Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/H3llBot

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.

H3llBot

Operator: H3llkn0wz (talk · contribs)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Automatic (partially reviewed before committed for now)

Programming language(s): C# .NET (comm via MediaWiki API)

Source code available: Not for now

Function overview: Add {{Caldwell catalogue}} and Category:Caldwell objects to the relevant article list contained in the template per this request.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): —

Edit period(s): One time run.

Estimated number of pages affected: ~~A bit less than 100~~ 96

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y (using this)

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

Function details:

Previous withdrawn request details

Function overview: Change the starting/first date param of a manually-specified template of the pages transcluding the said template to {{Template:Start date}} format. This is per this request (previously this one).

Function details: Current implementation changes the first storm formed in the Infobox hurricane season template param of the pages transcluding the said template to {{Template:Start date}} format. Potentially the bot should be able to handle all this list without major codebase changes.

The page is parsed by building a tree representation of relevant elements. (This is an overkill, but I am planning or a bit more complex tasks in the future.) The parser gracefully skips the page should it be unable to follow the syntax (i.e. broken page syntax), unable to find the template, unable to find the param, or unable to parse the date. Dates are accepted in "2001", "June 2001", "9 June 2001", "June 9, 2001" formats. The bot will also handle the linked "[[July 30]], [[1870]]" form. The bot cannot process dates in form of "June 7" (not possible in {{start date}}) or surrounded by additional info, such as "June 13, 1886 (Hurricane 1)" or "≤June 13, 1780". The implementation is not regex or search/replace based, rather split the string up and analyze each part. The bot will only allow proper/valid dates (no year <1583, no 29th Feb on non-leap-years, etc.). The bot respects prefix and postfix ' ', '\r', '\n' symbols to not break the layout.

A relevant question I asked on this talk page addresses the bot "fixing" corrupted end-lines due to some intermediate processing done outside of my code. This seems to change nothing visually except for removal of the repeated #10 character.

The bot adds a {{Caldwell catalogue}} template if it hasn't been added yet. It then replaces malformed or non-existent category with Category:Caldwell objects. See this diff for an example.

The bot properly logs in and sends user-agent "H3llBot/0.3 (.NET C# HttpWebRequest; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:H3llBot)". It has a POST request queue and read and write cooldown. The bot respects edit conflicts (currently skipping a page should one occur). Emergency shutdown via WP is not currently implemented as I am monitoring what it does real-time for now. I will implement this. The bot marks edits with "&bot". I currently run the bot from my PC.

The resulting summary of changes can be dumped in Bot's sandbox (or wherever needed) with a list of articles that it couldn't parse.

Discussion

I just found this request which was denied... Serves me right for being an idiot and picking a request at random. :( The previous failed due to microformat output ambiguity due to possible non-Gregorian dates. There also appears to have been sock-puppetry of some kind. I assume I should not touch this any further? Sorry about the mess. — Hellknowz ▎talk 20:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed my request for something slightly less controversial. I hope this is OK instead of spawning a new sub-page and since noone has replied yet. — Hellknowz ▎talk

I have implemented the above task now. Here is a dummy report. (Note that some articles had duplicate entries, I have enquired about this) — Hellknowz ▎talk 21:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (20 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Josh Parris 09:06, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. Special:Contributions/H3llBot — Hellknowz ▎talk 12:18, 15 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Approved. after reviewing the edits, all seems well. Good sailing. Feel free to complete this small task without the bot flag. Josh Parris 12:31, 15 May 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.