Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/LivingBot 8

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

Withdrawn by operator.

LivingBot 8

Operator: - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)}

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Supervised automatic

Programming Language(s): Python, using pywikipedia.

Function Overview: Reformat <ref> tags placed straight after a {{reflist}}.

Edit period(s): One time run

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: For a variety of reasons (the example is quite obvious), pages can end up like this:

{{Reflist}}<!--added above categories/infobox footers by script-assisted edit-->
<ref>Tony Wood The Man, The Legend</ref>

i.e., the tags are used to list non-inline citations, even directly after {{reflist}}. Needless to say, this causes a big red error. I would like to run through a list of pages with broken references and reflists, checking to see if this is the case. THey would simply be reformatted like so:

{{Reflist}}<!--added above categories/infobox footers by script-assisted edit-->
* Tony Wood The Man, The Legend

which isn't perfect but doesn't cause the error.

Discussion

I'm open to suggestions for improvement, of course. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 18:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An obvious suggestion is to also accept <references/>, and to wrap the list in {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} if it follows {{reflist}}. --Amalthea 19:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, fine by me. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 19:34, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't run into this problem. How would you find articles with a <ref> after a {{reflist}}? – Quadell ^(talk) 13:47, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would run through a list of pages with both broken references (i.e. in this backlogged category) and transcluding {{reflist}}. That would create a fairly refined list; nothing a few regexes couldn't handle. As for <references/>, I'm still working on that. (n.b. this is going to go stale, no doubt, while I am away, so if BAG members could refrain from archiving (give me 10 days, say) then that would be appreciated.) - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that cat only has around a thousand articles; you could just search through each for <references/> or {{reflist}} if you wanted. The bigger problem is formatting. You'd be taking articles in a patently bad format and changing them to use a different format that you hope is an improvement (though still not very good). So it would make this sort of change, right? That looks like an improvement. But what about cases like Khoo Thean Teik or North London Collegiate School (which are just as common, if not moreso)? Wouldn't the bot change pages from using one bad (but easily detectable by volunteer editors) format to a different bad (but more difficult to find and fix) format? – Quadell ^(talk) 21:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{{OperatorAssistanceNeeded|D}}

Seeing as though the problem seems to have lessened (at least in sheer quantity), and as the issues Quadell has brought would require more work to fix than I had been anticipating, I'm going to close this as withdrawn - or rather, deferred to AWB plus some of my time. That way, quality should not be compromised. So basically, yes,

Withdrawn by operator.. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 14:24, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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.