User:TedderBot/WikiBacon

Bacon the cat, the mascot of WikiBacon

Project basics

wikibacon, AKA the Wikipedia bacon tool: show relationship between user A and user B

The name comes from the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", though it only shows DIRECT relationships, not 6 degrees in relationships.

Discussions:

• User talk:Tedder#WikiBacon results
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TedderBot
• Wikipedia_talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 180#New tool in the arsenal: WikiBacon
• Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2009 August 6#Tool to find all pages which two editors edited

Output

• Public output: User:TedderBot/Bacon Results

Technologies

• perl
• Wikipedia API:query
  • API:Query - Lists
  • API contribs example, basic
  • API contribs example, extended
  • python libraries

Infrastructure

Hosted on my own server unless my request for a Toolserver account is granted.

Code is on Github, and uses the MIT License.

Prerequisites

• Data::Dumper
• MediaWiki::API
• Time::ParseDate
• Storable

Installation

Assuming the above prerequisites are met, a few paths are currently hardcoded:

• test/tedderbot-test.pl: $userfile is at /home/tedt/.wiki-userinfo. This file should contain the account information the bot is running as:

mw_user: TedderBot
mw_pass: plaintext_password

• TedderBot/UserContribs.pm: $filename is a cache to the usercontribs. This will probably go away if the script is moved to the Toolserver.

Running

Example:

test/tedderbot-test.pl --user1=Tedder --user2=Katr67 --test

Remove --test to cause output to be sent to User:TedderBot/Bacon Results.

Notes

• 7/8/2009: redesigned away from OO based on prototypes, which showed the OO design was far too complex. Added future ideas. Have requested a toolserver account and bot review.
• 7/14/2009: committed user contribs methods, committed testing data for block size
• 7/17/2009: split off UserContribs.pm, create intersection code
• 7/20/2009: oneoff bot/search script using the framework
• 7/24/2009: prototype up and running! Results: User:TedderBot/Bacon Results