I just had a look.
The category Space exploration’s
complete closure is around 8000 articles. I ran a quick speed check with AutoWikiBrowser.
It can skip an article that doesn’t contain “manned” in about
1 second (no human action required) and it takes however long you take to make
the decision to make the change on articles that do contain “manned”
(one click on either SKIP or SAVE). On that basis, it can skip all the articles
in about 2 hours 15 minutes (if no human action required). Human action
requires a chance at the displayed diff and then click SKIP/SAVE. I generally
have that sort of task running in a background window and just flick over and
see how it’s going from time to time. Takes longer in total elapsed time
but less boring that way, and overall the job gets done in far less time than
trying to get other people to write and run a bot, noting the care that has to
be taken to foresee things like “unmanned vehicle” that should not
be changed if operating a totally automated bot.
Kerry
From:
Kerry Raymond [mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 25 February 2015
2:46 PM
To: 'Addressing gender equity and
exploring ways to increase theparticipation of women within Wikimedia
projects.'
Subject: RE: [Gendergap] Random
musings about a bot
The mechanics of doing this aren’t
such a big deal. AutoWikiBrowser is probably the best way to do it as you can
eyeball each change before it happens just to make you that you haven’t
done something inappropriate (like the unmanned vehicle example). It’s a
little tedious (to eyeball each one) but not labour-intensive really (click
SAVE or SKIP).
But I think first it needs to be agreed
within that community that they want this change. Otherwise you might be
regarded as being Bold With A Bulldozer if you use any automated or
semi-automated tool.
Kerry
From:
gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:gendergap-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Maia Weinstock
Sent: Wednesday, 25 February 2015
1:04 PM
To: gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Gendergap] Random
musings about a bot
Hi all,
There have been numerous
discussions among folks in the space exploration community that use of the word
"manned" and "unmanned" in Wikipedia is outdated and gender-biased.
Unfortunately, going in and fixing all of these by hand would be rather
labor-intensive...
Someone recently created
a browser plugin that replaces "manned" with "crewed." (See
https://twitter.com/mcnees/status/570409472818061312)
It would be such an awesome thing if a bot existed that updated these instances
for real on English Wikipedia. Anyone have ideas for making this happen,
perhaps just limiting it to space exploration? I do see some issues with it
being done wholesale for the whole site, as certain terms might contain
terminology that would create confusion if changed automatically. (For
instance, "unmanned aerial vehicles," for better or for worse, is a
known term that I wouldn't advocate changing at this time.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud...
Maia (user:Girona7)