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

Operator: Tim1357

Automatic or Manually assisted: Fully Automatic

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: If you want it...

Function overview: Message users who created (or were maijor contributors to) articles that are listed as Unreferenced Blps.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Original Request at WT:BLP

Bot Request #1

2nd Bot Request (me figuring out details)

Edit period(s): First run to message creators, then run to message maijor contributors (we tried combining the messages, but they were to "busy")

Estimated number of pages affected: 23000 users will get messages, given that they are not blocked, and there is already a talk page present.

Exclusion compliant (Yes):

Already has a bot flag N:

Function details: I already rendered the list, users are given a message (beginning template here) with the first ten of their created articles displayed with a {{findsources}}, and a collapsed list of the rest.

Mis-labeled articles

If any article in the list actually contains <ref>, or a references section, will the author be left a message? Will the article be modified so that it is no BLPunreferenced in this case? Josh Parris 00:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As of right now, the bot only checks if there is a unrefrencedblp tag on the page. Seems pretty easy to check if articles are unreferenced. I will report back here when I'm done. Tim1357 (talk) 01:16, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, now that I think about it, there is really no harm in messaging users about an article that is tagged as unreferenced, evenn if it has <ref> tags. If there is substantial referencing, then the User should be responsible for removing the template. I don't think it should be up to a bot to decide if an article is suitably referenced. Tim1357 (talk) 17:40, 22 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In that case it might be better to use a modified message though, because sometimes page creators think they can't remove the tags even after they rectified the problem which is a different situation than creators who have not fixed anything and the bot should not treat them equally in its messages. On a side note, I think the bot should not message certain groups of users, for example admins, since some users work on such articles often without being able to fix them all, for example an admin declining an A7 tag on a page also tagged with BLPunreferenced who then does some copyediting - in that case they might be identified as a contributor by the bot and would get dozens of messages by the bot. Another example are autoreviewers, a user right only granted if you know to reference your articles properly. In a nutshell, I think the spirit of WP:DTTR should be observed by this bot. Regards SoWhy 09:03, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I agree with your point about the admins being messaged. In fact, we spent some time figuring out why they were so many experienced users on the list. Our final solution was this: users were only considered major contributors if they had the most edits to an article, and they had more then a total of 5. That way, gnomish tasks would not earn them a spot on the list. (Also, minor edits were not counted). In response to your first point, how about including a line in the message like

Please add reliable, secondary sources. When the article is adequately referenced, remove the {{unreferencedBLP}} tag from the article.

That at least gives a hint that they have the ability to remove the tag. Tim1357 (talk) 16:40, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. MBisanz ^talk 02:42, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 Doing... Tim1357 (talk) 04:06, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. 50 users messaged. (I had a few bugs at the begining). Note i tested the shutoff function. (It works) Tim1357 (talk) 05:08, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Did it notify Rmwing2 twice? Was that the early error that was fixed? MBisanz ^talk 04:34, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that was my fault. I stopped the bot to fix something with the template and I forgot to remove Rmwing2 from the list. Tim1357 (talk) 05:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved. MBisanz ^talk 06:02, 2 January 2010 (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.