Difference between revisions of "User talk:LGBot"

Revision as of 21:10, 23 March 2007

Bot Tasks

This is a list of tasks that the bot might be able to help get done faster. Feel free to request anything that you want done, and I'll add it to the list if it seems feasible. If you'd like to contact the bot operator directly, you can do so at User talk:Jonpro. Also, please sign your comments with ~~~~.

• Fix formatting in videos from ''(text)'' to (''text'') per LGPedia:General style guide.
• Add {{tag}} to all articles in Category:YouTube tags.
• Correct capitalization of The Order to "the Order".
• Correct capitalization of The creators to "the Creators".
• Make anchors for the LG15 Soundtrack table and link to them.
• Change instances of {{blog3}} to {{blog4}} (in progress).
• Fix links in transcripts (and regular articles) so that each page is linked to only once.

Great job!

Hey Jonpro,
Great work with the bot! Looks like it's running smoothly... as for tasks, think it could change instances of The Order to the Order? Actually, I'm not sure which one is correct, but I think there's instances of both floating about the wiki. Thoughts anyone?
OwenIsCool 01:39, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

i think "the" is definitely the correct form. --Skeeta 01:56, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, whichever one is correct, I'm pretty sure the bot could fix those. And I think "the Order" is correct as well. Is there anyone who thinks it should be "The Order"?--Jonpro 10:38, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

You know, in real life these things are often a matter of belief. For example, a Christian would say "We pray to Him" where non-Christians would more likely write "They pray to him." So Lucy would probably write "We in The Order" because, to her, it's The Order and there is no other Order. Thank Goodness this isn't real wikipedia where we'd have to make a decision about real people's deeply held religious beliefs. For what it's worth, the official description of Date With P. Monkey also capitalizes "The" in the middle of a sentence. --JayHenry 11:43, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

i think that only applies to the capitalization of "order." for ex, someone wouldn't say "Our God."--Skeeta 18:47, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

Date With P. Monkey and Me For Daniel capitalizes mid-sentence. In Bree Is Crazy Daniel leaves it lower case. I thought of another example of the controversy. Newspapers insist on capitalization, such as The New York Times, but others insist it should be the New York Times. I guess there's no right or wrong answer. --JayHenry 23:25, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

well no one's saying it should be "Order." and that's different, it's a publication title, so the first word would have to be capitalized.--Skeeta 02:21, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Another one similar to this is The creators. Is it "the Creators", "The Creators", or "the creators"?--Jonpro 22:34, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

I think what Jay pointed out about "The/the Order" in the descriptions is interesting. Looks like Bree (who was brought up by them) capitalizes "The", but Daniel (an outsider) does not. I would go with "the Order" then. This may be about Bree, but the LGPedia clearly does not exist in the Breeniverse. The characters are barely aware that there's a forum, and I'd bet anything the wiki doesn't exist to them. We are "outsiders". We use "the Order".

For "the Creators", even though that's the spelling that I've been using, if we're standardizing it, I would prefer to use "the creators". If this were a movie, you wouldn't be saying "The Executive Producers" mid-sentence, would you? The current article on the creators (which is actually titled "The creators") says that they might call themselves that because they liken themselves to gods (a possible argument for capitalizing Creators?). However, I don't think the article should read that way (it's kind of disrespectful to them, really). A much more likely explanation is that 1) they "created" the Breeniverse and 2) their roles in the production defy easy classification. Each of them often takes on various roles in different videos (as evidenced by the credits). Soo... I'm still for "the creators". OwenIsCool 10:05, 17 March 2007 (CDT)

What about "the create-a-trons"?? >:-} Nieriel.Manwathiel

I think OIC and Skeeta's reasoning for "the Order" is pretty compelling. I never noticed the strange language in the Creators article before. I think it's obvious that "the Creators" refers to how they created the Breeniverse, not that they think they have God-like powers on earth. I can go either way on the c's. I think the best argument for lowercase c is OIC's above, I think the best argument for upper case C is that "The Creators" is their account at the forum. --JayHenry 10:42, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Ok, so "the Order" it is unless anyone has any last objections. For the creators, I'm in favor of "the Creators" personally. I see the name as a title, like "Mr. President", only it refers to a group of people rather than just one. It's almost like "the Creators" is their collective name. After all, people do say things like "please, Creators, we want a new video". Really, either way is fine with me, but that's just my opinion.--Jonpro 13:45, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

I think you can safely make the edits for "the Order" now, it's a pretty clear consensus. For "the Creators", you can go ahead with this option. Although I lean towards "the creators", I could go either way, like Jay. I also think the forum account, with capital "C" is pretty compelling. So "the Creators" it is. OwenIsCool 22:24, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

A few bad edits

The bot recently made a few bad edits to Bree, Daniel, and a couple other pages due to an error in logic on my part. I was removing leading blank lines from the YouTube tag pages and accidentally removed some (necessary) blank lines in a few other articles. I have reverted all of the bots bad edits and fixed the logic so it won't happen again.--Jonpro 16:36, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

Soundtracks

Hey Jonpro,
For a while I've wanted to have video pages link to the LG15 Soundtrack table instead of having their own music links (in the template). Twjaniak had tried to explain to me how to do this with "anchors" and I didn't quite get it. It did seem like something fairly repetitive though... think if I figure out how to do it, we could have good ol' LGBot run it?
OwenIsCool 18:35, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

Hmmm, I guess it depends on exactly how it would work. If it's a matter of replacing one string of text with another, then definitely. And you can get pretty clever with this, so some things are possible that at first don't seem to be. There are other things the bot can do, but it sounds like replacing would be the thing to use here. Most likely, if it is a repetitive task, the bot will have some way to do it.--Jonpro 20:07, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

All righty, I took another look at it and apparently this is how it works.

Step 1: Add anchors to the song titles. For "A Cup Of Blue", put the div tags around the title (note the div id cannot have spaces) <div id="A_Cup_Of_Blue>A Cup Of Blue</div> It doesn't matter what's in between the tags, it could be hyperlinked or anything, won't make a difference as long as the bot can figure out how to separate the title from the hyperlink so it can copy it. What we'd be linking to is the little "anchor" you've made. This step seems fairly straightfoward in that all the bot would have to do is add the markup and use the song title name (with no spaces) as the anchor.

Step 2: Update the blog pages to include links to these anchors. On Bree Phone Home that would mean putting in "[[LG15Soundtrack#A_Cup_Of_Blue|A Cup of Blue]] by Steve Watkins". Now I can see that being trickier since we haven't been consistent with how we credit the music there. However, if the bot can at least make the anchors, it won't be as much work to link to them.

Is at least some of that doable for LGBot? If it'd be too much work to program it, just let me know. It definitely looks like more work than "the Order" or "the Creators".

OwenIsCool 13:36, 16 March 2007 (CDT)

Ok, I'm pretty sure the bot will be able to do at least one of these things. It will probably be able to do both. When I get around to it, I'll work on the specifics a little more and see if I run into any impassable snares. Hopefully not :(--Jonpro 12:17, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Video template

I've noticed that only the videos from Snow Angels on actually use {{blog4}}, and the ones before it use {{blog3}}. Would it be a good idea to try to convert all of them to {{blog4}}? If so, what are the differences between the two templates? If it's nothing too extreme, the bot might be able to make the conversion.--Jonpro 20:13, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

It seems like the cast is the only difference. And {{blogJP}} is not working completely correct because of the difference between {{blog3}} and {{blog4}}. I think I'll try to find a way to change them all to {{blog4}} sometime tomorrow. The hardest part, I think, is that the {{blog3}} cast is in reverse order, but I'll try to work around that.--Jonpro 23:32, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Actually, the {{VidChar}} template is causing problems in {{blogJP}} because it still puts everything into the filmography categories. --JayHenry 23:39, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Hmmm, I see what you mean. Maybe create a version of {{VidChar}} for the Japanese transcript pages?--Jonpro 11:00, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Why not just base Template:BlogJP off Template:Blog3? That way you don't have to use VidChar at all. Yeah, it won't have as many bells and whistles, but that might be a good thing. So far none of the spin-offs have Blog4-type templates either. OwenIsCool 13:12, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Well, this isn't a spin-off though, it's the official videos with a translated transcript. Basing {{BlogJP}} off {{blog3}} will require the cast to be manually changed on later videos. Basiing it off {{blog4}} requires it to be manually changed on earlier videos. It's a wash either way, I guess. --JayHenry 14:49, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Yes, JayHenry-san, it's a conundrum. OwenIsCool 22:24, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Yes, but I still prefer {{blog4}}. If I can get the rest of the transcripts converted from blog3 to blog4, then when they are copied over for the Japanese pages there won't be a problem. {{Blog4}} will have to be changed to {{BlogJP}} and {{VidChar}} will have to change to {{VidCharJP}} or something like that. I could even do this with the bot if need be (it would be rather simple).--Jonpro 18:04, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

These kind of things make me quite happy that you came up with LGBot. =) OwenIsCool 22:24, 22 March 2007 (CDT)

Links in transcripts

I just noticed one user removed links in a transcript because they thought it was "a no-no". I think I remember having this discussion someplace before and, if I remember correctly, the consensus what that the first instance of each link should be linked, and the rest should not be linked. Perhaps LGBot can help in the implementation of correct linking style, not just in the transcripts, but articles in general. For instance, if you give him a list of articles, he can search for the first instance of each, add brackets, search for the remaining instances, and remove brackets. Sorry for the barrage of requests to LGBot, Jonpro... take is as praise! This isn't a time-sensitive project, no rush. OwenIsCool 10:13, 17 March 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, this is something the bot might be able to do. I haven't yet figured out everything that it is capable of, but I'm figuring it out as I go. And I really do appreciate all of the ideas for the bot. This is exactly what I hoped the bot would be able to do, so keep them coming. As long as there is no rush (as you say), I'll try to work on the projects one at at time.--Jonpro 14:57, 17 March 2007 (CDT)

I did a test on this and you can see it here. This at least removes multiple links to the same article. I'm still working on how to do it if there are no links already in the article. I was thinking, though, should this apply to every article? Might there be some exceptions (sorry, I can't think of any)?--Jonpro 14:54, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Redirects

I just moved Other fanfic to LG15 Spin-offs. This probably generated a lot of links to redirects. Just giving you a heads up in case you feel like zapping them with LGBot. OwenIsCool 16:21, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, I think I got all the main links.--Jonpro 10:57, 20 March 2007 (CDT)

I also recently merged some articles into Bree's parents. This created many links to redirects such as Bree's father, Bree's mother, Bree's biological father, Bree's biological mother. I think there might be some stuff linking to Bree's dad too. Take it away, LGBot! OwenIsCool 16:10, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

List of Lonelygirl15 videos/redesign

We're working on a new page for the list of videos and we need to mass transfer information on 100+ vids. The page uses Template:VidExpand to list the videos. All this needs is the copying and pasting information from the Blog templtates on the video pages. If you look at the Talk:List of Lonelygirl15 videos/redesign towards the bottom, Renegade kind of describes some of the finer details. Think this is something LGBot can do? OwenIsCool 16:10, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

LGBot?

What exactly does this "bot" do? What is it? A computer program? Maybe put the answers to these questions on the page, unless everyone else already knows what it is *blushes*. Wingless earthbound 15:03, 18 March 2007 (CDT)

Assuming this MediaWiki installation was not modded in this area, a bot account is nothing but a normal registered account (like yours and mine), but with an extra "bot" flag set that leads to its edits not showing up on Recent changes by default (you can still see them by clicking "Show bots" in the header).

In addition, there's an independent set of perl scripts that can be used to automate certain tasks on the wiki, like placing categories or purging stuff. These scripts usually need an account they can log into to have the rights to change certain things.

Now, since we already established the bot account is like any other account, you see where we're heading - the perl scripts are told to use the bot account to make their changes, and therefore can edit hundreds of pages in rapid succession without Recent changes getting flood-filled with edits saying "LGBot - Removed category" or something.

Mind though, that the bot account is expressedly like any other account - it is entirely possible for a human to log into and operate it, and use it like any other account - his edits just won't show up on Recent changes by default.

Renegade 18:47, 18 March 2007 (CDT)

oh. wow. haha. wingless.

That's pretty much it. Only I'm using the python wikipediabot so it uses python scripts. I'm still learning how it works, but generally it's good for doing repetitive, tedious tasks that would take a long time for a human to do. It can mass-add categories, replace one string of text with another, correct formatting and typos, etc. And yes, it is just like a regular account except that the changes aren't in the recent changes list. If you want to see the bot's edits, see Special:Contributions/LGBot or you can click "Show bots" in recent changes.--Jonpro 12:13, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Actually, Jonpro, would you mind if I moved the description of what the LGBot can do to its user page? --JayHenry 23:52, 19 March 2007 (CDT)

Go right ahead, Jay. I was thinking I should probably put some description on the user page anyway.--Jonpro 10:16, 20 March 2007 (CDT)

I added a light-hearted description, feel free of course, to change it however you like. --JayHenry 10:42, 21 March 2007 (CDT)