Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WMUKBot

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.

WMUKBot

Operator: Seddon (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 09:59, Thursday December 2, 2010 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Manually Assisted

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: AWB

Function overview: Official delivery of notices on behalf of Wikimedia UK to members of the UK wikimedia community.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Likely to be no more than monthly/bimonthly

Estimated number of pages affected:Individual runs of tens, or hundreds, or thousands depending on geographical target.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N):

Discussion

Although I know that the message delivery bot does exist, this bot is strictly for official correspondence by Wikimedia UK and for use on extremely short notice. Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 10:01, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, is this to people who know they're going to get messaged, or for people who might be interested? - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 16:35, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The general plan is that for regular things such as newsletters and general announcements, messages will be directed to those who sign up to a delivery list. These will be probably about fortnightly. However there will limited usage, not expected to be no more than two or at the most three times a year at most, of significantly larger mailouts to ensure that new community members can be kept involved. These large scale mailouts are only expected to be a short-mid term until there has been discussion amongst the UK community about the suitable usage of central notice to logged in users. Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 23:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (one delivery run, maximum 100 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Let's see how this goes. - EdoDodo ^talk 09:46, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the meantime, might we also have a little explanation of the exact method of selecting those (the latter group) to receive messages? Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 11:28, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This will be based off user categories such as Category:Wikipedians_in_the_United_Kingdom. This has been done once before when Wikimedia UK first started but there was no follow up initially to allow people to sign up to a regular mailout, nor has there been a repeat since. Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 12:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The bot delivered a bunch of messages to user pages instead of user talk pages. Please stop it and roll back these edits as soon as possible. - EdoDodo ^talk 12:37, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, from the edits I can see a problem. Please use section headings - not in the transcluded message but in the message itself, as otherwise archive bots will have problems archiving. - EdoDodo ^talk 12:42, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I have said scattered around talk pages, many apologies for that and the section header issue has been corrected. :) Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 13:08, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not a problem, mistakes happen. Feel free to restart the trial whenever you're ready. - EdoDodo ^talk 13:12, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Self Review

Trial complete.

I thought I would self review the trial as felt that would help me and you guys.

Although there was an initial error with posting to user pages, this was quickly reverted. The issue was one of oversight caused by my computer restarting mid-set up resulting in not converting user pages to talk pages.
There was one instance of duplication here and here. I'm not entirely sure what happened here. This duplication was removed. Looked through the causes of this but the list was correct in both AWB and the source which is User:WMUKBot/Proto_delivery_list.
Messages will be subst: rather than simply transcluded since there is the issue of archiving etc.

That was everything I think I could see. WMUKBot (talk) 06:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC) Seddon ^talk|^WikimediaUK 06:03, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Approved. MBisanz ^talk 07:13, 5 December 2010 (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.