Platonides wrote:
I find it a bad example, as it's not clear what
you are translating from
the keys (and there's no documentation on them)
a) en/zh/ca... mean "The name of the article about lang XX on
XX.wikipedia.org", not the language name.
b) "Good" means "articles"
c) "Administrator" means "sysop"
d) 'Template:Statistics' is translated, but translations don't exist.
And if you started creating them you'd face opposition by the community.
Other than the last two messages, IMHO they could be automatically
generated.
I think that "Good" and "Administrator(s)" were in original table on
en.wn. Also, there are two types of articles "good" and "total", so
there should be written "good articles" from which "good" is an
aberration.
However, I changed some of the messages exactly because of automatic
translation via Wikipedia interwikis (instead of "Last update", I put
"Time"). Except Polish (and English) all other translations are not
checked by human. (I think that I changed "Template:Statistics" for
Ukrainian, because it was obvious that the name of their article is
"Statistics (science)" or something like that, like in Polish).
Also, I didn't make comments (or more descriptive names). However, it is
assumed that a person who is correcting translation should know what is
translating. And, yes, for some wider usage, there should be much better
described. However, I was thinking about possibility to move bot
localization to betawiki (but I still didn't talk with anyone about
that). As I said, this bot is still in the stage "willing-to-be"
multilingual bot :)
And, of course, I didn't create them without asking communities (sr: --
community more or less = me; I am (more or less) active on en.wn; and it
may be said that I got permissions from pl community (asked on IRC)).
I find the interwiki links of the village pump
extremely useful. Of
course you may get it moved to their [[Wikipedia:Embassy]] or get a nice
pointer to [[Wikipedia:Bots]].
So yes, it's time expensive but it think due to communicating with
communities, waiting...
Last time (in April this year) when I wanted to ask a simple question
all communities ("Do you write language names with starting capital
letter?"), I found that it is extremely hard to find all village pumps,
as well as *methods* for posting new section. The consequence was that I
realized that I have to ask everyone for some basic data for their vps.
Product is something like 2-3% covered village pumps [1]. The other page
(but, without a "post method") is [2]. But, please, notice (1) the
number of covered projects, (2) how many projects have a link to
"discussion".
Also, the most of projects have explicit decision to make interwiki
links from their village pump only to the village pumps of the most
important (globally and/or regionally) projects.
There is another problem. Please, look at [1] what is the method of
adding new post to vp at Russian Wikipedia. I remember that Danish
Wikipedia had also unusual way for adding a comment...
So, theoretically, it should be a good idea, but practically it is still
very problematic. Spending time on talk with a lot of communities is not
a problem. Spending time on trying to talk with communities is a problem.
According to my experience, it is not physically possible only to ask
all Wikipedias only one question during one full day, but I suppose that
it is necessary to spend a couple of full days for that task.
The other issue, is, of course, fact that it is not reasonable to spend
human time for something which may be done by computer. This includes
one question * 700 (or, at least, * 250).
Some communities will block your block unless it has a
bot flag. And i'd
feel stupid asking a bot flag for a bot which posts "Hello World" ;)
I don't know for any bot which is blocked because of ~10 edits on its
own page or subpages. Sense of blocking bots without bot flags is
related to their high activity and contaminating RC, not to the fact
that they are programs. (Of course, assuming that bot is operated by
reasonable and constructive editor.)
Also, there
are a lot of bots which are doing useful things. But, they
are limited to one or, at most, a couple of projects. A lot of people
are making bots which were already made a couple of times. And we have
all prerequirements for making multilingual bots, except the basic
multilingual methodology.
Agree. Maybe the need is not of a framework but a [[meta:Bot pump]]
where you can request and provide bots.
There is a [[meta:Bot aid]] for such things. However, 10% more work on
one bot (making a possibility for its localization and WM wide usage)
means 700 times more useful bot. But, without those 10% more work,
writing another bot for the same task may be the same job as previous.
And, usually, the page was/is used for not so trivial asks and, usually,
questions were not made by people from some of Wikimedian project.
So, my idea is to make a field for sharing methods, as well as for
education of new bot programmers. Also, it should be used for promotion
of automation, at least at a level of introducing non-tech people what
bots are able to do.
Also, this shouldn't be the last project of this type. I treat it as "an
academic introduction" to bots on Wikimedian projects (where all of
participants are professors and students) :)
[1] -
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikimedian_pubs
[2] -
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Index/Requests_and_proposals