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: KuduIO (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 22:30, Friday September 9, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic unsupervised

Programming language(s): Python, regular expressions

Source code available: Standard pywikipedia

Function overview: The bot will check for articles using ((Geobox)) where the map_locator paramater is "Ontario", and replace its map parameter by Canada Ontario location map 2.svg.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 43#Bot to update map parameter values for Geobox used with articles in Ontario

Edit period(s): One-time run

Estimated number of pages affected: ~300

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): Y

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Am I to understand correctly that this cannot be fixed with addition of some internal template logic? I'm unfamiliar with geoboxes and how they choose which image to display. Is it always manually specified and any file change requires a manual update? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That was my first impression too. See linked discussion. — Kudu ^~I/O~ 20:08, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I read that, but let's assume I'm too thick to understand the multiple template layers used there and why the map is already used in sub-templates but not propagated to the top templates. 300 edits shouldn't be a problem really; but I'm wondering if this is a wider issue and how often such updates are made... —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be the first time such a change occurs. On the one hand, I don't think such a change will happen again for a while, so hardcoding the values seems like an OK solution. On the other hand, being a programmer, this seems to be very un-DRY, which suggests that creating a meta-template like ((Geobox Ontario)) would be more future-proof. What do you think? — Kudu ^~I/O~ 21:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The whole point of Geobox is exactly to be DRY: it consolidates in one template the ability to create infoboxes for a whole host of geographical features. Creating a subsidiary template like Geobox Ontario would seem to be a step away from that outcome. The only way I can see to improve the Geobox template with regards to location maps would be to remove the need to specify two parameters to invoke a fully-automated location map, as is now the case with both map and map_locator, and reduce it to just one, map_locator. This would ensure that, even if the called Geobox locator templates had their images changed at some point in the future, no changes would need to be made to articles using Geobox. Of course, I am not well-versed enough in template coding to be able to evaluate if such a coding change to Geobox is tehcnically feasible or worth whatever coding effort that would be required. May I also suggest that this aspect of the discussion is separate from the immediate bot request: it is about the Geobox template itself, and might be better hosted at the talk page for Geobox? I am certain whatever expertise the commenters here have would be welcomed there. It would also allow commenters there who are more familiar with the Geobox template code to offer their insights.--papageno (talk) 05:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (30 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Alright, it seems this is currently th best way to do it even if hypothetical improvements exist. I wouldn't mind someone with expertise commenting though, but that may be beyond this BRFA's scope. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. No problems seem to have arised. — Kudu ^~I/O~ 00:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. No issues as far as I can tell. --papageno (talk) 19:41, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved. Edits look fine. Please use a more descriptive edit summary. P.S. This approval is for a one-time run though, not any number of future similar runs. I would want to see a proper discussion first about automatically (by bot) changing maps this way or at least some explanation that this is the best way to do it. It probably is, I'm just being on the safe side. No problem in having additional runs with a note at WT:BRFA. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:13, 14 September 2011 (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.