The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard. The result of the discussion was  Approved.

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

Time filed: 15:30, Friday, October 9, 2020 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: on GitHub

Function overview: Fill out DYK blurbs to pages which are missing those.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia:Bot_requests#DYK_blurb_filling_bot

Edit period(s): Go thru backlog as one-time run, after that run periodically, probably weekly

Estimated number of pages affected: currently 2,500 pages in the category

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: Go thru pages in Category:Pages using DYK talk with a missing entry, parse date from {{DYK talk}}, load blurb from archive and fill it in

Approved for trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Yeah, it's my own Bot request, but this is hardly controversial. I'll review things, but leave it to another BAG member to do the final approval if everything is peachy. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:43, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. I'm having an issue that is causing the bot to sometimes incorrectly change the DYK appearance date. I'm currently manually correcting those and I have a guess on what is causing that bug. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 17:11, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I found out what is causing those issues ([1], [2]) and added some code to automatically detect similar issues. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 17:27, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for extended trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Let's test the improved bot logic then. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:26, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. LGTM – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 19:25, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me too. As a note, the date fixing wasn't requested, but it brings the DYK talk template in line with what is shown in the DYK archives, the UTC date. It's often off by +1/−1 day from the DYK talk template because the date varies by that much depending on where you are in the world. This is a good thing in general, both WTF-reducing (+/- 1 day difference) and error-correcting (over +/- 1 day difference), so there shouldn't be any issue with this task done in combination with adding missing |entry=.

It might be worth exploring approval for general date fixing, not just doing date fixing when there's a missing entry, but I'll leave that to the final BAG approval. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:28, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

General date fixing would be nice if we're at it. As mentioned, it's confusing and I can't count the number of times I got messed up because of it. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:37, 9 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Headbomb Majavah The date in the DYKtalk template is semantically different from the date in the archives. DYKtalk template reflects the UTC date/time the hook appeared on the Main page. The archives reflect the UTC date/time the hook left the Main Page. I suggest a conversation with the broader DYK community before attempting to change these semantics. Shubinator (talk) 17:49, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Flipped through the bot's trial edits - with the existing semantics that the DYKtalk template should reflect the UTC date/time the hook was placed on the Main Page, the bot is introducing errors by changing the date to when the hook left the Main Page:

• Hulk Hogan's Pastamania
• Kremlin Regiment
• Are You Lonesome Tonight? (song)
• Marie Palace
• American System-Built Homes
• Alexander Oswald Brodie
• Ah Meng
• Chief Justices of Japan
• Desinicization campaign
• Cornelia Adair
• Ada Covered Bridge
• 2009 12 Hours of Sebring
• 1915 Avezzano earthquake

Also it looks like 1922 College Football All-America Team is a separate bug, perhaps the one that was fixed between the first and second trial? The hook-filling logic looks great, so it might be best to scope the bot's responsibilities to just filling the hook in DYKtalk templates. Shubinator (talk) 20:58, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware of those semantic differences, thanks for letting me know. If that's the case I agree that it's best to only fill the hook ignoring the date parameter. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 08:44, 11 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's not quite true. The date is used to create link to anchors on the archive page, e.g. Wikipedia:Recent_additions/2006/May#14_May_2006 (before) vs (after) Wikipedia:Recent_additions/2006/May#15_May_2006 for Hulk Hogan's Pastamania. The bot fixed those links to point to the correct archives. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:19, 11 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be in favor of a new |archiveDate= parameter on Template:DYK talk to address the archive link anchors. Shubinator (talk) 00:42, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I highly doubt that |date= truly reflects a difference between archiving time and displaying time, or that the difference is even meaningful. But I agree that's a different discussion, and that this bot should be concerned with sticking to the entries for now, and fixing dates later if there's consensus for it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:00, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Shubinator's suggestion may be a good way forward for the long term; for now, we shouldn't be changing the dates for {{DYK talk}}, since the main concern is to show when the DYK for the article was posted on the main page. The archive, as noted, gives the time that the DYK was moved off the main page (or archived), which is sometimes the following day in the early days when we were running three or four sets a day, and nowadays happens either all the time when doing one set a day, or half the time when doing two. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:53, 12 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, this isn't the correct place to discuss how {{DYK talk}} should be changed. For now I've removed code that changes |date=, if it's wanted in the future I'll open a new BRFA. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 15:26, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for extended trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete., let's have a hopefully final trial on this, and then some other BAG member can evaluate and do the final approval. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:58, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. and I've reverted the previous date changes. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 07:18, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks all good to me. I'll ping other BAG members for final review/approval. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:43, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Majavah Can the bot fill out |nompage= where easily possible/applicable, like DYKUpdateBot? It's useful in case the current page title later moves, to retain the link. Mostly an extra really, so doesn't matter too much. Regarding the above thread on dates, you say the date code is removed, so (just confirming) if Talk:1922 College Football All-America Team was rollbacked and done again it wouldn't modify that date? (it would stay "7 April 2009"?). Recent trial LGTM. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:16, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, it does not modify dates anymore. I probably could add nompages but I'd like to do that in a separate BRFA to avoid problems similar to dates above when approving this BRFA. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 18:20, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• A link to diffs/contribs of the last trial would be very helpful. Primefac (talk) 16:47, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  @Primefac: Here you go: [3] – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 18:09, 16 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Note the Category:Pages using DYK talk with a missing entry has been moved to Category:Pages with a missing DYK entry, and now contains some entries from missing |dykentry= in {{ArticleHistory}}. @Majavah: can your bot handle those too? Or at least make sure it doesn't touch pages it can't handle? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:07, 24 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  @Headbomb: Yes, it can now also handle {{article history}}. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 17:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Approved for extended trial (25 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Let's have another trial then, a mix of both {{DYK talk}} and {{Article history}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:21, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    Trial complete., edits available at [4]. Only thing is that {{article history}} has the parameter added right to the end instead of with other DYK-related parameters. That should be fixable if desired. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 18:14, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    • @Majavah: I don't see an issue with this and it looks good to me, but let's hold for a bit to see if anyone raises any concerns. How long/difficult do you think it would be to fix the parameter listings? I don't think that the parameters being at the end is that big of a deal, but am curious as it may annoy some. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 18:29, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

      Actually it was really simple, just added one simple parameter to a function call and now it adds it right before |dykdate=. I did one more trial edit demonstrating that [5]. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 19:10, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• There are other issues here: see Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Brain dump. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:02, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • What issues are there that would concern this bot? I don't see any. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:55, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

    no. 3 may concern this bot (I raised it above, as well, but was, and still am, not sure how big of an issue it would be) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:57, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it 'concerns' the bot, in the sense that this bot fixes some of the DYK issues. It doesn't fix them all, but it fixes the blurb part. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:32, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@TheSandDoctor and Primefac: any remaining concerns here? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:53, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

---

 Approved. As per usual, if amendments to - or clarifications regarding - this approval are needed, please start a discussion on the talk page and ping. --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 02:45, 9 November 2020 (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 Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard.