User talk:Maralia/FA bot

FAC/FLC closing bot

@Legoktm, GrahamColm, Ian Rose, and Hahc21: There are several separate discussions about this at the moment, spread across multiple pages. If you don't mind, I'd like to centralize discussion here (I expect we will eventually move this page into the WP namespace). I will add a link here from those other discussions.

Lego asked for an explanation of the bot's importance, so he can prioritize it amongst his workload.

How we got here

GimmeBot closed all FACs, FARs, and FLCs for many years, and also (as a separate task) implemented articlehistory on closed GANs and PRs. Occasionally Gimme would take some time off, and when he did, I would step in and manually close FACs and FARs in his absence.

GimmeBot stopped operating at the end of January, leaving us without a bot to handle FAC, FLC, and FAR closes. Someone from FLC made a new bot request for FLC closing; the task request is at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VoxelBot 3. The new bot was asked to use the procedures for FLC closing documented at User:Hahc21/FL Bot, and I requested that it also follow the procedures for FAC and FAR closing documented at User:Maralia/FA bot.

From the end of January to nearly the end of February, the FLC folks manually closed all FLCs, and I manually closed all FACs and FARs. On February 25, VoxelBot was approved, and it began to close FLCs and FACs.

At FAC, we have had ongoing issues with the functions the bot does perform:

the frequency of the run has been somewhat unreliable, sometimes lapsing for a week or more;
the bot doesn't use proper closing timestamps, instead using a current timestamp (problematic especially since its closes were often much later than the actual action);
the bot often doesn't name the right user who closed a particular FAC, instead naming someone else;
a bug often causes it to stall in mid-close, which leaves that FAC partially closed and any remaining FACs altogether unclosed.

We also needed functions that were part of the original request but were never written in:

Rather than fully implementing articlehistory on closed FACs (that is, catching and recording all relevant process events on the page, such as previous GANs, PRs, DYK) the bot can only incorporate the FAC itself into articlehistory. This is a huge omission because GimmeBot had been the only bot that implemented articlehistory at all, so now there is no automated process to record anything except FACs and FLCs in articlehistory. Consequently, since late January I have been editing the talk page of most every article as it arrives at FAC to create an articlehistory for all previous actions.
FAR closing was said to be in the works, but was never implemented. I have manually closed all FARs since January (with the occasional help of one other user).
Removing GAs-promoted-to-FAC from the list at WP:GA was never implemented. I wasn't able to keep up with this manually, so the GA page contains hundreds of articles that are technically no longer GA.

As the year has progressed, the bot operator has become increasingly unresponsive. He has at times apparently taken action on posts to his usertalk or the bot's talk page, but has not responded directly to any inquiry since July 09. The bot has not successfully run the FAC task since 26 November. I posted on the bot talk page and pinged the operator on 02 December. He did not respond, so I pinged the co-operator of the bot on 05 December; he indicated he would attempt to get hold of the operator or fix the code himself. The morning of 08 December, the bot attempted to run the FAC closing task, but once again experienced the bug described above and stalled out in the middle of its first close and therefore only close.

The tl/dr summary, from a FAC perspective:

Closing FACs is important. When the process is not completed:
- Nominators are left confused about the status of their nomination, resulting in many worried talkpage queries (despite a closing notice intended to allay such concerns).
- Reviewers cannot tell which articles actually still need review.
- Readers are not made aware that articles have attained FA status.
Closing FACs is hard. A single FAC close typically involves opening at least five pages and editing three. A user has to locate the diff where the article was promoted/archived; get the username, timestamp, and url; incorporate this information into an archive tag on the nomination page; add an FA star to the article if promoted; and create or update articlehistory on the article talk page. The last step—articlehistory—includes scanning the talk page for other relevant process actions (GAN, PR, DYK, etc) and getting all the relevant links and timestamps to incorporate those actions as well. Articlehistory itself is so complex that few users know how to fully implement it.
There are a lot of FAC closes. On average, we have 50 closes per month.
Since Gimme left, I'm effectively the only person around who knows how to manually close FACs. It's tedious, nitpicky work that ends up falling squarely on my shoulders when the bot fails; no one else seems to have the fortitude to take it on.

I am so grateful that the current bot saved us (me) from manually closing all the FACs this year, but unfortunately we are facing precisely the same situation again. I really appreciate your willingness to help out, Lego. Good luck on your exams this week. Maralia (talk) 06:09, 9 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I'm not sure what kind of commentary is wanted here, but I wanted to add my $.02 as a former FAC delegate. This work that gimmebot used to do is absolutely critical to keeping things in order as an article progresses through the food chain and becomes a Featured Article. The manual tasks of promoting an FA even when gimmebot was functioning were significant: close the FAC page, move it to the appropriate log, add the page to WP:FA under the appropriate classification, update the counter, add it to WP:GO. All that was on TOP of what gimmebot did. Voxelbot was doing some of it, but gimmebot being shut down has created a huge void. Updating articlehistory and other things are thankless tasks, and no one notices them half the time, even when they aren't being done. Most people just want to see the little star in the corner of their article and they're on their merry way. It's far from ideal for all this to be a manual process. Is this absolutely critical to the mission of Wikipedia? No. But it's very important. --Laser brain (talk) 19:44, 12 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Side question: Has anyone actually attempted to email Gimme to ask for his source code? He still has email enabled on his account. --Laser brain (talk) 20:20, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know that at least a couple of people did (and got no response), but I've since forgotten who. Guess it couldn't hurt to try again. Maralia (talk) 03:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Few changes

I am manually closing Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Interstate 805/archive1 and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Interstate 70 in West Virginia/archive1 since the bot screwed up again, and noticed a few things...

The User: link to the delegates should be piped, next to the "promoted" or "not promoted" part.
All assessment classes should be set to FA.

Also, my manual closes should probably be checked Thanks, Rs chen 7754 20:36, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure #1 really matters (if it ever did matter, I've probably invalidated it by personally doing it 'wrong' a zillion times now), but I'll change the advice. As to #2: I've been doing that all along, so no idea how I left that off the list all this time! Thanks for the notes. I'll check over your two soon; thanks for doing them yourself. Maralia (talk) 21:32, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update!

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Legobot 36.

I just did FAC for now, I should be able to do FAR and FLC in the next few days. Legoktm (talk) 09:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]