Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard
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Copy attribution bot question or proposal
Does anyone know if there is a bot available that could process a list of articles and make one edit each, in order to add a copy attribution edit summary to the history based on a couple of parameters?
Editors are welcome to copy or translate material from other Wikipedias (or wikis with compatible licenses) as long as they comply with our licensing requirements, which specifies the wording to be added to the edit summary. (This is not optional, and is per our Terms of use.) When an editor is not aware of the requirement or forgets to do it, the required attribution can still be added after the fact, per WP:CWW#Repairing insufficient attribution.
The bot's task would be to add the proper attribution wording to the article history. Input to the bot would be a list of articles, where each article would be accompanied by one parameter containing the name of the article from which content was copied or translated. There would be a second param, which specifies |type=copy- or |type=translate-attribution, and which could either be a single, run-time param, or per article. The output would be a dummy edit to each article, along with an edit summary using the wording given at WP:RIA, substituting in the correct wording per the parameters.
Does something like this exist, and if not, how hard would it be to create one? Inspiration for this is a (good-faith) situation I have become aware of involving possibly hundreds of unattributed translations; prior user discussion with User:JeyReydar97 here. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 02:14, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Mathglot: I am not sure if any bots currently handle attribution dummy edits, but it is technically possible to run one. While I am not planning to run a bot, I can assist with this specific task if you provide more details, such as how many articles require attribution. If it's a one-time task involving 100 to 250 articles, I can handle it using PAWS with my alt account in supervised mode. I won't be able to help with larger numbers of articles due to time constraints. Could you email me the list of articles needing dummy edits, including how many are copied and how many are translated? Also, are all of them translated from the German Wikipedia, or do they include translations from other projects as well? – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:43, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- DreamRimmer, thank you for this. Hadn't heard of PAWS before, I'll have to look into it myself at some point. I don't know the number of copied and translated articles, but User:JeyReydar97 will be able to figure that out. I'll work with them to get a couple of lists for you. Many thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:10, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- If it's a small number then an WP:AWBTASKS request might be an option as well. Primefac (talk) 14:29, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- DreamRimmer, in an attempt to come up with a simple input file interface that people could use to provide input to a bot or [semi-]automated procedure, I have come up with this /Attribution bot proposal so we could have a starting point with something we could discuss. Let me know if this is anything you could work with. If so, we could use the Talk page there to hash out details, and keep this page just for higher level stuff when there is some major decision point, or if that proposal doesn't work at all. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:30, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
- DreamRimmer, thank you for this. Hadn't heard of PAWS before, I'll have to look into it myself at some point. I don't know the number of copied and translated articles, but User:JeyReydar97 will be able to figure that out. I'll work with them to get a couple of lists for you. Many thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:10, 12 December 2024 (UTC)