User talk:Thegeneralbot

Can I get you to subst in notification templates instead of just transcluding them? ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 01:21, 6 May 2011 (BST)

I was just about to ask the same. Mystery transcluded headers don't work out any other way. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 01:31, 6 May 2011 (BST)

Yup, I've already put that change into the code..--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 07:42, 6 May 2011 (BST)

Thought I saw that on some of the later edits; just making sure. Good stuff! ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 09:05, 6 May 2011 (BST)

Yeah, I'm slowly fiddling with it as I see where the problems are.

I'm currently trying to get it to match the date uploaded against the current date so that it doesn't tag images that have just been uploaded, which is slightly tricky due to the differece in formating of dates used on the wiki compared to dates outputted by python. After that I'm going to try to make it condense notices under one header (currently it adds a new header for each image it finds).--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 10:29, 6 May 2011 (BST)

Better idea. Can we just get the bot to not give notices? Maybe just have it add a category to the images considering they should be on the uploader's watchlist anyway. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 16:05, 6 May 2011 (BST)

I could, but part of the point is to notify people of images that they've forgotten about and I don't like working on the assumption that people are actually intelligent (because there are lots who aren't). However, I am aware that it breaks your userpage and I've created {{nobots}} flag which should allow you to exclude it from your talk page: Is that acceptable?--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 19:10, 6 May 2011 (BST)

So long as there's a solution for people who don't want the notice, yeah that works for me. I honestly have more problem with it re-adding the message after having it deleted off my page then anything else about the formatting. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 19:55, 6 May 2011 (BST)

If you are going to give notices, might I suggest not using a bot account to do so? From what I've seen (i.e. what happened to me), bot accounts that post on talk pages do not trigger the orange wiki notifications to talk page owners, nor do they trigger e-mails in the case of users who have signed up for them. If the point of posting to the talk pages is to notify people, then it would be best if an account that actually triggers notifications is used. In my case, I only noticed that my talk page had been edited after I looked at my Watchlist, but I never received any form of notification from the wiki software that a change had been made to my talk page. —Aichon— 20:36, 6 May 2011 (BST)

I've change it so that the bot no longer marks its edits as minor; this should mean that they show up on talk pages.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 10:21, 7 May 2011 (BST)

It shouldn't be re-adding messages that were deleted as long as the template is still on the image. When did that happen? Please let me know if that happens again.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 10:21, 7 May 2011 (BST)

Template:Orphan

The template isn't officially depreciated, but it should be. I'd recommend using {{OrphanAlert}} if the bot will be used to notify users via template. {{OrphanPage}} may also be a good task, just keep in mind that not all orphans are actually orphans. Some pages are meant for inclusion only (typically group advertisements and navigation bars). For these, I've been creating group categories where there were none and linking the pages there. See {{GroupCat}} and category:CORAM for an example. ~ _{16:02, 13 May 2011 (UTC)}

Eagh, userbox templates are not notices and bots shouldn't be spamming them. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 16:04, 13 May 2011 (BST)

Agreed. If anything, the bot should only be adding <noinclude>{{OrphanPage}}</noinclude> to the top of orphaned pages, where it will be categorized as an orphan and can be sorted out by someone with a pulse. ~ _{16:42, 13 May 2011 (UTC)}

Yeah, the reason the bot isn't already running is:

1. Because I'm still making sure it behaves correctly; Unused Images was a small enough category that I could police it myself: Orphaned pages has to be right.
2. Because I'm still debating whether this is a good job for a bot and how far it should go.

If I may ask: is the Rob with the template used or the concept of a bot doing the notifying?--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 18:40, 13 May 2011 (BST)

It's the template, really. The problem is that for a long time, many people felt that Special:lonelypages needed to be cleared, even if it meant spamming the creators of the pages. At one point, people got sick of it and tried to ban the use of the template. As a compromise, the text portion of {{Orphan}} was altered so that action was required by the author to de-orphan pages and almost everyone decided to stop using it. A few months ago, I took it upon myself to expand on that system and create category:Orphans and the newer and improved {{OrphanAlert}} and {{OrphanPage}} in hopes that people would BE BOLD and introduce valuable links to articles. ~ _{18:58, 13 May 2011 (UTC)}

So would there be serious objection if the bot started notifying with {{OrphanAlert}}? I'm still debating if I want to make it do that, it's a lot of extra coding and a lot more potential bugs, so I'm not going to do it if it's going to cause controversy.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 21:51, 13 May 2011 (BST)

I wouldn't bother having your bot do it, honestly. Basically, the template is there as a tool to notify active users and groups that have legitimately forgotten to link their pages. I'd be fine if the bot just added {{OrphanPage}} to the orphans pages themselves, though. ~ _{22:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)}

Template:Orphanedimage should add a timestamp to make it easier to identify when an image was flagged as orphan, thus when it will become eligible for deltion --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 00:02, 14 May 2011 (BST)

Substitute in Template:Unsigned

D'you reckon you can have the bot trawl for and substitute in {{unsigned}} templates? These should really be subst-ed in when used, but I know a lot of people (myself included) haven't followed good template hygiene with these.

If it goes well, I think it might be worth working up a list of templates that should or should not be subst-ed and using the bot to enforce the former.

Might also be nice to have it check for unsigned comments in appropriate areas (and incorrectly invoked {{unsigned}} templates), but that'd likely be a separate function.

Cheers! ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 03:36, 19 May 2011 (BST)

It looks like a lot of the links lead to protected pages. Not to say it couldn't be run for mainspace usage, though. ~ _{06:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)}

Well, I'll run it on the unprotected pages for now. On a side note: the bot is actually capable of switching to a Sysop account when it needs to edit protected pages.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:22, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Yup, can do. I'll set it up later today.

Yeah, I'm OK with it if someone wants to give me a list.

Auto-signing unsigned comments is on the list, but it's quite difficult to implement because it needs to 1) recognise individual comments from different users in a block of texts and 2) Somehow match that against the revisions diffs in order to get the user who posted it. Recognising the comments is the most challenging part because there's no easy way seperator that it can scan for to deliniate comments from different users.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:18, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Quick note: some of us actually prefer having it as a template, since it creates cleaner code which is easier to read. Counting bytes is only useful on pages that are in danger of exceeding the transclusion limit. Elsewhere, cleaner code makes for easier editing and less confusion. —Aichon— 10:58, 20 May 2011 (BST)

Just to note: I am going to do this but my notebook, which is the machine that normally runs this stuff, is currently refusing to start the wireless service. I'll need to either fix it or port the bot over to my personal laptop, which will delay things a bit.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 19:04, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Looking good so far!
I had no idea {{wikipedia}} existed until I looked at the code that was getting subst'd in. We may want to subst that template, too. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 23:18, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Yup . It's turning out to be quite a nice script.

Yeah, I don't actually get why we need that template when we can just use the Wikipedia: prefix in links. In fact, I think I might change the template over.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:15, 20 May 2011 (BST)

Substitution of {{Wikipedia}} is running.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 14:19, 20 May 2011 (BST)

I'm actually a little annoyed at the bot now, since, prior to this run of the bot, I added {{nobots}} to the navbar that's on most of my pages and it wasn't respected. Any chance the code for the bot could be modified to handle such inclusions, that way users don't have to include it individually on all (in my case, dozens or hundreds) of their pages? Also, why is it running on User and User Talk pages in the first place? There should be a clear justification for any edits of this sort (bot or otherwise) done on user pages, but there isn't one here. Contrary to Rev's idea of "good template hygiene", the only justifiable reason to subst these templates after the fact is if pages are nearing the transclusion limit, which has only been an issue on A/VB, so why userspace pages are being modified without their permission is beyond me.

I know you mean well, but I think you're being a bit overenthusiastic in your use of your Template:Wikipedia. I'm of the opinion that these edits are doing more harm than good since they're making code less human-readable in places where that matters (they're also inflating the size of the code, which likely doesn't matter too much). Editing owned pages and comments should only be done with good reason, and I haven't seen one provided in this case. —Aichon— 20:25, 20 May 2011 (BST)

The bot scans the text of the page for the {{nobots}}, so it won't recognise inclusions from other templates: Unfortunately, the only way to get around that would be to have it fetch and scan the text of very single template used on the page, which would massively increase both the processing time and the server load; it would also mean that adding the flag to a single template would also add the flag to every single page the template is included on, which would be rather undesirable.

The reason it ran on User and User Talk pages is because it was set to simply edit all pages wit the template included. It is set up like that on the assumption that batch edits to templates are normally uncontroversial maintenance edits agreed by concenus and should thus be included all pages. With hindsight, this was probably an oversight as no one should really be editing other people's user pages without a good reason.

As for he content of the edits: I can see who subst'ing in the {{Unsigned}} template might be undesirable in terms of user-readability. I do, however, believe that subst'ing {{Wikipdia}} was justified because it had absolutely no effect on the size or readability of pages and removed an unnecessary template call, thus reducing server load: Given that there was absolutely no change to the content of the post beyond replacing "{{" with "[[" and ":" with |, I feel that this was an acceptable alteration to user's in the same way that it is normally acceptable to fix accidental links in other users' posts.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 22:14, 20 May 2011 (BST)