Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VeblenBot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Approved.

VeblenBot

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Operator: CBM

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Perl

Function Summary: Update Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Table, and possibly other similar pages

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): One update per day

Edit rate requested: under 20 edits per DAY. Updating the table requires running several query.php queries, which run at no more than 1 query per second.

Already has a bot flag (Y/N):

Function Details: Updates table of article ratings. Future functionality may include updating lists of rated articles. The code is based on User:WP 1.0 bot, but with a more specific purpose. I have been successfully running this under my own user name for a week or so, but I would rather run it under an alternate username.

Discussion

Seems fine - make sure to put a throttle on any edits (in particular), and keep the query.php usage rate limited :). I too am writing a bot for WP1.0 (ish) work, which takes it all a step further than MathBot (by choosing articles), and from my research, the categories don't chagne that often, so perhaps you may choose to run the bot once a week? It's a task fairly easy on the servers, so I wouldn't worry about this too much in any case. Martinp23 22:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Right now there is exactly one write per day. If that were to increase to five or ten writes per day, I see no reason why the rate would need to be higher than one edit per 10 seconds. CBM · talk 22:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds great then :). Final question: I trust that the Maths Wikiproject is happy with this? Martinp23 22:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it has been discussed here and everyone who commented was in favor of it. I replaced the WP 1.0 table with this one over a week ago, and nobody has complained. CBM · talk 22:55, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Approved for trial. Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I've read over the comments from the Math WikiProject and the members have embraced this idea. The tables look beautiful as well. So long as you take their advise into account, I don't have any problem. They mentioned that you can't replace the WP 1.0 table or else that bot will be unable to function correctly, so make sure you have accounted for that issue. -- RM 12:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the trial. I'm sorry for the confusion about "replacing" things. The bot does not change the WP 1.0 table in any way, and never has. I replaced the transclusion on the math project page to point to the new table instead of the WP 1.0 table, which is still being updated by the WP 1.0 bot. CBM · talk 12:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that makes perfect sense. Does the bot aggregate the table already created by the WP 1.0 table or is this table created entirely from scratch? -- RM 13:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

It's done from scratch using query.php. The code is based on the WP 1.0 bot code, and there is now a link to the code on the bot's user page.

In order to cross-reference the article "field" tags with the "class" tags, I need to know the actual "class" of each article, but the WP 1.0 table only has totals, so it isn't helpful. Also the WP 1.0 bot ignores the B+ class, because it isn't a WP 1.0 rating. CBM · talk 13:35, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I understand now. -- RM 13:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

This looks really nice. I'm sure other large projects could use it. Maybe Oleg (WP1 Bot creator) would be interested in forking the code back into his codebase? --kingboyk 15:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

How's the trial going? The edits I can see look great - do you have any feedback? Martinp23 18:32, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The trial is going perfectly. Oleg is aware of the script, but has stated he would prefer to leave User:WP 1.0 bot unchanged for the time being in the interest of stability. If other projects are seriously interested in this sort of table, I would look into extending the code (and put in another bot request - this request only covers the math project). CBM · talk 19:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Great -  Approved.. Keep the edit rate down until the bot is flagged. Thanks, Martinp23 21:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I suspect WP Bio might be interested at some point - we may be in touch. Keep up the good work! --kingboyk 22:26, 26 March 2007 (UTC)