User talk:OrphanBot/Testing

(Continued from Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Bot testing) The relevant code is at User:OrphanBot/libPearle2.pl, User:OrphanBot/libBot.pl, and User:OrphanBot/tagbot.pl. A summary of the functionality is available at User:OrphanBot/tagbot functionality. The code on the server isn't quite the same as the running code, but the only major differences are a few additions to what the bot will accept as a fair-use rationale, and a reduction in the verbosity of the log output. --Carnildo 03:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, this looks good! First I would like to ensure that I'm not disappointing you. I'm not a professional test manager, and I have never done a test plan. I only have seen some when I was a software localization project manager a couple years ago. Moreover, I have a lot of loose ends to tie up both here and off-wiki, so I would like to take some time. On the other hand, I can imagine that you may be eager to get the bot to work. So, I'd like to understand your expectations, and what your plan was before I volunteered.

On my part, what I am trying to get out of this is a step towards a more open and cooperative testing, according to the wiki way, and similar to professional software testing. — Sebastian 17:24, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for taking so long to reply; things got busy recently. It doesn't matter to me that you're not a professional test manager: I'm not a professional bot writer.

OrphanBot's upload-tagging functionality is by far the least-tested bot code I've written. I wrote it in a hurry about two years ago when the toolserver stopped working and the Untagged Images project was no longer able to get lists of images to work on. I'd like to get it thoroughly tested and up to the same standard of reliability as my other bots. I know it's got at least two logic errors (it does nothing when it should do something, which meets my goal for failsafeness, but not for correct operation), and I'd like to find out if there are any others. The low-level code for accessing Wikipedia is shared with OrphanBot's image-removal functionality, so it's reasonably well-tested, but knowing if there are any bugs lurking in it would be nice. --Carnildo (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, I'm pretty busy myself these days! (I'm sorry, too - I didn't see that you replied until now. I sent you mail on Nov 15 - did you get it?) If you're not in a hurry then I would prefer to wait a bit. I took on too many things at Wikipedia and outside, and my to-do list is growing every day. Does after Christmas sound good to you?

One thing I realized after I started this is that it's really not so easy to do testing here, because we don't have a dedicated test environment. Can you see a way to separate test runs of a bot from real runs? Would it be possible to have it run only on pages that contain a certain text (such as "to be tested by OrphanBot") in their talk page? — Sebastian 19:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]