User talk:PhotoCatBot

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This user account is a bot operated by Twp (talk).

It is not a sock puppet, but rather an automated or semi-automated account for making repetitive edits that would be extremely tedious to do manually.
Administrators: if this bot is malfunctioning or causing harm, please block it.

This bot will crawl Category:Wikipedia requested photographs. When it finds any article which has a {{reqphoto}}, {{photoreq}}, {{photoneeded}} or {{images-wanted}} template with no parameters, it will check for the following conditions and update the photo request as appropriate.

See PhotoCatBot for more details.

Source code can be found at User:PhotoCatBot/Src.

Tim Pierce 23:12, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Comments

  • I'm not sure if the bot needs some tweaking... because there's a couple of pages it did its work, and there were photographs present in the infobox on the page. Two of the articles were Serenity (porn star) and Michelle Trachtenberg. Tabercil 03:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the feedback. The bot doesn't try to figure out if the article actually has the photo that has been requested. I have thought a bit about how to approach that, but don't believe it can reliably be done by a bot. All this bot does is to better classify the photo requests. So yes, it's relabeling the photo request on a lot of articles that already have photos -- if you notice that, please feel free to remove the request entirely! :-) Tim Pierce 03:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should I Type It Differently?

I've noticed you've categorized near all of the times I've put a {{reqphoto}} on a talk page. Is there a way I can categorize it myself, or is that best left up to you Mister Bot? -WarthogDemon 01:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sure! You can add modifiers and qualifiers to the {{reqphoto}} template to put the article in different categories. For example:
Try to choose categories that already exist, of course. :-) The whole goal is to make it easier for photographers to find pictures that they can contribute and to make it easier to navigate the crowded photo request categories. Thanks for your interest! Tim Pierce 02:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}

Could the bot please not change a {{Reqphoto}} outside of a {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} to a needs-photo=yes for a {{WPBiography}} transclusion within a {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}? Doing this breaks the WikiProject banner shell, and the {{Reqphoto}} transclusion accomplishes the same function. If need be, I'll have my bot add the relevant sorted category to the talk page itself. But that needs-photo=yes parameter was removed for a reason.

Cheers! — madman bum and angel 04:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I can make the bot not use {{reqphoto}} for {{WPBiography}}. This subject came up before on my talk page -- see User talk:Twp#PhotoCatBot and User talk:Severo#Photo requests and WikiProjectBannerShell. I'm sure I've seen other WikiProject banners that take a needs-photo or imageneeded parameter and don't have the same problem with {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}, so it seemed to me like a problem that can be solved on that end. Of course, I can't think of what other banners meet those criteria and I'm not sufficiently skilled to try to fix the problem myself, so I'm not in a good position to talk. :-)
The irony for me is that I'm coming to think that the needs-photo parameter is almost always inferior to a properly qualified {{reqphoto}} parameter, because you can add a location-specific parameter when necessary to {{reqphoto}} but not to the WikiProject banners. The main exception is {{WPBiography}}, which will add a photo to multiple photo request categories if more than one work-group is specified in the template. Maybe the best answer here is for {{reqphoto}} to support multiple unnamed parameters and multiple location tags. Tim Pierce 11:36, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I do agree that {{Reqphoto}} is better in almost all situations, except for when the work is sorted into work groups. I may have my bot add {{Reqphoto}} and the appropriate category/categories the WikiProject banner template would have added. Also, yes. As far as I know, {{WPBiography}} is the only one with this problem; they're insistent that the notice be visible in the banner shell so it can easily be spotted and the problem can be fixed. But considering their backlog (I don't envy them by any means), I think this is a good temporary solution. — madman bum and angel 11:45, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the background -- I didn't know that before. Anyway, the bot has categorized all of the generic photo requests that it presently can, so I will see if I can improve the {{reqphoto}} template before running it again. I'd rather like to reduce the number of extraneous photo request templates too, if I can. :-) Tim Pierce 12:23, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I've updated the {{reqphoto}} template to take up to three numbered parameters and up to three location-oriented parameters, in=, in2=, and in3=. So we should be able to replace all of the needs-photo=yes parameters in {{WPBiography}} articles with appropriately qualified {{reqphoto}} tags. Tim Pierce 03:43, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] template instructions

I've noticed that your changing templates(not sure thats a good move) but can you place notices on obsolete templates and provide instructions to the new style of template. Gnangarra 23:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure, I can. The {{reqphotoin}} template is not actually obsolete at this point -- I haven't filed a RfD request or anything -- so it didn't seem like it was appropriate yet to tell people to stop using it.
FWIW, I first suggested merging these templates a few weeks ago, at [[Template talk:Reqphotoin}}, and got no feedback recommending against it. The reason for merging them is that {{reqphoto}} now does everything that {{reqphotoin}} did and more besides, so it gives us an opportunity to simplify the template namespace. If you know of a reason why {{reqphotoin}} should not be retired in favor of {{reqphoto}}, I would like very much to hear it! Tim Pierce 02:13, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Until people are told to stop using it, your bot will be continually changing the template over. As for not a good move, its more to do with not obsoleting one template in preference for the other. I read the suggestion after seeing the bot operate, and agree with your position of no response being no issue. I think thats its really time you ran the RfD and standardised to one template, just to be certain that there are no issues. Gnangarra 01:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
I'll certainly put a more explicit notice on {{reqphotoin}} so that folks know what's going on, but I don't think it would be wise to file an RfD, at least not until the rest of the legacy templates have been changed. There are still several thousand articles using the old template and the bot is only changing one per minute; if the template were deleted too soon, I think it would break the What Links Here link that the bot uses to find {{reqphotoin}} references, and prevent it from fixing any of the rest of the articles. Does that make sense, or am I missing something? Thanks -- Tim Pierce 22:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mistake?

Looks like the bot had some trouble here: diff. Might want to check on contributions around that time to see if others got duplicated instead of using the in2= parameter. Also, I was wondering if we could somehow alter the template you're dealing with to recognize Category:Plant articles needing photos, which is duplicated by the automatically created Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of plants. Or perhaps have your bot alter its program to introduce the "needs-photo=yes" parameter into the {{WikiProject Plants}} banner on those pages instead of creating this duplicated effort. Thoughts? --Rkitko (talk) 02:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. See also User talk:Twp#Bug report PhotoCatBot.C2.A0.28talk.C2.A0.C2.B7 contribs.29 - this bug was reported before but I thought I fixed it. I'll stop the bot and try to fix it again. It's not a matter of other edits made around the same time but a question of having more than one {{reqphotoin}} template on a page. As for the WikiProject "needs-photo" parameter, I've wrestled with the same question in the WikiProject Biography and similar templates, and come to the conclusion that the additional flexibility of the {{reqphoto}} template makes it more valuable. There is no way to use the {{WikiProject Plants}} template to put the photo request in a location category as well as a plant category, for example. I'm open to hearing reasons why that does make more sense, however. Tim Pierce 19:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into that. Indeed the reqphoto template is more flexible and I've been wondering about this for a long time. I could simply have the WikiProject template categorize pages into Cat:Wikipedia requested photographs of plants, but my superficial objection is I dislike the category naming scheme. But I shouldn't be so stubborn, I guess. Anyway, I was wondering what you think about utilizing both categories in different ways. Mostly, the pages that are in Cat:Plant articles needing photos are ones that lack a photo entirely and just need something - an illustration, line drawing, botanical print, etc. The reqphoto category for plants could be used in such a way that users would need to specify what kind of image is missing (e.g. need image of fruit, closeup of leaf, or need photo of full habit). On the other hand, it does seem to entirely duplicate effort, so I'm not sure what to do. Easiest solution would be to change categories with the WikiProject template, since it appears as if the reqphoto template would be difficult to modify to recognize the Wikiproject category. Well, enough ramblings. Thanks for your feedback! --Rkitko (talk) 20:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wine and other Food subprojects

Hi Tim Good work with the bot. Thought I'd draw your attention to {{wine}} which supports the |needs-photo=yes| tag although I'd agree with you that reqphoto categories are now preferable to in-project tags - not sure if there's a reqphoto|wine category yet. The other Food subprojects have a right ragbag of project templates :

Of course to further complicate things the Food project has a couple of aliases, {{WPFOOD}} is the most common, I think I've seen others. Icecream, herbs and cheeses are pretty quiet and could all reqphoto|food, there's probably room for a single reqphoto|drink for beer, mixed and soft drinks but Wine's probably busy and big enough to justify its own category.
On the mis-req'd issue, would it not be helpful for a bot to generate a list of all articles with reqphoto on their Talk page and an Image tag on the article page, so that people could easily check them? Even better, to count the number of Image tags on the article page and put that number in the list - an article with 5 Images would be a high priority to lose its reqphoto, an article with just one might well need the reqphoto still. You'd obviously need some way of telling the bot that the page had been checked by a human bot-slave, and then it wouldn't put the article back on the list unless the Image: tags got changed.
If you ever get bored of reqphotos, it occurs to me that there's some similar jobs to be done. For instance the Korea Project has a working group tag, it would be useful I guess for them for {{WikiProject Korea|wg=cuisine}} to be applied when one of their articles is already in the Food Project. And vice versa I guess. The Plants project has a {{WikiProject Plants|needs-cultivar-infobox=yes}} tag which in principle is quite similar to reqphoto - in fact there's scope for a lot of work in matching infoboxes to Projects, for instance I see a lot of articles with Company infoboxes that aren't yet in {{WikiProject Companies}}. Just in case you feel at a loose end..... :-)))) FlagSteward 17:35, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding more project groups

If I want to add other change groups to the list, should they be requested on the talk page or added to the table in the article? Traveler100 10:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Geographic requests

Articles containing... Change photo request to...
{{SFBA Project}} {{reqphoto|in=California}})


[edit] Other

Articles containing... Change photo request to...
{{WikiProject Automobiles}} {{reqphoto|Cars}})
{{WikiProject Formula One}} {{reqphoto|Cars}})
{{WPBiography}} {{reqphoto|People}})
{{Mammal}} add needs-photo=yes parameter to {{Mammal}}
{{MaTalk}} add needs-photo=yes parameter to {{MaTalk}}