Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InterwikiConversionBot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

InterwikiConversionBot

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Operator: TheFearow

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Java

Function Summary: Replaces basic external links to sites that are available via interwiki to interwiki links

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Most likely weekly

Edit rate requested: 8 edits per minute

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

Function Details:

Converts external links to sites like meta, mediawiki.org, commons, etc to interwiki links. It will also convert links to things like google, which can be searched using an interwiki prefix, as can many other sites. It ignores any URL with more than the basic params (for other wikis, ?title=, and on google, q=query, and similair on other wikis.).

Discussion

This code is not complete, but I am putting forward a BRFA as it does not appear to be anything complex, and shouldn't be too hard to code. There are 437 links to google on just one style of URL. Meta has over 1000 (including complex params, but its still a lot, as most are basic ones that can be converted), and likely more than 5000. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 23:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

How will you replace the link? Regexes? ~ Wikihermit 01:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

After thinking about it, regexes are probably the best idea. I assume picking up something (nuymbers are what I would keep across the two links) similair to [http://(www.|)google.com/?q=1 2] and replacing it with [[google:1|2]] would work well, and shouldnt be too hard to make. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You can interwiki to Google? Wow. You do learn something new every day. — Coren ^(talk) 01:39, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd skip user_talk pages so everyone doesn't get the new message bar, unless it's a subpage of the talk page like an archive. ~ Wikihermit 01:42, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

My bot, JL-Bot, does the same thing. I think you might find it a bit more complex than you think. There turned out to be a lot more oddball cases than I originally expected. In addition to [http://site/name name], there are combinations such as name[http://site/name] that should also be replaced. You should avoid replacing [http://site/name] ones on their own. I have seen quite a few cases where that is used as footnotes. It may not be correct usage, but converting it to an interwiki link would be worse as it would result in an unintelligible sentence.

Example: Alfred Tennyson's works[1] are should not become Alfred Tennyson's worksAlfred Tennyson are.

If you check my bot's user page, you will see a list of the combinations it replaces. You are welcome to the regexes I use (though they are in perl) if that would help you. They would provide more insight on the oddball cases & how I accounted for mistakes people often make.

However, I strongly recommend against replacing any non-Wikimedia project link with interwiki links unless there is a broader community discussion on it. I know there is a long list of interwiki link prefixes, but while the software supports them, they are not all in wide use on Wikipedia. The down sides of converting them are:

1. Interwiki links are displayed as internal links. People are going to be surprised if the click on hi and end up at Google. They expect to see such an external link as hi.
2. I know of no way of searching interwiki links short of downloading a database dump. External links can be found via Special:Linksearch. There are probably people who search on some of these. For example, I'd be pretty surprised if no one searched on Slashdot, SourceForge, Technorati, etc.

Especially for reason one, I think non-Wikimedia project links should not be converted until it has been broached and agreed upon at a higher visibility place. Deviating from users' expected behavior is not something that should be taken lightly.

My 2 cents... -- JLaTondre 02:41, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I know about deviating from expected behaviour, I am a web designer. The thing is, on almost every other site, all links including external look like what we have as an internal. Also, internal links are different, see Internal Interwiki and External. You can already tell the difference between them. Also, I was going to identify with linksearch. In any case, I think the issues here are a bit much, so i'll leave for now. It doesnt seem as complex as it is. Withdrawn by operator. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.