Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 2

message: I am planning to use a bot to create Rambot-like articles on Israeli cities. The discussion thread on wikiEN-l starts here. The example article is at User:AdamRaizen/Ramla. Comment there or at User_talk:AdamRaizen or User_talk:IsraBot. -- AdamRaizen 14:08, 2003 Sep 15 (UTC)
:I like some of the different types of data in the above article.  The U.S. Census bureau data gets old to look at after a while.  Good work! -- Ram-Man 22:29, Sep 19, 2003 (UTC)
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From the Village pump
:: This may be a stupid question but; when Google and sites like Onelook update themselves regarding to wikipedia content, does it have an significant effect on the server performance and response time? -- Skysmith 11:52, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well-behaved, polite, gentle spiders like Google's don't seriously degrade performance, but we get our share of visits from jerks who hit every link on the site four at a time with no delay between hits. When these are found, they get banned. --Brion 05:16, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot for generating Rambot-like articles on Israeli cities 

message: Rob Hooft has written a bot to simplify Disambiguations. Given the name of a disambiguation page, it gets the pages that link to that page, shows the disambiguators, and lets the user choose one of them or 'none', then changing that page.
It has been used with success on nl:, and I would like to ask whether it would be okay to use it here as well? Andre Engels 09:01, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: How does it change the page?  I mean, if a link is to English, does it change the text to English language or put it as a hidden link: English?  I would much prefer the second - that's what I tend to do when manually fixing links to disambiguation pages.  The first option can lead to some very strange sentences.  -- sannse 09:07, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: It does the second. Andre Engels 09:19, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

text: As an example, I have used the robot on 11 (out of a larger number) from the pages linking to 'Java'. See http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=80.129.93.237 for the results. Andre Engels 09:51, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: This looks as though it could be really useful.  If the technical types give the go-ahead I would be very interested in learning how to use this (I might take a bit of teaching - I don't know the first thing about bots).  I do a lot of manual disambiguation fixing, so something that makes the work easier would be welcome.  -- sannse 10:43, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation bot 

message: is there a way to build a bot?
I'd like a bot that could track (somehow) party standings from official websites that keep track of these, and automatically update pages with these party standings. (political pages)
is there a way to make such a bot? if so, respond in my talk page
Pellaken 06:32, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: bot building

message: 195.50.12.118 and User talk:195.50.12.115 are unregistered bots which have been attempting to add spacing to all taxoboxes accross the Wiki. They have been blocked, but I fear they shall be back soon from another IP. Fennec 20:56, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unregistered taxo-box spacing bot 

message: I made a script that downloads pages from my list of articles with common misspellings, fixes any of the common misspellings, and then lists other potentially misspelled words, which I can correct with the click of a button. I review every change before it is submitted, but the script allows me to correct pages faster and more accurately as compared to changing articles by hand.
I'm not sure if I need permission for this, but I thought I'd ask to be safe. My script should be:
# harmless because I review and discard any incorrect fixes
# useful because I can easily correct not only misspellings on the list, but any misspellings I notice
# not a server hog because it is limited by how fast I can approve changes. It should use less overall bandwidth than fixing every article by hand because I only request the edit page for the article, rather than loading the article and then following the "edit" link. 
I could even allow others to help because the script runs off my personal computer through a web interface. Thanks. Wmahan. 21:55, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)
:There have been objections to spelling bots in the past. See Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 1 and the Spelling Day? thread on Wikien-l. It might be best for you to ask on the mailing list (WikiEN-l if you are just doing this on the English Wikipedia, or Wikipedia-l if you want to run it in other places as well). Angela. 22:07, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I don't think that the primary objection to spelling bots, namely that they perform erroneous changes, applies here because every change is reviewed by a human before being submitted. So this method shouldn't make any changes that I wouldn't make by hand; it only speeds the process up. I've emailed WikiEN-l as you suggested for confirmation. Wmahan. 03:34, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
:I think Angela's point is that for example, sometimes valid foreign words happen to be misspelled English words. Human knows the article is talking about completely non-English stuff but bots cannot be aware of contexts. I am pretty sure it happens extremely unlikely but it might happen. And it is really tedious and hard to spot errors made by bots because people assume they don't make mistake. So I object to spelling bots. -- Taku 06:17, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)
I'm claiming that my bot will be different from others that might run amok in that I will be aware of context when I review each change. I agree that it is easy to make a mistake in approving a bot's changes; that's why I must explicitly request any correction that doesn't appear on the list of common misspellings, which has been reviewed for potential pitfalls. If this bot is approved, I will be conservative and not make changes that I'm unsure about.
I admit that there is a possibility, though small, that the bot will make an incorrect change, and then I approve it. My points here are that there are that 1) because I am responsible for the changes, anyone who notices the mistake is free to yell at me on my talk page; and 2) one can interpret the maxim be bold in updating pages as an argument that even if I make a few mistakes in making many corrections, I'm justified by the overall benefit to Wikipedia.
To summarize, I share your concern about assuming that bots are perfect, but I won't make such an assumption. Thus I think that your blanket rejection of spelling bots is a little too cautious. Wmahan. 15:14, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
Addendum: I thought I should let you know that Jimbo agrees with the idea, see WikiEN-l. But I'm not trying to bypass anyone's opinion, and I'm willing to listen to any further objections or comments. Wmahan. 18:25, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
Please do. As far as being bold goes, how well you do will be the best way of judging whether it's good or bad. If you get it wrong regularly, people will object.:) Jamesday 14:17, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request to use human-assisted spelling bot