I wish to have the bot flag set for DYKBot. This makes it's edits invisible unless "Show bots" is selected. This needs community approval. What does everyone think? --Bp 20:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Support: Bp's bot does not use the pywikipedia frame work, but I have seen the script and edits and see no harm. The DYK is a bit misleading now, since the bot no longer is supposed to manage the did you knows, but what's a name ... -- Kobi 20:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Support. A rose by any other name... well, you know the rest. :P --From Andoria with Love 20:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Support. That bot is not only useful but also lots of fun :-) --Jörg 22:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Support. Too many bot edits! :P -- Renegade54 11:16, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys, I've started an RFC (request for comments) for a bot to link Episode titles into the Episode listings pages...

The basic premise is to link episode article summaries into any listings pages that list the episode. For example, the Voyager series has an Episode listing in the "VOYAGER Series" article, and each Season has its own Episode listing again.

The bot really has a much more profound use as to creating linked text in WIkis, whereas text from a source article can be propogated to multiple places and optionally the Wiki engine could treat those propogations as "soft edits"

See the User:EnEpiLink page for more specifics. and dont forget to post initial suggestions here! --Funkdubious 22:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Pages that would get the initial treatment:

• Voyager series episode listings (already done, click to see example)
  • Season 1
  • Season 2
  • ...etc
• The Next Generation series episode listings
  • Season 1
  • ...etc
• TAS Episode list
• DS9 Episode listing

I don't see any reason for a need for this. I prefer to keep things the way they are now, and this seems to clutter the list a bit. - AJHalliwell 00:20, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I prefer this as new format for the series pages. Perhaps also without pictures. --Memory 20:15, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't. This form clutters the page and has no advantage to browse through MA's episodes easily. Because of its placement, between the cast and background info, it forces the reader to scroll to the end of the page before he or she has something useful to look at. (repositioning it does not prevent this) The form it currently has is much more suited for navigation. -- Q 15:00, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I can work in that format. Although assembling the stardate info might be harder, but thats the beauty of a wiki, I suppose.--Funkdubious 17:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no reason to do what you are suggesting, Funkdubious. If anyone wishes to learn about the episode, all they need to do is click on the link to that episode. There is no need to clutter the pages with information people can read by just one click. --From Andoria with Love 20:19, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Then you're saying there's no reason for "information at your fingertips", and instead vying for "information just one more click away" or "information maybe if you search the right keywords". The key to a great database (which Memory Alpha is) is having several different views of the information. Which would include at least an episode description whenever episodes are listed in a table, but not having each episode's minutia which is perfect for the actual episode page. --Funkdubious 17:48, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it is more important to have one central resource for each piece of information than to have "information at your fingertips" everywhere. Putting information not only on the page where it belongs, but also on several other pages means much content duplication and as a result, more work to keep everything updated all the time.

Your suggestion actually consists of two questions: Do we need it (episode summaries on every page), and if we need it, how do we achieve it? I personally think that we don't need it, but if the majority thinks otherwise, I'd still strongly suggest not to use a bot to copy information if there's a much better solution: If this is really considered necessary, templates could be created for each episode (for example, {{EpSum Broken Bow}}), containing a small 3-4 sentence summary of the episode. This template could then be included in the episode article and everywhere else. That way, there's only one page that has to be edited, not many. -- Cid Highwind 12:30, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I hear you, Cid, and I appreciate your comments. From my point of view, it seems much more concise to have the descriptions tag along with the episode listings, since the description is one of the primary ways to distinguish between episodes. I agree that you can click on the episode title... I was just suggesting that having the episode descriptions help the users to quickly locate the episode being sought. "Oh yeah... thats the one I'm thinking of!" Basically having that information minimally aggregated for the viewers via the episode list. I'd love to be instructed on how to do this properly, because I feel its a big win for everyone.

On another note, if I was willing to invest in the time to do it (about 3 seconds per episode), then I'd surely appreciate Shran not reverting the changes because He thinks it shouldn't be that way. Especially since the discussion hasn't run its course. Not only is that rude, but awfully pretentious.--Funkdubious 07:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I must agree it has its advantages. I myself ran into the same problem were I was looking for a particular episode from which I knew its contents but not the title anymore. A small description beside the link might have helped to find the episode quicker. -- Q 15:00, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Precisely what I'm talking about Q. Most of the time I don't remember the title, but I obviously remember what the episode was about. Thanks for reaffirming my position. Any other comments?--Funkdubious 18:10, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Another angle to this is Episode ratings. With members/raters voting on the article page, the ratings could transfer into the VOY/TNG/etc pages, showing popular episodes. Perhaps we just need a good Episode listing template?--Funkdubious 18:47, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Here's a little supporting evidence for having the descriptions:

• Talk:Star Trek: Voyager#a different world

Well since I'm not seeing a whole lot of opposition to it (and can't imagine why there would be), I'll invest the time to make it look good. Optimally, we can figure out a way to have the Episode Descriptions "auto-export" but I don't believe current Wiki implementations allow for this. (Templates come to mind... whereas the Episode page would have

{{description=This is the description}} and then the episode link page could have: *{{e|Caretaker}}: {{Caretaker (episode):description}}

In addition, I've proposed this "exporting" to the MediaWiki feature request list.--Funkdubious 02:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if you're still insisting on that "export" feature because you like it so much, or because you haven't completely understood how templates work, yet - so I'm just going to present the way that already would work, again:

1. Create a template page for the episode description, for example [[Template:Description Caretaker]] (just a suggestion: use that order instead of Caretaker_Description to have all episode description templates sorted together later).
2. Move the existing description from the episode article to that page and replace it with a template link: {{Description_Caretaker}}
3. Also use that template link in whatever other contexts you want, for example: ;{{e|Caretaker}}:{{Description_Caretaker}}

-- Cid Highwind 12:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I do like the export feature, and Templates would be a good workaround for what I'm trying to accomplish. But since the episode descriptions shouldn't be changing that often, it should be ok.--Funkdubious 18:00, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Another thing, the MediaWiki devs are considering meta-data to be attached to pages. I filed a feature request at bugzilla.wikimedia.org: [1]. They appear to be considering the new feature, which would be exactly what we need here. Basically, you'd create meta-data for the article and have both the page and the episode listing page import that meta-data. For instance, the episode pages would get KeyValue pair like "Description"="some description", then in the episode page, you'd have {{meta:Description}}, not sure what the syntax would be for one page to import the meta-data from another page, but the possibility is being considered.--Funkdubious 18:08, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Why are you going template-happy over something that will have use on exactly two pages (the series page and the season page)? That sounds a bit harsh, but honestly, we don't need 700+ new templates (that's how many Trek episodes there are) for something like this... I do like the idea of descriptions possibly, but not templates or ratings (see below conversation on ratings). --Broik 15:42, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the template thing is probably a bit overboard. It would be nice (for purity sake) for the Description to automatically update Listings if the Episode page itself's description is changed. But in theory, the episode descriptions shouldn't change, and therefore the listing pages wouldn't change after the initial table treatment. --Funkdubious 18:13, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

As I wrote above, I prefer this, so we don't need these 700 (!) temps. --Memory 20:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Given all the above text, an episode list with descriptions helps the casual Trek fan to find the particular episode he was looking for. Although I do like the TAS episode list, its still missing a more vital piece of info for somebody who would've sought out the Episode list, IMHO. Also, I agree that 700 new templates is probably overkill, unfortunately. On the other hand, the episode descriptions won't be changing so it should be ok. ...And since the DB is only 8MB, according to the dump, it has the space ;-)--Funkdubious 18:08, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, let me throw in my two bits... IMHO what we lack among all the episode listings is STANDARD. I do like the TAS listing, but we could deal with less information. I don't think that we need a bot right now. What I think we need first is a standard, then we can think about a bot. --MstrControl 01:58, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello! I'm Plasmarelais from MA/de. Maybe you've noticed my contributions here, mainly setting or fixing interwiki links. Recently I ran our bot on MA/de, PlasmarelaisBot, setting and fixing interwiki links. It's going through all languages to add/edit/delete new/changed/broken IWL on MA/de. Now I also got a list of en-pages, where IWL to other existing pages are missing. I already posted that at the page Bot requests, but haven't recieved no answer. This bot is already successfully working on MA/cs, MA/de, MA/fr, MA/it and MA/pl.

So I ask you if you would like the bot to add these IWL on your pages. If so, I would request a botflag for your wiki from w:User:Avatar and the bot may start working. If you have any questions about the bot or the way it is working or anything else, just contact me on my german user talk. It's also possible just add IWL in the first time, without editing or deleting any links. Thank you for your anwer! --Plasmarelais Ξ TALK Ξ ツ Ξ 16:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Since I haven't recieved any answer, neither here nor there: maybe this is the wrong place for questions like these? Should I rather post this to another subforum? Or better ask one of your admins? So I ask to help me for I really want to add those links. Thank you very much! --Plasmarelais Ξ TALK Ξ ツ Ξ 09:55, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the reason you haven't gotten an answer may be because no one here feels like they have authority to give "permission" since we don't have any formal hierarchy. I for one am okay with it, but admin or not, I don't claim to be able to give "permission". --- Jaz 16:31, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I see. I know that a single person can't give me an absolute "OK", I just wanted to ask the community which is present here if I may have the bot run. I didn't want to start it silently without anyone noticing it. I think it will be the best to set up a user page for the bot, describing its job and abilities. And if no one really protests agianst it, I will ask for bot flag and start working. Finally everyone can contact me and an admin can use the "emergency button" in case of things going wrong. Thanks a lot for reply! --Plasmarelais Ξ TALK Ξ ツ Ξ 16:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Memory Alpha:Bot requests is where you should place your request, which I see you've already done. I say knock yourself out and go for it. :) — Morder 17:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

My mistake, you are asking to use a bot and not ask that a bot do something. :) — Morder 17:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Your bot has the bot flag now. You can use that rather than adding the "de" interwikis with this account. -- sulfur 21:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that the flag was set. And so the bot has already been setting several hundreds of interwiki links. But some of them need to be set manually, I think. Please don't get me wrong, but now I wonder: is there something not right about the way I've setting the links with this account? Or is it because these very minor edits should not all appear in the recent changes list? Thank you! --Plasmarelais 21:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Not at all. I wasn't entirely certain if you'd started bashing through stuff with the bot yet. That's all. :) -- sulfur 22:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I've created a new bot, User:SulfBot. His talk page/user page both direct to mine, and on there are the token bits of info that he does. The plan is to update the "Image:" namespace calls to "File:" calls for starters. Once that's done, the sky is the limit. Well, that and my comprehension of regular expressions. :)

Regardless, I'd like to request a bot flag, and for such, community consensus is required. -- sulfur 15:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Yay! -- Cid Highwind 15:42, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

bp responds in the affirmative. --bp 15:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. --31dot 16:03, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

*thumbs up* - Archduk3 19:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Late, and useless, but yip yip yahoo go for it!--Obey the Fist!! 21:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I've downloaded the AutoWikiBrowser, which will let me do simple find and replace runs. I don't plan to use this often, because it requires a database dump to work outside of some simple built-in options, mostly category and whatlinkshere based. That said, since using it beyond the test I ran today requires community consensus, I'm asking for that now. - Archduk3 02:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi! I'd like to request a bot flag for my bot account: User:Mr. Botfleet Command. It uses both the MassEdit script from the Fandom Developers Wiki and a custom script I wrote to be more efficient for widespread bot editing.

The initial task I'll use it for is recategorizing the members of several categories that were recently moved by Renegade54. It wouldn't be too hard for me to do this manually, but it would totally flood the recent changes feed with 207+ edits, which is far from desirable.

Once that initial task is done, I image I'll make occasional edits of a similar nature: minor formatting tweaks and implementing more notable changes upon consensus. 🖖 Mr. Starfleet Command ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:37, 17 May 2024 (UTC)