Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard

Bots noticeboard

Here we coordinate and discuss Wikipedia issues related to bots and other programs interacting with the MediaWiki software. Bot operators are the main users of this noticeboard, but even if you are not one, your comments will be welcome. Just make sure you are aware about our bot policy and know where to post your issue. Do not post here if you came to discuss non-urgent bot issues, bugs and suggestions for improvement. Do that at the bot operator's talk page discuss urgent/major bot issues. Do that according to instructions at WP:BOTISSUE discuss general questions about the MediaWiki software and syntax. We have the village pump's technical section for that request approval for your new bot. Here is where you should do it request new functionality for bots. Share your ideas at the dedicated page

Bot name

Resolved

 – bot was approved approved with current name

• D6 (talk · contribs · deleted · filter log · SUL · Google) • (block · soft · promo · cause · bot · hard · spam · vandal) - It is a bot but does not have the word "bot" in the name. --Anna Lincoln (talk) 12:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Note that account was registered on 2004-06-13, while the "must" requirement was instituted on 2008-09-15, and prior to 2008-01-01 the Bot policy didn't even suggest including the word. Common sense indicates that existing bot accounts should not required to be renamed every time policy changes, and if that were the intention of that particular change it would have said so explicitly. Anomie⚔ 13:02, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
    • If this were a bot doing anything remotely controversial, one might make an argument that it should be renamed. But this hard-working bot seems to be simply adding geographic coordinates to articles, coordinates taken from other language Wikipedias, and it clearly states what it is doing in its edit summaries. Nothing to see here ... please move along ... -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:07, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
      • Link to approval for the geocoording? It's a rather large task to IAR. §hep^Talk 01:43, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
        • Might take a bit of digging to find: the bot started operating on 2004-06-13, long before the current approvals system. --Carnildo (talk) 08:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
          • Approved at Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Archive_3#D6 by Angela (talk · contribs), not really sure I'd call that a proper approval though by today's standards. MBisanz ^talk 08:18, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
            • And I wouldn't call that approval for its current task. Should we have the op go to BRFA? 98.31.12.146 (talk) 02:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
            • You might want to ask Docu what he thinks, and ask him to do a BRFA if he wants to add more tasks to his bot. -- lucasbfr ^talk 14:03, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• • I think it would be a waste of resources to rename the bot's edits to another username. The bot still operates on the same python framework and we discussed extensively the way the coordinates should be done (see WT:GEO#Coordinates_from_other_language_versions). -- User:Docu
    • But it still needs to be approved by BAG. Every other bot that has a new task does. §hep^Talk 19:03, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Bot operating without formal approval for its tasks

Unresolved

 – Bot still operating without approval for its task (especially the WP:CHECKWIKI bit), in some cases reverting users who disagree with the changes. –xeno (talk) 19:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

← The bot has recently conducted a number of very minor (seemingly insignificant edits) that I believe fall afoul of current bot guidelines (concern was raised at WP:AN#User:D6). I dropped a note for Docu to comment here or there. –xeno (talk) 18:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Those are insignificant, at one point the bot was copying coordinates from one wiki to another, I thought that he should have to go through what everyone else does. §hep^Talk 18:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

See User_talk:D6#Puzzling_diff. and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Check_Wikipedia#Template_with_Unicode_control_characters. -- User:Docu

OK, perhaps the edits aren't insignificant (they merely have the appearance of being so), this still doesn't mean you can set your bot to work doing any task you choose - you need to seek approval for each distinct task through WP:BRFA. –xeno (talk) 19:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• For the record, Docu has refused to seek further bot approval for the new tasks (see User_talk:D6#WP_CHECK_WP_edits:_automated_or_reviewed.3F). I'm leaving this here as an unresolved issue. In some cases the bot (or Docu manually editing as the bot) has reverted the users who disputed the checkwiki changes (usually the h3->h2 "checkwiki #7" edits). –xeno ^talk 15:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Can you remove your claim of edit waring. There was no such claim in this thread until you inserted it in the summary [1] -- User:Docu

Softened. I speak of these and similar situations. –xeno ^talk 15:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the claim. Can you also remove the claim that the bot reverts others? The diff you provided seems to show that someoneelse used twinkle in a way he shouldn't have. -- User:Docu

Bots running unapproved tasks should not expect to be treated with the same deference as human editors, nor should they revert war with them. –xeno ^talk 16:48, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Pan-lingual interwiki bots?

DSisyphBot (talk · contribs) added over 20 interwiki links to Wikipedia:Bot requests, but its operator indicates he only understands three languages. My understanding of bot policy is that ops should be able to minimally verify that language links are correct. Do we waive this requirement if the bot is running standard software like pywikipedia? Wronkiew (talk) 16:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point. My view of this would be that the policy itself should be clarified, as there are in fact few true interwiki adding bots: most simply propagate existing interwikis, so I don't see how knowing a language would really help. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe its just bad wording, and that its a case of operators are encouraged to know the other languages. Since the advent of global bots and the like, I doubt anyone actually expects people to know each language. -Djsasso (talk) 17:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I have proposed a policy change here to resolve this. Wronkiew (talk) 00:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

DediBox range hardblocked (88.191.0.0/16)

(crossposted from WP:AN)

DediBox is a cheap dedicated hosting solution operated by Proxad (France). I have hardblocked it since there are apparently some abused open proxies there. However, some bots operate from these servers and I expect some collateral. I have given IPBE to WP 1.0 bot (talk · contribs) and MystBot (talk · contribs). If an other operator complains, please give them the bit (don't forget to log it) and poke me so I can double check. -- lucasbfr ^talk 09:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Questions on existing bots

Is there a bot that removes {{ifdc}} from captions? Which ones, and on what conditions? Thanks, – Quadell ^(talk) 14:33, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

AWB operating mass edits (no general fixes)

Xenocidic (talk · contribs · deleted · filter log · SUL · Google) • (block · soft · promo · cause · bot · hard · spam · vandal)

an account that redirects to

Xeno (talk · contribs · deleted · filter log · SUL · Google) • (block · soft · promo · cause · bot · hard · spam · vandal)

processed a large number edits to remove attribution notices from a large number of articles (contribution details). Is there a consensus for such a change or was there a task approval? -- User:Docu —Preceding undated comment added 15:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC).

Those are manual edits, so this doesn't really belong here, nevertheless, the edits were conducted after this discussion at AN. 35, 17 April 2009 –xeno ^talk 15:48, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

It is an automated mass change that removes the notice from all pages. WP:AN isn't really the forum to decide on this nor is there a consensus to remove the notice before you operated it. Besides, you appear to have started removing them [2] before you asked the editor to comment there [3]. -- User:Docu

This not a bot issue. Firstly, those edits are within the "no approval necessary" guidelines; secondly, my reading of the situation is that WP:SELFREF establishes the consensus position perfectly well. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 16:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Semi-automated - each manually reviewed, and as Jarry noted there is no need to seek approval for edits such as these. In my read of WP:SELFREF and WP:RS, I felt the line was inappropriate; it was also in many cases inaccurate as only certain data were based on the French Wikipedia, a large majority of the articles were built independently. Nevertheless, you yourself already know I've ceased making the edits long ago to seek broader community input (you've participated in the TFD...). To be perfectly honest, posting this thread seems a rather juvenile response to my objection above to your bot performing unauthorized tasks. –xeno ^talk 16:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

This bot task was explicitly approved at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Xenobot 6. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

That was afterwards though. BTW are you aware of WP:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_April_13#Category:Interwiki translation templates. Maybe the task should be cancelled. -- User:Docu

Yes, and I even elected to delay running the task to see if a better way of making these attributions can be agreed upon (so perhaps the bot can fulfill the attribution coincident with the removal of the line). –xeno ^talk 17:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Task review question ("nullify template")

Xenobot (talk · contribs · deleted · filter log · SUL · Google) • (block · soft · promo · cause · bot · hard · spam · vandal)

modified a series of templates on IP talk pages (contribution details). Has this been reviewed or specifically approved? -- User:Docu

Well, a quick check of the B/RFA archives didn't turn up anything. On the plus side, it would have passed a BRFA quite easily anyway. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:00, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

pywikipedia mailing lists

Hello folks!

We have updated our mailing lists! :)

Until now, pywikipedia-l was automatically spammed on each bug update, and on each svn commit, which made its subscription painful for users not interested in pywikipedia development.

To solve this issue, two lists have been created, pywikipedia-bugs, for automated bug updates, and pywikipedia-svn, for automated svn commit message. This way, the traffic on pywikipedia-l should be greatly reduced: only human discussions should take place there. We would like to encourage advanced pywikipedia users to subscribe to this list: it should have moderate traffic, and it would allow us to get feedback on our development.

But more important, we have created an announce mailing-list, pywikipedia-announce. This mailing-list will be used for important announcements, such as breaking changes. The aim of this list is to have a minimal traffic: only a couple of folks can post on it, and we should not have to use it more than once a month. (any mail sent to pywikipedia-announce is also sent to pywikipedia-l, no need to subscribe to both).

We would like our users to subscribe to either pywikipedia-announce or to pywikipedia-l to be sure to receive those important announcements

We hope that in this way, we'll be able to significantly improve pywikipediabot quality, and response time to urgent matters: no more foundation-wide running around for developers if something is utterly broken ;)

Thank you,

NicDumZ ~ 11:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Summary:

pywikipedia-l (Archives, current month)

Human discussion on pywikipedia topic. This includes support, follow-ups to announcements, follow-ups to svn commits, and developer discussions. -- Moderate traffic (usually no more than a couple of mails a week in average)

pywikipedia-announce (archives, current month)

Important announcements, e.g. breaking changes. -- Minimal traffic (one mail a month, at most)

pywikipedia-bugs (archives, current month)

automated mail is sent by bug trackers on each bug state change. -- High traffic

pywikipedia-svn (archives, current month)

automated mail is sent after each pywikipedia SVN commit. -- High traffic

-- Would be good if there was some onwiki forum as well.. -- User:Docu

It would be nice if you could help translating and submitting this announcement to other wikis too :)

NicDumZ ~ 12:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)