Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/CenPop

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

Request Expired.

CenPop edit

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

Time filed: 13:00, Saturday, October 22, 2022 (UTC)

Function overview: Automatically fetches from the US Census Bureau and updates US Census data in the Historical Population (USCensusPop and the other standard one) and the Template:infobox settlement templates. Using this for the past 7 years has enabled Wikipedia to have the latest population estimates [and now the 2020 Census numbers] on every incorporated place in the United States, while prior to this it was lacking in nearly all less prominent places.

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic except during trial periods Programming language(s):

Fork of AWB (so Javascript)

Source code available: Right-hand sidebar of User:CenPop, note that I didn't know how to migrate to a userpage via "move" (due to the standard restrictions) so I copied it manually [i.e. the history is available at

User:DemocraticLuntz/CenPop via right-hand sidebar

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s):

One time runs (started manually), once per each state, once annually, to keep things up to date.

Estimated number of pages affected: 100,000 for decade Census numbers [due to the inclusion of Census-designated places, otherwise closer to 50,000 Namespace(s): Mainspace/Articles, specifically articles for Place (United States Census Bureau). It has been very carefully engineered to err on the side of not editing a place (and noting it on an AWB sidebar) if it cannot confirm that the place is the correct place.

Exclusion compliant Yes, see above on careful engineering.

Function details:

1. Fetches, for the specified decennial Census, state, and geographic level (county, incorporated place, and for decennial census, all places (included Census-designated places) or mid-decade estimate year, both the most recent official population (for the former) or population estimate for all entities at that geographic level within the state. It also fetches the most recent area data from [1], and combines them by geographic entity based on the unique FIPS codes.

2. Iterates through each geographic entity, attempting to first find a page that has been tagged with the unique FIPS code in the infobox. If such a page is not found, it attempts to find a unique page with the name of that place (and ensures it is the correct type of place [i.e. ensures a census-designated place is listed as census-designated on the page already). If a disambiguation page is hit when trying to find with the not necessarily unique name of that place (including the state), it skips it and notes that it has been skipped.

3. If a page is successfully found, the script updates the Template:US Census population and Template:Historical populations (if it exists, for some US pages, mostly in Iowa) if one of the two already exists on the page. If none exists on the page, a new US Census population template with the currently fetched population and year is added to the page, at the beginning of the Demographics section if one exists (if one does not exist, one is created automatically with it). 4. After updating the population templates, the script updates the Template:infobox settlement (if it exists), with the most recent population and area numbers. 5. An in-progress work is to have it update old automatically added prose with population numbers (via highly specific regex searches), but this is currently moribund and may never be instantiated.

Discussion edit

Question: While I support this updating, some edits of the above type have caused various problems. How does the bot operator plan to avoid or mitigate inserting unreferenced material, duplicating parameters, and creating red error messages and hidden error categories? Viewers of this BRFA can refer to User talk:DemocraticLuntz for more details. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:23, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is also, for the record, an archived ANI thread related to this as well. I, too, am somewhat concerned about the alleged error rate seen previously when using this script. Primefac (talk) 08:03, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The username of this bot does not satisfy WP:BOTACC since it is not immediately clear that this is a bot. This should be renamed as CenPopBot or something else before approval. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 05:24, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe I've renamed it. DemocraticLuntz (talk) 00:21, 10 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Questions: So sorry; I don't see in WP:BOTAPPROVAL who is or not allowed to participate here. For sure, BAG members do the approval, but no mention is given about the participants in the conversation.
1. The approval process mentions "links to any community discussions sufficient to demonstrate consensus for the proposed task(s)". I don't see that here. Is it forthcoming?
2. In the past this user (and their auotmation) have caused notable disruption. How were those concerns addressed?
3. While the applicant claims the bot is well-engineered, there's evidence that it can't handle simple problems, like duplicate reference names or removing in-use reference definitions. There is considerable variance on input that the bot will see, since articles are formatted and edited without any restrictions. How will it be monitored so we know that it is doing more good than harm?

Sorry if I'm out of turn asking here -- I can withdraw my questions if so, but I am interested in this issue so I wanted to make my concerns known. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:28, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Community members are welcome to comment on BRFAs. Primefac (talk) 15:19, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Could this be done in Wikidata, and have the templates call WD? — Qwerfjkl talk 18:55, 19 December 2022 (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) @DemocraticLuntz: do you intend to go ahead with this task? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:19, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have I been approved? If so, I'd like to get to it at some point. DemocraticLuntz (talk) 20:58, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@DemocraticLuntz: It's not approved yet, but there are comments/questions above. For some I think your response would be useful in helping this BRFA progress. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:08, 9 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Request Expired. This request does not appear to be progressing towards approval. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2023 (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 Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard.