Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MykhalBot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was

Request Expired.

MykhalBot edit

Operator: Mykhal (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 20:36, Tuesday, December 19, 2017 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: initially manual, later maybe supervised, then potentially automatic

Programming language(s): Python/PWB

Source code available: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Pywikibot/Installation

Function overview: ocassional obvious multi-ocurrence typos, factual and/or technical errors fixing

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): one-time; after proving the good functionality, might be scheduled

Estimated number of pages affected: few tens, initially

Namespace(s): 0 (main)

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Various. Currently the task is to replace the Google search result URL to be replaced by the intended, i.e. real target URL (however, these first edits were unfortunately reverted, because not-yet approved bot status, and false edit summary alarm).

Discussion edit

Your function overview is too broad, we don't want bots to wander around articles just to fix random "typos" or "errors". Can you be more specific as to this task? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:09, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Xaosflux: On the other wiki site, before this type of URL fix, the bot was doing something much simpler, essentially and translated to EN: replacing obvious unnecessary "% of 100" to just "%" in e.g. "imdb.com rating: 77% of 100" for the movie pages. The nature of the edit was described in the edit summary. But here on the EN wiki, one would really have to make a separate specialized robot for that? I hoped I would use the robot from case to case to automate fixing of various obvious kind of problems, as I notice them. —Mykhal (talk) 22:46, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

.. But for this google URL fix, it would certainly be appropriate to do a specialized bot. I am not 100% sure this kind of fix is not yet covered some bot. So, this would be separate bot approval request, probably with source code published somewhere. But now I wonder if bots must be specialized, how the various smaller casual tasks are being automated. Everyone does not want to use his regular Wikipedia account for that. —Mykhal (talk) 23:02, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

MykhalBot recently did what can be called an unauthorized trial run. Of the 16 edits, eight fixed links that were commented out anyway, the other eight fixed links that were included in infobox image parameters and ignored. None of them changed either reader experience or behind-the-scenes functionality of the page in question. Since the bot apparently runs on other wikis too, Mykhal may want to check this edit; it seems the link is broken anyway, but the "fix" seems incomplete to me, with a ,d.aWc remaining at the end of the "true" fixed URL. Huon (talk) 19:34, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Huon: The bot was not prioritizing, so it was operating on articles obtained in a search query. Even editing the commented URL is useful in my opinion, as the raw google search result tracking URL does not even contain the original search query info, so probably no useful info is lost in the replacement.
I admit the bug causing mentioned garbage appendage to the extracted URL, the problem was not detected in manual/visual inspection of the diff before edit confirmation for this case. (The code was being improved iteratively, but I'm going to change regexp-based URL handling with proven URL parser). Thanks for the notice. But the argument on "reader experience" is not very useful, as many robots do various improvements that do not affect reader experience at all. —Mykhal (talk) 22:37, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mykhal: What's the search query you're using? --AntiCompositeNumber (Ring me) 22:45, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

AntiCompositeNumber: The search query was insource:/google\..{2,6}\/url/. —Mykhal (talk) 22:50, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Compare WP:COSMETICBOT. That part of the bot policy deals with edits that don't affect what I called the "reader experience". Huon (talk) 23:53, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

{{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}} Any update on refining the definition for this bot? As mentioned above non-specific "typo fixing" and "cosmetic only" type jobs are generally disapproved. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:24, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Request Expired. No response from operator. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:19, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.