Simple talk/Archive 164

Question - QD bot

Hello everyone. I hope you are having a good weekend. Recently I came up with the idea of creating a bot that would help us insert QD templates into newly created articles. The operation would be simple: if the article is less than 100B (this is only an approximate value) and does not contain any links, references, templates, etc., QD G2 would be inserted into it. The idea here is to work with only obvious editing tests, where the editor inserted random letters/test sentence as a new page. For now, however, I haven't tried to write any bot, I just wanted to ask if the community would mind if it was possible. Thank you and best regards, BZPN (talk) 08:40, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

This would be prone to too many false positives. Not everyone adds all of the content in one go. I would rather see this as a tag/log-only edit filter rather than a bot that tags for QD. No QD criteria fits this anyway. G2 is one of the most misused QD criteria in my opinion. It should be reserved for cases where it's a test. A 100kb unsourced page about Telemann's Wassermusik (its history, musical analysis, performances) is not a test page. A page that only contains:

• etc...

are test pages and eligible for G2. QD criteria should not be applied loosely, but strictly. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 08:59, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

We have edit filters for some of the cases Eptalon (talk) 11:56, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes, I suppose those are Special:AbuseFilter/11 and Special:AbuseFilter/107. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 13:54, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

@Fehufanga, for clarification: I meant 100B here, not 100kb (I made a typo and misled you, I'm sorry :)). BZPN (talk) 21:10, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

(Non-administrator observation) Maybe you meant 100 bytes? 100kb (100,000 bytes) is a very long article. ✩ Dream Indigo ✩ 19:15, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes, you're right, I meant 100 bytes... thanks for pointing that out! BZPN (talk) 21:07, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

No problem, there are so many things like documents and pictures that weight some kb, that it sounds more natural to say kb instead of just bytes. I didn't even notice at first, it sounded right. ✩ Dream Indigo ✩ 21:51, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

An edit filter could be put in place that stops very small new articles by new users, I don't really see why very small articles need automation to be removed. They aren't exactly harming anyone. We don't get so many of them that it's a lot of man-power, and they aren't indexed, so there isn't any reason to get to them very quickly. Even if all of the above wasn't true, we would still require administrators to delete the articles in question. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:40, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually, writing an abuse filter is also a good idea. However, such test edits definitely harm us - Wikipedia is not intended to test edits in the main namespace. That's why we have WP:Sandbox. Test edits only waste editors' time inserting QD templates and administrators' time deleting them. BZPN (talk) 21:48, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Special:AbuseFilter/19 does exist, but it only tags the edit. From the logs the false positive rate appear to be small enough that elevating it to warn might be acceptable. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 21:53, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Agree BZPN (talk) 22:04, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Template issue

Hi, Over at Manchester Victoria station, the text under Manchester Exchange is showing as:

Manchester Exchange

toward [[Template:S-line/National Rail Historical left/LNWR station|Template:S-line/National Rail Historical left/LNWR]]

I don't suppose anyone knows how to fix this?, I've updated the S line template and Template:S-line/side cell but nothing's worked, Thanks, Kind Regards, –Davey2010^Talk 22:49, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

@Davey2010: This appears to be due to the presence of the previous parameter. I removed these parameters and the template should display correctly. However, if incorrect information is displayed, please revert my changes. Have a nice day! BZPN (talk) 08:47, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

P.S. It looks like it was probably because there was only one such parameter in one place, which could cause an error between templates without this parameter. BZPN (talk) 11:09, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi @BZPN, Brilliant thank you so much, I have noticed though at en:Manchester_Victoria_station#Westbound_services it says Miles Platting and here it now says Terminus, I didn't know if I should just remove the template and add that name back manually ?, Thought I'd ask you first as you're amazing with this sort of stuff :), Many thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 12:22, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks again for fixing that too it's greatly appreciated, I certainly would've messed that up so I'm thankful and greatful you replied and helped so thank you :), Have a great day, Many thanks, Warm Regards, –Davey2010^Talk 13:40, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

@Davey2010, That's very nice of you :). I tried to fix the appearance to be the same as in enwiki, but the word toward kept appearing under the station name, and there was no way I could hide it. Therefore, I simply did it with a "rail line" template with appropriately set parameters. You can't tell the difference visually, but in wikicode it's a bit more complicated. I hope this isn't a problem :). Best regards, BZPN (talk) 13:40, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Ah okay I didn't even notice the enwiki one was changed, Oh no of course I don't care about the wikicode tbh - As long as it matches enwiki externally then I'm happy :), Thanks again, –Davey2010^Talk 14:31, 1 December 2024 (UTC)