{"id":1679,"date":"2008-06-01T19:49:04","date_gmt":"2008-06-01T11:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=1679"},"modified":"2009-03-01T12:57:59","modified_gmt":"2009-03-01T04:57:59","slug":"1673-of-two-million-pages-on-wikipedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=1679","title":{"rendered":"[1673] Of a bot wants to create two million pages on Wikipedia"},"content":{"rendered":"

This must be one of the craziest ideas ever tabled in Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

User:FritzpollBot was recently approved at Wikipedia:Bots\/Requests for approval\/FritzpollBot to create stub articles for most or all of the documented villages and towns in the world in the style of User:Fritzpoll\/GeoBot\/Example. The BRFA means that it is approved technically, Tim Starling has confirmed that there will be no adverse technical effects from such a bot, but I don’t believe that this is a non-controversial task, so I’m bringing this here for wider review by the community. The following are some pros and cons of the bot, though not an exclusive list:<\/p>\n

Pros<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Articles about verifiable towns are generally considered inherently notable<\/li>\n
  2. This will greatly increase Wikipedia’s coverage of geographical places<\/li>\n
  3. The articles will be very standardized, all will have coordinates and an infobox<\/li>\n
  4. A new user wishing to write about one of these places won’t have to figure out how to start a new article (the infoboxes for places can be complicated)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Cons<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Many people would rather not have stub articles, this would create close to 2 million new stubs, many of which may not be able to be expanded much more than their original size<\/li>\n
    2. There could be adverse effects with pages like Special:Random and the search function<\/li>\n
    3. Adding new articles like this could be seen as “inflating our article count”<\/li>\n
    4. The “inherent notability” for geographical places may not apply for very obscure villages.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Options<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Implement bot as written, create ~2 million new village articles<\/li>\n
      2. Modify bot to only create article on large villages, X thousands new village articles (this is being done anyway 2 million is far from covering every place and google only recognizes the main towns and villages)<\/li>\n
      3. Modify bot to create lists of all villages, X thousands new list articles<\/li>\n
      4. Modify bot to create merged mini-articles for all villages on articles about townships, X thousands new and expanded township articles<\/li>\n
      5. Do not implement bot<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

        One vote for Option 5 please!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        This must be one of the craziest ideas ever tabled in Wikipedia. User:FritzpollBot was recently approved at Wikipedia:Bots\/Requests for approval\/FritzpollBot to create stub articles for most or all of the documented villages and towns in the world in the style of User:Fritzpoll\/GeoBot\/Example. The BRFA means that it is approved technically, Tim Starling has confirmed that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[235],"class_list":["post-1679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kitchen-sink","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2652,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}