Wikipedia talk:Bots

Older talk at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 1

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I am planning to put hunderes of stubs for Japanes authors using bots. Any objection? The format should be like Hozumi Shigeto -- Taku 04:47 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Nice format. I like the way you have the Japanese characters in the same parenthesis as the birth/death dates. One minor issue: a space needs to go after the comma in the dates. --mav

I don't like the way the Japanese characters are in the same parenthesis as the dates. They are different things altogether, so it seems strange to link them in that way. And it doesn't follow the standard "(date - date)" pattern that seems to have been agreed for biographical articles. I prefer the format used at, e.g. Kokichi Mikimoto. -- Oliver P. 16:04 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

The article contains little more than List of Japanese authors, only the Japanese characters. These could be added in the list. It seems better that a separate article about an author is made at the moment that there is more info on him/her. Except when it is probable that soon more info will be added to a large percentage of the stubs. - Patrick 10:33 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

I agree that it makes more sense to do a list, and when someone decides to flesh out a particular author they can create a new page. --snoyes 16:34 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

What is the benefit of adding all these authors using a bot? Is it truly contributing to the content of wikipedia, or just cluttering the database? If people feel that they need to add content about a particular topic, then surely to benefit readers, it should have at least a little content. Kabads

I don't think they're just "clutter", since these people are presumably all going to get articles, so pages on them are going to be in the database eventually anyway. These bot contributions are just providing slots into which people can put stuff. We all want more encyclopaedic content to be added, of course, so I think the most important question is: are people more likely to add encyclopaedic content on an author who (a) has no entry at all, or (b) has a very brief entry with almost no content? I suspect that the latter is more likely to spur people on to add information, but it's debatable, of course. (I still don't like the format, though!) -- Oliver P. 16:51 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

First of all, stub articles have inadequate information but the purpose of them is to provide a good starting point to write an article. Finding out the birth date and death date is a tedious job and particularly putting Japanese characters are difficult to job for those who can't type Japanese. Secondly, we already have the List of Japanese authors. It means soon or later we will have articles for all of them. There is no reason to postpone making articles unless we are unsure we need such a article. Yeah, we need a little more at least, where he/she was born and died. I think I can put such information because I have it.

Yeah, maybe bots are a little too overwhelming. I will put stubs by hand if we can agree with having stub articles for Japanese authors.

Taku, Have you read Wikipedia:Bots? It's a useful page on this issue. -- sannse 16:41 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Yes. I believe my bot is useful, harmless and not server hog.

I guess another benefit of using a bot is to guarantee consistent format for the articles. --Tomos 20:30 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

Japanese city bot I would like to use a bot to make a stub of Japanese city. The format should be like Funabashi. I will wait to use it until enough dicussion is done. I welcome any sort of comment, really any. -- Taku 04:18 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm, that's awfully short. Could you include a little more data? Population would be a start, and such stats are likely widely available. --Brion

Yes, it is less than adequate stub. I put population and I will put area. Unfortunately I couldn't find out the complete set of stat data like census in USA. So we have to get each data like population individually. What else do you think we need? -- Taku 22:27 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Yea that's too short. I think you could add information like location (latitude, longitude...), climate (max/average/min temperature, rainfall...), geographical features (nearby rivers/mountains...), history (when is the city formed, who formed it, important historical events...), just to name a few. Maybe you could use the US cities articles as reference since they are also added by a bot (AFAIK). --Lorenzarius 15:30 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

Of course, I wish I could. If someone has good stats in English, I will appreciate. But I doubt there is such. Maybe we need to add history or such by hand later. Anyway we can't expect artciels like US cities articles. -- Taku 16:14 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

IMHO, Why can't we expect articles of similar quality? We don't necessarily need history, but if we're going to run a bot, then we should be able to find all the information possible. At the very least, Lorenzarius' first few suggestions are very good; population alone is not enough, nor the city designation. Atorpen

Taku: for population, how about this? [1] (http://www.glin.org/prefect/cpf/index) Tomos 20:05 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)
for more demographics, [2] (http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2000/kihon1/shihyo.htm) (files are in .xls format, and you would perhaps need japanese font)
and land areas [3] (http://www.gsi.go.jp/KOKUJYOHO/MENCHO/200210/opening.htm) Tomos 21:21 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for all of those who gave me comments. Particularly pages Toms gave seems quite useful making an city article bot will add decent probably. I am working on a converting Japanese into English and writing the script of bot. Feel free to keep discussing formatting or whatever. -- Taku 02:02 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

I updated Funaba article. I think it is still short but adequate stub. For some reason, I can't access [4] (http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kokusei/2000/kihon1/shihyo.htm). If someone can download the excel file and upload it somewhere or send it to me, I will appreciate. -- Taku 04:30 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

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Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump

I would like to create a bot that gets info from various U.S. Department of State websites, and makes articles. I have no experience making this type of program, could someone point me in the direction as to what I need to learn, or a where to start? MB 20:26 27 May 2003 (UTC)

If you have experience with Perl, it's easy. Even if you don't, it's easy as long as you're somewhat good with computer languages. For example, on page 708 of the first edition of the Perl Cookbook (Christiansen & Torkington) it shows how to grab a web page with two lines of code:

use LWP::Simple;

$content = get('');

... at which point the variable '$content' contains the HTML of the requested page. More sophisticated robot work requires a little more code, but it's surprisingly easy. Jordan Langelier

If you have no experience writing bots please be careful that you don't unleash some kind of terminator onto the servers. Always test your work on a sandbox system (install an HTTP server locally with static copies of some example pages), and don't leave it going for hours and hours without checking what it's up to. CGS 22:40 27 May 2003 (UTC).

Automated content is generally disliked here: the value of Wikipedia comes from the fact that human beings interested in each subject have written and edited the articles. If you really feel that you must auto-create, you can test the bot on my server first; mail me and I'll give you all the info. LDC