Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Tom.Bot 8

Tom.Bot 8

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

Time filed: 09:33, Friday, December 27, 2024 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): C#

Source code available:

Function overview: Process pages in Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with unknown parameters (873,622)

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Template talk:WikiProject banner shell#December update

Edit period(s): OTR

Estimated number of pages affected: ~900,000

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

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

Function details: Migrate the |living= parameter to |blp= for {{WikiProject banner shell}} in Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with unknown parameters (873,622) (currently @ 874,604), and piggyback WikiProject-template standardizations.

Not sure if non-bureaucrat, non-bot experts are permitted to opine, but that's a huge number of articles on BLPs that have lacked the standard BLP notice at the top of the talk page since 14 Dec -- which provides a lot of links to important policies and, I think, forms an important part of education of new editors and possibly also people who have a Wikipedia article about themselves; not a good situation to leave the articles in. ETA: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Creating the need to make 400,000 unnecessary edits is another discussion about the template change that led to current the problem. Espresso Addict (talk) 13:17, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tom, make sure the bot is using the tag Talk banner shell conversion when doing this task. --Gonnym (talk) 14:07, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to know how to do that, but I'm not sure how/if it's possible via the AWB module. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Needs wider discussion. Given the ANI complaint linked above, I think the nearly 1 million edits proposed here need wider discussion than one template's talk page with discussions only a handful of people seem to have participated in. Template talk:WikiProject banner shell/Archive 11#Why we should choose between blp or living, for example, had only three people involved. Anomie ⚔ 16:13, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm more than happy to have the template change that has caused this problem undone, but I don't think we should sit around talking about the best way forward for months, as all the BLPs in the nearly a million talk pages affected are currently lacking any obvious link to BLP policy. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:01, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- If this bot is going to be approved, there needs to be consensus, probably on one of the Village pump pages. Reverting the problematic edit until that discussion can happen would probably be a good thing for the reasons you note, but that isn't something that can be decided here alone either. Anomie ⚔ 16:05, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]