Commons talk:COMBotBot

Who is COMBotBot?

I missed the documentary. Well, if I manage to write it, and it works, I'll call it that. The problem I keep running into is that taxonomy's so messy to begin with, it takes bots with a higher IQ than the majority that run here in order to not to screw up what some people have very strong feelings towards. There's a lot of decisions where a human brain is required. I'm also not familiar with all the conventions TOL editors use. Like when to use "." as a sort key, or why some pages list the whole hierarchy whereas others list up to the family or something. If anyone has ideas for templates or categories that would make the bot's job easier (and indirectly the bot creator's), let me know and I'll get working on it (A better use of my time than programming; I consider myself only py-0.5 - still got a lot to learn). Rocket000 (talk) 06:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm tired of archiving my talk page

So I using this page. :)

During my little bit of experience working in this area, I quickly became aware that taxonomy is not a logical hierarchy and thus a poor candidate for mass categorization via templates. It gets even worse when you account for disambiguation, alternate names, and the incomplete, uncertain, ambiguous, ever-changing system systems it's based on. It's possible, but the work involved would outweigh the usefulness. There's also technical limitations (e.g. you can only use so many parser functions per page). So I think we need to rule out that super awesome mega ultimate template I was planning on. However, that just means we need to rely on the bot part of this a little more. And that's ok because bots don't have these limitations. Actually, it's better. Other users won't need to find, understand, and then edit a very complex heavily-used template. It's also easier for other bots (as I witnessed when moving categories the other day. Some images were not being moved. Why? Because they were hidden inside a template.)

This is not to say my template work is done. I'm still planning to make a bunch of taxonomy ones, just not the big one. I keep thinking about Wikispecies' system. Obviously we can't do it their way because we have more than one classification, but I still think there's something there we can use. Rocket000(talk) 09:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

If there is a set of two templates with the names of whatever is right before the genus (sometimes it is a tribe, sometimes a subfamily and sometimes family) future management of the whole bunch of them should be not quite trivial but just a little understanding of how the templates work -- it should be easier to add a new species into the existing set than it is to make a gallery page and find where most of them are living. The templates will work on galleries also, so it isn't even one instead of the other....

The thing that I am worried about most right now with a bot making the new genus categories is if the genus name is being used for a different thing, like the name of a city or an insect or famous vampire. A bot could right now safely create the genus categories that do not yet exist and at the same time paste some instructions on the talk page for which templates to use to add species. -- carol (talk) 10:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm still thinking about ideas. Have you tried my {{Genus}} version of {{Species}}? It was much easier to make since I didn't have to CONCAT_WS() (concatenate with separator) the genus and species name to form a link, so I added in possible disambiguation. Used here. Rocket000(talk) 11:31, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

No, but I will. It would be nice if some software could change all of my previous genus into that form. Those should work for the insects, fishes and other animals also! -- carol (talk) 20:52, 14 August 2008 (UTC) That template is really very clever. -- carol (talk) 20:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)