Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OrphanTagRemoverBot

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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 The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

OrphanTagRemoverBot[edit]

Operator: Feedintm (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 17:42, Sunday December 25, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised (required start by operator)

Programming language(s): Java

Source code available: Possibly (not at the moment)

Function overview: Removes orphan tag off of pages that are orphans no more

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Sporadically (hopefully at least weekly, maybe daily)

Estimated number of pages affected: 1-2 edits per minute

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

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

Function details: The bot picks a random orphan category from Category:Orphaned articles to work on (skips Attempted de-orphan and Orphaned images). Then it goes down the list, checking the number of non-redirect mainspace articles links ("Links") to the article. Then it filters out these links by checking if they are on the Article Feedback Blacklist. (if they are, they don't count towards the number of links) Finally, if the total number of links is >3, the orphan tag is removed. After completing the category, it jumps to another one, and so on and so forth, until the operation is cancelled by the operator.

Discussion[edit]

How does article feedback come into this by the way? - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 18:03, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It gets rid of the non-article links (specifically disambiguations, and others I might have missed) Cheers! Feedintm (talk) 18:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, you mean the Article Feedback exclusion list? - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 20:39, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I meant to say "blacklist." You're exactly right. Cheers! Feedintm (talk) 20:50, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense :) So I guess the reason to include that is that the list is a good proxy for "things that are in the article namespace that are not really articles".
The problem here is that there will be articles with 4/5/6 links but which a human might still considered orphans. I'm sure there's a relevant WikiProject, have you raised the issue there? I've been around long enough to remove[EDIT: remember] the fiasco when Addbot went around adding orphan tags... - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 21:09, 25 December 2011 (UTC) Edited 00:21, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll look into it. (it's WP:ORPHAN) Cheers! Feedintm (talk) 21:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Addbot fiasco was driven by disagreement over the use of the orphan template at all. There has been no disagreement about it's removal when the article does not meet the criteria. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mmm, I seem to remember queries over whether the template should ever be placed by a bot (i.e. whether there exists a magic number of links that is "too few" for a give article). But I have little urge to revisit the issue; I assume that that debate was eventually settled in the affirmative. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 15:20, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there was debate about whether it should be placed by a bot, but what I saw was objection based an applying it at all. Orphan template use has been contentious over the years. The final resolution was Addbot stopped adding it. In three years of running the removal task, no one has objected to removals in principle (a few questions on individual removals, but those were all resolved amicably and without objection to the task itself). -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My bot, User:JL-Bot, is already approved to de-orphan articles. This isn't a task that has a pressing need for multiple bots, but having another certainly wouldn't hurt (and I'd be fine even letting this become the "primary bot" and concentrating on other tasks). However some comments:
  1. I really don't understand the random category thing. It should just use Category:All orphaned articles.
  2. The phrase "number of non-redirect mainspace articles links" is ambiguous. While redirects are not counted, links via redirects are.
  3. The Article Feedback Blacklist would be Category:Article Feedback Blacklist, correct? If so, that is not sufficient for exclusion as it does not include all excluded types. In particular, Category:All disambiguation pages & Category:Wikipedia soft redirects need to be excluded.
  4. The current orphan criteria is specified as 1 link. However, I do think sticking with a slightly higher number (like the proposed 3) is good as it provides "margin" for the bot mistakenly counting links it shouldn't (the exclusion categories aren't perfect). Plus, that change was relatively recent and some folks are still debating whether there needs to be an intermediate "lightly linked" categorization. While I don't quite see the point of that, leaving them tagged while they sort that out seems appropriate as it would make finding them easier if they decide to implement.
By the way, this would be a good task for a Toolserver based bot if you wanted to explore that. Being able to query the database directly would be a lot more efficient than iterating through each article. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:16, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I find your bot is effective enough. I find no reason for another bot to do this. Cheers! Feedintm (talk) 15:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Withdrawn by operator. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 16:05, 26 December 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.
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