Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DASHBot WebCite

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

Request Expired.

DASHBot WebCite[edit]

Operator: Tim1357 (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 22:58, Monday August 8, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Fully Automatic & Unsupervised

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: I'm working on it

Function overview: Duplicate User:WebCiteBOT Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: N/A

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Yes

Function details: The bot has two major functions: 1) A thread that listens to #wikipedia-en-spam on freenode. 2) A thread to archive the links.

Wait 24 hours.
Verify that the url is used in a reference.
Check cache to see if there is a recent archive from 20 days ago or earlier.
If not, ask for an archive from WebCite
Wait an hour to verify that the archive was a success
Insert into article (utilizing proper templates, CiteWeb parameters, ect.)

Discussion[edit]

Already approved bot task. We need a large scale technical trial. Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete., with another Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. if the operators considers the first 50 to be successful. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 18:48, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did the first 27 but relized that I had mangled the date format ("year-day-month") so I reverted the edits en masse. Tim 1357 ^talk 20:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As this is pre-emptive archiving, unless the link is dead, you should use |deadurl=no. I see you are marking bot's edits with comments so they can be found later on, but I don't think you should be adding "|" as a parameter (with a pipe), rather perhaps straight after the |archvieurl=? Also, why is the bot changing whitespace around other citation's fields? If anything, it should try mimicking it, instead of changing whitespace to its own style. Also, does the bot respect the date format templates ({{use dmy dates}}, {{use mdy dates}}, {{use ymd dates}}) or the date format used in the article? — HELLKNOWZ ▎TALK 20:57, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mark templates with deadurl parameter ... Done
The bot no longer puts the comment as a new template parameter, and preserves template whitespace.

Respect date format templates... Working

Also, it seems that WebCite throttles requests, so I've contacted the creator of the service to have my email address whitelisted. Untill then, large scale testing will be impossible. Tim 1357 ^talk 04:40, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}} - Any progress on the whitelisting? If not, would it be possible to slow down the bot's operation so that it's not affected by the throttle for the purposes of checking its operation? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 15:41, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No reply yet. I sent another email to the head of the project, and one to the main developer. Tim 1357 ^talk 15:12, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}} any updates? ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 16:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to drop a note that I worked on an extension to do something similar for my Google Summer of Code project. Archive.org is willing to work with us and archive a feed on demand and I'm working on getting my extension to a point where it can be deployed to make that feed available. The extension has the ability to rewrite every external link on the wiki to link to what the archive would be if it exists, however I doubt that part is going to be deployed anytime in the near future as I don't think consensus for that would be easy to get. --Kevin Brown (talk) 22:30, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request Expired. I guess we're waiting on a reply from Webcite? If that ever happens, feel free to reopen this request. Or maybe Kevin Brown's GSOC project will make this unnecessary. Anomie ⚔ 16:10, 28 October 2011 (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.