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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.

BG19bot 9

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

Time filed: 23:52, Monday, December 28, 2015 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): AWB

Source code available: AWB

Function overview: Remove blank lines between list items.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Bot run for removing blank lines in list

Edit period(s): Monthly

Estimated number of pages affected: Initially ~120,000

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: This is an accessibility issue, see WP:LISTGAP. A list will be generated monthly that includes articles with blank lines between list items. List is generated using Checkwiki software. AWB will then be run on the list with general fixes enabled. Latest AWB version added the ability to remove these blank lines. Any spaces or tabs on the blank lines and AWB won't fix, these must be done manually (for now).

Discussion

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Whitespace cleanup is normally not approved, can you do a couple of manual edits and provide difs below to more clearly demonstrate exactly what you are trying to do? — xaosflux Talk 00:20, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Xaosflux I understand the whitespace issue and your hesitancy. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Lists tells why it is an accessibility issue for screen readers. Graham87 is a screen reader user and he can tell you about this problem better than I can.
Diffs for Aardwolf and Aardvark after an AWB edit.
When a blank line appears in a list, Mediawiki ends the list with a </li></ul>. Thus, when you have a list containing a blank line in between each list item, every item becomes a separate list to screen readers. For an example, take a look at the HTML source code for Achilles#Popular culture. You will see this:
<ul>
<li>Achilles is portrayed as a former hero who has become lazy and devoted to the love of Patroclus, in <a href="/wiki/William_Shakespeare" title="William Shakespeare">William Shakespeare</a>'s <i><a href="/wiki/Troilus_and_Cressida" title="Troilus and Cressida">Troilus and Cressida</a></i>.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Achilles appears in Dante's <i><a href="/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)" title="Inferno (Dante)">Inferno</a></i>. He is seen in <a href="/wiki/Hell" title="Hell">Hell</a>'s Circle of Lust.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Achilles is the subject of the poem <i><a href="/w/index.php?title=Achille%C3%AFs&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="Achilleïs (page does not exist)">Achilleïs</a></i>, a fragment by <a href="/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe" title="Johann Wolfgang von Goethe">Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</a>.</li>
</ul>
.
.
.
Bgwhite (talk) 00:59, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Bare sample
BEFORE:
<ul>
<li>a a</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>b b</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>c c</li>
</ul>

AFTER:
<ul>
<li>a a</li>
<li>b b</li>
<li>c c</li>
</ul>
The first sample would be spoken by a screen reader as "List of 1 items, a, list end; List of 1 items, B, list end; List of 1 items, c, list end", as opposed to "List of 3 items, A, B, C, list end". Graham87 02:39, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More discussion

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mw:Help:Lists, references that a newline in a list triggers a new list creation. — xaosflux Talk 01:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • "lists" are very broad, do you intend to only perform this operation on unordered lists? — xaosflux Talk 01:17, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Will only perform on unordered lists and only those that use wikicode (ie, *). On an ordered list (ie, #), the blank line is most likely intentional and a bot wouldn't be able to tell between intentional or unintentional. This is the reason AWB does not remove blank lines in an ordered list. Bgwhite (talk) 01:27, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is this the same issue as referenced in bug T3115 ? — xaosflux Talk 01:43, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes. Graham87 02:39, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes and no. Yes, they do reference blank lines ending lists in the bug report. They still want blank lines to end a list. However, the phab ticket's issue is when you don't want a list to end with an empty line or a line without a * or #. The thinking is to add new wikimarkup to say that this is not an end of a list. Blank lines will still cause problems with screen readers will still continue. Bgwhite (talk) 03:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This makes sense, but are we sure this is a safe task for a bot to do automatically, or are there situations where blank lines would be desired (i.e. WP:CONTEXTBOT)? At the very least, restricting to reference sections should be safe. — Earwig talk 04:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I cannot think of any situation where a blank line is necessary. The blank line does not show up on the rendered page. The only people who would notice are those that use screen readers. There are more lists in the main article than the ref section. People usually read the article and skip the reference section. Both BG19bot, Yobot and Battybot, along with our manual edits, have been using AWB's implementation of this since September. I'm not aware of any complaints. The only reason to have a blank line is for the editor to "see" things better when editing the page... I'm 100% sure I'll will get complaints because of this reason. Bgwhite (talk) 05:18, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding page sections - is this a general page issue, or does it primarily cause problems only in certain specific sections, such as reference lists? — xaosflux Talk 16:10, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:23, 31 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. -- edits. 50 articles were entered. 8 skipped due to already being fixed by a previous AWB run. Bgwhite (talk) 00:05, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I guess my concern is really about the use of blank lines for edit window clarity, as you pointed out above, which seems like it should be a valid use case; I understand the accessibility issue, but this really feels like it needs a fix in MediaWiki. — Earwig talk 23:44, 5 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The fix in Mediawiki is not going to happen and it can't happen. The phab ticket above said they will not consider removing a blank line to end a list because blank lines do correctly end lists in a gazillion articles. Look at Graham's example above (ie List of 1 items, a, list end; List of 1 items, B...), how would you like to hear that for a 20 item list? In my book, accessibility trumps the very minor disruption an editor will have, plus it is already in MOS. Bgwhite (talk) 01:12, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Let's be clear—I don't mean removing blank lines to end lists, I mean squashing adjacent <ul>...</ul>s when they are only separated in wikitext by a single blank line. As you pointed out above, this has no real use case; it is natural however for editors to try to do it, which leaves us with these accessibility issues. The Phab ticket seems to concern list items only, not entire lists, but maybe I'm not reading it right. — Earwig talk 09:31, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
From the phab ticket, "empty lines unconditionally terminate lists" and "lines beginning with "something else" unconditionally terminate lists". By saying unconditionally, I think that rules out blank lines between list items not terminating lists. T15223 was closed without action after seven years to not have blank lines terminating numbered lists. T109905 was submitted this past August to not cause the current dilemma of blank lines between list items. There was developer comment that said, On reflection, I can't imagine any way in which this kind of huge breaking change to how all wikis everywhere work can be justified by the gains we'd get.. So, a MediaWiki fix doesn't looks likely. Bgwhite (talk) 22:27, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to be clear, this only runs against lists separated by a single blank line? Multiple lines might suggest the lists were intentionally separated. That being said, have we tested the bot on a page where there are multiple blank lines separating lists?
    If that all checks out, this task overall seems sensible to me. I feel like if there are lists right next to each other, even if intentional, visually there's not going to be a big difference by joining them. Edit window clarity is a fair argument, but given the accessibility benefits and backing of the MoS guideline, I don't think you'll run into too many complaints — MusikAnimal talk 22:49, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Good question. I had not thought of that. In the list of articles I complied, I was only looking for single blank line. But, an article could contain double blank lines between lists. I tested it out and unfortunately, AWB does combine the two separate lists into one. Playing around with the regex in AWB's code did not rectify this. Turns out, as part of AWB's general fixes, if there are two or more blank lines in a row, AWB will delete the extra ones and leave only one blank line left. Phab ticket T123825 has been submitted to fix this. I have generated a list of articles where this occurs and there are ~1,200 articles. An example of what you are talking is Transport in Bulgaria#Major roads. Unfortunately, this appears in a small minority of cases. In the majority of cases, the blank lines should be removed and this will need to be done manually. Yea for me!! :( So, I can wait for this fix or I can exclude the union of the two lists. Bgwhite (talk) 06:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for extended trial (20 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Just make sure the patch works. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:11, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bgwhite please confrm that rev 11837 fixes the problem. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:38, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bgwhite (talk) 00:17, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux and The Earwig: Anything else? Bgwhite (talk) 05:33, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

{{BAGAssistanceNeeded}}

@Xaosflux, The Earwig, MusikAnimal, and Nyuszika7H: Any other comments? Bgwhite (talk) 22:06, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've received your pings, but I can't think about this now, so it's up to another BAG member. — Earwig talk 23:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Approved for extended trial (2000 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. With this being such a large task, and with some community members being extra attentive to "cosmetic" changes, I'd like to keep this under supervision for a bit; do a run of 2000 so that more pages will be hit and we can see if there is any unexpected community outcry. — xaosflux Talk 00:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Seems reasonable. — Earwig talk 00:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Xaosflux and Earwig. This is reasonable. February's dump started on the 2nd. I'll wait for the needed dump file to be produced in a few days before starting. Better to go with an updated list.
Things I learned from moving the Table of Contents for accessibility reasons. 1) People will complain, loudly. 2) Edit summary is key to keeping down the complaints. How about, "No blank line between list items per WP:LISTGAP. This is an accessibility issue for users of screen readers. Do general fixes and cleanup if needed. Goto Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility for information and discussion." The link will goto an example like Graham gave above. Graham, is it ok to lead people to the Wikiproject Accessibility talk page? Hopefully there will be safety in numbers, more people know and respect you on accessibility issues, and I'm a wimp right now. Bgwhite (talk) 06:05, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Bgwhite, I appreciate that you are able to learn from experience, or at least from being bludgeoned. We are not all so wise.
I suggest a minor copy edit to your edit summary proposed above. Something like: "Remove blank line(s) between list items per WP:LISTGAP to fix an accessibility issue for users of screen readers. Do general fixes and cleanup if needed. Go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility to discuss these edits." I tested this edit summary in my sandbox, and it fits in the space allotted for edit summaries.
And then make sure you watch that WT:WP Accessibility page, of course. Thanks for making WP more accessible for all readers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Bgwhite: Indeed, sounds good. Linking people to the accessibility project talk page will be fine. Graham87 07:18, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Bgwhite, if you haven't yet, start a talk topic on that page in advance, and link to this request. — xaosflux Talk 12:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove blank line(s) between list items per [[WP:LISTGAP]] to fix an accessibility issue for users of [[screen reader]]s. Do [[WP:GENFIXES|general fixes]] and cleanup if needed. Go to [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility#LISTGAP]] to discuss this.
  • Remove blank line(s) between list items per WP:LISTGAP to fix an accessibility issue for users of screen readers. Do general fixes and cleanup if needed. Go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility#LISTGAP to discuss this.
See my edit summary for this edit, which is copy-pasted above. – Wbm1058 (talk) 13:16, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe change the last sentence to "Discuss this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility#LISTGAP."? — Earwig talk 02:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's better. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:41, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As mentioned above, I concur that this should only run in mainspace. Though, I should note, this is really poor design in the screen reader itself. I mean, back-to-back ol's with only single li's and no intervening text is pretty obviously the same list. Is it even a "screen" reader if all it's doing is reading the code verbatim—not the actual look? :\ --slakr\ talk / 04:46, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If "back-to-back ol's with only single li's and no intervening text is pretty obviously the same list", then we should have no problem in marking them up as the same list, right? --RexxS (talk) 14:48, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Starting up

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There are 111,908 articles with blank line list problems in the February dump. I'll run the first 2,000 on Wednesday. Bgwhite (talk) 10:56, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. Ran on 2,000 articles. Here is the ending point. Bgwhite (talk) 00:45, 11 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Of the 2,000 articles, 42 were not fixed. AWB doesn't apply general fixes to articles that have <noinclude> tags. These will have to be done manually. Bgwhite (talk) 19:12, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
{{BAGAssistanceNeeded}}
The event has started. (refresh)
Significant time given for community input, and yet no real objections. Don't work too fast, but barring anyone with concerns:  Approved. — Earwig talk 00:07, 27 February 2016 (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.
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