Wikibooks:Requests for permissions/CarsracBot

Hello, I've a bot. I ask you the permission to use it on this Wikibooks. It's running on dutch Wikibooks and other projects. The bot has already the global bot flag. It's a interwiki bot. Excuse my bad English. Carsrac (talk) 13:07, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Did you look into our policy proposals for Bots ?

What does the bot do? (this should be included on this request and not inferred from actions on other projects) Is the source available ? --Panic (talk) 01:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Info is now on the bot user page. --Panic (talk) 23:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interwiki linking isn't done as much on English Wikibooks because books even on the same subject can be drastically different across language projects. For this reason bots that provide this functionality are not useful on English Wikibooks. --darklama 14:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I see from the bot's userpage that it is an interwiki bot using pywikipedia. I don't think we need that, since automating the interwiki linking system doesn't really make sense on Wikibooks projects. I'd welcome input from the rest of the community on that point.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:34, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some books have been translated into multiple languages, either to or from English Wikibooks. For those, though, people often add the interwikis themselves. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interlink is very useful for wikibooks. I gave the bot flag to CarsracBot on fr.wikibooks.org --DavidL (talk) 18:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Useful yes, but not very useful and the remarks made above are valid, books do not relate well across projects, at least the ones I'm familiar with a better idea would be moving all Interlinking to the subjects area. I would support such proposal. Interlinking of books should be reduced to translations efforts... --Panic (talk) 20:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree what interwiki work here is not as much as for the other project, but still there some work too be done here. I link the books about the same subject. So the books about chess in english is linked to the books about chess in the german. But if needed I can let my bot also do other bot work. For example add interwiki in other namespaces as the main namespace. My bot also removes interwiki links. It added and removes the links from the recepts in wikicookbook. Carsrac (talk) 12:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikibooks allows two or more books on the same subject to exist. I think appropriately determining which books should be interwiki linked isn't something that can be automated. English Wikibooks has 4 books on Chess for example. I believe this to be true also for the Cookbook, Wikijunior, Help, Wikibooks, Transwiki, Subject and Category namespaces. --darklama 12:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Possible other scripts/bots are

• add_text.py Adds text at the top or end of pages
• category.py Manages categories
• imagecopy.py Copies images from a wikimedia wiki to Commons
• redirect.py Fixes double redirects, and deletes broken redirects
• replace.py Replaces text
• solve_disambiguation.py Fixes disambiguation pages
• table2wiki.py Converts HTML-tables to MediaWiki's language
• template.py Replaces a template with another
• upload.py Uploads images to wiki
• weblinkchecker.py Finds broken external links

I'm willing to run all of those scripts here. Carsrac (talk) 12:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure finding bots to run without a reason to do so is a great idea. If you think you can make interwiki.py work appropriately for Wikibooks that is fine by me - let's see some test edits.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:41, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that normally there is not much to do for interwiki bots, but on es.wikibooks.org they did a massive rename so the bot did some edits in the Ada Programming book and flooded the RC. The rest of the work can better by done with a botflag, because there is a lot of iw links that needed to repaired. Carsrac (talk) 17:42, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problem is (maybe) the bot doesn't have the Editor flag so all the pages that are flagged are now being reset and will require manual sighting again. Not great? Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 19:53, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the german wikipedia there was the same problem and there they gave all the trusted bots the bot flag and the editor flag. Carsrac (talk) 16:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@Carsrac That was only because of a bug in MediaWiki. The autoreview right was removed from the bot group and the new autopromote module (which should take care that bots do not unreview or unvalidate pages) was not working correct. The bug was fixed months ago and the bot group got the autoreview right again as a precaution. Nearly all bots on dewiki havn't this right any more (only my bot needs it there because of a special task). (Special:ListGroupRights lists a group called autoreviewers - if that helps). Merlissimo (talk) 03:20, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks clearing that up. Carsrac (talk) 09:27, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I strongly oppose flagging this bot, as the potential for damage is too great. Geoff Plourde (talk) 07:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you say "the potential for damage is too great"? interwiki.py is quite safe, the question I raised is whether it makes sense for Wikibooks (interwiki.py as well as the entire interwiki system was really written for Wikipedia). I don't know the answer to that question, which is why I've asked others for input on that.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What I'd really like to see is a bot that runs regularly adding {{BookCat}} to subpages listed at Special:UncategorizedPages in order to maintain the category system and book indexes. Nearly all new pages added aren't being categorized by their contributors unless they use a template that already contains {{BookCat}}. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support We need more interwiki links not fewer! The ability to quickly move between articles and books in different languages is the thing that I love most about Wikipedia and Wikibooks. That's why I use Wikipedia for articles because I can quickly see similar versions in other languages. Books may be different but there should be links between languages whereever possible. I regularly follow the few existing interwiki links between books which have such links.--ЗAНИA  ^talk 14:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]