Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MMABot 2

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

Approved.

MMABot 2

Operator: TreyGeek (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 23:03, Friday December 30, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic supervised

Programming language(s): Java

Source code available: No (at least not yet)

Function overview: MMABot will edit MMA figher articles, mostly the Infobox, MMA record box and MMA record history table, to comply with several Wikipedia policies, manuals of style, and MMA Wikiproject consensus issues.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): An announcement of version 2 of MMABot was put at the MMA WikiProject discussion page and discussion of the tasks and how they would be implemented is on the bot's talk page.

Edit period(s): Multiple times per week, initially and ideally. Over time, as articles become more consistent (or if my time in monitoring the bot decreases) the interval may be reduced.

Estimated number of pages affected: 1,709 (As of December 4, 2011)

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N

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

Function details:

Task Number	Task	Status	Brief Description
6	Remove future fights from fight record	Withdrawn	As per the following discussions: 1, 2, and 3; MMABot will remove future fights from a fighter's record table.
7	More cleanup of MMA record table	Unapproved	The deprecated "link=off" parameter for the {{dts}} template will be removed. Any fighter name or event that is "red linked" will be de-linked. Variation of "US" in the location column will be changed to "United States". As per WP:OVERLINK the names of countries (ie "United States", "England", "Brazil", etc) will be delinked. As per MMA WikiProject promotions and organizations which are linked in the event column will be delinked. Any names in the opponent field which are incorrectly linked will be corrected.
8	More cleanup of Infobox & Recordbox	Unapproved	The deprecated total win/loss parameters are removed from both the infobox and {{MMArecordbox}}. As per this discussion MMABot will remove any information used in the fighting style parameter of the Infobox. Links to a fighter's Sherdog profile will be matched between the "External links" section and the infobox parameter.
9	Add MMA WikiProject Banner to talk pages	Unapproved	If an article's talk page does not include the {{WikiProject Mixed martial arts}} banner, it will be added.
10	Flagging unsourced articles	Unapproved	If an article lacks any <ref> tags the {{BLP unsourced}} template will be added to the top of the article.

Discussion

This request is to add additional functionality to an existing bot (MMABot v1 BAG request). These tasks are to fulfill some additional requests I and other edits have had since MMABot was first created and has been running as well as to handle some additional MMA fighter article guidelines consensus items. These additional tasks have been implemented and I've been testing it on random articles in the bot's sandbox. It appears to me I have resolved the major bugs in the bot. The possibility exists there are other bugs I have not found, but intend to do more testing in the sandbox while the approval process proceeds and if approved I will be manually reviewing edits the bot makes.

As for exclusion compliance, I have answered 'no' above simply because I have not implemented that functionality (and I am unaware of any MMA fighter articles with the bot exclusion tag). If approval requires this functionality, I have no problems adding that in. I welcome any other comments, suggestions, and/or questions. --TreyGeek (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've got concerns on #6; I'm not sure whether there's clear consensus that the given data should be removed across-the-board entirely, at least given Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mixed_martial_arts/Archive_6#Adding_future_fights_to_the_fight_record_table; there're a lot of "split it" or "integrate it" sort of responses. I'm nit-picking, but the main reason I raise the issue is because when it comes to bots, there's a very high standard of consensus on any task it might be performing. If other editors disagree on the actions a bot takes, it's extremely difficult for the average editor to mass-revert it. #7 and #8 might also be issues, as it could result in repetitive removal of content and "enforcing consensus," which could involve the bot in edit wars—something that should not happen. I could be being overly paranoid, however, so other editors who are better-versed in this should please speak up in any direction. --slakr^\ talk / 06:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that #6 is the most controversial tasks that the bot will perform, which is why I left it as a separate item in the table rather than lumping it in with other record table items. Over the last three years the large majority of MMA WikiProject participants have preferred that future fights not go in the table for a number of reasons (those discussions are linked in the task description). While other editors have come in to disagree with this agreement, there never seems to be enough to swing the opinions of those who are for removal of future fights from the fight table. This task is being manually enforced by a number of editors including myself. If this item is deemed to be too controversial I can easily remove that functionality from the bot. (Incidentally, MMABot was intended to do this tasks in version 1. However, I removed the functionality then because debate on this task had started up at about the same time.)

As for task #7 I fail to see how any of those items could be controversial. It standardizes the presentation of "United States" across all MMA fight record tables, removes a deprecated parameter from a date template, and enforces non-controversial Wikipedia guidelines and MOS (WP:REDLINK, WP:OVERLINK). If there is a concern that I am overlooking, I'd be happy to listen to them.

Task #8 is also largely non-controversial (removal of deprecated parameters and providing Sherdog profile link consistency). The only think that may be of minor concern is the removal of fighting styles in the Martial Arts infobox as per MMA WikiProject guidelines. This was a change to the guidelines during the summer and largely hasn't been followed because manually removing styles from 1700+ articles is a pain. This is why the bot was created in the first place.

Any possible edit war involving these tasks would be a slow one since I monitor the edits the bots make during the edit runs. When version 1 of the bot began its first pass through MMA fighter articles, it took almost two months to get through all of the articles, because of the need to edit and review practically every fighter article. Subsequent runs have taken less and less time as there have been fewer articles needing edits (the last run took two weeks to complete as the bot was editing about 1 in 25 articles). These new set of tasks was announced on the MMA WikiProject discussion page two and a half weeks ago (Dec 17) and there have been no comments for or against the tasks. In testing the tasks for this bot in its sandbox I have been manually copying the changes to the live article if/when the edits look good. This past weekend I did this with fighter articles for the recent UFC event. With few exceptions those changes have been stable and no comments from other editors. Which suggests to me that there is little to no concern over the edits that will be made by this version of the bot. --TreyGeek (talk) 15:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The rest of the task looks fine, but I do agree with slakr's concern regarding #6, it may be worth starting another discussion/rfc/etc to verify where the consensus is at the moment (looking through the different discussions, consensus regarding it seems to be mostly split, but has changed over time) --Chris 17:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm withdrawing task #6 from the request. I agree it is the most controversial thing the bot would do and don't want that one item to hold up the approval for this set of tasks. --TreyGeek (talk) 20:09, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok,

Approved for trial (7 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. --Chris 02:02, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks I'll start slow with the tests in case there are any strange bugs I haven't encountered in the sandbox.

I did just notice I goofed slightly in task #7. It should also include "Any names in the opponent field which are incorrectly linked will be corrected." (IOW, "Roy Nelson" would become "[[Roy Nelson (fighter)|Roy Nelson]" .) If it is a big deal I left that off the list of tasks let me know; I can comment that method out and skip it for now. If it's otherwise alright, I can add it in to the list of tasks in #7. --TreyGeek (talk) 02:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That should be fine --Chris 08:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. In the last week, I've performed short runs of the bot each day. It has been through 100 fighters. Of that it edited 84 articles[1] and 46 talk pages[2]. Early on I discovered a few bugs which were corrected. No major issues were discovered after those early corner cases were dealt with. --TreyGeek (talk) 17:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Approved. --Chris 17:12, 20 January 2012 (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.