So from what I can see, there are three issues with automating ship stats updates:
1st, the reference data does not contain the common name of ships (so created templates would need to use the short or object name)
2nd, the knowledge cost reference data does not contain the short or object names of the ships, so it would have to manually entered
3rd, modules and module based ships add in new complications that are not particularly easy to deal with, since there is no flag related to being a module.
Otherwise, all the following attributes can be (relatively) easily automatically updated, though it would require relinking current ships to new templates with short or object names.
Description Ship Cap Ammo Type Armor Type Immunities Bonuses Attack Power Attack Range Reload Speed Health Armor Rating Speed Engine Health Single Ship DPS Ship Cap DPS Armor Piercing Metal Cost Energy Cost Time To Build Cap Metal Cost Cap Energy Cost Cap Build Time ShotsPerSalvo Mark Level
Knowledge can't be automated (unless it is included in future reference files with accompanying short or object names) and any modules would generate their own page and can't be included in ship information (unless future reference files introduce a module flag).
EDIT: Oh, and any time the mass update is run, something like 3000 edits would be performed.