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  Approved.

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

Time filed: 00:27, Thursday, June 11, 2020 (UTC)

Function overview: Update redirects created for AnomieBOT 74 when they no longer match the corresponding title-with-en-dashes.

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Perl

Source code available: User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/EnDashRedirectCreator.pm

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): No direct discussion, but see for example Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 10#Responses to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic

Edit period(s): Periodic

Estimated number of pages affected: About 3599 to start (see quarry:query/45755), then depends how often people change the redirects

Namespace(s): Same as AnomieBOT 74

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: When the target of the AnomieBOT-created ASCII-hyphen redirect no longer matches the en-dash-containing title (e.g. the en-dash-containing title was a redirect and has since been unredirected or retargeted), the bot will update the redirect to match the en-dash-containing title. It may also update the ((Redirect shell)) or other templates when doing so.

Discussion[edit]

For example, the bot originally created Responses to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in April 2020 as a redirect to Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in April 2020 because Responses to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in April 2020 redirected there. But then someone unredirected that title, and the bot-created redirect should have been updated to point to it but wasn't. And later someone moved it to Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, leaving a different redirect at Responses to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, and again Responses to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic in April 2020 wasn't updated.

Note that the bot will only update redirects where the oldest revision was created by the bot. It won't update something like 0-1 to match 0–1 because the former was not created by AnomieBOT.

To avoid the possibility that multiple titles containing en-dashes map to the same ASCII-hyphen redirect causing the bot to continually update the ASCII-hyphen for each of them in turn, the bot will look for its ((User:AnomieBOT/Auto-G8)) template and skip if it exists and has a target that doesn't match the current en-dash-containing title. It looks like only one example of this situation currently exists in mainspace: 2020–21 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season vs 2020–21 South–West Indian Ocean cyclone season.

I note that if for some reason a human tries to make a bot-created redirect not match the corresponding en-dash title (e.g. creating a new 0-1 vs 0–1 like situation), the bot will overwrite it. If we actually want that mismatch to exist for some reason, it could be worked around by deleting the revision where AnomieBOT created the page (or revision-deleting AnomieBOT's username on the revision) so AnomieBOT will no longer see it as being AnomieBOT-created. Anomie⚔ 00:27, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It would also be good if the bot could tag them as ((R avoided double redirect)) of their en-dash forms, so that they would show up in the maintenance category Category:Avoided double redirects to be updated if they become unsynced again in the future. 59.149.124.29 (talk) 02:38, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I actually added that yesterday. I somehow or other came across that template when I started looking into this, and it seemed like a good idea and didn't need a BRFA. On the other hand, I just added that yesterday so there are many existing redirects that aren't so tagged. Anomie⚔ 14:26, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I support this in general, and agree with 59.149.124.29. I think preferable to deleting revisions or attribution would just be to put an exclusion template on the redirect applying to this task if that is possible? Thryduulf (talk) 12:17, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Exclusion would work, but may go against the advice against using exclusion as a blunt instrument. But really, how often do we want a situation like how 0-1 and 0–1 redirect to different targets in the first place? Probably WP:Disambiguation should apply. Anomie⚔ 14:26, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, quarry:query/45784 is a list of all cases in relevant namespaces where a title-with-en-dashes and a title-with-ASCII-hyphen don't target the same thing; there are 6992 of them, 4445 in mainspace. But the least interesting ones are probably those where the redirects target different anchors on the same page. Excluding those leaves 4090, with 1551 in mainspace. Anomie⚔ 14:53, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Primefac (talk) 23:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. [1] Anomie⚔ 22:08, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved. Primefac (talk) 17:08, 19 June 2020 (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.