Persondata-o-matic is a tool by User:Dcoetzee for Microsoft Windows for rapid interactive entry of persondata information in biographical entries. It was created in December 2011 to address the enormous backlogs in this area. It is written in C# using DotNetWikiBot (included in download) and requires the .NET Framework 2.0 or later (included on any Windows Vista or later PC).
The tool lets the user choose a backlog to work on (Category:Persondata templates without name parameterorCategory:Persondata templates without short description parameter), loads a list of the first 10,000 articles, and presents articles in a random order. Form fields can be used to add, remove, or update any persondata information, and the template is updated accordingly with an informative edit summary. Articles are loaded and saved in the background, so that the user can move instantly from one article to the next by merely pressing ENTER to press the "Save and next" button. Other options are to Skip the current page, or to Remove the persondata template (if it is not a biographical article).
The name field may be speculatively pre-filled based on category sort keys and/or the title of the article. The user should verify this name is correct and in compliance with Wikipedia:Persondata#Name_and_titles before saving. Persondata-o-matic does not make any edits automatically.
Security warning: log-in credentials are saved in a plain text file between sessions.
Bug reporting: If you encounter any problems with Persondata-o-matic, or notice it making strange edits, feel free to note it on the talk page or on the developer's user talk page. Known bugs:
Sometimes removes/adds blank space on lines that were not edited.
Changes may not be saved in the event of an edit conflict or network error.
Removes wikify templates without adding userboxes or wikifying the article. Apparently the application is drawn to articles based on the existence of a Wikify template. Without making any other changes to the article, it will delete the Wikify template, apparently assuming that it has made effective changes, when if fact it has not. Stevenmitchell (talk) 20:15, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
All rights to Person-o-matic source code, binaries, and other materials are released under the Creative Commons Zero Waiver, except for DotNetWikiBot, which is released under the MIT (X11) license.
This is an extremely useful tool, very easy to use. Kudos to the developer, well done! —Fitoschido[shouttrack] @ 20 February, 2012; 09:43
It looks to be a useful tool but as of June 2012, it still needs some work to fix it. While it is an apparent tool to fix userbox articles, it does not create userboxes for articles that don't have any. It also deletes/removes any wikify templates that are posted (which is how I have come across it for the 2nd or 3rd time) without regard to whether its initial forays were successful or not. It needs a QA feature that checks to see if what it did is actually what it intended to do (which is probably a multiple stage fix to check for multiple conditions). Solid idea that requires some QA testing and modification... Stevenmitchell (talk) 20:32, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Months ago I dreamed of a program that would address this massive backlog , I'm so pleased someone took the initiative and set it up. Really is a fantastic feature and program. Keep up the great work. Touch Of Light (Talk / Contributions) 06:59, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
