Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Bot/The Anonybot

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

 Approved--Ymblanter (talk) 15:04, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

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The Anonybot

The Anonybot (talk • contribs • new items • new lexemes • SUL • Block log • User rights log • User rights • xtools)
Operator: The Anonymouse (talk • contribs • logs)

Task/s: Improving items of counties in US states by fixing labels, adding/fixing descriptions, and adding aliases

Function details: The bot retrieves a list of names of counties in a state using en:Category:(State) counties (e.g. en:Category:Alabama counties). Next, it goes through the list, improving the items in the following ways:

• changing the English label of the county by removing the state suffix, if neccessary

  e.g. "Autauga County, Alabama" → "Autauga County"

• changing the Spanish label of the county by removing the state suffix, if neccessary

  e.g. "Condado de Autauga (Alabama)" or "Autauga" → "Condado de Autauga"

• adding the English description "county in State, United States", if necessary

  e.g. + "county in Alabama, United States"

  • changing the English description if it begins with a capital letter or an article

    e.g. "County in Alabama, United States" or "a county in Alabama, United States" → "county in Alabama, United States"

• adding the Spanish description "condado en Estado, Estados Unidos", if necessary

  e.g. + "condado en Alabama, Estados Unidos"

  • changing the Spanish description if it begins with a capital letter or an article

    e.g. "Condado en Alabama, Estados Unidos" or "un condado en Alabama, Estados Unidos" → "condado en Alabama, Estados Unidos"

• adding an alias in English with "County Name, State", if necessary

  e.g. + "Autauga County, Alabama"

The bot is prepared to handle county equivalents, such as parishes in Louisiana and boroughs in Alaska. It also uses localized state names in descriptions (e.g. "condado en Misuri, EUA" [county in Missouri, USA])

Counting all of the steps, there could be up to four edits per item. w:en:County (United States) says that there are a total of 3,144 counties (and county equivalents), which means that I expect the bot to make roughly a few thousand edits.

I will begin making some test edits as soon as I can.

The Anonymouse (talk) 00:32, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• Sounds like a good idea. Will it overwrite existing descriptions? --Rschen7754 00:36, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

  No, unless they start with a capital letter or an article ("a"). I ran a few test edits for Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Mexico before being stopped by some anti-spam feature. The Anonymouse (talk) 00:48, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• Here is a good example of what it did to Sandoval County (Q493255) [1] The Anonymouse (talk) 00:55, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• I was able to run the bot again and I got it to make just over 50 test edits. So far, I haven't seen any edits that are incorrect. The Anonymouse (talk) 04:08, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• Instead of "USA", I have been putting "United States". Even though it's longer, it seems more complete and good to put in the description. Aude (talk) 11:07, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• You have a good point: we should aim for completeness, not convenience. I'll try to make a few test edits later today with ", United States" in the description, when I get the chance. The Anonymouse (talk) 12:21, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks! I think it's good to be consistent. Aude (talk) 17:55, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I ran a few test edits with the change, and I updated the examples above. Besides a typo in the Spanish descriptions (which I have corrected), everything seems to be running smoothly. The Anonymouse (talk) 22:56, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The bot can now correct Spanish labels by adding "Condado de" [county of] at the beginning or removing the "(Estado)" [state] suffix at the end. See the example above. I ran a few more test edits, but I was not able to find a good example of this in an edit. The Anonymouse (talk) 04:38, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Bot looks good to me. Definitely a needed task. Aude (talk) 11:29, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.