Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JJMC89 bot 4

Operator: JJMC89 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 05:54, Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AutoWikiBrowser

Source code available: AWB (User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects)

Function overview: Complete discontinuation of comments subpages.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

• Wikipedia:Discontinuation of comments subpages (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• BOTREQ (permalink)

Edit period(s): One time run initially, upon request afterwards if needed

Estimated number of pages affected: 35,000 per part initially

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Complete discontinuation of comments subpages.

• Part A: subst /Comments subpages (via {{subst:substituted comment/subst}}). List compiled from Category:All articles with assessment comments (and the categories here if needed depending on the job queue).
• Part B: redirect /Comments subpages to the main talk page. List compiled from Category:Pages whose comments subpage can be redirected.

Part A will be run with all automatic changes and User:Magioladitis/WikiProjects.

• Please see my comments at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Substitute and redirect /Comments subpages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:51, 25 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• I also object; just treat them as archive pages with non-standard names, per my comments at same locale as Andy's.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:09, 26 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• More complex logic, while extra work to implement, might be useful. For example, if the comments page is quite new (newer than the most recent talk edit), I'd subst it to the bottom of the talk page. If it's older than anything on the current talk page, I'd put it in the archive box. If the page doesn't have an archives, you could add it to the top of the talk page. But it might not be worth adding all that functionality. — Earwig ^talk 02:44, 29 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Thanks for the comments. Interesting ideas from everyone, although quite complicated as Earwig acknowledges and probably unnecessary in my opinion. These pages typically consist of a single sentence of questionable value - I invite you to sample a few at Category:All articles with assessment comments. I don't believe it is worth retaining a whole archive page for them; the vast majority of these talk pages do not have any archives yet anyway. Some may be gibberish or even vandalism that has never been spotted; bringing it to the talk page will increase the likelihood that it will get attention. A disadvantage of keeping a separate archive page is the danger of it getting separated when a page move occurs - much neater to have all comments on one talk page. It might be worth asking JJMC89 to comment on how feasible the above suggestions actually are. My own opinion favours the simple method of substituting at the bottom of the talk page - I don't believe this will disrupt current discussions, and any long comments will be collapsed. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:53, 29 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• @Pigsonthewing, SMcCandlish, The Earwig, and MSGJ: As far as I know, AWB cannot use the state of another page to make changes to the page it is editing, so placing the comments in different places based on time is out unless someone can write a template to parse everthing. Instead of substituting /Comments, {{Archives}} could be added or |1=[[/Comments|Article assessment comments]] added to an existing {{Archives}} (Unless someone can come up with a working regex, this would override any |1= already present.). /Comments could then could be wrapped with {{Archive top}} and {{Archive bottom}} with {{Soft redirect}} added. Starting point for an AWB module to add {{Archives}}:

public string ProcessArticle(string ArticleText, string ArticleTitle, int wikiNamespace, out string Summary, out bool Skip)
{
  Skip = false;
  Summary = "";
  string zerothSection = WikiRegexes.ZerothSection.Match(ArticleText).Value;
  string restOfArticle = ArticleText.Replace(zerothSection, "");
  string archives = @"\{\{\s*(archives|archive[ _]*box)(\s*\|([^{]|\{[^{]|\{\{[^{}]+\}\})+)\}\}";
  
  if ( Regex.IsMatch(zerothSection, archives, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) ) {
    ArticleText = Regex.Replace(zerothSection, archives, "{{$1|\n* [[/Comments|Article assessment comments]]\n$2}}", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) + restOfArticle;
  } else {
    ArticleText = zerothSection + "{{Archives|auto=yes|search=yes|\n* [[/Comments|Article assessment comments]]\n}}\n\n" + restOfArticle;
  }
  
  return ArticleText;
}

I don't think its worth the trouble. If talk page participants want to archive the substituted text or place it in chronological order, they are free to do so. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:29, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• If we add the last revision date as a timestamp then I believe the archiving bots will make sure it goes into the relevant archive based on this date. The only reason I didn't do this earlier is that the comment may be archived immediately without anyone seeing it. But perhaps this is not so much of a concern — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:29, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not seeing any real gain here and substantial potential to confuse editors by barfing old comments onto the talk page. At the very least, it seems obvious that the discussion on whether this task is appropriate should be taken to a venue with larger traffic. ~ Rob^Talk 02:05, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  For your information, we have had consensus for this task since 2009. If you would care to look through WT:DCS you will see that most people who commented there supported the idea of substituting these comments on the talk page. The exact implementation was never agreed on, which may be why this still hasn't been completed 7 years later. (Outright deletion was also discussed but there were some concerns over loss of attribution.) Substitution and redirection gained the most support. We can take this back to WP:VPR if you insist, but I very much doubt that consensus has changed on this issue. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:33, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  I've always interpreted deprecation to mean "stop using this" while deletion means "actively get rid of this". There's a bit of a difference. I don't see any consensus on that page for deletion, and especially none for throwing everything on the talk page in this manner. ~ Rob^Talk 13:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  I didn't claim there was consensus for deletion. If you read the comments on that page to see what people meant by "deprecation" you'll see that the overwhelming majority mention substitution and redirection. What are the alternative methods? For example, simply {{hat}}ting the comments was not proposed by a single person in those discussions. Leaving things the way they are is not deprecation because there is still the occasional edit to these pages (see here) and those with problematic content are not being dealt with. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:51, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Concur with Rob. As a WP:GNOME myself, I have a lot of patience for fiddly cleanup efforts, but this appears to be a worm-can best left unopened. No harm is caused by old /Comments pages. It's just historical stuff that few care about at all, and fewer and fewer care, less and less, the more the material ages. I'm skeptical we care much if someone vandalizes a /Comments page to be string of expletives, since people don't look at these pages; it would be rather like screaming obscenities into one's pillow, alone, at midnight.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:24, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  LOL to the pillow anology. Okay I do see where you are coming from. There are similar conversations occurring elsewhere on the wiki regarding abandoned userspace drafts and the option of cleaning them up versus ignoring them. (Personally I feel we should take some effort to keep our article talk space reasonably tidy ...) Anyway, seeing as there was a very strong consensus from editors to take some action regarding these subpages and as we have a bot operator ready and willing to do this job, do you think that perhaps your ambivalence should not stand in the way of getting the job done? I do recognise that there is a sort of consensus developing here though as well, so I will make a couple of proposals below. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:35, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• As alluded to above, this might be at a point where we need to consider sending these directly to archives or otherwise just integrating them with {{Archives}} directly instead of sending them to current discussions on the article's talk page. On low-and-zero-traffic articles, sending them to the talk page might not be as bad, admittedly, but all the others will end up with a bot injecting stale, most-likely-irrelevant comments into a stream of current discussions (plus disrupting watchlists for anyone who doesn't ignore bots). A bot might not even need to do anything if we could use a module to test the existence of a page (which is predictably a specific subpage of the corresponding Talk). --slakr^\ talk / 02:32, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually it would be fairly easy to detect which pages have archives, and it would be a small fraction of the total. I would be willing to take a look at these manually and see if the comments can be incorporated into the relevant archive to prevent any disruption to the flow of the talk page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:35, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I recognise the concerns of editors on this page, and considering also the strong consensus to clean these subpages up, I have a couple of proposals below. Hopefully we can agree on one of these. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:41, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Option 1: the bot will only substitute the contents of the /Comments subpage on talk pages which do not have any archives. The remainder (which will be a tiny proportion) will be dealt with manually and discretion exercised.
  • Option 2: the bot will not substitute any comments, but will simply redirect the subpage to the article's talk page. I feel this is preferable to just leaving the subpage untouched as it actively discourages any further use of these pages.
• I'd support Option 1, but the discussion of which option has consensus really should happen at a better venue than BRFA. ~ Rob^Talk 20:52, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree, consensus should be established before BRFA, and indeed, ideally before BOTREQ. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:23, 3 April 2016 (UTC).[reply]
  
  • As noted above there is broad consensus for the original requested task evident at WT:DCS (originally at WP:VPR) and reaffirmed by several editors recently. However that doesn't seem to stop people opposing it here. (Can't have it both ways!) Tell you what I'll do - I'll post a short notice on WP:VPR asking anyone interested to post here and I'll ping those editors who posted recently at DCS to comment on their preferred option above. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:12, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay it is now advertised on WP:VPR and I will ping the four editors who commented at WT:DCS one final time to ask them to express their preference either on the original proposal or the two compromise options above: User:Dinoguy1000, User:Hiding, User:PC78, User:Titoxd — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:09, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• {{BAGAssistanceNeeded}} It's been a while without further comment. Could we get a decision on this please? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:50, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not many comments from anyone, unfortunately. Which option are we going with? — Earwig ^talk 20:50, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Seems that option 1 may satisfy just about everyone's concerns — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:38, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • VPR post archived with no responses. Yeah, I guess we'll go forward with option 1. Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. — Earwig ^talk 03:27, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1 does not satisfy my concerns. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:12, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Option 1 works for me. Hiding T 21:04, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Well there are 0 that need tackling manually if you'd care to give a hand! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:26, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. Edits: part A, part B, and one incorrect redirect due to loading the wrong page list. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:45, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any issues, apart from the one identified. Perhaps the edit summaries could be a bit more descriptive, but the links to WP:DCS should suffice. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:59, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it is worth pointing out to other editors on this page that the bot is only dealing with pages which don't have any archive pages (or at least not one of the form /Archive 1 which seems overwhelmingly the favoured naming scheme). Those with archive pages are being dealt with manually for now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:00, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While a minority, there are a significant number of archive pages not using that naming scheme. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 08:57, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you could give me some examples, I will be happy to add them to the logic that detects the archive pages. Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:57, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There are 0 talk pages which have precisely one archive (Archive 1). In addition to option 1, could we please get approval to substitute the comments onto /Archive 1 for these pages? Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:48, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved.

• 0 archives: substitute comment to talk
• 1 archive: substitute comment to archive
• >1 archives: resolve manually

We can't be perfect, but if a talk page is old enough to have comments and yet has no archives, chances are that activity is so infrequent that the substitution won't occur during active discussion. Even if it were to, it's hard to imagine that the message will actually disrupt anything, and we already have other bots that post talk page messages. As for archive substitution, the interpolating comments requires a fair bit of work for little benefit (and is possibly a bit misguided, since it's not an accurate picture of how the talk page looked). So, I see enough support and no convincing objections. — Earwig ^talk 16:44, 27 April 2016 (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.

Languages