Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SmackBot XXIII

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Withdrawn by operator.

SmackBot XXIII[edit]

Operator: Rich Farmbrough

Automatic or Manually assisted: Auto

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available: AWB

Function overview: Replace or consolidate deprecated parameters in {{Cite web}} and other cite templates

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Created section at template talk here

Edit period(s): one time

Estimated number of pages affected: c. ~~10k~~ 650

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

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

Function details: merge various access date fields into one ("accessdate"), merge "year" "month" and "day" fields (when all present) into "date"

Discussion[edit]

Per these edits the following fields are deprecated and use places the article in the hidden category ~~Category:Cite_web_templates_using_unusual_accessdate_parameters~~ Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters.

accessmonthday
accessdaymonth
accessyear
day
accessmonth
accessday

The removal is a simple matter of merging the fields to "accessdate", except for "day" which needs merging with "month" and "year" to "date". I forsee that this task may need finishing by hand as there will be many poorly formatted expressions, however preliminary testing indicates most cases (over 90%) can be dealt with with half a dozen simple rules, and refined rules will doubtless improve the hit rate further.

Rich Farmbrough, 23:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Looks fine, deprecated template, competent bot owner, community requested task (through deprecation of other templates), going after reasonable level of fixing with bot. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems straightforward. Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Anomie ⚔ 01:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. here Rich Farmbrough, 04:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

The edits mostly look good, although I have a few questions:

I see a few times (e.g. [1][2]) you change something like "|accessyear=2009|accessdate=January 4" to DMY order, while in others (e.g. [3][4]) you keep MDY. Why?

Just multiplicity of rules, one set pulls the date apart before re-assembling, another makes checks or assumptions on the validity of the combined month/day section

What is the deal with this edit? It doesn't even use the same edit summary.

It's a separate task, running very slowly and stalling a lot.

In [5], you leave a date of "5 2007". It may be beneficial to detect that situation and fix it to "May 2007".

Yes I catch a fair few of these, in these cases I'm not sure it is safe to assume that "5" means May. For this article it seems to be the arithmetic mean of the month and day, a form of data compression that had not occurred to me. [6]

It also seems you have AWB's "general fixes" also turned on (which should be mentioned in the edit summary for completeness). Why does it uselessly change {{reflist}} to {{Reflist}} (and the same for several other templates)? Are the general fixes considered unsafe for automatic application disabled? Or was using general fixes here an accident?

Yes it should, as I generally do (also on SB's user page). Just a question of a readability improvement. All GF's were on as I was inspecting every edit (see below).

Anomie ⚔ 13:01, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am thinking I should withdraw this one as we are now "finishing by hand" thanks mainly to the work of Rjwilmsi, and the fact that this is now in AWB general fixes itself. But I answered the questions above for completeness sake. Rich Farmbrough, 13:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC). Withdrawn by operator. Rich Farmbrough, 14:23, 3 December 2009 (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.