vickers is a semi-automated editor for articles of WP:SHIPS on en.wikipedia.org designed to make the tedious and repetitive task of filling in B-class article assessment checklists quicker and easier. It is essentially a combination of two browsers, one for viewing an article and one for editing the article's talkpage. When started, it:
- chooses an article X from Category:Ships_articles_with_incomplete_B-Class_checklists
- opens Talk:X for editing and X for viewing
- removes disused |nested= and |importance= parameters from {{WPSHIPS}}
- provides buttons to toggle the values (yes/no/blank) of criteria B1 through B5
- sets the toggle button states to match the values in the {{WPSHIPS}} template
- provides a button to add the |=needs-infobox=yes parameter
- provides buttons to skip ahead 1 or 10 articles
- provides a save button
When the save button is pressed, the Talk page is updated with the contents of the edit box, and the program returns to step 1. Some items of note:
- vickers is written in Java using jwbf and Eclipse RCP.
- vickers uses the chick skin to optimize the use of screen space.
- vickers displays article pages "logged off" and served via the squid cache to increase speed and decrease server load.
WP:SHIPS had approximately 8,500 articles needing this assessment when I started using the program. WP:MILHIST has approximately 25,000 articles needing similar work. I'm open to providing a slightly modified version to projects requiring this functionality.