Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MusikBot 15

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

Approved.

MusikBot 15

Operator: MusikAnimal (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 22:16, Sunday, November 25, 2018 (UTC)

Function overview: Add/remove {{Current TFA}} to Today's Featured Article, so that it can be referenced in edit filters.

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Ruby

Source code available: GitHub

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Special:PermaLink/870355366#RfC: should we automatically pending-changes protect Today's Featured Articles?

Edit period(s): Once daily at 00:00 UTC

Estimated number of pages affected: Two a day (previous TFA, current TFA)

Namespace(s): Mainspace

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No - not applicable.

Function details: At 00:00 UTC, the bot will place {{Current TFA}} at the bottom of the new TFA, and remove the template from the previous TFA. TFAs are identified by looking at [[Template:TFA title/date]], e.g. Template:TFA title/November 27, 2018.

The template itself will have no visual effect. It used solely so that we can create filters that target the current TFA. A second filter (or perhaps the same one) will ensure only an admin or MusikBot can add/remove the template. This functionality is similar to Special:AbuseFilter/803.

Note an attempt was made to have TFA Protector Bot do this at User talk:Legoktm/November 2018#TFA template but I received no reply.

Discussion

The bot relies on the Toolforge grid job queue. I have a similar bot task, User:MusikBot/RotateTDYK that also runs at midnight. It almost always runs no later than 00:02, which I think is acceptable. Look for "Rotating nomination headings..." in the contributions. If we think it's super duper important for this to happen at exactly midnight, we may have to come up with a different strategy. Thoughts? — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:16, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I guess a cheap way around this is to schedule a cronjob for 23:58, 23:59, and 00:00. Each run we check the current time before making the edits; If it's on or after 00:00 proceed, otherwise abort. — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:29, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You probably know this already, but Template:TFA title always lists the article name of the current day's TFA. This page is populated from the pages named Template:TFA title/November 1, 2018, etc. - Dank (push to talk) 22:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I did not know that, thank you :) I will instead go off of [[Template:TFA title/date]], since I need the previous TFA, too. — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:01, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Unlike the userspace one, we should expect lots of edit/edit attempts to TFA. Couple of concerns to look at: (1) will this placement be violating some MOS/mass cleanup list wherein bots and scripts will try to remove it or move it somewhere else on the page? (assuming the bot shouldn't care if it is on the wrong part of the page). (2) Can you build out the filter first for review? — xaosflux ^Talk 04:02, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: I am not aware of any bots or MOS guidelines that would conflict with this. If using a template is at all a problem, maybe we could just a comment? I can't imagine that would cause any problems. I just figured {{Current TFA}} looks more "official" than , but it's true the template otherwise doesn't make sense as it isn't used in more than one place.

The filter that restricts addition/removal of the template (or comment) except by sysops/MusikBot will closely resemble Special:AbuseFilter/803. That will probably be a standalone filter. Per the RfC, we'd have another filter that prevents addition of imagery, which will be similar to Special:AbuseFilter/history/943/item/20158. I don't think this BRFA is much about this filter, specifically, rather making it possible for filters to target TFA. With this, the door is open to prevent other common vandalism, such as blanking the article (which wouldn't ever make sense on TFA, at least by a new user). We might also see other LTA-specific filters, at least in the short-term. — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:36, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Another possible concern: It's possible that Toolforge downtime or the like could mean the bot task fails to start. This should be very, very rare. The User:MusikBot/RotateTDYK task also runs at 00:00 UTC every day, and since October 2015 when that task first came about, I think it failed to start twice. For this reason, maybe using a template is better than a comment, as we'd be able to see the transclusions, and immediately tell if it's being used somewhere it shouldn't be. The bot could even check transclusions and remove all of them before adding the template to the new TFA. How does that sound? — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Taking this a step further... what about an additional template, say {{Main Page article}}, that is placed on all articles linked to on the Main Page? Similar to TFA, they all are subject to more disruption. We don't necessarily need to do anything contentious, at least without discussion, but again the idea here is that it will become possible for filters to target these pages, should we ever need to. I'm mostly thinking about LTA-related abuse. — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think only WP:DYK's and the other "Today's featured..." are predictable. WP:ITN for instance could change at any time, so probably not best to let the bot handle that, at least for this task. Let's just save the {{Main Page article}} idea for a separate discussion/BRFA. — MusikAnimal ^talk 05:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Approved for trial (14 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. I was originally thinking of a week, but two weeks gives more opportunity for people to notice and/or for potential debugging if toolforge crashes at the right time. Primefac (talk) 21:45, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Trial complete. Edits can be found using the edit summary search tool (it's a little slow). I didn't start the bot until December 19, so just shy of two weeks. It didn't run on the 28th, which was my fault (all my bot tasks broke), not the code for this task, or Toolforge. You'll also notice the edits weren't made at exactly 00:00. I abandoned my idea above of having the cron run just before midnight. I can revisit this if you think it's important, but frankly I think the few minutes difference is plenty acceptable for our purposes. Overall, I'm confident this task is stable.
That said, I'm not happy with the solution this bot task was meant to provide. The idea came about in response to severe vandalism to TFA, but the fact is TFA is just a small part of it. Special:AbuseFilter/951 was the kind of filter I was going to use, and it's a bit expensive, and for this specific LTA it's not even effective. What we really need is the {{Main Page article}} template, applied to any and all pages linked to on the Main Page. The topical articles such as recent deaths and In The News seem to be subject to just as much disruption, if not more, and in many cases they have more pageviews than TFA too.
Let's move forward with this task, anyway. Once the recent wave of vandalism has died down, we can revisit Special:AbuseFilter/951. I'll also consider starting a discussion about {{Main Page article}}. Thanks — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:38, 30 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Approved. For the basic adding / removing the template for TFA. I noticed that there's possibly(?) an AWB option that could relocate the template, but it's not consistently/regularly relocated across the other TFAs during normal edit traffic, so it's probably not a huge deal or it was a one-off from that editor; there's no obvious bot that's going around rearranging things. Issues related to the edit filter itself and/or expanding the scope of protection outside of the RFC are probably outside the scope of this request and should probably be discussed/tested/ensured-of-bug-free-ness elsewhere. --slakr^\ talk / 20:30, 4 January 2019 (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.