Follow a Wikipedia category

[jarib]

This probably requires calling out to the Wikimedia API (at least it doesn't seem to appear in IRC), but it would be cool to be able to follow all edits of articles in a given category, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Current_events.

[edsu]

It's a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I'd be a bit worried about the number of API requests anon would have to do to keep up. See wikistream for a view into the churn.

An alternative would be to write a script like whitelist-congressedits.coffee that builds a whitelist, and writes it out, so that it could be incorporated into anon's config.json? The script could use the Wikipedia API to build a list of pages in a category and write out a config.json. If you wanted to run it rom cron we'd have to cook up some way for anon to re-read its configuration when it changes on disk.

[jarib]

Yeah, that sounds simpler.

Or perhaps anon could watch for changes to the category (which I think are also published on IRC) and refresh its whitelist automatically. That does increase the complexity a bit though.

[edsu]

I don't think the category is part of what's published on IRC unfortunately. If it is this is definitely more doable.

Oh wait, you're right: changes to the category pages would show up. But what would that signify?

FWIW I've tried to keep anon small and relatively simple so it could serve as a model for writing other similar types of scripts that do other things. So if it makes sense to create a new little project that uses the same bits of functionality to do what you want definitely give it a shot.

[jarib]

I may have misunderstood, but I noticed this in the Norwegian feed:

https://twitter.com/wikistorting/status/489323619559153664

Den 20. juli 2014 kl. 19:43 skrev Ed Summers notifications@github.com:

I don't think the category is part of what's published on IRC unfortunately.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[edsu]

No, you are right. If a category page is changed it will show up in irc updates. For a moment I thought you meant that article categories show up regularly for all changes.

[jarib]

Makes sense. I'm not sure how interesting the feed would be. There's a good chance it would be quite spammy with lots of innocuous edits.

At least the idea is out there if anyone wants to run with it.

[n-eq]

Hi @jarib , did you manage to find a way to perform this ?

Thanks!

[jarib]

Never did explore it further, no.