Requested Bots & Templates

[evkl]

Use this thread to request templates or bots.

Be sure to submit requests in the following format:

[Type of article]: Games, Anime, Manga, 'Dex, Movedex, or any other.
[Bot function]: What would this bot have to do?
[Bot/Template Name]: Well, yeah...
[Pages affected]: What pages (or category) would be affected?
[Reason]: Purpose of the bot or template.
[Source Material]: If a bot, where would the bot pull its information from?
[Template Appearance]: If a template, describe how it would look. Horizontal? Vertical? etc.

[Zhen Lin]

Don't forget [Bot name] - we can't have all of them coalesced together as BulbaBot.

[Zeta]

Well, I had one in mind:

[Bot name] Animebot

[Type of article]: Anime

[Bot function]: Create articles for each episode of the anime, listing Japanese name, translated name, dub name, original airdate, and first dub airdate, as well as it's name in the bulbapedia (Ex - EP005 or AG005). Possibly also add the basic template already seen in the few episode guides available: Synopsis, Episode Guide, Character, Introductions, Pokémon Debuts, Trivia, Errors. And perhaps "Important Characters", as well to let readers know who is involved in the episode. It could also add a browsing template on the bottom linking to the previous episode and the next episode.

[Pages affected]: The few episode guides we have up, now.

[Reason]: Getting the basic information up would help facilitate writing the articles. There are now enough episodes of the anime, including AG, to rival the sheer volume of moves or Pokemon in existance in the games.

[Source Material]: I don't know. Any suggestions?

[Template Appearance]: I'm not sure. Whatever looks best. Although I'd like to see the basic episode information (Airdates, Titles, and Episode number) listed vertically near the top of every article.

I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but aside from the individual TCG cards, it's the only other aspect of the fandom that exists in such large quantity to as require a bot - aside from in-game data.

[Zhen Lin]

We can't really set up a bot if we don't have source material to work with.

I am not presently aware of any reasonably complete episode synopsis set, although certainly we can use a composite of sources, but it might still have gaps.

The raw facts - episode number, series, titles, airdates are easy enough to find and organise though.

BTW, there are only about 400 episodes of Pokémon, not including the 50+ side story episodes, movies, shorts and specials. There are 386 Pokémon, not including glitches, Munchlax or Lucario, and 354 moves, not including Shadow Rush.

[Zeta]

The raw facts - episode number, series, titles, airdates are easy enough to find and organise though.

That's pretty much what I had in mind, but the other parts of the article could be left blank - but with he headers included only IE "Important Characters" or "Pokemon Debuts" could be created in the article to be filled in latter.

[evkl]

[Type of article]: Games (Mechanics)
[Bot function]: Add Ability articles. i.e., Arena Trap (Ability)
[Bot/Template Name]: AbilityAdder?
[Pages affected]: Abilities.
[Reason]: To show the info provided on the current "Abilities" page along with more detail, like describing (possibly) tactical value and especially a learned list for that abilitiy.
[Source Material]: Pogeydex/Abilities page.

[Zhen Lin]

Can be done fairly easily, although I'll need to update my database to include Pokémon information for that.

[Ferret]

Episode source material. (http://www.tvtome.com/Pokemon/eplist.html)

Has numbers, names and airdates at least. Needless to say, it's a start.

[coppro]

[Bot Name]DexBot

[Type of Article]Dex Articles (Pokedex, Movedex)

[Function]Extract info from one or more pages on the Internet into pedia code for easy human addition (It's not a true-blue bot)

[Pages Affected] Pokemon Pages, Move Pages

[Reason] It takes too long to do manually, but a true bot is liable to hiccup with such difficult processing

[Source Material] Various info pages accross the net, depending on where information is.

Note: The bot would probably work like thus: Someone'd make it from javascript, get it approved, place it on Bulbapedia, then people can use it to auto-extract information to paste into the articles.

[coppro]

[Template Name]TypeAffinInfoBox

[Type of Article] Pokemon

[Function]Make it easier to figure out weaknesses and strengths for dual-types as opposed to current Battle Properties

[Pages Affected]All Pokemon articles

[Reason] I think that dual-type attributes should be easier to see

[Template Appearence]Probably a vertical strip, could even become a part of the regular infobox

[☆欠番☆]

I had an idea for a template for shipping articles, and was wondering what others thought...

[Template Name] shippingtemplate or some such

[Type of Article] Isn't there a Project:Shipping that hasn't done anything yet?

[Function] To standardise the appearance and content of shipping articles.

[Pages Affected] All articles about individual ships.

[Reason] Just 'cause.

[Template Appearance] See attached image.

[Jshadias]

[Type of article]: Movedex
[Bot function]: Create move redirects from [Move] to [Move] (move)
[Source Material]: same place as it's pulled from before I guess :d

[Zhen Lin]

That one is doable. I'll get to it now.

And it's done.

[Mudkiplover56]

[Type of article]: 'Dex
[Bot function]: Insert the location that the pokemon is in the games Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/FireRed/LeafGreen
[Bot/Template Name]: Location Adder
[Pages affected]: The Pokemon Species pages
[Reason]: So it doesn't take a very long time to add every pokemon in
[Source Material]: Serebii's PokeDex(http://www.serebii.net/pokedex-rs/) or Legendary Pokemon's PokeDex at http://legendarypokemon.net/pokedex/
[Template Appearance]: Well see the example on http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Wurmple_%28Pok%C3%A9mon%29

[Zhen Lin]

You're going to need to provide a much better source than HTML pages that need to be transcribed manually. Fortunately, I'm working on get a complete Pokédex database already - after that it will be a simple matter of writing the program which will convert the data to wikicode and insert it into the page.

[Argy]

So, what exactly is in this database you're working on, and how long do you estimate until its completion?

I'm asking so I don't start adding data you're working on anyway.

[Zhen Lin]

It's pretty much everything important from the GBA relevant to Pokémon, with the exception of sprites and graphics. (Detailed Move Tutor information (i.e. with location/name of move tutor) is missing however.)

I cannot give an estimated completion yet. I'm still in the middle of compiling the data into a format that I can more easily use.

[Jaso-Kristian]

I'm not sure di I understand how this works, but could someone complete this http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_by_National_Dex_number site and put the missing pictures in it... I'd like to have all the pictures of the new Pokemons, but I want them all to be like they look same. Sorry for my bad English.

[LaprasBoi]

I would like to request a bot with the following specs, as required by the first post:

All articles. Project namespace too.
Change episode/chapter/song titles from italics to “quoted”.
Whatever name the botwriter wants. Or LaprasBot.
All article and project pages.
In English writing, italics are for longer whole works, like books, films, albums, and series. Shorter works and sections of longer works, including chapters, scenes, songs, and episodes, are set in (double )quotes.
I dunno exactly what the best way to give it instructions would be, except maybe to give it a list of all the things that need to be changed, e.g. ''[[EP#|Title]]''→“[[EP#|Title]]”. I could write the list if somebody gave me an example of how it should be written for the bot to interpret it.

[Zhen Lin]

I would like to request a bot with the following specs, as required by the first post:

All articles. Project namespace too.
Change episode/chapter/song titles from italics to “quoted”.

Some of those are translations. Translations are in italics.

In English writing, italics are for longer whole works, like books, films, albums, and series. Shorter works and sections of longer works, including chapters, scenes, songs, and episodes, are set in (double )quotes.

I've never seen this in print - my experience is that quote marks are used for - well - quotes, and of course the so-called "scary quotes".

[LaprasBoi]

I've never seen this in print - my experience is that quote marks are used for - well - quotes, and of course the so-called "scary quotes".
Really? Um, it’s standard MLA style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLA_Style_Manual). Used by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(titles)), every school I’ve attended, and quite a number of serious publications, in America anyway. MLA is essentially one of THE handbooks for academic and other non-technical writing. Here (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/10/) is a copy of the relevant guidelines, from Purdue University’s website.
The Bulbapedia MoS says “Bulbapedia is designed to be an encyclopedia, and as such should contain the best possible level of literary style.”
Well, in English, MLA is definitely among “the best possible level of literary style”. It would take a little research to check, but I am pretty sure other major style guides, like Chicago, the AP, Fowler’s, and Oxford would agree.

Oh, and, on translations, I can’t find any guidelines, but, I agree they should be italicized. Just, with quotes too when they are episode or song titles.

[Arseus Ex Machina]

Can we get an anti-spam bot for this forum? Getting spammed on a regular basis is annoying!

[Zhen Lin]

Really? Um, it’s standard MLA style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLA_Style_Manual). Used by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(titles)), every school I’ve attended, and quite a number of serious publications, in America anyway. MLA is essentially one of THE handbooks for academic and other non-technical writing. Here (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/10/) is a copy of the relevant guidelines, from Purdue University’s website.
The Bulbapedia MoS says “Bulbapedia is designed to be an encyclopedia, and as such should contain the best possible level of literary style.”
Well, in English, MLA is definitely among “the best possible level of literary style”.

One of many, which is the problem here, isn't it. I do hold one thing against quote marks though: I have had the experience of people editing pages for the sole purpose of correcting British punctuation style (which permits commas, full stops, etc. to follow or precede a closing quote mark) to American style. What's worse is that people aren't aware that such a difference exists, unlike, say, the difference between British and American spelling. (There's a story about a Harry Potter 6 forgery that was detected by the fact that though it used British spelling, American punctuation rules were followed.) Another gripe I have with quote marks is the use of so-called "smart" quotes, or rather, the inconsistent use thereof. (This can be troublesome when linking to articles with quote marks or apostrophes embedded in the title.) Interestingly, MLA seems to endorse British usage.

With italics, no such precedent exists, and of course the most logical thing to do is to italicise only the portion that is being quoted.

To be honest though, I think it has more to do with the fact that I rarely see song titles, chapter titles or episode titles in print. In any case, I note that the MLA guidelines are for citations, as in a bibliography section, not for inline text.

It would take a little research to check, but I am pretty sure other major style guides, like Chicago, the AP, Fowler’s, and Oxford would agree.
Bulbanews (http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Bulbanews:Manual_of_style) follows the same convention as Bulbapedia, and I believe Argy modelled that after AP style.

[Argy]

Italics are technically not supposed to be used in AP style, but only because AP computers (the wire service) can't process different typefaces.

However, I quote this entry of the AP Stylebook:

When italics are available, a word used as a word should be italicized.

Italics are not available to highlight this type of word use on the news wires. When a news story must use a word as a word, place quotation marks around it.

This entry seems useful in general:

Apply the guidelines listed here to book titles, computer game titles, movie titles, opera titles, play titles, poem titles, song titles, television program titles, and the titles of lectures, speeches and works of art.

-Capitalize the principal words, including prepositions and conjunctions of four or more letters.

-Capitalize an article- the, a, an -or words of fewer than four letters if it is the first or last word in a title.

-Translate a foreign title into English unless a work is known to the American public by its foreign name.

As for quotes vs. none for titles, here is what I have been taught and what I use:
* The names of TV series are not in quotation marks, but episode titles are.
* Movie titles are in quotation marks.
* Album titles are not in quotation marks, but song titles are.
* Video game titles are not in quotation marks.
* Book titles are in quotation marks, except religious/holy and reference books.

In my book, italics and quotation marks mean the same thing, and italics are less ambiguous.

[Theryguy512]

[Type of article]: Pokemon TCG sections
[Bot function]: Create ''Pikachu (TCG)'' (just an example) pages for each Pokemon
[Bot/Template Name]: TCGBot????
[Pages affected]: All Pokemon species pages
[Reason]: On every single Pokemon species spage, it says : ''Main Article:'' '''Pikachu (TCG)''' (only an example), yet almost done of the pages are created!

[Shiny Noctowl]

Just out of curiosity, how do you create a bot?

[SpontaneousCombusken]

[Bot name]: TitleBot

[Type of article]: Anime

[Bot function]: This bot will create redirects from the episode title to the episode number. Example - "Following a Maiden's Voyage" redirected to "DP001".

[Pages affected]: I suppose the episode articles without redirects.

[Reason]: If someone knows the title of the episode but not the episode number, this will make it easier for that person to look up the episode and get more information.

[Source Material]: The pages that have already been created...?

[Template Appearance]: N/A

[Diby]

[Type of article]: Movedex

[Bot function]: Update all the moves (all parts of the article) to Platinum standard.

[Bot/Template Name]: MoveUpdater

[Pages affected]: Move pages

[Reason]: Its too difficult to update all the TMs and HMs manually and so nobody is very much intent on updating them.

[Source Material]: Um...the existing pages maybe????

[Template Appearence]: N/A

[Da Cookie Monster]

[Type of article]:Userspace

[Bot function]: Welcome new users and warn users when they edit the user space more than three times in a day.

[Bot/Template Name]: DCMbot :D or Userbot.

[Pages affected]: I dont understand this category. User and User talk

[Reason]: Users are editing the user talk space way to much welcoming new users, in the case of Tavisource, or just so stop people from HOUNDING over users
about going over the limit

[Source Material]: The Warning already made and the {{subst:welcome}} already made

[Guardian]

How do you create a bot? I want to create one to use my acccount to do lots of mainspace contribs?

[ThatKidWithNo Originality]

How do you create a bot? I want to create one to use my acccount to do lots of mainspace contribs?

Sorry, no can do. That's just cheating. You need to put your heart into editing, otherwise don't edit at all.

Also, there's a bot program that Zhen has that uses a user in the bot category to edit based on programming...such as MewBot who creates links to the other Pokemon wikis.

[Da Cookie Monster]

Yeah right. Actually do the contributions yourself and then we shall talk

[Guardian]

I dont want to talk to you DCM, or go back to IPGL. Stop saying that I want to talk to you. I have you blocked on Aim, so I am not asking for you to unblock me on Aim, i havent even mentioned Aim and your constantly, "then we will talk".

Your childish DCM, and cant have a proper conversation, thats why you block, so I did it back to you, and yes i got the last word in our aim chat.

[Guardian]

How would anyone know if I was to use a bot? I thought ph34r created one. Thats what it said in the article about him.

I wanna use mine for Good. I could call it SkyBot after my newly adopted little brother.

[Da Cookie Monster]

No. You do the edits yourself, or you dont do them at all. it would make no sense to have a bot that makes edits for a user

[ThatKidWithNo Originality]

How would anyone know if I was to use a bot? I thought ph34r created one. Thats what it said in the article about him.

I wanna use mine for Good. I could call it SkyBot after my newly adopted little brother.

Still, you'd want bots are for generic stuff like redirecting and linking to the other wikis, not for regular edits. The reason why bots are in the bot category is so their edits don't clog up the server.

And please, no way is there a way to program a bot to edit like us normal users. Bots don't know how to transform news into words. Bots won't know how to explode in excitement when a Pokémon Topaz is released. Draw a line between robots and humans. There's a huge difference.

And with that, I'm ThatGirlWithNoOriginality, I try not to remember it so that the Nostalgia Critic doesn't sue me.

[Guardian]

No. You do the edits yourself, or you dont do them at all. it would make no sense to have a bot that makes edits for a user

Ill do what i want DCM, you dont dictate to me what to do.

[Sketch]

Ill do what i want DCM, you dont dictate to me what to do.

To use a bot to make edits for you isn't the way to go.

[Guardian]

Im just asking if it is possible. Im not asking about ethics.

[ThatKidWithNo Originality]

Im just asking if it is possible. Im not asking about ethics.

You already screwed up the wiki. PLEASE don't screw up the forums as well. You CLEARLY said "I want to make one so it can edit mainspace pages for me" or something along that line. THAT. IS A CLEAR CONTRADICTION!

[Guardian]

Ethics means whether its right or wrong, not whether you will use it or not. I want to know if it is possible to make one. [And if i did it would rival bulbabot and we would take over the wiki MUHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHA.]

I mean I would use it (if possible to make one) to do good stuff on BP. Why cant you create a bot to edit the WIKI???

What is the reason that stops you from doing it, obviously some stuff wouldnt be possible for a bot.

[$aturn¥oshi]

If there was a way to create bots to edit the wiki like humans, there would be no use for humans.

[Da Cookie Monster]

If there was a way to create bots to edit the wiki like humans, there would be no use for humans.
Shh. Dont tell them that..Theyre on to us......
No. Yuo are asking to edirt for you, but bots are used to do monotonous tasks and specifically those tasks. Like welcoming new users, which there is already a request for ;)

[Guardian]

Why cant regular users welcome users? Its much more inviting than a bot.

[Da Cookie Monster]

Tavi has been warned over and over again because he welcomed alot of users and it was under user talk abuse

[Guardian]

Really, that seems harsh dont ya think? To warn someone for welcoming to many.

And although I despise you, I must admit if that is the case, your bot is quite a good idea. But dont get big headed.

[Guardian]

DCM YOU ARE A MAJOR HYPOCRIT, you call me childish for saying something then blocking you, then you go and do the same thing, LOL, DCM you crack me up, btw Im laughing at you, not with you.

Just so you know, You cant edit stats. You can only make the pokemon appear, and I think a guy on youtube did one where you can make em shiny. But you cant edit stats.

[Da Cookie Monster]

*perhaps there is a reason no one likes you*
[Type of article]:Userspace

[Bot function]: Welcome new users and warn users when they edit the user space more than three times in a day.

[Bot/Template Name]: DCMbot :D or Userbot.

[Pages affected]: I dont understand this category. User and User talk

[Reason]: Users are editing the user talk space way to much welcoming new users, in the case of Tavisource, or just so stop people from HOUNDING over users
about going over the limit

[Source Material]: The Warning already made and the {{subst:welcome}} already made

[Guardian]

you already posted that.

[ThatKidWithNo Originality]

*facepalm* Screw it. Bottom line: You can't make a bot to edit the mainspace unless it's designed to do generic tasks. Don't ask why, your fucking mind can't understand it.

[Martonimos]

You know, how many of these requested bots actually get made into bots? It seems like so far, we've got a running total of one.

[Archaic]

All bot functions are done by the single Bulbabot user. It's multifunctional.

[Martonimos]

I see... but still, of all these functions, it seems like only one was actually written in to Bulbabot.

On a related note, we do have Redirect fixer, who also appears to be a bot.

[Martonimos]

[Type of article]: Most to all main namespace articles
[Bot function]: Change links to avoid redirects; for example, [[Pokémon Trozei]] to [[Pokémon Trozei!]] or [[Ash]] to {{Ash}}.
[Bot/Template Name]: I'm Batman
[Pages affected]: Again, most to all main namespace pages (other namespaces aren't as necessary).
[Reason]: Myself and two other users stayed up 'till past 2 AM (Alaska time) last night because Pokémon Ranger was moved to Pokémon Ranger (game), while Pokémon Ranger was made a disambig. A nice way to unfairly inflate my contrib count, but incredibly tedious.
[Source Material]: We'd have to manually add links for it to correct. If I were given access, I could handle this; if not, I could always bother whoever does have access.

Zhen Lin once said this sort of thing would be too difficult, but the TFwiki bot, Deceptitran, does this sort of stuff all the time. so it must be possible. From Deceptitran's creator, Derik:

"I wrote Deceptitran from scratch in PHP. He runs on a seperate server. Links are stored in a mySQL database. And a crontab task 'runs' him once every 5 minutes, making a single change. So I can queue up HUNDREDS of page edits (like changing every link to "Springer" to "Springer (G1)") and they'll clear out in about a day without me having to do anything."

TTE tells me that Bulbabot's written in C#, so reconciling the coding may be difficult. Unfortunately, I know nothing about this myself, so there's little I can do to help. Still, I'd appreciate taking this tedious, repetitive work and giving it to a bot.