Proposed in Community-Wishlist-Survey-2016. Received 56 support votes, and ranked #17 out of 265 proposals. View full proposal with discussion and votes here.
Problem
AutoWikiBrowser is a huge success, helping people make millions upon millions of semi-automated edits, making repetitive tasks so much easier to accomplish. However it has lots of problems:
- It is a desktop app, so
- It's Windows only
- It requires installation (including dependency as cumbersome as .NET framework)
- It requires updates
- It can't follow you across devices
- It was created without localization in mind so making its interface support multiple languages would amount to a rewrite
- While it's written in a language that is reasonably popular, it's less popular among open source developers and overall less popular than modern web stack languages. As a result, it never had enough developers.
- Very early on, it had cosmetic "general fixes" introduced to it, that now generate lots of unnecessary controversy, slow down page processing and drain developer time on supporting them.
Who would benefit
power users, potentially expanding reach to "simple mortals"
Proposed solution
Create a web-based replacement for AWB. Having a web app would also allow users to contribute on mobile platforms (phones and tablets) where typing is hard, but clicking "Save"/"Reject" is something people can do while commuting to work, for example.
Proposed implementation: I envision a site on Tool Labs that hosts a mostly-JS AWB that does editing. The backend would only authenticate users (OAuth), store settings and editing lists, and collect statistics. Most of JS code can be made reusable in Node.js for use by fully-automated bot developers.
Technical details
Time, expertise and skills required
- e.g. 2-3 weeks, advanced contributor, javascript, css, etc
Suitable for
- e.g. Hackathon, GSOC, Outreachy, etc.