User:EhJBot1/Proposal

I would like to propose a bot that would do the following:

1. Look through current articles (or, only new articles) on the Simple English Wikipedia and look at the identically named article on the English Wikipedia (or, the article linked via interlanguage links.)
2. Create a list redirects to that English Wikipedia article.
3. Check to see if those redirects exist on the Simple English Wikipedia.
4. If not, create those redirects.

The purpose would be to create useful redirects that already exist on the English Wikipedia, thereby making it easier for users of Simple English Wikipedia to find the article they are looking for, but without the tediousness of making many appropriate redirects manually. If consensus feels that this ability should be limited to new page creations only, or be semi-automated rather than fully automated, those are also options.

Thoughts? EhJJ^TALK 17:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

• I don't think there's really a need. I think manual is good, and I don't see a problem with making redirects manually. I think automated is unnecessary. —Mythdon ^{(talk) (changes)} 22:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• As a 'crat I would approve this for trial, let me know when you want to run a small trial. It can't hurt to have a bot do this. -DJSasso (talk) 23:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• I'm split. Although users could do it, having a bot do it would save time. However, there could be mistakes because of the difference in the wikis (3 mil articles and 60k articles). But, if you monitored some of the bot edits, I could support. Griffinofwales (talk) 13:32, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Redirecting is the way forward. Support the idea. Yotcmdr ^{=talk to the commander=} 15:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for the advice guys. I'm almost done writing the bot and I've decided on a semi-automated approach (i.e. the bot creates a list of options and lets the operator choose which ones to create). So far, it seems to work very good. I'm thinking of adding a IRC front-end to allow trusted users to control which redirects are made and which are not. Since the bot only lets the user choose from a select list of options, and checks to make sure that page doesn't already exist, there is very little ability to cause damage (i.e. no more than if the bot were fully automated). EhJJ^TALK 16:16, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Not sure. Normally we create the redirects when we create the article. If a redirect is later missing, so we create them later. The question is: Do we really need such a bot? On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt. Barras (talk) 16:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)