Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PDFbot 4

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was

Request Expired.

PDFbot 4[edit]

Operator: Dispenser (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 03:59, Friday May 3, 2013 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Pywikipedia

Source code available: Will publish at User:PDFbot/pdfbot.py

Function overview: Removing {{PDFlink}} wrapper for small files

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 April 24#Template:PDFlink

Edit period(s): Multiple one times/possibly monthly

Estimated number of pages affected: 7500 pages

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Same functionality as described in previous BRfA, expect removing the wrapper when the linked file size is below some threshold. Last year the average web page was nearly 1 megabyte, so a threshold in the 2 to 10 megabyte range?

And as pointed out in the TfD the template is obsolete because the Icon is automatically added to PDF extensions via CSS (not supported in dying IE6) and Adobe Reader starts faster now while Chrome/Safari/Firefox have built in PDF viewers.

Discussion[edit]

The decision at the TfD seems to be to move everything over to the standard citation template/module, rather than to simply remove the template altogether (regardless of the size). So surely this bot should be converting the template rather than simply removing the wrapper? This also means having to wait until the citation template is updated (I believe the discussion is still ongoing as to what to call the new parameters). This also leaves a bit of a question mark over what to do in cases where the PDFLink template is used for something other than a citation. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well PDFlink and Cite * series of template have always been fundamentally incompatible. PDFbot was programmed to remove either nesting. Perhaps the TfD should be relisted since it's only used with plain text citation and the external links section? This BRfA is concerns with leaving the edge cases of 1) very large files and 2) files without a .PDF extension. — Dispenser 17:32, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In that case I'm sort of struggling to understand the closure. I'm guessing what was meant was that something like

<ref name=startVLBI100m>Proceedings of the 6th European VLBI Network Symposium, {{PDF|[http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/div/vlbi/evn2002/book/EPreuss.pdf The Beginnings of VLBI at the 100-m Radio Telescope]|100 KB}}, June 25th-28th 2002, Bonn, Germany</ref>

should become

<ref name="startVLBI100m">{{cite web|url=http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/div/vlbi/evn2002/book/EPreuss.pdf The Beginnings of VLBI at the 100-m Radio Telescope|title=Proceedings of the 6th European VLBI Network Symposium|date=June 25th-28th 2002|publisher=Bonn|location=Germany|format=PDF}}</ref>

(plus a formatsize parameter when that becomes available). But this does not cover cases where the PDFLink template is used outside of <ref></ref> tags (which you seem to suggest is most cases, e.g. external links). I'll ask Plastikspork to clarify what he judged consensus indicated should happen in these cases. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:39, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for not being more clear. By my reading of the discussion, there was consensus to replace it by standard citation templates when it was being used as a citation. I had not really put much thought into other cases, like where it was being used for simple external links. The deprecate and replace comment was meant for cases where it is being used in place of a citation tag. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 03:29, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. Based on the above, Dispenser, I would say it's not necessary to remove this template in most cases. Let me know where you want to go with this request. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A user has requested the attention of the operator. Once the operator has seen this message and replied, please deactivate this tag. (user notified) I'm thinking withdraw? Unless you want to modify the task significantly to instead convert refs to cite templates (which would not be a trivial task) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 14:13, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Request Expired. No response, and not looking like this task is going to be necessary in any case. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 13:28, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.