Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/NotPlanter

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

Denied.

NotPlanter

New to bots on Wikipedia? Read these primers!

Approval process – How this discussion works
Overview/Policy – What bots are/What they can (or can't) do
Dictionary – Explains bot-related jargon

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

Time filed: 12:19, Thursday, July 23, 2020 (UTC)

Function overview: Replaces American antebellum capitalists termed "planters" with more descriptive "agricultural enslavers."

Manual: Due to the geographic focus of the bot, manual intervention is presumptively required.

Programming language(s): C#

Source code unavailable: Open-sourced, pending approval.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): One-time run

Estimated number of pages affected: Several thousand

Namespace(s):Mainspace/Articles

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No):No

Function details: Using offline archive of English Wikipedia, identifies articles of North American individuals in the antebellum south described as planter(s) and creates an iterable object of suggested edits to replace planter(s) with agricultural enslaver(s). Bot is innocuous and simply provides material for human review. Human approval would ideally result in an automated bot action with its own signature.

Discussion

Please provide a link to the consensus discussion supporting this mass language change. Also, if the bot is not going to be making any edits, I don't think you need a BRFA. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:07, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Needs wider discussion. as Jonesey95 mentioned above, this would need a strong consensus to release a bot on all of these articles. Will give you a little time to see if this is established, but I really doubt it will emerge. Have you made some of these edits yourself without any contention? Also, do the references in the articles support one term or another? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:22, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It appears the primary article for this classification is Planter class? Has there been discussion about renaming that to your suggested term? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:25, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See Talk:Planter class#These_Are_a_Class_of_Enslavers_Not_Planters. It is not a formal RM, and has generated only one reply, which asks whether sources support this proposal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:41, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The actions of this task proposal are unclear:

Why does the function overview say Replaces American antebellum capitalists termed "planters" with more descriptive "agricultural enslavers", but the function details say an iterable object of suggested edits
The overview describes a bot editing articles, but the details don't.
What is an an iterable object of suggested edits? Some plain English please.
Will it simply create a list of articles to review? (That might be OK)
Will it create clickable links to autoedits, enabling editors to make one-click edits? (That would be effectively empowering meatbots)

The underlying issue is that the proposal shows no sign of any consensus anywhere to make such changes.

In principle I personally like this idea because it seems to be more accurate terminology, but en.wp terminology should follow the sources ... so I would oppose this change unless it reflected a sustained shift in the terminology used in reliable sources.

The fact the proposer wants to run a bot without even trying to present any evidence at all of consensus-building is very alarming. The ill-defined nature of the bot is an additional complication.

So I suggest that User:Louis Waweru start the long process of multi-stage consensus-building before they even consider seeking approval for a bot. At a minimum, that would need 1/ a WP:RM to rename the head article 2/ an RFC on when to change the terminology in articles; 3) a well-attended discussion (ideally an RFC) on whether a bot might help. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:16, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Denied. Scope is fuzzy, consensus not demonstrated, and no clear method(s) are defined. Primefac (talk) 22:09, 2 August 2020 (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.