Wikibooks:Requests for permissions/Tsca.bot

+Bot
We have plenty of work with books that don't conform naming policy. Sometimes such books are pretty large, so renaming all of their chapters takes a long time.

I think most part of such work should be done by bots and only small part by humans. Now it is opposite - nearly all renaming tasks are done by users. I know a bot which I think could help us. It is made by User:tsca, admin or bureaucrat on many projects. His bot has been successfully used at Polish Wikipedia and, occasionally, at Polish Wikibooks. The bot is stable and can perform tasks we need: add pseudo-namespace (like renaming Vodka to Bartending:Vodka), change letters, change colons to slashes etc. It also automatically fixes all links pointing to old page titles. tsca is often online, so he would complete tasks we will give him in short time. You can see bot contributions: Commons, pl.books.

I would like to hear you opinion about such bot. Before I can subit Request for permissions at Meta for this bot, I need to gain support from the community. --Derbeth talk 23:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Update: I started here request for bot status. I encourage you to vote for this bot. Current polices don't allow focing naming convention without authors' agreement. This bot will be used only on request of authors of a book. --Derbeth talk 11:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Votes
 * Support --Derbeth talk 11:17, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support with the above restriction on the need that authors' concensus is obtained first. --Rob Horning 14:27, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support - Like I said below. -Matt 23:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support - I didn't vote for this yet? --Dragontamer 03:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support Krischik T 06:55, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support --Kernigh 03:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support --JMRyan 20:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 18:41, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Request sent to meta. --Derbeth talk 20:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * tsca.bot has bot status since now. --Derbeth talk 22:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Discussion


 * Heck yeah. We need to get naming policy upto date by actually having all our books follow naming policy! --Dragontamer 00:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Since it apparently works, yes. GarrettTalk 01:05, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * BTW, the reason we have to be careful about 'bots is that while they can do a great amount of work and help out, they can also screw things up in a way that would make you just cry. Moving pages is one of those areas that in particular is hard to revert... or at least can make a huge mess of things.  Other things to consider as well when working on a 'bot is to make sure that you have it throttled so that it doesn't overload the server.  In other words, make sure you got a delay loop or some timer involved that just does a slow crawl through the pages and doesn't try to do everything all at once.  One page move every 10 seconds or perhaps a slightly longer delay, for example.  If you try to run the 'bot as fast as HTTP responses come in, it might crash the server and perhaps cause other problems as well.


 * If this 'bot is going to be used, try to get concensus on the particular Wikibook project itself at least among participants, and try to come up with the conventions that you are going to use within that Wikibook. We shouldn't be forcing all of the Wikibooks to conform and make changes like this project-wide... at least yet.  As long as the 'bot is only working on just one or two Wikibooks at a time and the group working on that Wikibook is making a request to use the 'bot, I support it being used here.  --Rob Horning 02:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * My answers to Rob: this bot has proven its stability. It is often used on Polish Wikipedia, one of biggest of all. Today I'm only thinking of renaming books on request of its contributors, I haven't said anything about massive renaming of all books. tsca is not interested Wikibooks so he will do only things we ask him to do. --Derbeth talk 09:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we should get WB:NP to be enforced first. People need to go over there and vote. In my opinion it's ready to be enforced. As far as what Rob Horning said, most of it I agree with besides asking permission to rename the books. The naming policy should be enforced and the books need to abide by it. The community's opinion of the policy should be held over several users' preferences on how they want to write a book. -Matt 05:14, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * In this case I hope we can agree to disagree on this point. I don't think a 'bot that goes through all of Wikibooks is going to be helpful, and besides, the naming policy gives several conventions that can be used for a book as well that fits within the guidelines.  There is no specific policy that says it has to be done in a certain manner.  Obvious violations of naming policy should be fixed, but I don't know of any specific Wikibook where this is a serious problem that involves more than a dozen pages.  Perhaps we should be enlightened.  I do know that if somebody ran a bot on one of the Wikibooks I focus on and changed conventions without my input, I would be quite upset.  It is for that reason I am emphasizing that you get the participants of the specific Wikibook involved and not make this a project wide bot changing everything.  The whole point of the naming policy is to try and keep related book modules together through a consistant naming schema.  WB:NP is mainly a guideline in this case and not necessarily a policy that could be enforced.  What should be enforced policy is that some sort of naming system be used in each Wikibook.  --Rob Horning 13:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we actually are in agreement on most of the issue. I may have misunderstood what you were previously saying regarding permission. I don't think permission is needed for things such as making a large book use slash convention. What I do think permission should be asked for (and how I agree with you more now) is the style in which the naming convention should be used. I would only want to make the basics mandatory such as needing to use slash convention for book pages (I also really dislike pseudonamespaces and would love for the Programming books to be reworked). The way hierarchies of pages are organized is indeed an issue for the book writers to discuss. In a way I think I retract my last comment then because in order to enforce slash convention you need to know how the page hierarchy of the book works first and that requires discussion before any bot use. -Matt 14:23, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It's a good idea as long as the combination of the bot's well-writtenness and human intervention is adequate, and we have the details of what it's going to do before it starts work.
 * Basically there are three tasks involved:
 * moving the pages
 * updating the navigation headers
 * updating the links down the hierarchy
 * If a bot is competent to carry out these tasks, then I would be in favour. Some details that might need human intervention include:
 * Fixing the spelling and capitalisation of some titles. Perhaps the bot should be programmed to use the text of the down-hierarchy link to each page as the bit to add to make a new title, and so the human work would be making sure these are correct.  Of course, some trivial corrections, such as capitalising the first letter at each level, can be automated.
 * Keeping an eye open for any links on pages that a bot may mistake for down-hierarchy links.
 * -- Smjg 16:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * This bot fixes all links to page it had renamed, it does not use book hierarchy. When it comes to title capitalisation - yes, this bot is flexible and such options is also possible. --Derbeth talk 18:43, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * What do you mean by "it does not use book hierarchy"? -- Smjg 10:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You don't need it as you have "what links here" feature. --Derbeth talk 10:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm still not sure what you mean. By "it" in your first reply, do you mean the process of fixing links or the bot as a whole?
 * If the process of fixing links, then yes, that makes sense.
 * If the bot as a whole, then I don't see how it can rename pages without using the hierarchy. Even if it uses What links here to determine what to name each page, that's still following the hierarchy (albeit bottom-up rather than top-down), isn't it?  And what would it do if more than one page links here?
 * -- Smjg 12:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If there is any doubt as to what the bot is supposed to do, I'll simply ask for clarifications. I won't accept vague or impossible requests. If the process cannot be automated (for example, because pagenames are too inconsistent), I won't run the bot and will require a manual list of what to fix/move. But those are unusual situations. / tsca ✉ 14:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I can forsee exceptions to requiring an author's permission. I recently brought LPI Linux Certification into WB:NP compliance.  This book had not otherwise been edited in over a year.  It seems reasonable apply the bot to such an apparently forgotten book.  However, I would want the bot to be used one book at a time and with a human designated beforehand to check the results.  Note that there may be issues with books appearing multiple language.  When I updated LPI Linux Certification, also updated the French Wikibooks version's transwiki links to the English version.  (I did vote to support.)  --JMRyan 20:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Reasonable compliance to this would be to come up with an idea for renaming the pages on the main talk page of the Wikibook, and potentially adding a quick note on the talk pages of most of the users who have done some major contributions to help add some commentary to help come up with the direction of the formatting. If those users aren't active or don't want to get involved with the decision but you are, feel free to help make that decision.  Keep in mind this is Wikibooks and not Wikipedia, so give it a little bit of time before you make a final decision, especially if it is a radical change.  A month of discussion is certainly reasonable here, but this is a judgement call that you as a contributor would have to make.  --Rob Horning 21:48, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * This appears to be a request for bot status - currently User:Guanabot, which fixes double redirects, is the only registered bot. As I understand it, we only need to do Requests for bot status if we want the bot status that hides the bot from Special:Recentchanges.


 * I have not voted yet, but I do not know any reason to hide the bot from Special:Recentchanges. Thus, unless someone gives a better explanation of the request, I will probably oppose it. --Kernigh 00:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * One huge reason I support users with 'bots to "register" with the project they are running on is that if you find a 'bot that has run amok you can try to find out who is responsible. Also, anybody going through the effort of trying to register the bot and get community acceptance is likely not to be a spambot or do something seriously damaging to the project.  In essence, this is a whitelisting of a user that we can accept as being reasonable.  In addition, if you have concerns about 'bots, you can change the flags for recent changes to monitor only 'bot changes, if they have been registered.  Basically this is just one more option to monitor what is happening on the project.  If there is a serious problem, we can always block the 'bot user account as well.  With this in mind, why is this not a Bureaucrat function to set this flag?  --Rob Horning 02:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks for the good explanation! Also, tcsa.bot already has a bot flag at [Commons (bot list) and pl.wikibooks (bot list), so I will support. --[[User:Kernigh|Kernigh]] 03:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This bot has the flag in wiktionaries: pl, nl, it; Wikipedias: pl, csb, da, de, sv, cs; pl.wikisources, pl.wikibooks, commons. / tsca ✉ 14:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

-Bot
No longer active. Poses a risk if the account were to be hacked and not monitored by the owner. Bot's page states "due to the lack of time the bot is unable to complete any requests until further notice". -- Adrignola talk contribs 17:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Last Contribution: June 13 2007
 * Operator's Last Contribution: February 19 2009

Unusual? Quite TalkQu 18:19, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 15:51, 8 December 2009 (UTC)