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==[[User:SmackBot]] request for flag==
==[[User:SmackBot]] request for flag==

Request flag per [[USer:lightdarkness]] [[#SmackBot task approval III]]. ''[[User:Rich Farmbrough|Rich]] [[User talk:Rich Farmbrough|Farmbrough]]'' 15:10 [[20 June]] [[2006]] (GMT).
Request flag per [[USer:lightdarkness]] [[#SmackBot task approval III]]. ''[[User:Rich Farmbrough|Rich]] [[User talk:Rich Farmbrough|Farmbrough]]'' 15:10 [[20 June]] [[2006]] (GMT).

:Bot had problems in the past, but the user was 100% co-operative. Has been doing useful work and should just be allowed to Get On With It. Behind Rich and LD on this one. Go for it. '''[[User:Robchurch|robchurch]]''' | [[User_talk:Robchurch|talk]] 12:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


== [[User:RoryBot|RoryBot]] task approval ==
== [[User:RoryBot|RoryBot]] task approval ==

Revision as of 12:10, 26 June 2006

Shortcut

If you want to run a bot on the English wikipedia, you must first get it approved. To do so, add a request below. Rather than running your own bot, it may be a good idea to ask someone else to run one for you at Bot requests. Admin: When bot is approved or disapproved, you can use {{subst:debate top}} and {{subst:debate bottom}} to encapsulate finished discussions.

Current policy on running bots

Before running a bot, you must get approval on this page. State below precisely what the bot will do. Observe discussion and await authorisation from someone in the approvals group. Approval may take up to one week. After approval you may run the bot for a short period so it can be monitored. After the trial, the bot will be evaluated from someone in the approvals group and you may ask that the user be marked as a bot by a Bureaucrat.

Again, please DO NOT start running your bot without following these instructions.

I
Creating a user page for the bot describing its functions.

please state the following:

  1. Describe the bot's purpose, language it uses, what program(s) it uses (pywikipedia framework, etc).
  2. Describe whether it is manually assisted or automatically scheduled to run.
  3. The period, if any, we should expect it to run.
  4. Describe who the maintainer is.
  5. Add the bot's user page to Category:Wikipedia bots (By adding {{bot|your user name}} to the bots user page)
II
Listing your bot here.

please state the following:

  1. Whether the bot is manually assisted (run by a human) or automatic scheduled to run
  2. The period, if any, we should expect it to run
  3. What language or program it is running
  4. The purpose of your bot
    • Why do you need it?
    • Is it important enough for Wikipedia to allow your bot?
III
Waiting for approval.

You must wait for approval from someone in the approvals group.

  1. When naming your bot, please make sure that it does not look exactly like your username, and that a person can immediately determine that it is a bot. One common way is to name the bot as your username + "bot".
  2. Sysops should block bots, without hesitation, if they are unapproved, doing something the operator didn't say they would do, messing up articles or editing too rapidly.
  3. The operator should be at, or logged into, the machine the bot is running on to terminate it if necessary during the debugging phase, or the bot is liable to be blocked without notice.
  4. If you are planning to use a "spider", recursive wget, or similar software to get a local copy of wikipedia, please download the database dumps instead.
  5. Dynamic loading of Wikipedia pages may also be unacceptable. Please see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.
  6. Operators should separate their edits from their bot. This means that you should not be logged in as your bot replying to people. Questions or concerns can be addressed at bot's talk page or the operator's talk page, but the one who is responsible for replying is the operator not the bot.

The burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate the following:

  1. The bot is harmless
  2. The bot is useful
  3. The bot is not a server hog
  4. The bot has been approved

Note that according to Wikipedia:Categorization of people certain types of person categories should not be filled/emptied using a bot. Before adding sensitive categories to articles by bot, the input should be manually checked article by article, rather than uploaded from an existing list in Wikipedia.

In the assistance to prove the bot is harmless and useful, a trial period may be asked to demonstrate the bot. Complaints made about the bot during the trial period requires the bot to be immediately stopped, and the issue should be resolved below the application. If the trial period passes with no problems, then a bot flag may be requested from a Bureaucrat.

Organization

Active trial runs

Please document active trial runs at Wikipedia:Bots/Trial runs. When doing so, include

  • Username of both the bot and the operator (denote as needed)
  • The purpose of the bot
  • The date and time the trial run was approved
  • The name of the person who approved the trial run

The original discussion should remain on this page or be be moved to the #Trial run holding pen.

Bot flag approvals

When a user has completed a trial run (if needed), and their bot flag has been approved, please

  1. Archive the discussion at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals/Archive
  2. Add an item to Wikipedia:Bots/Approval log

Current requests for approvals

William Allen Simpson running occasionally as Botryoidal

Reading the instructions, it appears that it should be possible to run the standard py bot under our own name. I've been checking stuff by hand (orphaning templates) every day for the past several weeks that would be helped by a bit of automation. It's not currently a lot of edits per day, and it will be fairly slow as I'll be handling it late nights over dial-up. Any objections (or advice)?

--William Allen Simpson 20:46, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You need to outline exactly what work you are doing. If this has anything to do with disambiguation templates (or {{2LC}}, {{3LC}}, {{4LC}} etc) then I ask you to discuss any changes at the relevent project talk pages.--Commander Keane 03:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, this is exactly the template changes that I've already posted at the relevant talk pages. I'm getting tired of doing them entirely by hand. I'm seeing a lot of repetition, and apparently simple tasks (like mere substitution) are easy to do with standard bot utilities. I won't write any additional code, and will run the utilities "as is" from the repository. Shouldn't affect the performance of this site.

--William Allen Simpson 03:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You might consider using the Auto Wiki Browser for these tasks. It's as near to automated as you can get without people complaining that you use bots. (people with editcountitis, at least) — 0918BRIAN • 2006-01-20 03:38

Cannot, as I'm a longtime Unix(1977)/BSD(1983)/Mac(1984)/MacOSX kinda guy. But reading more of the instructions convinced me that it would be prudent to run a separate user. So, I just checked many variants of my name, and almost everything has already been taken by usernames with no edits! (FYI: Botch, Bottom, or Bottomless are still available.) Anyway, I'll try out Botryoidal later.

--William Allen Simpson 05:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Happy Joy Joy! Successfully editted a single page. Will try more later.

--William Allen Simpson 06:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This bot doesn't have approval. Stop using it and outline the activities explicitly.--Commander Keane 08:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gentlefolk, earlier today (middle of night local time) Commander Keene blocked both this (my) User and my new bot User:Botryoidal. At the time, I gave up and went to bed. However, I just figured out that I was unblocked:

  • 2006-01-20 08:50:36 Commander Keane unblocked User:Botryoidal (collateral damage from blocking of Botryoidal)
  • ...
  • 2006-01-20 08:49:56 Commander Keane unblocked #84338 (collateral damage from blocking of Botryoidal)
  • ...
  • 2006-01-20 08:28:34 Commander Keane blocked "User:Botryoidal" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Unauthorised bot)

I followed each and every step listed for starting to use the bot. The bot was run manually, and run throttled. Indeed, I was manually running in alphabetical batches (20-30 or so edits at a time), and had just started 'E' about four (4) minutes before!

The stated rules for administrator block require that

1. "... they are unapproved, doing something the operator didn't say they would do, messing up articles or editing too rapidly."
  • Certainly the bot wasn't doing anything that I didn't say it would do (it was only doing exactly one edit, and that was what I stated, orphaning a template that I'd listed at WP:TFD) several days ago.
  • Certainly the bot wasn't messing up articles. I tested the first edits one file at a time by hand, and I checked each and every batch of edits on my screen before running the next batch. Heck, I'm generally considered a fairly careful and cautious "safe pair of hands"!
  • Certainly the bot wasn't editing too rapidly, Special:Contributions/Botryoidal shows that the edits were throttled to 30 seconds (as required), and run in the slack time (as required).

The stated rules for starting the bot say that:

"2. New bots should run without a bot flag so people can check what it's doing.
"3. Until new bots are accepted as ok they should wait 30-60 seconds between edits."

Now, how exactly are perfectly performing bots supposed to qualify during their "initial one-week probation" demonstrating they are run responsibly, when an administrator blocks them without any valid reason?

--William Allen Simpson 15:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Botryoidal has not been approved for the one week trial. It was blocked because the operator has not outlined exactly what the bot is doing and why. The operator still has not outlined that. There has already been a complaint about the types of edits that the bot is doing. The edits need to be discussed before the bot makes any more. If the bot edits without approval it will be blocked.--Commander Keane 16:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So, you admit you know exactly what the bot is doing! (I didn't think I could possibly have been more clear — in fact, considerably more clear than any other bot request on this list.)

Anybody who looks at that reference will note that it is actually posted several days before the bot existed. So, you personally object to the edits I've been carefully and considerately doing for weeks by hand. Well, I don't think this is the place to re-argue a two week straw poll, that was started because of the flagrant template redirecting and category closing surreptitiously done on New Years Eve by the person you cite (Tedernst), and fairly quickly reverted.

--William Allen Simpson 18:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No one has yet given you approval to run your bot, and therefore it was blocked a day after when no comment was made on whether it was approved or not. I still don't understand what you intend to do with your bot account, since I really don't see your proposal here. Just a lot of complaining. --AllyUnion (talk) 03:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AllyUnion, please go back to the first paragraph. Orphaning templates. In particular, those I've currently got listed in TfD, or those of mine currently in TfD Holding Cell. Pretty straightforward work I've been doing by hand for weeks.

--William Allen Simpson 10:15, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now that the templates (proposed, straw polled, survived TfD, and after related CfD of Feb 20) are clearly approved, please set the Bot flag.

--William Allen Simpson 11:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly object to the operation of this bot.--Commander Keane 11:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As do I. -- Netoholic @ 05:01, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object. This user overrides CFD decisions on a whim (see Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 March 16#Category:Human name disambiguation), so letting him loose with a bot could have untold consequences. Noisy | Talk 09:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Calm down, people; let's get this straightened out without a pile on

The bot flag will not be set until approval for it is given; for this, the bot must pass a week's trial run without raising complaints. At no point did you receive approval for this, either. It may seem thoroughly unwiki, but you have to appreciate that we need to be stringent about what's doing what automated; a bot running out of control could do quite a bit of damage before we noticed and responded.

You appear to want to run a bot under the username Botryoidal on a periodic basis, for the purposes of orphaning templates where there is consensus at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion for them to be removed, correct? Rob Church 20:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:ABot update

I would like to use my bot to change instances of {{NowCommons|...}}/{{nowcommons|...}}/{{NC|...}}, where appropriate (that is, if the image name on the commons is exactly the same as the name here. The code is built on top of the pywikipediabot framework, and is availible upon request. – ABCDe✉ 04:36, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support I don't see anything long with that. JtkieferT | C | @ ---- 22:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, change instances of those templates to what? This request isn't as clear as I'd like. Rob Church 20:20, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To {{NCT}}, probably... Fetofs Hello! 23:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, not really good enough. We need to know what the bot is doing, when. Rob Church (talk) 19:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Xbot RFP

I have created Xbot for fuffilling the request of this user. I would like permition to run. The bot would only crawl through the military history category. TIA! - Xxpor 18:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bot wikilinks instances of Osprey Publishing? How does it decide what articles to check, and does it wikilink all instances in a page (not good) or does it do the first one? More information is needed before I can approve a trial run. Rob Church 01:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Accessing the servers for stats

I am not really asking about a bot posting to pages itself (yet) but i run some scripts accessing all Special:Statistics?action=raw pages from Wikimedia servers to automatically create wikisyntax for pages with long statistics tables like 1,2,3, 4 and 5. I just provide the wiki syntax here though and copy paste manually. My question is now: What time intervals are ok when accessing all those stats pages? What timing can i set my cronjob to without being seen as an annoyance? (when running the scripts to update my local database) and should i think about also posting the result automatically or rather not and just offer people to copy and paste. Mutante23 20:39, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't the place to ask these sorts of questions; ask the wikitech-l mailing list, or in the #wikimedia-tech IRC channel. Rob Church 01:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zirland = PorthosBot

I am the admin of Czech Wikipedia and my main activity here on English is doing interwiki links. I run the multi-purpose robot on cs.wiki. I'd like to enable the robot doing interwiki to czech articles.

So I am asking you for support to granting the bot status to my user account here on en.wiki. -- cs:User:Zirland Zirland 11:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I changed my mind and I'll keep my account non-bot. So I registered special account for the bot - User:PorthosBot. If there is no objection, I will ask for the tag on Meta tomorrow. --Zirland 15:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  1. You haven't read our policies well enough, it seems
  2. "Tomorrow" was too soon
    Rob Church 01:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Per wikipedia talk:bots#PorthosBot (and other talk linked from there) I think it is clear:

  1. PorthosBot should immediately be de-flagged at en:wikipedia,
  2. ... so that this bot approval request can be assessed on its own merits.

For my own opinion (in the "assessment of bot merits" meaning):

--Francis Schonken 11:59, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The robot is pyWikipediaBot, on English Wikipedia adds links to (primarily) czech articles. Due to pyWikibot standard functionality it can however add/change other links. This bot is manually operated. --Zirland 06:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gnome (Bot) I reproposed with a new mission below

The code for this bot is nearing completion, it is capible of several things, what I will use it for is still up in the air. (when I do deciede I will ask for bot status)

As a result of my code nearing completion I would like to test it, its editing capabilities.

1)Can it write correctly to wikipedia
2)Can it write to the right fields.
3)Can it not make a mess while doing so.

Is a sandbox alright, (on my Userpage)? What do I need to do? Thanks Eagle (talk) (desk) 02:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: I do not want a one week trial period, if that can be avoided... I just want to double-check my coding.Eagle (talk) (desk) 02:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What I did with OrphanBot while I was developing it was have it make one edit, checked the result, reverted any mistakes, and fixed the bugs I found. As long as the bot isn't editing too fast, isn't messing anything up, and you're checking every edit, short testing runs are fine. --Carnildo 04:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hey thanks, no trial period is required...or notification? I really don't want to get people mad at me right away:-)Eagle (talk) (desk) 04:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Heikobot

I'd like to request permission for running the pywikipedia bot Heikobot. It will use up-to-date pywikipediabot software and in en.wikipedia.org it will only add/correct interwiki links. Heiko Evermann 22:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Between which projects? Rob Church 01:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:AIDbot

Situation on WP:AID (imense increase in number of nominations in just few weeks) forced me to write this bot as maintaining this project became imposible by humans. I wrote it without consulting this page properly, so I started runing it without putting a notice here. But, now I read this page and now I'm putting te notice here :-) Please, don't block this bot for not requesting it's approval first as you can see that nobody complained about it, and moreover, it recieved only compliments. I'm sure we can settle any disputes about this bot (if any souch dispute should arise, I don't see why would that happen) without stoping it, as it is essential in trying to keep AID up to date. --Dijxtra 09:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  1. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Lukobe (rollover) (top)
  2. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:DanielCD (rollover)
  3. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Raghu.kuttan (rollover) (top)
  4. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Hahaandy1 (rollover) (top)
  5. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:SpacemanAfrica (rollover) (top)
  6. 10:55, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Vir (rollover) (top)
  7. 10:55, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Pschemp (rollover)
  8. 10:52, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Ugur Basak (rollover)
  9. 10:52, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Jmabel (rollover)
  10. 10:52, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Radufan (rollover) (top)
  11. 10:49, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Wikiacc (rollover)
  12. 10:49, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:172 (rollover) (top)
  13. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Adammathias (rollover) (top)
  14. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Resistor (rollover) (top)
  15. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Bhadani (rollover)
  16. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Ashibaka (rollover)
  17. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Silence (rollover)
  18. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Quadell (rollover)
  19. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Carwil (rollover) (top)
  20. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Tombseye (rollover)
  21. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:NeoJustin (rollover) (top)
  22. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:TachyonP (rollover) (top)
  23. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Khoikhoi (rollover)
  24. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Stevecov (rollover) (top)
  25. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Neutrality (rollover) (top)
  26. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Cuivienen (rollover)
  27. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Wackymacs (rollover) (top)
  28. 10:45, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Waltwe (rollover) (top)
  29. 10:45, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Fenice (rollover)
  • The templates thus posted are not in template namespace (e.g.: [1]), so: unnecessary overhead
    • Care to explain in more precise manner? What is the actual problem here? --Dijxtra 13:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Suppose your project has an average of 100 contributors soon; A year later the wikipedia databases contain approx. 5000 times this string:
        ==[[<pagename>]] won!== <div style="text-align: center; margin: 0 10%;"> {| class="notice noprint" id="{{{id}}}" style="background: #ffccFF; border: 1px solid #ff33FF; margin: 0 auto;" |- | [[Image:Aidlogo.png|none|50px| ]] | Thank you for your support of the '''[[Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive|Article Improvement Drive]]'''.<br>This week '''[[<pagename>]]''' was selected to be improved to [[Wikipedia:Featured articles|featured article]] [[Wikipedia:What is a featured article|status]].<br>Hope you can help… |} </div>
        — i.e. approx. 5000 times over 200 characters (didn't count); it's possible to do the same requiring less than 10% of these resources, by typing the above in a template once (replacing <pagename> by {{{1}}}), so the database only has to digest 5000 times a string of this length: {{AIDnotif|<pagename>}}.
        Note that even then I don't think this a good idea. Afaik, all projects sending out invitations on user talk pages by bot stopped doing that (the last project I knew in this sense was Esperanza). --Francis Schonken 17:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Good point! Didn't remember of that. If we decide that it's OK to leave messages on talk pages, I'll make the new template and use it. And the decission whether to leave messages on talk pages will be made somewhere else. I myself don't plan on entering that discussion, I'm interested just in the result of the discussion, so I know how to program my bot. I'll inform the people on AID project to discuss that. For now, I'm dropping all of the features of the bot that are disputable, so we can use the features which are not disputable. --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The bot adds non-content (or "project-related") templates to articles http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roma_people&diff=prev&oldid=42461727 — whether or not such templates are desired in article namespace, should not be decided by a vote on the bot performing these changes: I mean: it is questionable whether such templates are called for in article namespace: I'm merely saying the discussion about these does not have to take place here, on the talk page of the "bots" page. Maybe there was some prior discussion (and approval) of the use of the {{AIDcur}} template, if that is the case: please give a link where such discussion was concluded.
    (PS by Francis Schonken 12:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC):) until such approval is a fact, I suppose:[reply]
    • The bot was formed on rules which exist on AID (you can see those here). This bot just does what was previously done by hand. Therefore, this is not the place to discuss such policies. If you do not approve this bot, the templates will be added by hand, as they have been for last few months. This bot does not impose new rules, it just automates the old ones. --Dijxtra 13:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • "rules which exist on AID" — but apparently as rules for a small-scale project. You indicate yourself the project has grown quite a bit. Apart from the question whether the involved tasks need to be automated, the question whether it is a good idea to have AID as a large scale project needs to be answered too. Not on this page, as we both agree. But apparently the question wasn't answered elsewhere either (as you don't give a link to such discussion with conclusive decision - note that I didn't ask you to give a link to the page with the rules, but a link to the place(s) where it was decided that there is broad community approval of the mode of operation of the project). I don't see the need to give permission for bot automatisation as long as the other question isn't answered
        Apart from that, I don't think it a good idea to have templates like {{AIDcur}} in article namespace, per wikipedia:avoid self-references. And even less when a bot would be given permission to place such templates in article namespace. --Francis Schonken 17:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • As we agreed, this is not the place to discuss that, so I'll do the following: drop that feature untill the thing is discussed somewhere else. --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The AID project is only one (of many) projects on article improvement: I don't say this project is necessarily worse or better than the other projects/initiatives, but maybe it shouldn't have a competitive advantage by being served by a bot (yet). The discussion about the various article improvement initiatives should take place elsewhere, not here on the bot talk page, IMHO. Was there any prior discussion (e.g.) in village pump? announced at RfC? etc... --Francis Schonken 11:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • This project has currently 73 nominations. Every nomination has to be checked at least once a day (preferably every 6 hours). To check the nomination you have to count the votes, detect the anonymous ones, remove expired nominations and update header information on nominations. This is a tremendous amount of work, tremendous enough to make me learn python and learn how to write a bot withouth any how-tos. I insist that this project will colapse under it's own weight if this bot is suspended as the number of people willing to check the nominations is very small and shrinking. --Dijxtra 13:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I made no objections to that part of the bot operation, did I?
        • Sorry, I misinterpreted you. I felt that "it shouldn't have a competitive advantage by being served by a bot" was an objection. If it isn't, then everything's cool! --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I objected to the serialized talk page posts and to the namespace where the bot places the AIDcur template. I didn't see you would be prepared to modify your bot on these two points (well, are you?). I think it a bit curious I had to find out about these operations myself (you didn't mention them on the bot's talk page, apart from using the word "rollover", which I didn't know implied all that), so for the time being I'd disable these two operations of the bot (that is: the posting of invitations on user talk pages, and the posting of a project template in article namespace instead of in talk namespace). Unless these objections can be taken into account (or remedied by proof of wide community acceptance), separately from the project page check & update functionality (which I don't object to), I'm opposed to the bot as a whole. --Francis Schonken 17:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Objection taken in account, the two disputed features dropped utill consensus on those is reached. The bot will for the time being do just operations like these: [2] [3] [4] Is this acceptable? --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fetofsbot2

This will be the bot that I'll use for general fixes, such as substing and disambiguating. All edits by this bot will be manually checked. Fetofsbot2 22:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Who is running you? Fetofs (talk · contribs), I imagine. You shouldn't edit with your bot - edit under the operator name for comments such as these. :) Talrias (t | e | c) 23:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to log in as I had just created my account. Sorry! Fetofs Hello! 23:11, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation is fine, but substituting what? Rob Church (talk) 22:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IW-Bot-as

I'd like to run bot User:IW-Bot-as, which will place interwiki links (mostly to lithuanian wiki). I would like to request bot-status for this bot. I use interwiki.py which is periodically updated from CVS. --Laurinkus 17:50, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problems, approved. Rob Church 01:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:ShinmaBot - The Wikipedia:Articles for creation maintainance bot

For a while, User:Uncle G's 'bot has done archiving maintainance on Wikipedia:Articles for creation. However, recently, his bot has stopped functioning. I'm currently working on a bot that will take over these activities as well as add new activities for helping maintain AFC. Specifically:

Auto-archiving of requests.
  • Actions: Moves the current day's request to the appropriate archive, starts a fresh request page, and updates the archive listings.
  • Frequency: Once per day.
Stub/category cleanup.
  • Actions: Looks for stub entries and categories added by users in their requests and converts them to simple links {{tl}} and {{cl}} links. This is at the request from the stub/category sorting communities.
  • Frequency: 3-6 times per day.
Empty request cleanup.
  • Actions: Looks for dead/null requests (that is, requests that consist of nothing but the request template with no added text) and removes them.
  • Frequency: 3-6 times per day.

At first, the bot will be manually started until it is determined that all bot functions are working as expected. At that point, the bot will run on as a cron job from a Linux server. I'm currently writing the bot in Java (not using python framework). -- ShinmaWa(talk) 19:33, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, I anticipate no problems. Trial run approved. Rob Church 18:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Modulatumbot

I've created Modulatumbot to automate general tasks, such as misspellings, tagging orphan images, and stubbing very short articles. The bot itself will be run for short periods of time on a personal computer, so excessive resource usage will be a non-issue. I'll also be working on an AI engine that determines what an ambiguous link should link to based on the content of the article, but that's not anywhere near completion. MOD 00:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks much, the bot has been operational now for the current week as under my username with the comment "modbot." MOD 02:35, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Had some serious concerns I should have posted here, but are now at Wikipedia talk:Bots#modbot? (didn't know this bot request was running - the requested name also does not correspond with the name used in edit summaries - neither does the bot run under its own account). After the second incident on the same encyclopedia page, I seriously, seriously oppose this bot. Modulatum seems rather clueless as to what the bot is actually doing. Not the kind of bot we need. --Francis Schonken 19:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I coded the bot from the ground up and I know precisely why it's messing up. It's called debugging. I profusely apologize for my own human mistake of overriding subsequent edits, but the bot has absolutely nothing to do with that. MOD 23:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, "clueless" included being clueless about wikisyntax for image tags; and in general that the bot messes with things between double square brackets, which is a completely different thing than doing spelling corrections in text outside double square brackets.
    Re. "debugging": not if it disturbs wikipedia: if your bot needs that kind of debugging, please contact MediaWiki developers and ask if they can provide an alpha or beta testrun environment for your new software. Until it tests positively (which it apparently does not do yet) it should not be used on life wikipedia. --Francis Schonken 09:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • This bot activity must be suspended. First of all, you need a seperate bot account. Secondly you need to discuss why the bot has been making these errors that Francis Schonken indicated. The bot must not run until these issues are address and you are given the go ahead. If it does run the account will have to be blocked.--Commander Keane 20:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Faulty dictionary entry is the reason for the mistake. The bot has now been redirected to User:ModulatumbotMOD 23:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know where "doesn't know what he's doing" came from, and I understand the implications of using my own account for the bot. I've now changed the user-config.py to go to User:Modulatumbot. MOD
If you look on my userpage, you'll see that the stub mechanism has been taken out due to false positives. MOD 23:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please halt this bot at once. It was not approved for a trial run and automated spell checking bots are prohibited on this Wikipedia. In addition, legitimate concerns about the bot's operator and the bot's programming and purpose have been raised, and these must now be addressed. Thank you. Rob Church 00:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Ganeshbot

I've created Ganeshbot to create city/town articles in India based on on data provided by Census India 2001. I converted the data into a comma-seperated file. Bot will read the file line by line and create article stubs. Please see examples, Aadityana and Aambaliyasan, that I had created in the sandbox using the bot. It will be manually run by me. There are 5161 towns listed. It should take a couple of hours to complete. This is similar to the User:Rambot that created U.S city/town articles. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 08:33, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A few questions:
  • Do you have more information you can put into the articles besides the name and rough location? Part of the strength of the Rambot articles is the amount of information they contain: basic geography, a basic demographic profile, and frequently a map showing where the place is.
  • How fast is the bot editing? To keep from overloading the servers, bots shouldn't edit more than once every ten seconds. Creating 5161 articles should take at least 15 hours.
--Carnildo 09:08, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Reply:
City Name,Urban Status,State Code, State Name, District Code and District Name
Let me research if there is anyway possible to expand further.
  • I have added 30 seconds delay between each edit. Couple of hours was just a guess. Out of 5161, many exist already. I have not run it on the entire file yet. So I don't have a time estimate.
- Ganeshk (talk) 09:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Per suggestions by User:Carnildo, I had made changes to the bot. Could you please look at Aadityana, Aambaliyasan and Kodumudi and give approval for the bot?
Changes:
  • Added population count
  • Added Geo-coordinates and Altitude
I would like to run it for all towns.
Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 08:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think it looks good, I would give it permission, but I think it might need greater community approval first, as it is such a large project. Maybe you could mention it at the village pump? Martin 12:56, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We should only be happy to have something like this, and eventually for all the countries in the world. Hearily support, except perhaps the demographics could be moved to another paragraph, like Rambot did. But if this is all the info you have then this is probably fine. --Golbez 20:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Martin, Thanks for the tip. I put up a message on the village pump.
Golbez, I have added two new sections, Geography and Demographics. Please check Kodumudi. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 22:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do you feel about exploiting Geographic references like Rambot, instead of adding the same reference to all the articles? Melchoir 21:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Melchoir, Could you please explain with an example on how Rambot used Geographic references? Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 22:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Added geographic reference similar to Rambot. I used Template:GR format since the number will not be constant. - Ganeshk (talk) 22:40, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't go ahead Bot articles are horrible, especially the awful rambot ones about American localities. A couple of human-written sentences are always better and they will all get done in the end. I see huge long term problems with the rambot articles. They are going to get very out of date, but when new census data is ready how are they going to be updated, especially those where people have added proper content? Is is going to be wiped along with the old rambot bilge, or is the rambot data going to be left in place forever. Please be patient and wait for Wikipedia to be written by people not machines. Hawkestone 23:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to disagree; having the stubs help greatly, I find the information generally useful, and I prefer to have machine-made articles than none at all. Many of the Rambot articles have since been improved, sometimes vastly so, by editors. Treat them as stubs. --Golbez 23:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The examples provided look pretty good, as for becoming out of date, this is applicable to all articles, regardless of how they were created. Creating the articles like this is good, as it provides a base for humans to build on and create much better articles, as is the case with many of the rambot articles. Martin 23:17, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It should round to the nearest percent, rather than truncate (to avoid the gender proportions totaling to 99%). It should give the literacy rates for males and females, rather than the proportion of the literate people. TimBentley (talk) 19:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the rounding issue. I rephrased the the literacy line. If you feel it still does not sound right, Could you please write the exact line how it should show using Kodumudi as an example. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 23:32, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the bot not getting approved now? Any more issues left? deeptrivia (talk) 12:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

June 2006

I have added a locator map feature. For towns that have longitude and latitude values, a locator map will be automatically loaded and dot placed for the city. With this last change, I feel the bot is complete. Please check Kodumudi. Can the approval group please give it a bot flag? - Ganeshk (talk) 07:07, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. --Carnildo 01:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot and AWB operated by Rich Farmbrough

Please see:

For a variety of incidents listed by (primarily) William Allen Simpson on the "Bots" talk page, and Village pump (policy), I formally request:

  1. removal of "bot flag" from Smackbot;
  2. Smackbot (or AWB and other bots/semi-bots by Rich Farmbrough) should no longer be run until reported issues have been solved. This includes (but not exclusively) the issue of delinking dates, presently marked as "no-consensus" at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Avoid overlinking dates, and requested even by pro-delinking supporters not to create disturbance about it by bot or otherwise before the issue is solved (see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Request to stop delinking dates in order to avoid additional distraction)

--Francis Schonken 10:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh boy! There is I think no real issue over de-linking excess month names and days of the week. In any event SmackBot is currently blocked (and stopped) so no need to panic. I shall get round to commenting on those other pages in due course Rich Farmbrough 13:05 26 March 2006 (UTC).
See also SmackBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log):
Continues through today. Replacing the bold around the title to
<!-- Do not change [[{{PAGENAME}}]] it preserves the date correctly formatted 
and stops robots from delinking it. -->
[[{{PAGENAME}}]]
To start with, self-linking to get bold date preferences isn't a policy or guideline, it was off on a talk page.
But June 21 wasn't linked, it was already bold! The edit summary and comment make no sense. Of course, robots should not de-link dates, so there's nothing to stop!
YOu are quite right that June 21 was already bold. Virtually every other day of the year page was self linked, this one had been unlinked by an anon. And yes the decision was on a talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year, in a discussion in which I was involved, and I'm sure that Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year doesn't have the same force as Policy or MoS. But it is really a rather specialised area to go onto an already bloated MoS. In terms of maintaining this style it is not unusual for either users or bots to delink and bold this per the normal procedure, which results in minor breakage. I have been through the entire year manually correcting it, very recently, and already some have been changed back by well inteniotned people or bots. People can be dissuaded with a comment, bots can't. Hence the solution adopted. If there's a better one almost certainly there is) I would be happy to adopt that. And if necessary I will edit all the 368+ date pages manually to implement it! Rich Farmbrough 13:20 26 March 2006 (UTC).
Would that be "at bot speed" and/or "using a (semi-)bot like AWB or other"?
I think the last sentence of your retort particularly nasty: it sounds like a declaration you'd rather start a revert war over this, than applying wikipedia consensus-seeking processes. Apparently the decisions taken at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Days of the year haven't reached a broad consensus yet – otherwise other people wouldn't object to it so strongly. So I'd suggest you work on finding such consensus, e.g. publicizing in wikipedia:current surveys or in Village Pump that you think the "Days of the year" WikiProject has developed some "best practice" recommendations, you'd like to see accepted by the community.
Unless finding such consensus, I don't think the issue re. SmackBot can be considered to have been properly addressed. If you stick to the "whatever happens I'll implement it" this is a belligerent attitude that might get you in trouble sooner or later (just drawing your attention that we're not only speaking about the bot account any more in that case, so this discussion would have to move to another page).
Just as a side note regarding the solution you defend: there are strong feelings by some wikipedians against including HTML commentary tags in wikipedia pages. --Francis Schonken 16:33, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, [[WP:AGF}} and all that! I was offering to wade through several hundred pages and put in a better solution if anyone had one! And I don't think people object strongly, although I may be wrong, one user has taken exception to two edits to List of two letter combinations and List of three letter words (titles not quite right). Rich Farmbrough 18:12 26 March 2006 (UTC).
A request for SmackBot to do some work - I don't see the relevance. Rich Farmbrough 13:34 26 March 2006 (UTC).
A question not about SmackBot at all. Rich Farmbrough 13:34 26 March 2006 (UTC).
One person thought that we should talk about the 2000 census in the present tense, I explained why I disagreed, and that person seemed OK w with it. Two people point out a capitalisation mistake (immediately corrected both in the process an all articles.) Another apparent error is a bug in the wikimeedia diff routines. Rich Farmbrough 13:34 26 March 2006 (UTC).

A simple error only affecting "Playmates of the Month" if I remember correctly, simply and quickly fixed. Rich Farmbrough 13:34 26 March 2006 (UTC).

The problem that started this off! Rich Farmbrough 18:10 26 March 2006 (UTC).
"I really appreciate your bot..." Rich Farmbrough 00:52 27 March 2006 (UTC).
Small problem, quickly fixed. Rich Farmbrough 00:52 27 March 2006 (UTC).
Small problem, quickly fixed. Rich Farmbrough 00:52 27 March 2006 (UTC).
Request for assistance Rich Farmbrough 18:10 26 March 2006 (UTC).
The block occsioned by this complaint. Rich Farmbrough 18:10 26 March 2006 (UTC).
I'd suggest that the bot be permanently blocked until he certifies that he's personally reviewed and fixed every single edit ever done by the bot.... At a rate no faster than 1 every 2 minutes.
--William Allen Simpson 12:55, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
William seems to have dumped all the header from my talk page here implying they are all major problems. Some are the reverse, requests for more bot changes, some are queries and some are minor problems. Rich Farmbrough 00:54 27 March 2006 (UTC).

Geni has blocked the bot indefinitely, pending more information from the bot operator. Talrias (t | e | c) 12:59, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with the original request for removal of the bot flag. The flag was approved without any explanation from Rich Farmbrough as to what his bot was actually going to do, it was just a very vague request to be able to automate things which were tedious to do manually. That's not a request that should ever be honored. And the removing of date links does not have consensus. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not removing date links, just links to months and days of the week. If anyone thinks they should stay linked, please say so and I'll stop. (I had a request to delink years associated with months, which I turned down for precisely that reason.) In general you can stop SmackBot any time, using the Big Red Button (tm) on the user page. Rich Farmbrough 23:18 27 March 2006 (UTC).

I also must reluctantly support removing Smackbot's flag status. I made two specific complaints about Smackbot edits a couple weeks ago and received absolutely no reply from Rich. I support most of what Smackbot does, but Rich is a bit too liberal with his use of Smackbot and he seems unwilling to engage in discussion. Such behavior seems irresponsible to me. Kaldari 02:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think I replied to almost every other post to my talk page. And I didn't miss you out for any unkind reason - I wrote a reply, but it never got posted - I don't know whether it was a browser crash or WP problems - my apologies for that. Nonetheless I'll talk to anyone, me, and often have. I'll also try to discuss, understand and explain, and will change my behaviour to accomodate others - viz slowing down, avoiding certain groups of pages, reverting or redoing, generating lists of problem pages, helping with tricky markup, adding a stop button. On the other hand this whole thing was kicked off by a user who hasn't replied to my messages, who has made misleading representations, and posted them on various admin pages without contacting me first - and has caused me (perhaps foolishly) to spend a lot of valuable time defending myself (on the other hand it's all a good learning...). Cest la vie. Rich Farmbrough 23:03 28 March 2006 (UTC).

I'd agree to a go-ahead as a de-flagged bot. Following Zoe's reasoning above, I'd say either make this a "various tasks" AWB bot (in that case not bot-flagged); or a flagged bot, but then only if positive after a new approval request on the basis of one or a few precisely described tasks, and new approval requests if new types of tasks are added to that.

Rich, is that a choice you want to make? Or am I too narrow-minded here? --Francis Schonken 15:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a good deal closer. What I would suggest is leave it flagged, and I will look for approval for each task of over 100 edits. This is the way my thinking has been going with bots anyway, especially with the new streamline approval process. It won't impact single task bots, but blanket approval is a little bit OOT, anyway. What do the approvals group think? Rich Farmbrough 00:47 30 March 2006 (UTC).

To be honest, I've seen a lot of concerns raised above and I'm uncomfortable for this bot to retain a flag. I'd be open to Rich making some changes and sorting out problems (as he seems willing to do) and then approving another trial run, i.e. starting afresh; what do the others think? Rob Church 01:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Was SmackBot de-flagged? (I don't know where to check that) – there appears to be pretty good consensus in this section (Zoe, Kaldari, Rob, myself,...) that this bot should be deflagged. Was that done?
  • SmackBot is "active" again ([5]), just realised the bot was unblocked a few days ago, with a rather mysterious unblock message ("I'm an idiot, unblocking actual username") [6] - is SmackBot an "actual username", then it should be non-botflag, of course.
I asked the admin who blocked it to unblock, rather than some random admin. That admin simply "unblocked" "User:SmackBot" (i.e. User:User:SmackBot in error, before unblocking the "actual user name". Hence the comment. Rich Farmbrough 19:22 30 March 2006 (UTC).
  • Don't agree SmackBot changing "Chopin's" to "Chopin's" in the Claude Debussy article (diff - this was done 13:17, 28 March 2006). Was this "addressed" somewhere by Rich? If so, please let us know where. The contentious edit was not yet reverted anyway (and that's a task for Rich, if he wants to continue running a bot I suppose)
Changed to Chopin's. Rich Farmbrough 19:56 30 March 2006 (UTC).
  • "100 edits" rule proposed by Rich is one of the most nonsensical things I ever heard. A bot should not do a single contentious edit under a bot flag. It's specifically the small tasks, in the contentious/non contentious border zone for which no bot flag should be applied. These should be done as ordinary logged-in user, and not at bot speed (so that they are easier to detect and one gets a user-user interaction in case of disagreement, not a user vs. a "I have permission to do this" bot operator).
Yes your right about this ("these should be done as ordinary logged in user"). Maybe it's me but "one of the most nonsensical things I ever heard" is not perhaps the most tactful way of putting it. Rich Farmbrough 19:54 30 March 2006 (UTC).
  • So I don't think SmackBot should do a *single* edit any more, until de-flagged or having acquired an approval on the basis of a *new* bot request.
See m:Requests for bot status#en:User:SmackBot --Francis Schonken 10:00, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Complaints procedure

I need no convincing that this (above) is a mess, and Zsinj has an excellent point. So please comment at a new discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Complaints_procedure.--Commander Keane 17:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot (1) Fair Use Rationale Request Request

This is a request for approval for an addition to Tawkerbot's work (as the bot is idle right now)

The bot would leave a friendly message on an fair use image uploader's talk page to kindly leave a fair use rationale for the image.

It would essentially

  1. Grab a category of fair use images
  2. Use a regex to see if the worlds "rationale" or "fair use" do not appear (outside of the template)
  3. Post a message on the image uploader's talk page requesting that they rationalize the image. This could be done for all uploaders of an image or just the first one.

I haven't seen anything that does it specifically and it might get us a little more than the 0.5% of images with fair use rationales. -- Tawker 15:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you assuming that if the words "rationale" and "fair use" do not appear then there is no rationale? Martin 15:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that most people don't understand fair use, and rationales are likely to be copy-and-pasted from some other image, leading to situations like List of Presidents of Portugal where the "rationales" for the images claimed that the photos showed "how the event depicted was very historically significant to the general public", when most of them were random portraits. --Carnildo 20:53, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Essentially I was planning on just looking for the words "rationale" and "fair use" not in the template category. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be better than nothing. What I'm thinking is a "fair use rationale help page" which would have examples etc, essentially a template that the bot would subst in. I haven't written this bot yet, its just a proposal but I want to see if people want it before I commit to writing it. -- Tawker 23:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My concern is that if people start copy-and-pasting random rationales, we'll end up with worse than nothing. --Carnildo 02:48, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly it would be useful to create a list. Perhaps a a database scan would be better. Then I think the License Cleeanup project (or whatever it's called) should be asked to suggest the next step. Clearly we would like proper rationale on each page, but even asking the uploader for a rationale would show good faith. Rich Farmbrough 13:09 29 March 2006 (UTC).

I'd like to see a pledge to eliminate too many false positives; also, please be aware that if this starts accelerating copy-pasting of fair use rationales as noted above, then it will need to stop. Rob Church 00:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I support this request, but I'd like this to generate a list of all images where the user was warned, if at all possible, so that users could watch for bad rationales. This could be easily achieved with one list linking to all images warned; in this way, the "related changes" special page could be utilized. If this is possible, it would be much appreciated. Ral315 (talk) 14:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a reasonable request to me. Rob Church (talk) 19:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno... If an image is fair-use and the template explains exactly why it's fair use, what further explanation is needed? (for instance, corporate logos... the template explains why fair use is used and when it's appropriate.) What else needs to be said? If this is the wrong place to ask this, then feel free to userfy this question to my talkpage. ---J.S (t|c) 15:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this. More discussion is needed before running this on specific fair-use templates (those other than {{fairuse}} and {{fairusein}}, pretty much). Also, we should create an easy-to-use template for providing rationales; maybe I'll create one today. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eskimbot

I'd like to get bot status for my bot, Eskimbot, which has now been running for 6 mounths. It adds interwikis and fixes double-redirects. It currently has more than 19000 edits on the English Wikipedia. It is already flagged on fr:, ja:, sv:, nl:, it:, de:, es:, pl:, no:, os: and eo:. ▪ Eskimo ☼ 10:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question Are you fluent enough in the listed languages to recognize a mistake by this bot and/or do you have someone you can run language links by on those wikis that would be able to recognize and deal with such mistakes? Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 03:23, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I speak English, users from foreign wikis contact me if they see I made a mistake on their wikis, I fix them. There is no "user must be fluent in our language" policy on the Wikipedias I work on. An admin from os: even asked me to run my bot on his wiki, knowing that I didn't speak a single word of his language (it's similar to Russian). ▪ Eskimo ☼ 16:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On this Wikipedia, we require that users running interwiki bots speak enough of the languages involved that mistakes will not occur. Please convince us that this is the case, otherwise there will be no bot flag. Rob Church (talk) 19:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so no bot flag :(. Although I don't understand your policy, since a bot run on your Wikipedia will be checking ALL Wikipedias, even if it doesn't have accounts there. ▪ Eskimo ☼ 07:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CJBot

I'm wanting to get approval for my bot, CJBot. It's main tasks will be to bypass redirects (for example change links from Ask Jeeves to Ask.com. Also, the bot will apply AWB's general cleanup fixes, such as simplifying wikilinks. Also, eventually, it will fix typos.

The bot will run on AutoWikiBrowser and will be automated. Computerjoe's talk 11:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay let's see how you do. Be careful about which links you bypass. Many of them should remain as-is, and I'm not sure about the "Jeeves" one being a good example of either. I suppose, if in doubt, leave it. — Apr. 2, '06 [14:00] <freakofnurxture|talk>

Please be aware that this Wikipedia has a policy against automated spelling correction bots which run unsupervised. I don't want this thing "eventually" fixing typos if it's going to be running on its own. Rob Church (talk) 19:31, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I when he says "fix typos" he is referring to bypassing redirects tagged with {{R from misspelling}}, {{R from title without diacritics}}, and other redirects that involve decidedly non-ambiguous typographical errors. For example:

[[Jose Canseco]] should always be changed to [[José Canseco]]

The entire link text should be replaced, and never piped as [[José Canseco|Jose Canseco]] as this would remove the referring page from Special:Whatlinkshere/Jose Canseco but keep the typographical error visible to the reader. Other cases where the intent of the misspelling is so obvious that such a tagged redirect exists, should also be bypassed in this fashion. — Apr. 9, '06 [07:19] <freakofnurxture|talk>

This bot has really malfunctioned, screwing up around 30 articles. I think this should be blocked, which is a shame as I put so much time in it. Computerjoe's talk 08:53, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the contributions for this bot, and many mistakes are still there. For example, the bot changed "splog" to "spam blog" in many pages, but spam blog is not a page (splog is a redirect to spam blogs). Also, cafe was changed to café, with no apparent regard to whether it should be done. For example, World Cafe where it has been reverted, and presumably others. Ingrid 02:52, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Minor point: spam blog is now an article and spam blogs and splog both redirect there. This is the correct target per WP:MOS, we usually have article titles in the singular. Just zis Guy you know? 11:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. It mucked up. It isn't really active any more. Computerjoe's talk 18:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm requesting permission for User:CJBot to be able to deliver newsletters for WP:CJ. Computerjoe's talk 19:57, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As there are other bots that do such things, you may run the bot. Please monitor it while running to be sure it only delivers it to the appropriate people, and be sure to allow the users to somehow un-subscribe from the newsletter. --lightdarkness (talk) 23:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Pearle doing wikify-date

By request, I'm doing a test run of Pearle sorting to-be-wikified articles by date. Since this is nearly identical to the cleanup-date task she is already performing, this isn't really something new, but I thought I'd mention it here and make it official. -- Beland 03:11, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problems. Rob Church (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No reason to object, obviously, but do you think you could easily peruse the article's history (not every edit, just the last edit of each month), searching for the relevant tag in the wikitext, to determine which month the template was actually added, rather than dating them all to the current month? That would avoid overpopulating one category, and give a better perspective on our cleanup/wikification priorities. — Apr. 9, '06 [07:05] <freakofnurxture|talk>

That's what it's doing now. -- Beland 16:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. Cool. For all I know it was doing that all along and I didn't notice, because all the ones I saw appeared to be dated as whatever the current month was, no worries. Go for it. — Apr. 10, '06 [10:50] <freakofnurxture|talk>


CatHeadBot

I'd like to run User:BmearnsCatHeadBot as an automated bot which will scan certain wikiproject related categories and "what links here" for related templates, and make sure that they are in synch. For instance, all articles in Category:WikiProject Musicians articles are supposed to have Template:Musician as a talk header on the article's talk page according to WikiProject Musicians guidelines. This bot will be using the Pywikipedia python library, and will only be run periodically. It will not automatically update anything without user input, instead it will compile a list of conflicts, and await further instructions on which of those pages to update. B.Mearns*, KSC 15:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I posted this request a week ago, and haven't heard anything. I'm a little confused about whether or not I was supposed to create a user page for the bot before or after approval, but I haven't done so yet. Is that why there're no comments? B.Mearns*, KSC 13:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Shouldn't these categories be confined only to the talk page anyway? You should add the category to the template so that the talk pages of these articles are categorized when the template is applied. — Apr. 10, '06 [13:34] <freakofnurxture|talk>
I don't think so. At this point, the category is supposed to be on the article page, the template on the talk page. If you have opinions on that, pelase discuss them on the Project's talk page
Compiling a list is not a bot job, either a database query or simply getting the two lists manually (AWB makes lists from what links here and categories easily) and then comparing them would be all round a much better solution. Martin 13:39, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well the idea was that the bot compiles the list, and then asks for feedback from the user on which pages should be fixed, and which shouldn't be, and then fixes the appropriate pages. It could be all automated, but that would make the bot a little dangerous in my opinion. For instance, the project page includes the template as an example, but it's not on the talk page. I don't want the bot changing that, so it tkaes some feedback so I can indicate not to "fix" that instance. B.Mearns*, KSC 14:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ganeshbot (AWB)

I have already nominated this bot above as a India town bot. This second nomination is for running AWB to make general fixes on India-related articles. It will pick the list of articles from List of India-related topics and categories related to India. It will run on a automatic mode with a timer of 15 seconds. You can check it's contribs to see a trial run I did yesterday. Could you please give it a bot flag? - Ganeshk (talk) 16:07, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Pearle to update WP:PNA

By popular request, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention is being overhauled, to bring all maintenance needs pertaining to a particular topic together in one place. Pearle has been enlisted to help keep the lists here up to date. I have debugged the process and you can see the results on the demo page, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Ecology and Agriculture. Most of the processing to determine which articles should be posted is done offline, from a database dump. The bot does read all of WP:PNA's subpages, looking for those that have been "configured" to accept its output. (Volunteers are now working on configuring more sections.) More details are on Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal. Please let me know if there are concerns. -- Beland 03:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Cydebot

I would like permission to get Cydebot (talk · contribs) a bot flag. In the beginning I will run him manually, but in the future I hope to eventually have the task be fully automated. As for what the bot actually does ... I think I'll let Cydebot speak for himself.

I am written using the pywikipedia framework. My sole goal thus far is to examine a day's block log, sniff out the indefinite blocks, parse the block reason, and if it is a username block, add {{UsernameBlocked}} to their talk page and {{Indefblocked-username}} to their userpage (if they aren't already there). I feel that this will be helpful because many users end up getting blocked but they do not know why, and although human administrators may be good at sniffing out the bad names, they aren't so good about always about leaving a message explaining the block. My reliable robotic nature will help me to overcome these human limitations. I am manually run for now, but eventually I expect to do my work automatically.

I think this bot is important enough to justify receiving bot status because of the following rationale:

  1. In any given day, dozens, if not hundreds, of new user accounts are indefinitely blocked because of their name.
  2. Very few, if any, are tagged with any sort of rationale. The only rationale is a cryptic "user..." block reason in the block log; newcomers aren't going to know what that means.
  3. Some of the accounts being blocked are legitimate good faith attempts by newcomers.
  4. We don't want to bite the newbies and indefinitely block their accounts without a stated reason because that makes it very unlikely they will stick around and actually help the project.

Also, for non-username blocks, Cydebot will just leave the standard indef-blocked template.

--Cyde Weys 17:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for a trial run for one week. Please remember to throttle edits to no more than two per minute to avoid clogging up recent changes and watchlists. If no sizeable objections are raised afterwards, then a bot flag approval will be forthcoming. Rob Church (talk) 19:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Checked the contributions. No problems with approving a flag. Rob Church (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Pegasusbot expansion of usage

I am planning on expanding Pegasusbot's uses to also deal with redirects as shown by whatlinks here and a few simple find and replaces. I have begun doing this without official approval as this is non controversial and shouldn't be a problem but wanted official input to be gotten. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 06:19, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of redirect work (nothing to do with this etc) and what sort of find and replace. Examples etc.--Commander Keane 06:58, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly redirects that are misleading or are too ambiguous to be useful, currently I am running a find replace on NCAA to [[National Collegiate Athletic Association making it so it does not change the display name. I am also working to perfect a method to do semi-automated disambig work though that requires more work before it could actually be put into full service. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 07:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh ok, you are doing disambiguation link repair. m:Solve disambiguation.py is very effective for that.--Commander Keane 07:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm contemplating that but if I do I'll add it as a request but I'm adding one task at a time and the substing I've had to suspend due to some bugs in how I was doing it. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 07:31, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This bot's edits violate Wikipedia:Redirect#Don't fix links to redirects that aren't broken and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Context. I inquired on your user page, and you replied that because it's a guideline, it can be ignored. I disagree; guidelines are actionable except in special circumstances. Do you feel there's a special circumstance here? --TreyHarris 04:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that as it is only a guideline if it makes navigation easier to get rid of a redirect it should be done otherwise it shouldn't be since it would be a useless edit, I felt that the NCAA redirects were a useful thing to bypass. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 19:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You're using circular reasoning here. Why was it a useful thing to bypass in the case of NCAA? What special circumstances obtained to where you "felt" that the guidelines "were a useful thing" to ignore? In what future cases might you make a similar determination? --TreyHarris 06:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is also probably a good time to mention that Pegasusbot ran around various bot userpages placing the emergency shutoff button without permission from the bot owners. This, combined with TreyHarris' point above, shows rather reckless behaviour (and misunderstanding over the way WP operates), I'd feel more comfortable if this bot didn't operate, let alone had expanded activity.--Commander Keane 07:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Luckily my bot does good work so it will continue operating and you'll note that when it was requested that I stop putting the bot tag on pages I stopped immediately so that would so maturity not immaturity as well as good behavior. I also know exactly how wikipedia operates and I suggest in the future you Assume good faith. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 19:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also like official comment on doing [[disambiguation link repair using m:Solve disambiguation.py which by essence of having to do it partially by hand would of course be only robot assisted. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 19:54, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since there have been no other objections I am going to assume that it's okay if I expand my bot's tasks as listed. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 23:55, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

QovulwBot

Would like to submit QovulwBot for approval or for a trial.

This is an automatic bot that will run through a list of 50-100 Wikipedia pages (for now 50-100, more after initial testing) pre-chosen by myself from a google search of wikipedia.org. It will search for these phrases (to be expanded later to the form the University <verb>) :

the University will

the University offers

the Univesrity is

the University does

and it will change them by making the capitalized 'U' into a lowercase 'u' per the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Institutions. It will run no faster than one edit per forty seconds and will terminate as soon as it exhausts all of the pages I give it to search.

QovulwBot is run on Python with the pywikipedia framework .

I realize this isn't the most important bot in some senses but it still does a viable service for en.wikipedia.org by correcting an infraction of the Manual of Style. Also, I think that this type of formatting will very rarely, if ever edit a false positive because of the rarity of such a false positive.

-Snpoj 23:24, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a useful function. How will you avoid quotes? Rich Farmbrough 15:45 12 April 2006 (UTC).
Yeah that's a good call I hadn't thought of that. I'll work on that. Also, to exclude: everything in a References section and maybe some other sections of the bottom if they exists. -68.210.211.4 01:40, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed it. Thanks for the suggestion. -Snpoj 02:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot task approval

Task: replace "External link" with "External links" where more than one external link is present.
Method: Either manually using Firefox, or automatically using AWB.
Speed: If manually in batches of 20 - 100 each taking a few minutes. If with AWB 1-2 per minute.
Number: Approximately 1400 articles.
Frequency: Recurring: 1400 have occurred in less than a month since the previous cleanup.
Testing: A previous run of about 6000 caused no problems.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough 01:13 11 April 2006 (UTC).

So are we going back to the old "wait a week to see if there are any objections" model? Rich Farmbrough 16:41 13 April 2006 (UTC).
Looks good to me. Feel free to go ahead. --Carnildo 18:15, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Rich Farmbrough 18:45 13 April 2006 (UTC).

Cydebot II

Requesting permission for Cydebot to substitute {{UsernameBlocked}} and other talk page message templates that have been identified by the community as templates that should be substituted. This will all be done with standard pywikipedia template.py. --Cyde Weys 23:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is also related to the thing Cydebot got permission for a trial run for. --Cyde Weys 23:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hrrmmm, apparently also Pegasusbot got approval to do something like this, though he's using AWB and I'm using pywikipedia. There's no substantive difference in these two methods though, so since his was approved, I don't see a reason why this one wouldn't be either. --Cyde Weys 00:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support I see no problem with this. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 18:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, Cyde, but if this template (a message to the blocked user) is detected on a User: page, it should be moved to the User_talk: page instead. — Apr. 20, '06 [17:50] <freakofnurxture|talk>

Support However, if Cydebot now would (or even could) be used to subst templates to achieve similar ends to Userboxbot, then my support would be come an oppose.--Ssbohio 01:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion ended a loooong time ago. There aren't even any templated transclusions of UsernameBlocked left to deal with. --Cyde Weys 02:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maksim-bot

It will be automatically scheduled to run from time to time when exists what to do.

It uses pywikipedia framework.

The bot is for put interwiki links from en: to eo:. I upload articles in eo: and we need back interwiki links.

The maintainer is User:Maksim-e.

I already tested the bot: see diffs [7] and [8]

- Maksim-e 18:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds straight forward, but (and I don't speak EO so forgive me) why does diff 1 link to a redirect? And why does diff 2 link to an article in the project name space, rather than a corresponding article?--Commander Keane 18:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The bot is needed just because it is needed to link to the project name space. (To the main namespace standard interwiki bot will link and ok.) In the project name space are articles which are not very good yet.
Diff 1 links to redirect because one corrected the article in eo: and moved them in the main namespace. Standard interwiki bot will correct the link.
In general standard interwiki bot search for articles only in the main namespace, but if article not in main nmespace is linked the bot considers it. Maksim-e 17:06, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if I understand the problem. If the page on the Esperanto wiki is not "corrected" enough for it to be moved to article space, we shouldn't be linking to it from other languages yet. If it is "corrected", it should be moved to article space immediately. We shouldn't have "diagonal links", i.e. links that are both cross-project and cross-namespace. It's just too confusing. — Apr. 20, '06 [17:44] <freakofnurxture|talk>
The goal is to obtain for eo: articles interwiki links to other languages when the articles will appear. Maksim-e 10:00, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'm not sure what you mean, but please do not create links from the English article to the Esperanto article until the Esperanto article is moved to the article namespace. For example, after eo:Vikipedio:Projekto matematiko/Idento (matematiko) gets moved to eo:IIdento (matematiko), then we should link to it from en:Identity (mathematics), but not until then. Thanks. — Apr. 22, '06 [16:18] <freakofnurxture|talk>

NedBot

I would like to run a bot to assist in redundant edits for WikiProject Digimon Systems Update. Such tasks include:

  • Going through articles in Category:Digimon and finding common mistakes specific to digimon articles, such as proper placement of English and Japanese terms and names, for example:
"*'''Baby''' (In-Training)" shows the Japanese term first and English term second. The bot would look for this exact phrase and replace it with *'''In-Training''' (Baby)"
  • Going through articles in Category:Digimon and placing the {{WikiProject DIGI}} WikiProject banner on the top of talk pages, if it is not already there.
  • Correcting character names in articles in Category:Digimon and articles that link to the character page, such as Lalamon's correct name was later found out to be Raramon.

There are about 1,000 articles in Category:Digimon and it's sub-cats. WP:DIGI is trying to reduce this number and make these articles acceptable for Wikipedia. Recently the anime series of Digimon was started again after a 3 year absence. Because of this these articles have become, and will become moreso, more active. This bot, if approved, will save us a lot of time and allow us to focus on more pressing issues, such as threshold of notability and verifiability. -- Ned Scott 21:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And the bot will be manually assisted by a human (myself). -- Ned Scott 21:58, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see diffs to a few test edits so I know exactly what kind of actions this would entail before I go giving my approval to anything. --Cyde Weys 17:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Cyde on this. Edits related to the content of articles beg for greater detail prior to bot approval. — Apr. 20, '06 [17:35] <freakofnurxture|talk>

Basically, re-listing terms per WP:MOS-JA, fixing typos of words and names that are specific to this franchise, and making things constant with layout guidelines that WP:DIGI has come up with. I ran a few example edits on NedBot as requested Special:Contributions/NedBot. -- Ned Scott 06:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
minor goof on the edit summary on one of those.. -- Ned Scott 07:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I don't know enough about Digimon to opine whether these are good edits or not. If the members of the Digimon project agree that these edits are good, I'd say go ahead. Please summon them here for comment. Also, try to avoid backslashing in an edit summary, you might get mistaken for an open proxy, lol. — Apr. 22, '06 [16:12] <freakofnurxture|talk>

I can't see anything wrong with these edits and I agree that a bot would be immensely useful to make such fixes on the large scale that Digimon articles represent. Circeus 00:31, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How about running it across a couple of old diffs of Digimon articles such as this one? x42bn6 Talk 10:13, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand this request, or what it would show that was not already shown in the previous edit examples. -- Ned Scott 10:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since I haven't heard anything yet, I put up some more example edits using some additional "spelling data". see Special:Contributions/NedBot. Also, I plan on making these replacement parameters apart of an open discussion on WP:DIGI, so the whole WikiProject will be able to get input to what terms, character names, etc that the bot will look for and replace. Hope this helps with your decision. -- Ned Scott 04:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most of those are just a "digidestined" caps correction, note the edit on Dark Masters [9] as a good example of not only "digi-spelling" but link correction. Also, only a small amount of replacement parameters have been defined so far. -- Ned Scott 04:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Still no word.. I'd like to rephrase my request a bit if that helps:

I went ahead and ran the bot on a good number of edits (each edit was manually assisted by myself). After a few hundred edits the bot ran without incident. Some of the basic text replacements it did involved: link correction, adhering to WP:MOS-JA, disambiguation link repair, formatting corrections established by WP:DIGI, and fictional character name typos. After doing so, I realized that in reality the usage of the bot will most likely be 1 - 3 hours, 2 or 3 days a week, which is less than I originally anticipated. The more of these basic edits the bot does, the less frequently it will be run. I imagine that in a month it will be ran maybe once a week, unless it's needed to help with some new layout decision by the Digimon WikiProject. Furthermore, the edits, types of edits, and any possible issues will be openly discussed with the WikiProject, allowing even more "eyes and ears" to make sure nothing bad happens.

I understand that there is reluctancy to approve a bot to work on articles that are border-line notable. However, as I pointed out before, allowing the bot to handle these minor things will allow the WikiProject to focus on more important matters, such as how to reduce the numbers and make the articles appropriate for Wikipedia. In addition, similar articles have even become Feature articles, such as Pokemon's Bulbasaur.

If there are no objections, I'd greatly appreciate NedBot being fully approved. -- Ned Scott 07:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't help but feel a little forgotten up here. -- Ned Scott 06:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine to me, permission granted -- Tawker 07:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Now I'd like to request a bot flag. See Special:Contributions/NedBot for examples of NedBot's work. -- Ned Scott 11:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot task approval II

Task: replace "ISBN: <isbn>" with "ISBN <isbn>" .
Method: Either manually using Firefox, or automatically using AWB.
Speed: If manually in batches of 20 - 100 each taking a few minutes. If with AWB 1-2 per minute.
Number: Approximately 430 articles.
Frequency: Recurring: 430 have occurred in around a month since the previous cleanup.
Testing: A previous run of about 1200 caused no problems.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough 17:04 19 April 2006 (UTC).

Sounds good, assuming that the links with the colon are, in fact, broken, which I assume they are. If there were many more than your estimate, I'd just as soon suggest just asking the devs to have the mediawiki parser honor either syntax, similarly to the way dates are accepted either with, or without, a comma. But if it's as few as you say, and if the devs have better things to worry about, go right ahead, thanks. — Apr. 20, '06 [17:24] <freakofnurxture|talk>

SeventyThreeBot

This bot (User:SeventyThreeBot) would be using AWB in manual mode, i.e. I will check every edit before saving.

The bot will perform recategorisation of Image: pages within Category:Logos and it's subcategories. Since this is such a large task, the bot may be running over the course of several months.

I've been using AWB for a while, in manual mode. I'd like a bot account so that I can a) separate out my 'real' edits from automatic ones; and b) not invade recent changes. SeventyThree(Talk) 05:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you be more specific about what you mean by "recategorisation" of those images? Thanks. Rob Church (talk) 00:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you are running AWB in fully manual mode and are checking every edit you don't need approval for it. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 00:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
AWB in itself doesn't fall into the bot category and unless you are doing edits super fast it's considered just like regular editing. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 06:41, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I asked because I was curious about what the user intended to do; bot or not, if an editor is going to make edits which might not be productive, then it's better to warn them in advance, no? Rob Church (talk) 17:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, Category:Logos is huge - Special:Mostlinkedcategories #8, with ~24k pages (although that may be out of date). We're trying to move logos out of the main category and into sub-categories, such as Category:Newspaper logos, so that it is possible to browse the categories. I've been limiting myself to an edit every 30 seconds, but it's a bit frustrating with so much to do. I could very easily edit faster than that - when I find a bunch of images called NFL1999 NFL2000 NFL2001 etc. it's easy to check where they all belong. SeventyThree(Talk) 10:29, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like I'm not going to get support for a botflag - fair enough. I withdraw my request. SeventyThree(Talk) 11:47, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:StefanBot bot flag approval request

I have been running StefanBot for over 3 months now without any complaint and over 500 edits [10], I think this bot should be seen in the recentchanges but I sometime do edits faster than the allowed rate and the edits are rarely bad, so I though maybe I should ask for a bot flag, I have checked all updates manually so far and plan to do that in the future also but might start runnign the bot in automode and fix the few things that go wrong afterwards. The bot have now gone through all relevant articles and fixed what it can but will be needed to run when new articles are created.

Stefan 02:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What language is the bot written in? Does it use the Pywikipedia framework, AWB, or your own code? --lightdarkness (talk) 06:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is written in python and uses Pywikipedia framework. Stefan 06:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Stefan, are there more FishBase edits to be done, or did you have something else in mind? — Apr. 22, '06 [16:06] <freakofnurxture|talk>
All articles that are sub categorised from the Fish category is updated now with the current capability of the bot, but I will run the bot again every month or so to catch up with new articles. I have a plan to update the bot in the future to handle not only genera but the higher levels as family and order. I also plan to change the various types of fishbase links we have now into using the fishbase template and move them to the reference sections instead of the external links sectiosn where they are most of the time currently. I also have an idea to put the conservation status in the taxoboxes automatically(not sure if it is possible yet). But all these are long term plans. The point is that according to the rules I now run my bot to fast, since there are so many articles to scan, I must do that or it would take days to complete a total scan of all fish articles, now it takes a few hours, which is acceptable :-). What I am asking for is permission to run the bot at high speed, and I think the only way to get that permission is to get a bot flag! Correct? Stefan 01:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Any comment to my last answer? Stefan 00:40, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see no issue with it though you'll have to wait for one of the bot cabal to give their approval before you can ask a bureaucrat to give your bot a flag otherwise the world will end and all hell will break loose. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 06:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hum, I can end the world ... interesting to have that much power .... maybe I should try ... nah, I'm not in a rush :-) Stefan 09:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Remove my comment also, even though it was given thinking that Pegasus was joking, I had not seen the discussion that explained what he meant. Stefan 02:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Your comments border on trolling, Pegasus. Please give it a rest. — Apr. 22, '06 [16:00] <freakofnurxture|talk>
Previous comments withdrawn Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 18:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot flag approved - the bot cabal has spoken :o -- Tawker 02:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alaibot

Unoriginal name, unoriginal code and purpose: bog-standard pywikipedia 'bot, doing only template-replacements on the basis of WP:SFD renamings, where there has been known to be the occasional backlog. Alai 08:06, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Trial run approved. Rob Church (talk) 16:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Been used a number of times now, please review at your convenience. Alai 06:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dlyons493Bot Request

Hi, I ran this 'bot initially to create up to 432 342 stubs such as Arrondissement_of_Abbeville. Subsequently, I rewrote it in Spanish to create e.g. Abbeville on es.wiki incorporating some improvements - specifically formatting the commune info as a table rather than as the list format of the original. I'm now proposing running a version of the 'bot to read the English articles and convert their commune info to tables from lists. This was requested by several editors and I feel it would both save space and improve readability. Other advantages are that it will use a standard table template (better for maintainability) and I can do the es and fr interwikis (if they don't already exist) at the same time. It's using the pywiki framework and I suggest running at 2 edits/min max. Dlyons493 Talk 15:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've now written the bot and tested it on Arrondissement_of_Abbeville - seems to work OK. Dlyons493 Talk 22:29, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is restricted to about 300 articles I originally generated myself. I'm now doing these updates. Dlyons493 Talk 20:59, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Now complete - all worked fine. Dlyons493 Talk 12:31, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm now proposing the addition of postal codes to the communes along the lines of Abbeville on es.wiki for the same restricted set of articles. Dlyons493 Talk 23:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Looking at the initial edit to Arrondissement of Abbeville (wikitext · result), I would recommend taking out the excess linebreaks, especially above and below the infobox, as they negatively affect the output. Other than that, it looks like a useful tool for creating articles that might not otherwise appear in a million years. — May. 24, '06 [01:37] <freak|talk>
    • Also, I think it would be helpful to format your invocations of infobox templates like this:
{{templatename
| title = whatever
| param_2 = whatever
| etc = and so on...
}}
This would make it easier for other users to make changes. — May. 24, '06 [01:41] <freak|talk>
Another thing you might not have been aware of: you can use parser functions to automatically calculate things like population density, e.g.: {{#expr:(125258/1589) round 2}} produces 78.83. It presently chokes on commas, but I'm sure there's a workaround. — May. 24, '06 [01:52] <freak|talk>
Thanks for the feedback. I created these articles back last December and this is just a proposed enhancement (add postal code to commune). I'll certainly take a look at making the edits you suggest - probably relatively straightforward but I'll need to revist the code to be sure. There's no problem with generating the data - I've downloaded it from INSEE to a local database and massage it with Java. Dlyons493 Talk
The bulk of these are now complete. There are 26 articles where the 'bot found Commune lists other than it was expecting - I'll need to look at those by hand. At least some of these are where editors have (rightly or wrongly) changed the lists, and I'll need to go back to INSEE to resolve. All in all, ended up more complex than I was expecting but a side benefit is that the commune order now follows a Unicode sort order. Once I've done this, I'll implement user:freakofnurture's suggestions. Dlyons493 Talk 17:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Down to 12 articles with discrepancies. Nearly all the fixes are typos by human editors - mostly not easy to spot, so this has been a useful QA. Dlyons493 Talk 21:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Postal codes now complete. Dlyons493 Talk 20:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Now running user:freakofnurture's suggested re-formatting. Dlyons493 Talk 20:25, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Completed Dlyons493 Talk 23:55, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Am looking at feasibility of uploading INSEE images to use in these articles. Dlyons493 Talk

Werdnabot expansion (User-talk archival)

Hi there. I've just written and tested a module for Werdnabot that will manage user talk pages for the user (the service is opt-in, and based on the user placing a template on their page). Currently, the proposal is that a user can place {{User:Werdnabot/Archiver/Template}} on their User talk page (or any other page), and Werdnabot will, at regular intervals, check for sections that are dated, do not contain <!--Werdnabot-Noarchive-->, and had a last post more than a user-specified age in days old, and archive these sections to a specified page. An example of this can be seen in this log entry for Werdnabot: 

*Ran archive job, archived 1 pages ([11][12])

I am requesting permission to (1) Do further testing on this system, ensuring that it works as expected (checking the diffs in the log and monitoring for unexpected behaviour) , and eventually, (2) Run this bot unsupervised, allowing the wider community to take advantage of its features. Werdna648T/C\@ 17:13, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Permission granted for the trial after a look at the code, this bot looks like it can handle my nightmare of archiving! -- Tawker 17:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For further clarification, this bot will only archive within the User_talk namespace, or will it also travel into the main Talk namespace on request? --lightdarkness (talk) 17:35, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It looks at Special:Whatlinkshere/User:Werdnabot/Archiver/Linkhere (this page is transcluded in the template) and archives every page in that list, so it could theoretically archive an article if that article had any timestamps in it. Archiving only User talk: is trivial (1 extra line of code), and could be added on request - but some pages may wish to be archived outside of User talk: space. Werdna648T/C\@ 17:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What would happen if the template were added to the main namespace? Would it simply ignore it, or would it attempt to archive the article? --lightdarkness (talk) 17:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the article had any timestamps in it, then any sections with a latest timestamp older than the maximum age set in the template would be archived. Any sections without timestamps would be ignored.
The reason me asking is simply for abuse. What if a user were to insert that template, and then sign the article, would the entire article be "archived" in 7 days, if no one caught it in time to revert the "vandalism"? Could safeguards be implimented to not archive anything in the main namespace? No article in the main namespace should have timestamps, those types of articles should be in the Wikipedia namespace. Would that be possible? --lightdarkness (talk) 19:18, 29 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I figured that was your concern. I understand the problem, and could easily limit the articles to ones that contain a colon in their name (most of these are in a namespace). Werdna648T/C\@
You might want to restrict it to only pages with "Talk" in the namespace. I doubt many Template, Category, Image etc. pages need archiving either – Gurch 16:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, with those safeguards in place, do a one week trial run, and once a week of successful runs are completed, please provide us diffs here to check over, then you may apply for a bot flag if you wish. --lightdarkness (talk) 17:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The safeguards have been implemented, and the bot has been run for a week, with one minor now-fixed glitch. I've kept an eye on the bot, which already has a flag for other reasons, and I'd like to request approval for continual running in a non-probationary manner. Werdna648T/C\@ 13:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Userboxbot

I'm looking for permission to run Userboxbot (talk · contribs). Basically he'd go through and substitute all non-encyclopedia-related userspace templates in preparation for deletion of the template. He'd be running template.py from pywikipediabot framework. As for which templates he'd start with ... probably anything matching the regex /Template:User .*/. --Cyde Weys 02:39, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note that this doesn't apply to Babel boxes, which are encyclopedia-related, and the bot would be namespace-limited so as to not cause collateral damage. All templates would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, not done strictly automatically. This should alleviate concerns about substituting in the wrong things. --Cyde Weys 02:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me.
James F. (talk) 23:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll run some test trials soon so you all know exactly what this is gonna end up being like. --Cyde Weys 23:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, this should only apply to userboxen that have been approved for deletion via the TfD process, not userboxen that some administrator somewhere decides to delete on their own. And the edit summary must point to the TfD log. --William Allen Simpson 00:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why that's necessary. Nobody's page is actually getting affected; it will look exactly the same. The only change is that unencyclopedic content will be remove from Template space, which is a goal that most people, including Jimbo and all relevant higher-ups, agree on. --Cyde Weys 00:53, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've been thinking about something similar in the last day. Only I was thinking about replacing all Wikipedia-unrelated boxes with the {{userbox|...}} code that generates them (to reduce clutter). I also thought of establishing it as a site-wide policy instead of an individual crusade of a bunch of admins. What do you think? Misza13 T C 09:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth that's what Userboxbot would be doing. It'd be doing a single level substitution ... since pretty much all userboxen do use {{userbox}} that's what it would end up looking like on users' pages. --Cyde Weys 16:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cyde's suggested use of this bot seems acceptable. This isn't the place to propose site-wide policies. --Tony Sidaway 12:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cyde I been an admin on en.wikipedia since december 2004. There is almost nothing on wikipedia I have not been involved with at some time or another indeed a simple cheack of my block log will show I have had dealings with bots as recently as 26th of March. In this case while I was pretty certian I knew what regex /Template:User .*/. meant I was not sure if the space would be included.Geni 17:09, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know you have, and I wasn't referring to you. But anyway, forget about the regex, this is a dynamic process and we're changing. Looks like it will now be used on a manually-constructed list of userboxes, either those that are killed at TfD or those that are killed by the new proposed template policy. --Cyde Weys 17:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The userbox wars are over - go and edit the encyclopaedia for a change. Noisy | Talk 13:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • This doesn't comment one bit on the merit of the bot proposal. Since this suggested bot would actually help the encyclopedia by clearing out the Template: namespace, I can't exactly see why you think I should just go "edit the encyclopedia for a change". Frankly, that's kind of insulting. Guess what, I do edit the encyclopedia (check my edit counts). The thing is, we have thousands of editors working on the encyclopedia and not a single one working on cleaning up the Template: namespace ... so it's kind of obvious how I'm going to decide to prioritize my time. And once the bot is up and running it's not going to take a large time investment anyway; it's just taking time right now dealing with opposition from you and other people. --Cyde Weys 16:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I took up your invitation: less than a third of your edits are in article space. You're more interested in the community side of Wikipedia than in the encyclopaedia. Anything that doesn't strike at the root cause of userboxes is shit-stirring. If you really want to stop people putting userboxes on their pages then ask yourself why they put them there in the first place. I think it's just to make their pages look pretty. If you removed the prettyness (someone made a good suggestion on Jimbo's talk page a while back that proposed a purely text version) then userboxes wouldn't be half as attractive, and might waste away. In fact, if you really want people to concentrate their minds, then why not propose that all images are banned from every page but mainspace and image space. Userboxes would lose their pretty images because images would be banned in template space; userboxes usage would die away; voila. Noisy | Talk 17:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Don't be civil or anything... Seriously, though, this is not a voting page, and we're not talking about Cyde at all. Stay on topic, both of you, and, particularly to Noisy, comment on the content, not the contributor. "Go edit the encyclopedia for a change" and "less than one third of your edits are to articlespace" are both unnecessary and, in the case of the first one, borderline incivility and personal attacks. Werdna648T/C\@ 13:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. As noisy said the usebox wars are over, and I would get angry if someone did that to my userpage. Also I have trouble enough editing my userpage I don't need any extra code to make me even more confused. ILovEPlankton 14:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • So you'd rather have no userbox at all? You do know that this bot will only subst templates deleted by consensus, right? Johnleemk | Talk 16:24, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Not exactly. As I understand it would subst boxes which fail a TfD as well as those which some admin finds T1 and asks Cyde to run the bot on it. The latter action doesn't sound quite like consensus, now does it? Misza13 T C 16:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And guys ... this isn't a vote, it's a discussion. In the end "votes" aren't even tallied anyway, it's up to the bot brigade people. So just saying something like "Oppose" without giving any reasoning really doesn't amount to anything. --Cyde Weys 16:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How did I not give any reasoning? and no duh it's not a vote, that is just my position. ILovEPlankton 17:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to someone else. --Cyde Weys 17:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well sorry then. ILovEPlankton 17:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note that even if this only deals with TfD userboxes, the number of userboxes that go to TfD would make this a major timesaver even if it isn't used for T1 userboxes. . Also, to the various objections above, regardless of one's position on userboxs, this will be a useful bot. Now as a more serious concern, I wouldn't mind seeing it run a few times on a few fake user pages with a lot of userboxes since I naively expect that if there are any problems with the bot they are likely to show up there. JoshuaZ 16:27, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support but only for cases where a template is to be deleted by a TfD consensus. To actions such as silent-substitution-and-then-as-orphan-deletion, strong object, unless a policy clearly banning all political/religious boxes is established. For the latter, your input on my project is appreciated - it's implementation would require a lot of bot usage. Misza13 T C 17:27, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
UPDATE: I just got an e-mail from Cyde. He stated that he might be away for a day or two and asked me to clarify this: what's being discussed here is that the bot being used only for userboxes that are TfD-ed or prohibited by a userbox policy. Note from self: since no such policy exists yet, it boils down to TfD for now. But the project of such policy anxiously awaits experts' input before being officially brought before the wide community. Misza13 T C 18:15, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Since it's only tidying Tfds I'm all for it, anything to take the load of a monotonous task off editors/sysops who are far more useful elsewhere. As long as it's only given the list after the debate is closed I can't see the harm (beyond traditional "zomg, rampage!" worries of course). GarrettTalk 07:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object until policy exists. No need for such a bot, any more than any other template for which TfD votes subst. Septentrionalis 23:46, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • This object vote makes entirely no sense. Should I just rescope Userboxbot as a general TfD closer and then you'd support? Then you'd basically be saying you won't support something that is limited in scope but if it does everything you're fine with it. I don't understand. And thanks, Misza. --Cyde Weys 00:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • There are not enough TfD deletions of userboxes for this bot to be useful. Since using it for any other purpose under the present authorization would be bad faith, I do not see a use for this bot. I will consider a general purpose template-closer when I see one. Septentrionalis 01:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Cydebot already does have full approval for TfD stuff. He already has (and will continue to do) encyclopedia-related TfD closures. If Userboxbot is turned down I will just have to use him for userboxes too, though I would prefer not to have to. --Cyde Weys 01:53, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Comments above already suggest that this would not be harmless. — xaosflux Talk 01:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose due to massive concerns about how the bot would work, what rules it would follow and above all concerns about the entire concept of substing every TFD'd template, many userspace templates are deleted solely for the purpose that they should be gone from every page in use, for example attack templates. There's also know way to know which ones are which and deal with special situations using a bot. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 02:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Your statement seems to indicate that you don't actually understand what this bot would do. It's not sentient; it's not going to be making decisions about which templates to subst and which to delete. That is decided by TfD. Of course I'm not going to be using it to substitute in attack templates that should rightfully be deleted. --Cyde Weys 02:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

W.r.t. babel-21 et al. why subst instead of s/{{babel-(?:2[1-9]|[34][0-9])([^}])}}/{{babel-X\1}}/g? Will it do real userfying instead of substing? Also why can't Cydebot do this and when was Cydebot expanded to do TFD, CFD, etc? I think Cyde is capable enough to work this bot, as long as he isn't going to go on an subst and delete rampage. Kotepho 07:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, now if I were to do that, it'd be a user conduct issue and not a bot issue. And yeah, since this thing looks like it's gonna fail (for whatever reasons), I'll just have Cydebot do everything I outlined above. This wasn't the outcome I was looking for though. Dividing the duties between two separate bots (not that they would ever run concurrently) would've been nicer. Now Cydebot's talk page is gonna be full of people complaining both about pet categories being removed and pet userboxes being substituted. Ugh. --Cyde Weys 18:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose per Xaosflux Hoopydink 10:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't contribute anything to the discussion. This is not RfA, it's not AfD, it's a discussion that attempts to convince the bot approval group that the bot is harmless and useful. Opposing "per" someone is essentially pointless. WerdnaTc@bCmLt 19:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it does show it is a concern shared by others as well. Ian13/talk 09:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, I "opposed" the suggested approval for the bot because of the massive controversy surrounding the bot. To have this much controversy in initial discussions among the community suggests that the bot would not be appropriate when/if put to use, so basically what xaosflux already said Hoopydink 14:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. We don't need an automatic bot not following existing policy. Make one which follows a community approved policy and I will agree with it, ie. subst userboxes which have been through TfD before deletion. I have yet to see an approved policy meaning that userboxes are not allowed to be templates, and until that time, users should be allowed to use a template if they wish, or subst if they wish. Bots should not do mass tasks on controversial issues. Ian13/talk 16:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Strong Oppose. I'd rather not have this bot running on my user page or on anyone else's page. If I choose to edit my userpage then that is of course up to me. After seeing the mistakes made in its earlier implimentations I'd rather not help Cyde write his CS term paper at the expense of the individuality of my Userpage.Basique 20:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Object Cyde has made the decision to wage war on the concept of userboxes, but, rather than achieving policy consensus on what's to be done, he's been nominating many userboxes to Templates for Deletion. These actions (IMO) skate right on the edge of disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. Cyde is well-intentioned, and I assume good faith in his actions, but letting him automate his personal campaign against userboxes in any degree further stokes the fires. The userbox dispute needs to be resolved on a meta basis, once & for all, rather than by the death of a thousand small cuts. Fighting over userboxes one by one seems an unproductive way to go about achieving consensus. This bot will speed up something that, if it should be done at all, should be done with pains-taking deliberation & difficulty. Because this bot would serve no other purpose than to further this userbox-by-userbox distraction, I must strongly object.--Ssbohio 01:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Oppose From the way you initially formulated your request it sounded quite alot like a bot meant to subst (almost) all userboxes, in preparation to delete them. There is no policy and certainly no consesus to do that, and using a bot to do it would only further pour oil into the fire. Should this bot only be used on Boxes with consensus to delete on TfD, my vote would become a weak support (though you should be aware that any glitches would draw alot of flak from userbox supporters)CharonX 20:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DumbBOT

DumbBOT creates the daily categories for WP:PROD, in periods, like this one, when the toolserver is unavailable. This bot is instructed with a date and a number of days, and creates the categories of Category:Proposed deletion that do not exist yet. It is a bash script with curl awk, etc. While it does not anything especially complicated, it saves the time for creating a new category for each day. - Liberatore(T) 14:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't see any problem with this and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to begin using it immediately since it is clearly needed due to the toolserver outage. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 14:39, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (for officialness' sake). GarrettTalk 00:20, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I really only have one question about the bot. Would it create the days one at a time, say... 10 minutes before the day, or would it create several at a time... I personally think that one at a time would keep the category organized, but I'll leave that up to you. --lightdarkness (talk) 00:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    It currently creates 10 categories at time (or any other number). Creating the category ten minutes before the day may be problematic if the wiki servers are temporarily down, but switching to "scheduled" mode may be a good idea. I'd however first run the bot manually for some time, to see if everything is ok. - Liberatore(T) 12:21, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    LDBot creates the AFD sub-pages every day on a schedualed basis, it makes things much easier and less cluttered. I just worried about having CAT:PROD crowded with unessisary categories. --lightdarkness (talk) 14:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, it's probably a good idea not to create too many categories at every run. For a trial period, I'd probably create categories for 3 days in advance. If the bot works fine, I could switch to one day. - Liberatore(T) 14:40, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since everything seems to work fine, I have switched to scheduled mode. The bot still creates categories for two days ahead, but runs automatically at 12:14 local time every day (10:14, currently). - Liberatore(T) 11:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot task approval III

Similar to task I
Task: replace header "Reference" with "References" where more than one reference is present.
Method: Either manually using Firefox, or automatically using AWB.
Speed: If manually in batches of 20 - 100 each taking a few minutes. If with AWB 1-2 per minute.
Number: c. 530 articles.
Frequency: Recurring: c. 530 have occurred in about two months since the previous cleanup.
Testing: A previous run of hundreds caused no problems.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough 21:08 5 May 2006 (UTC).

Task approved, does your bot already have a flag? --lightdarkness (talk) 00:59, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. No it does not have a flag. Rich Farmbrough 14:36 6 May 2006 (UTC).
If you wish to recieve a bot flag, run the bot a few more times throughout the week. If there continues to be no problems, you can apply for one. --lightdarkness (talk) 16:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BetacommandBot

BetacommandBot is an AWB assisted Bot that would be automated and semi automated. It will be used for spell checking substituting and other cleanup task
BetacommandBot will run whenever I can run it mostly in the evenings, EST
I want to use BetacommandBot so that I can make some of my task easier and quicker, without bloating my edit count.

that was me Betacommand 04:44, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment the spelling of this request concerns me for a bot which is proposing to carry out the difficult task of spell-checking. I'd like to know a lot more about exactly what this bot is intended to do. Dlyons493 Talk 09:32, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have to Oppose this due to the fact that there's a general feeling that bot accounts should not be used for spell checking and if you want to due it manually using awb to assist you should do it using your own account, it doesn't matter about your edit count. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 19:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response The Focus of BetacommandBot will be cleanup and substituting the spell check will only be minor it will only take commonly misspelled words like hte <the> and alot <a lot> it will not really be a spell-check more of a replace known misspellings. Betacommand 01:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There are occasions where they're useful, such as List of common misspellings in English. I therefore Oppose. Ral315 (talk) 08:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Responce to Ral315 in cases like that I will exempt the page Betacommand 20:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In any event, I will never support an automated spelling bot. Ral315 (talk) 03:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
removed the spelling function Betacommand 02:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment BetacommandBot will only work from a database of pages that I have and it will slowly expand. I will also have a datebase of DO NOT EDIT PAGES for issues like List of common misspellings in English. Betacommand 20:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • No reason why this can't be done semi-automatically, with supervised use of AWB, either under your normal account, or a special-purpose one, if you want your edit count to remain unbloated. But automating this is likely to be highly error-prone, and discovering false positives is liable to be an after the fact process of getting irate messages from annoyed users who've just reverted the changes, so oppose any full automation/bot use. Alai 03:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
it will not be automated bot but mainly semi and only for a very few exceptions would it run fully automatic and if there is a error as soon a a cooment is put on BetacommandBot's talk page it will stop editing untill I review the comment, concern or error. Betacommand 17:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then please use a non-bot account for the semis, and clarify what "very few exceptions" you're requesting bot approval for. Alai 00:23, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Actions speak louder than words let's set up a one hour trial and if the results of the bot's actions do not meet the standard's i'll withdraw my request, no questions asked and no hard feelings Betacommand 01:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose this idea in the strongest possible terms. If you can't describe the entire scope of the bot, a sample of some particular actions tells us nothing. Alai 03:28, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I agree with Alai that scoping is needed in advance. Dlyons493 Talk Dlyons493 05:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
BetacommandBot will do general clean up, category sorting, and will operate through WP:CFD. I have been doing the same edits manually but it is very slow and repetitive and I am only able to do a few percent of what I would like to clean up. During my edits on my user there haven’t been any false edits or errors Betacommand 23:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
can I get aproval? Betacommand 22:05, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, I still oppose. "General cleanup" isn't a description, it's an extremely vague reference that could mean almost anything. Ral315 (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Responce General cleanup is taking [[This_is_a_link]] to [[This is a link]] and other cleanup automaticly done with AWB. during cleanup it will not be automatic but under my supervision. Betacommand 00:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There is absolutely nothing like a dame stopping you from using User:BetacommandBot as a normal user account to segregate your manual AWB edits form your browser edits. You could then apply for botness of some sort, with clear examples of what you want to do. Rich Farmbrough 08:41 25 May 2006 (UTC).
thanks I will do that Betacommand 18:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have been running BetacommandBot manually for a while 500+ edits. there has been no problems and I would like to request approval and offical bot status. Please Examin the Edits [[13]]. There is a backlog of task that need to be completed, and I would like to end the backlog :) we all hate backlogs Betacommand 05:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, sounds good. — May. 28, '06 [05:23] <freak|talk>

Thijs!bot

Thijs!bot is a manually controlled bot creating interwiki-links on (for the moment) en: and nl: and maybe de: shortly. It mostly works on articles that have not been interlinked at all. It uses pywikipedia, and every page is entered and checked by me manually. Further improvements, automatic control for example, might be added later only after checking here again. Thijs! 07:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you aware of Flacus' tool, which does the same thing, but in a (probably) easier way? Jon Harald Søby 15:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Add conservation status to taxoboxes

I have bot permission for User:StefanBot and would now like to add functionality to add conservation status in the taxoboxes, (see discussion at project Tree of life ) I assume that I have to ask for permission again? The bot is written in python and uses the pywikipedia framework. It is manually assisted but might be run without supervision after longer tests. The bot will be run in a first big block for all articles that have taxoboxes and will then be run at regular intervals on new articles.

At the same time I would like to know if my request for a bot flag above have been rejected, approved or forgotten? Stefan 17:32, May 9, 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to use a bot to rotate the copyright problems pages. This means 3 edits per day, at or around 0:00 UTC: one to create a new page for the day (with a template containing instructions on how to list pages there, and a new section), one to add it to the new listing page, and one to archive entries from the new listing that are older than 7 days. This was previously done by User:Uncle G's 'bot, but he (and Uncle G himself) have not been active in the past few months. This is currently done manually by a few people (including me), but it happens sometimes that the pages are not updated for several days (e.g. in late April), meaning that some of the subpages are in limbo instead of being displayed with the other copyright problems. A bot would allow this simple rotation to be done automatically, at the right time and with minimal use of ressources. A quick poll on the copyright problems talk page gave positive feedback to this idea.

I have put the technical details on User:Zorglbot, but in a nutshell, it is a bot written in Perl, it does not use a special framework but is based on the WWW::Mechanize module. For the first few days, I plan to run it myself, but if everything works well, the goal is of course to schedule it to run automatically.

This is a pretty simple bot; I have a few other ideas of very similar tasks that could be performed by such a bot, but first want to see how this one works out; if everything goes well, I'll come back and ask for approval for anything else. Cheers, Schutz 12:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will be closely monitoring the functions of the bot, as I'm very active on the WP:CP page. Approved for trial run/testing. When all functions are complete, we can review them and you may apply for a bot flag at that time, if nessisary. --lightdarkness (talk) 14:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so after having implemented the additions discussed with User:Lightdarkness (the bot now updates 5 pages per day, due to the new structure of the copyright problem pages), the bot has just run and for the first time did everything it was supposed to do in one go (before that, I would run it, let it modify one or two pages, check them, and then run the rest) — I don't think there is anything else that it could/should do on the copyright problems page. Since everything seems to work well, I'll let it work unassisted for the rest of the trial phase. Schutz 00:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Trial phase completed without any problems, the bot works very well, and as intended. Approved to recieve a bot flag. --lightdarkness (talk) 14:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

VoABot

Requesting formal permission to run my WP:PP list updating bot. Below, I address some principle concerns.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 03:29, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • a) This bot is ran whenever I feel a need to update WP:PP, usually over nights and sometimes during the day, though a more consistant arrangement is certainly possible.
  • b) Every half hour mark (UTC) and every full hour mark (UTC); so once every 30 minutes. Though I will likely raise the time increments, since often it finds nothing to do.
  • c) The bot is coded in javascript, integrated into my Opera browser. Note that the bots loads page images only if cached so as to reduce server use.
  • d) As long as I set it to run, every half hour mark (UTC) it will check the protection log and go to WP:PP and delist anything that was unprotected (and still listed). Every full hour mark it will do the opposite: check for pages to add to the list. It only works for full and semi protected articles for now (I have not bothered to program in more yet)

This bot is important so as too keep WP:PP a good centralized place for admins to check up on the status of protected pages. User:Splash not to long ago worked hard at Category:Semi-protected to remove many articles that admins protected and forgot about. After I starting running my tool, while it was still part of my monobook, the semi-protected pages section at WP:PP doubled and the protected list went up in size by almost 50%. I have posted my other quick protection tab tools on WP:AN and talk for WP:PP, but relatively few people are using them, though many people still protect pages and never list them... Recently, many admins have noted[14] how poorly up to date the list had become a while ago, and as a result began to challenge its very existance[15][16]. I believe that this page serves Wikipedia by not allowing articles to "slip through cracks", being protected for weeks/months because people forgot. Page protection is, after all, "considered harmful" by guidelines. I would like this bot to be flagged if that helps.

Links in summaries still were unsparsed so I changed the script to parse wiki links back to "[[" formatt. This is really only a small nuissance, but I'd like to iron that out.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 06:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead and do a trial run, I'm interested in a few things though. It only has to load two pages right? The protection log and WP:PP, and it only does one edit to update? Or am I missing a step somehwere? --lightdarkness (talk) 13:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It loads the log, checks for listings/delistings, then checks WP:PP for those names. If it is listing, then it also goes back to the log to retrieve the summaries/date of the articles it will list and goes back to WP:PP in edit mode and paste them in and saves. It does one of these every 30 minutes while it is running, though I don't usually run it 24 hours, because that is usually just wasteful. It only edits WP:PP, on top of only doing it every 30 min (if it can find anything to do), so there is very little risk. The only small issue now is getting it to recognize deleted pages, which on occasion it still lists due to spelling errors in the explanations in the log, or a lack of a summary.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 04:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, I took a look at it's contribs and everything looks in order. Do you plan on having it run on a set schedule, or is it going to be manually assisted 100% of the time? --lightdarkness (talk) 05:13, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I usually click "run bot" before going to class and stop it when I want to do things that don't alot for background programs too well. I also run it at night. When I click "run", it checks to list things during N:00 and delist on N:30 (N = 0,1,2,3...). It will do its stuff automagically and save the page. It is possible for me to manually run the list or delist function, which I sometimes do using the tabs.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 05:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, go ahead and flag this one - its running fine -- Tawker 23:43, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Ralbot

I'd like to request permission to use Ralbot for Wikipedia Signpost-related activity. Such activity would include updating the footer at the bottom of articles, as well as sending the newsletter form of the Signpost every week. It would run every week, with occasional runs for infrequent purposes such as fixing Archives, etc. It's purely AutoWikiBrowser at this point, though I'm going to crack the code and hopefully make a version specific to my duties on the Signpost. If any other duties come up, rest assured I would request specific approval here.

The reason I want this flag approved is that I make a lot of edits every week on my main account, and would like to be able to do the same thing with a bot. Ral315 (talk) 08:12, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And for the record, I do realize that I don't necessarily need a bot flag for manually-run AWB, but I'd like it anyway to keep my edits off recent changes. Ral315 (talk) 08:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You can make very specific bots if you have Opera and know some javascript.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 16:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You said "Such activity would include updating the footer at the bottom of articles, as well as sending the newsletter form of the Signpost every week". Can you be a bit more specific on what is would be doing, and its approach to doing it. The bots sounds interesting though...Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 05:18, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, to start, it's going to be just manually doing a find-and-replace of text with AutoWikiBrowser (the links at the bottom of every article need to be fixed every week), as well as archiving old stories by adding a category to them. It might also help with manual page moves, but that's not my concern right now. Hopefully, I'll eventually write an extension that will take in the article names and make the appropriate actions itself, including updating the main Signpost page and all sub-pages- it's quite a simplistic task manually, and wouldn't be too taxing for a bot. In any event, the only task it would handle as of this approval is Signpost-related materials- it would not venture into the mainspace, nor would it take any other tasks without me making another request somewhere down the line. Ral315 (talk) 14:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Let it run for a while. Like my bot, it is constrained to a small area and does not do anything like page moving/reverts. It does a repetive task/paperwork so people don't have to.Voice-of-AllT|@|ESP 19:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Should I take the 10 days of silence as meaning that my trial run is in progress?  :) Ral315 (talk) 16:28, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well the approval group seems to be taking its time on this page, but when it comes to bots (maybe not ours, since they are low-key), it is better safe than sorry, so I don't mind. I would keep running it, and make any tweaks as needed so that it is perfect by the time the approvals group looks at it. Ask Lightofdark Lightdarkness if it is OK if you want to be sure.Voice-of-AllTalk 21:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Lightofdark? Hehe! As long as no one has a problem with the mass spaming of talk pages, it's fine to run the bot. I'd also suggest getting a bot flag, since when you do spam all those talk pages, it shows up in the RC feed (specificly the vandalism channel), so if you want to apply for a bot flag, let me know on my talk page and I'll get you setup. --lightdarkness (talk) 21:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Opps OMG...now my bots gonna fail :D!!! Thats the second time I botched your name (last time I fixed it before you noticed methinks). Sorry about that...fixed. I can't make any gaurantees for future spelling though...:)Voice-of-AllTalk 21:28, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. I have no reason to doubt that you know what you're doing. And if you mess up, you can fix it, as you pretty much manage the signpost singlehandedly anyway, Ral. — May. 24, '06 [00:28] <freak|talk>

Albotim

I would like to use this bot manually with AutoWikiBrowser, in English, to perform tedious/repetitive tasks, particularly cleanup and typo fixing or Find and Replace, mostly in Category:Stargate, at a slow pace whilst my computer is idle. To be run infrequently and for short lengths of time, but ultimately indefinitely (until the Wikiproject Stargate is complete, I guess). Would very much aid my contributions to the project. Thanks. -- Alfakim --  talk  03:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please expand on what the cleanup and typo fixing would be. Ral315 (talk) 14:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Words like Goa'uld are often misspelled in Stargate - e.g. "Gaould", "Gou'ald", etc. There are a number of common mistakes across Stargate articles i'd like to fix up. Cleanup would be the automated stuff as well as the above - capitalising character names, italicising show names, etc.-- Alfakim --  talk  15:58, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support, with the caveat that you keep it in Stargate articles for now. Typo fixing is dangerous outside specific subject areas. Ral315 (talk) 08:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm requesting 99% for Stargate anyway, so it won't be a problem to make that 100. -- Alfakim --  talk  09:13, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Endorsing bot. Just be sure the other editors in the Stargate subjects agree on the spellings ;-) --lightdarkness (talk) 13:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Stargate is pretty consistent for spelling so that will be okay. Is this bot activated yet? --User:Alfakim (not signed in)

As long as you are only changing spellings and usages that are unquestionably wrong to begin with (rather than being acceptable variations), I have no objection. — May. 18, '06 [04:32] <freak|talk>

This sounds a little open-ended to me, especially given the "for now", the "etc", and the all-embracing nature of "cleanup" (ah, the edits I've seen under such a summary...). Are there really so many of these that supervised use of AWB isn't perfectly adequate? Can you confirm this will be a) only be run on SG articles, until such time as separate approval is requested (and granted), b) will confine itself to SG-specific terminology and proper nouns, and c) will work to a pre-published list (linked to from the wikiproject, at a minimum) of s&r's? Alai 22:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. I'm only asking for the bot for convienience's sake. There are like 500 articles related to Stargate on WP. Do me a favour though - if you're not going to grant it - which is okay of course - please delete the User:Albotim userpage and account. Else it becomes a sockpuppet. --Albotim 21:07, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Upload bot

Bot User: User:ZyMOS-Bot Human User: User:ZyMOS

Run by a human, only run when large number of graphics. Like resently computer chip manufacturer logos, fair use.

It is a only minorly modified version of Upload script by Erik Möller - Developed for the Wikimedia Commons, It does not need to be listed publicly, it is not an important , or significant bot, and the changes to the original are a few lines. I only need it approved so user:freakofnurture will not block my IP. ZyMOS 00:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Origional Code


Code Changes
       @ns_headers,Content_Type=>'form-data',Content=>


ZyMOS 00:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How many images are we talking about here? Is it going to cause a strain on the Wikimedia servers by uploading so many images in quick sucession? Is your bot going to add a fair use rational to every-one of the images? Are the images going to be placed in their respected articles within 7 days? It seems to me, that there is a lot involved in image uploading, not just the uploading part, that would make it foolish to be done with a bot. That could be just me, but could you expand further on how many images this bot will be uploading? --lightdarkness (talk) 13:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have about 400 distinct IC manufacturers logos(fair use), so the bot is fairly practical. No they will not be put into their respective articles in 7 days because most not even have companies articles yet, but i will I put them all on an article similar to this, User:ZyMOS-Bot/list of ic manufacturer logos. So far i have created 3 new articles for 3 companies, but I have been hesitant to continue until this is resolved. I added the sleep 2s between each upload to try and reduce strain. I try to upload all non-fair use pictures to wikimedia-commons because i was told to by another wiki-admin. I have a couple hundred IC package drawings that i created(GFDL) so i will upload them to wikimedia-commons, as it was suggested for me to do. And again i would make the list page first, and gradually add to each individual page. But as of now I have waited until add problems are solved. I don't plan on using the script often, i think i only used it 2-3 times on my Wikihowto Site. I hope this answers you questions, ZyMOS 11:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC).[reply]
PS i change the naming scheme of these files to reduce confusion, ic_manuf_logo_MicronasIntermetall.gif
You cannot display the images inline on your user page, since they're fair use. Please link them like this: Example.gif. Ral315 (talk) 11:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was just using that page as my sandbox, but if that is improper i will delete it. Maybe you can help me understand what is an acceptable way to do this. I am an electrical engineer, it is often useful to know the logo of a company to identify a chip. I assume that wikipedia would want this information that it currently does not have. I was thinking a usefully page would be to have the logos on the page labeled with their companies respective names. I found this page displaying state flags and labeled with their respective states. Flags_of_the_U.S._states. I think this is the same idea, different licenses. I would hate to see this data not entered on a mater of protocol. And if it is not added in bulk, it will likely be added one by one for years, and many likely to get lost it time. I can not make individual pages for these. If i did one a day it would take about two years. I am also an archivist, and have archived 10,000+ IC data sheets for http://www.archive.org, so i hate the idea of lost information. I am trying to do the right thing. Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith. So please tell me how this should be done?
ZyMOS 09:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Also note that fair use images that are orphaned for 7 days are often deleted. They are tagged automaticly by a bot if they aren't inserted within a certain amount of time. I'm not sure if uploading 400 at once is a good idea if they are just going to be deleted a week later. --lightdarkness (talk) 02:05, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So i throwly read the the rules on fair use and logos and the only posible problem with the list i created is that there should be text descibing why the logos are relevant So i created an artical instead of just a list on Integrated circuit manufacturer logos. So tell me if there is a problem with this, so i can fix it. Also i will add this to the uploads description Template:Computer_hardware_logo in stead of just logo ZyMOS 07:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]



Alaibot trial period: request approval

Alaibot's been on a trial run for a couple of weeks now: assuming everything's satisfactory, can approval now be finalised? Alai 02:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see any issues with this being approved. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 02:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As long as it's being used to orphan stub templates deprecated by SFD, and replace them with different stub types, rather than needlessly bypassing redirects, I have no complaint at all. — May. 18, '06 [04:28] <freak|talk>

Babylon5

I want to have a robot named Babylon5 and here is the tasks of my robot:

  • Make Category
  • Raplace a letter with another
  • Make redirect
  • Interwiki (Especially Farsi language)
  • Disambiguation pages

Before I read that I must request it, So What should I do??? --MehranVB 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Can you explain these tasks in greater detail? — May. 22, '06 [21:49] <freak|talk>

Add functionallity to StefanBot

I would like to add the permission for my current bot to add conservation status to taxoboxes. I have asked above at Add_conservation_status_to_taxoboxes with no reply so far. The bot is now ready for initial testing (have updated 2 articles so far with no problem). See also discussion at Tree of life It is written in pyton using the pywikiframe work. It will be run when needed, first until all articles with taxoboxes are updated, then when new articles are created. It will be run by a human, not scheduled.

  • The bot is already approved for adding fishbase and ITIS links and have been doing that for half a year of so with no complaints.
  • I am also requesting a bot flag, or permission to do more than 2 updates for minute, see previous request aboveStefanBot_bot_flag_approval_request also no reply yet!

The bots history so far can be seen at StefanBot contributions it have not had any complaints so far. Stefan 06:26, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose, but only because i've just written a bot to do this too. Sorry I didn't see your comments on Tree of Life sooner or we could have reduced duplicated effort. My bot is similar, but adds proper references to IUCN (i'm using {{IUCN2006}} instead of {{IUCN}}. I'm also using the newer syntax for the status (e.g. Status = VU) and also a few other features. (see Beastie Bot). I was about to request permission myself. I'll have some examples up of what it does soon.—Pengo 07:26, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well I have already run my bot, very few missing conservation statuses found only about 100+, maybe you can find a few more with a smarter way of running it and I did not do sub species or varieties. Never got any response in tree of life if I should add {{IUCN}} or {{IUCN2006}} so I did not, if you are planning to do that I suggest you get consensus at tree of life, I got no response on that, but I think we should. Also I used the old conservation status syntax, just because I looked at examples not so much at the Tree of life description, so suggest that your bot should change to new. Stefan 01:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


User:Bot-maru

Bot-maru is my account for running both automatic and semi-automatic editting scripts; it's a throttled Pywikipedia setup which I update from CVS every other day or so, and when the script supports it, I use my XML dump instead of the live Wikipedia to save on bandwidth. The user page has the requisite information suggested at the top of this page, and it is also listed/registered over on Wikipedia:Bots.

The automatic edits generally fall into updating links (using standardize_interwiki.py or inter-wiki.py) and updating templates (for example, recently it was converting from {{starwars-stub}} to the more proper {{StarWars-stub}}). I hope to eventually modify the weblinkchecker.py program so that it can add Internet Archive links to broken external links. Now, I have received a number of complaints on its talk page about making edits to fix blatant spelling corrections and disambiguation fixes to talk pages, but those were all for my semi-automated editting with pywikipedia, and not my automatic ones. Though I disagree strongly with the complainers, I am looking for a way to exclude the Talk: namespace from my replacements, so that should not be an issue. --maru (talk) contribs 17:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong Oppose I don't trust a bot under this name until concrete reasons can be given for ignoring multiple complaints on his talk page in regards to that and assurances including the routines used can be given for how this bot will exclude user, user talk, and archive pages. I am also opposed in general to spelling bots as they in general are a bad idea due to the fact that automated spelling has so many flaws due to differences in American English (AE) and British English (BE) as well as the other variations in english. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 17:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Concrete reasons? Because fixing spelling is not a bad thing. You'll kindly notice that I didn't fully automate the spell-checking, and I limited it to stuff which is completely orthogonal to AE vs. BE- or do the Brits write "wierd" and not "weird" these days? --maru (talk) contribs 18:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because you were asked to stop making changes to other people's comments on talk and noticeboard pages as well as talk archives and you rebuked them as can be seen on your bot's talk page pretty much stating that you did not have to listen to them and you were going to run the bot regardless. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 18:57, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I never rebuked them. I disagreed with them, but I said I'd look into how to block off the Talk namespace. --maru (talk) contribs 19:34, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And to answer your edit summary I am trying to assume good faith and I think people have nothing but assume good faith however it is tough to do when you have from what I've seen hardly assumed good faith of those who question your bot. I would support this bot however if you got rid of the spellchecker functioning and could successfully make it stay out of user, user talk, talk, and archive pages since those are my only points of contention with the bot, I definitely like what I've been seeing in terms of it's work with star wars templates and once this is all cleared up would love to see that continue. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 20:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (although not "strong" at the moment). I point out in the user's behalf that they did stop the bot once actual complaints came in. If the user a) excludes Talk:, User talk:, Wikipedia talk:, Template talk:, and all other talk namespaces, and b) reverts their edits thus far to talk pages as inappropriate, I will have no further objection.  –Aponar Kestrel (talk) 20:31, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So if I promise to scrap the spell-checking, you guys will be fine? Alright then. It's not ideal, but it's not like there's nothing else I can do with a bot. Although Kestrel, you do understand it'll take me quite a long time to rollback all the spellchecks, right (there's so many I'm not even sure I want to tackle them- if spellchecking is of dubious benefit, then rolling them back would be of even less, mebbe?). --maru (talk) contribs 20:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As long as you stop the spellchecking and figure out a way for it to deal with user, user talk, talk, and archive pages better than I have no issues with it and would be perfectly happy to support it getting a bot flag. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 20:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just the spell-checking that bothers me. I am uncomfortable with any process that results in my signature appearing on material that I have not accepted responsibility for - e.g. correcting my comments - even if the change unarguably improves on it. I would prefer for the bot to stop editing signed material altogether (which means pretty much everything on Talk pages) or, failing this, attach a note indicating that it has been edited. --Calair 02:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd just like to note that this is not a vote in no sense, and Pegasus's and Aponar's votes can be overruled at any time by a decision of the approval group. Reinstating, the change of someone's vote to a support isn't going to change anything in the decision of whether to apply a bot flag. Fetofs Hello! 21:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it isn't a vote just like RFA isn't a vote but the approvals group is to a certain extent bound by consensus of the comments posted in regards to the bot so there's no way they'd actually go against valid concerns with the bot, I also am willing to assume good faith in the fact that I'm sure that the committee will listen to any valid criticisms of the bot. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 21:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the approvals group is more of an advisory body than anything else which was laid out when they were approved. They can of course approve or deny trial runs but when it comes down to the bot flag the bureaucrat doesn't listen to them, he/she listens to their opinions as part of the whole opinion of those commenting on the bot. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 21:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it isn't a vote just like RFA isn't a vote. I have to disagree. RfA is a vote. (I'm not misinterpreting the wiki concept, this is unfortunately a fact). Fetofs Hello! 00:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well they aren't bound by what we say here as such but they are bound by the fact that a bureaucrat will most likely not give a bot tag without proper consensus that it's useful and not harmful to do so so while it holds no official weight it makes it so that bot approvals can happen with community input. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 01:16, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bypassing template redirects is a waste of time. Orphaning template redirects just to delete them is outright disruptive to users accustomed to using the redirects, and to anybody attempting to read older revisions of pages formerly using the redirects. Please do not perform this task. — May. 24, '06 [01:28] <freak|talk>
Who is that comment intended for? Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 01:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It was intended for Maru, who said, among other things:
"for example, recently it was converting from {{starwars-stub}} to the more proper {{StarWars-stub}}"
— May. 24, '06 [01:54] <freak|talk>
Thanks for clarifying, when you first made the comment I had a bit of a ? moment. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 01:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

CleanBot

Hey, I want to create and run my own bot that can cleanup articles called CleanBot. It will start running June 1 by me. The bot will be cleanup articles with grammar, references, NPOV, merging, no spam, language, notes, cpoyediting, images, fact checking, and others. General Eisenhower • (at war or at peace) (History of War) 16:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How would this bot run? Computerjoe's talk 17:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The bot would be run by me and will clean up collaboration articles, make featured articles and other things. General Eisenhower • (at war or at peace) (History of War) 15:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What does it do, how does it function, what software is it using? There's nothing like the information we require here to start approving a trial run, let alone a flag. Also, with respect to the whole "it'll start on June 1st" part, please read the top of this page, and Wikipedia:Bots very carefully. 86.138.46.182 17:34, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It will use the finest WikiSoftware including VandalProof and others. It will function on the AutoWikiBrowser. General Eisenhower • (at war or at peace) (History of War) 15:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You haven't told us anything specific about what the bot will do. Ral315 (talk) 16:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strongest Possible Oppose - I appreciate your interest in running a bot, but you just have not shown the technical ability to do so. Regardless, AWB already does general cleanup. --lightdarkness (talk) 18:16, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Cyde, and oppose this bot when/if it is resubmitted. To fail to read this page regarding what the bot actually does, plus the bot's user page, suggests to me a fundamental misunderstanding about what a bot is, and what it does. Ral315 (talk) 16:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • No method / no code - permission is denied until we can figure out exactly what this bot will do and how it will do it "cleanup" is pretty generic -- Tawker 22:40, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jitse's bot

I want to run this bot daily from a crontab to perform various maintenance tasks. Specifically, the bot will archive WP:AfC, as requested on Wikipedia:Bot requests#Archiving Wikipedia:Articles for Creation. This used to be done by User:Uncle G's 'bot. I've run the script by hand twice. Diffs for the last run: 1, 2, 3.

Furthermore, I want to transfer the updating of three subpages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics, which I have been doing for months under my own account to the satisfaction of the members of the WikiProject, to the bot account.

All together, this comes to five edits and one page move per day. The bot uses the Python Wikipediabot Framework. More information is on User:Jitse's bot.

Finally, I'd like to hear the opinions from the experts here on whether I should publish the pywikipedia patch which enables page moves. In the wrong hand, it may lead to WoW-style problems, though I think that this is not much of an issue with the all the countermeasures which have been implemented (page move throttle and revert), and there are also many good uses of this functionality. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 14:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see no problem with the bot. Frankly, I see no problem with publishing the patch either; Curps' bot does a pretty good job at catching page move vandals anyway. Ral315 (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Jitse has manually run the AfC script for the past 11 days, with perfect results. Could a member of the approvals group please give this the ok? ×Meegs 06:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Permission granted to go ahead and run this, it looks great -- Tawker 06:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion of Pegasusbot usage

I would like to get input on expanding Pegasusbot's usage to add {{linkless}} to pages linked to on Special:Lonelypages as per the request here. It seems like a fairly good and benign request but I figured it would be better to get input before putting it to practice just in case. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 02:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'd recommend determing when the list refreshes and scheduling the bot to run shortly thereafter. Additionally, you may wish to individually check Whatlinkshere for the newpages feed also. I've found there's a direct correlation between the quality of a new entry and whether or not it was created from an existing link or completely out of the blue. — May. 25, '06 [10:07] <freak|talk>
Sure, looks like a good idea. I think it would be good to add a link to that template that goes to a google search of that title within en.wikipedia, for example, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=+site%3Aen.wikipedia.org+{{PAGENAME}} works, but only when there is no space in the title of the article (is there a way to fix that?)
I have made an example of the template here, I hope that explains what I mean a bit better. Martin 10:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Update, using {{PAGENAMEE}} (with the extra E) gives the URL friendly page name (with underscores), so that should work well. Martin 11:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I've been bold and added the link to the template. and also feel silly for having a conversation with myself ;-) Martin 11:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good, since there've been been no objections I have begun working on this though since I do not have the coding skills to get this done well I have had to cludge some routines together using AWB to do this and so it will probably be fairly slow going, I also won't be able to do changes as the page changes as it were. If anyone with coding skills is willing to help out coding a bot please leave a note on my talk page, I would be extremely grateful since my current setup for this is definitely less than ideal. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 01:45, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly are you finding difficult? generating the list or making the changes. Also, that special page unfortunately limits the number of results to 1000, which is a bit of a pain. Martin 11:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Couple of things; Can you put a newline between the template and the existing text, and can you ignore pages that are disambigs, as they shouldnt have incoming links. Martin 12:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am going to set it to ignore anything with the {{disambig}} template on it which should make it ignore any properly laid out disambig pages and I don't know how using regex and AWB to force a newline after the insertion if it is even possible. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 19:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, a newline is represented by \r\n also remember that there are other disambig templates like {{3CC}}. Martin 10:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot task approval IV

Task: To make a group of minor improvements to U.S. Census articles. Sample edit here.
Method: Automatically using AWB.
Speed: 1-4 per minute.
Number: c. 33,333 articles.
Frequency: Once.
Duration: Will take between 5 days and 2 months depending how many hours a day it is run.
Testing: 10% of the articles have already been changed. A similar run was done successfully earlier this year.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough 11:03 25 May 2006 (UTC).

The changes look great (shame rambot did not do it more sensibly in the first place), but can they really be done automatically and reliably? Martin 15:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, a great deal of effort has gone into the regular expressions, they are very robust. I'm happy to do a sample run of 100 under SmackBot if you like. Rich Farmbrough 15:46 25 May 2006 (UTC).
It's fine, the edits that it has made so far have been great. Martin 12:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good health! Rich Farmbrough 13:48 26 May 2006 (UTC).

RoryBot

I've been manually fixing things like cross-namespace redirects (before they get deleted in RfD, it's best to orphan them to not create redlinks) with AWB, but I'd like a bot flag so I don't have to click things each time and to not clog up recent changes. Speed would be 6-8 a minute. --Rory096 19:13, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a one-time thing (e.g. this recent business involving assume good faith). Is there anything else you'd need a fully-auto bot for? Is RfD really that busy? --Cyde↔Weys 19:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

special:allpages/Wikiproject. Not much more needs to be said. --Rory096 19:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just clicked through about a dozen of those on random and each had, on average, two incoming links to the redirect. I don't think there's really enough work here for a bot to do. --Cyde↔Weys 19:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
True, but there are the occasional ones that have a couple thousand (I cleared out 1800 to WikiProject U.S. Cities yesterday). Also, there are other redirects to policy pages that are used a lot more, like AGF, but there are others. --Rory096 19:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You did 1,800 manual edits on your main account? Aww man :-( First thing I would recommend is to register that bot account and start using it with AWB. You really shouldn't be doing 1,800 bot-like edits on your main account. --Cyde↔Weys 19:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, which is why I'm asking for a botflag now. --Rory096 19:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need a bot flag to run a secondary account for AWB. It's just a good idea, as it prevents spamming up your main account with thousands of bot-like edits. I'd like to wait a bit and see the kind of work RoryBot (the manual AWB bot) does for awhile before I can make a final decision on a bot flag. --Cyde↔Weys 20:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
True, but I'm gonna get carpal tunnel syndrome if I do this much longer. :o You can see my contribs in the past 2 days for examples, and I'll use RoryBot for another big one I found as soon as I get on the checkpage. --Rory096 20:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Found yet another batch of 3042. --Rory096 20:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My bot can bypass specific redirects. Computerjoe's talk 19:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Rory seems to know how to use AWB responsibly. As long as he doesn't veer off into obtuse formatting changes involving U.S.-U.K. spellings, or dates, or units of measure, which I'm sure he won't, I see no problems. — May. 26, '06 [06:15] <freak|talk>

BUT TEH METRE IS BETTER!!!111ONEONE1111!!1 --Rory096 06:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
BETTRE you mean. — May. 28, '06 [06:51] <freak|talk>
OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I SAID? /ME COMMITS SEPPUKU. --Rory096 06:53, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it's done with its first run of about 3047. --Rory096 18:43, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot flag granted. Linuxbeak (AAAA!) 20:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Beastie Bot

Beastie Bot Updates the conservation status of species in the taxobox as well as adding a proper reference, and generating a detailed log. It's very cautious and, for example, will not update a species if it has two species names listed (e.g. Rhea (bird) or if binomial names do not perfectly match. While the bot errs on caution, it also understands the taxonomic synonyms used both in Wikipedia's taxobox and IUCN's database. I'd like to give it a trial run on 10 or 20 articles. Unfortunately I seem to have duplicated some of the effort put into StefanBot, however my bot goes further in that it adds a full reference to IUCN. —Pengo 13:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tangobot additional task

I have developed an RfA Analysis script that analyzes RfAs and looks for possible duplicate voters. Once done, it posts a report to User:Tangotango/RfA Analysis/Report. (Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#Duplicate_voter_reporting_bot). It does not edit any other pages, retrieves all nominations in one XML export operation, and will promptly quit if anything goes awry. I am seeking approval to run this as a cron job once every hour so that it will be more useful than in its current, manually triggered form. (Tangobot already has a bot flag for an unrelated interwiki linking job). Thanks, Tangotango 17:48, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this even falls under WP:BOTS and if it does it should be speedily allowed to continue since it's only editing one stats page which is a user subpage of the bot's owner and is therefore absolutely harmless. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 17:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am inclined to agree. You don't need our approval if it's the one page running once an hour. We wouldn't even notice it. Go ahead. robchurch | talk 14:42, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Bolding" of featured articles that have been on the main page and connected tasks

I'd like to use a bot to automatically indicate in the list of Featured articles which articles have been featured on our main page. This used to be done by simply bolding the article's name; the new method uses a template and a stylesheet modification so that only interested users will see the bolding (see the source code for the page linked above for more information). The "bolding" itself is quite straightforward: at 0:00UTC, the bot would look at Wikipedia:Today's featured article to know which article should be bolded, then it would (1) modify the list; (2) update the {{Mainpage date to come}} template on the article's talk page to {{Mainpage date}}; (3) add the date to the list Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006 (or 2005, 2004, etc, depending on nomination date), thus a grand total of 3 edits per day. Wikipedia talk:Featured articles has liked the idea so far.

My first, obvious, idea was to run this script as User:Zorglbot, which recently got a bot flag. However, I thought about a useful side effect if I do it under my own username: when doing edit number (2) above, I can automatically add to my watchlist the often-vandalised FA, and help keeping an eye on it. The edit summary would of course still reflect the fact than an automatic process did the job rather than a human.

For the practical details, the script is written in Perl and it shares a good deal of code with User:Zorglbot. Any comment welcome ! Schutz 13:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No news, good news — I'll start testing it in the near future. Schutz 14:52, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's been running ok for the past 10 days or so (except for a few minor corrections); no need for a bot flag since I'll continue running it under my own username, as discussed above. Schutz 09:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot2A (WoW gone as fast as normal vandalism)

This is basically in response to Curps being semi away and the un-bot assisted WoW attack today. I'm pretty sure every reader here is aware of Tawkerbot2 and its vandal fighting abilities (to the point where I get complaints if the bot is offline). As such and seeing comments that WoW vandalism is up I have a new proposal for the codebase.

What Tawkerbot2A would do would be pretty simple.

If move is subject to subject + on wheels!

  • Move back to original location overwriting if page history of the moved page is longer than page history of the deleted page
  • Delete the redirect

If user triggers above action multiple times (say 3 times or more)

  • Block user indef if username

or *Block for specific amount of time (say 24 hours) if IP or 15 min if AOL / sharedip (in a whitelist) - I'm told I'm thinking to hard, IP's can't move pages -- Tawker 14:30, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know this one is a lot more contoversial, I'm willing to share the code on this one around a few people, so its not just myself and Joshbuddy who have code access, Pgk will also have a copy and so will Rob Church, Tim Starling, Curps, Freakofnurture, lightdarkness) etc. I'm not putting this one in a normal approvals policy (otherwise it'd be running by now :o ) mostly due to the flag it will need / the fact that it is contoversial and am putting this up for a full debate. If you have any questions comments etc please do ask below and I'll do my best to provide the answer you need -- Tawker 05:42, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When you say "due to the flag it will need" what do you mean? Otherwise, seems like a good proposal. --Rory096 06:03, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh right, adminship, duh. --Rory096 06:49, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like a great idea to me. There's basically no reason a user should be moving a page to anything with "on wheels!" for a legitimate reason. I'd be fine with the block occurring after this is reverted once, much less three times. And the IP address thing shouldn't be an issue, as non-logged in users can't move pages. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 06:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed...no brainer really. Just make sure you won't REGrette any EXceptions that might make it block innocent people (which I doubt will happen).Voice-of-AllTalk 06:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fine with me, but perhaps the bot should leave a warning on the user talk page after the first attempt. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I see no problem with Tawker's use as described, even if it immediately blocks users. It's only going to block users who move pages to targets that contain "on wheels". There's no reason to move a page to "XXX on wheels" Ral315 (talk) 07:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose now. Ral315 (talk) 06:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have nothing contrary to running this bot. However, a past attempt from a user to acquire a second administrator account has shown large opposition from the community: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Genisock2. Some of the objections raised there (including mine) do not apply here, but others do. It could be probably less controversial to run the bot using your regular account, just like Curps did. - Liberatore(T) 11:02, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it. That Genisock thing was another matter entirely. Tawkerbot needs a bot flag for reversing page move vandalism as well as blocking ridiculous vandals. Just this morning I woke up to an anonymous IP that had vandalized 29 times in a few minutes ... meanwhile, ctawkbot was complaining every single time but no one was awake to do anything about it. If Tawkerbot could block vandals on its own that'd be great. --Cyde↔Weys 14:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To my knowledge, there's never been a controversial WoW move. A bot to revert these so the rest of the hardworking editors here don't even have to think about it anymore would be WONDERFUL. :) --InShaneee 01:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No effect you can still block (and unblock) while blocked.Geni 00:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's the same bot but I want a unique username for one specific issue, full page protection. I want to make sure there is no way whatsoever for the bot to edit a fully protected (read: WP:OFFICE page, the only admin capabilities it will use are delete and move (and delete) (and possibly block on a for sure WoW move vandal like Curpsbot does) - I'm wary of doing it on my own user account as I like to make it clear when its a bot or not) - as for taking it to RfA - I've been told by some people to and by some people not to, I'm on the fence on the issue -- Tawker 05:03, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... I'm not asking if you want it to run under the Tawker account, but rather Tawkerbot2. I don't see why you would need to revert protected pages, as the bot is not supposed to revert admin edits to begin with. As for the RFA, I'd say that it is better, as we're talking user permissions usually restricted only to the sysop group, so it needs more eyes to look through the issue than a regular bot approval. (And you said that you would do it in your RfA, IIRC too) Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely not. You told us that Tawkerbot2 would not be an admin, and it shouldn't be. If you want admin rights for an account, ask at RfA rather than on a backwater like this. And I will oppose it there. No admin bots, thank you. -Splashtalk 18:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be a very useful tool. Perhaps it could be done on a trial basis, say for one week, and weekly increments added. Would that remove your hesitations? Danny 23:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A little actually. My concern is the abdication of human involvement in the process. Or at least, until a human has to clean up after a loose cannon bot (such as Tawkerbot2 was for a long time). There is also the scope creep: we were first told that an admin with a bot wasn't going to give the bot admin powers. But now... And now we're told it will only deal with WoW...but that obviously won't last...
One thing I'd really like to see is a dry run. Run the code for a week, w/o permissions and give us an output of what it would have done. See how useful it really is, and how often it screws everything up. -Splashtalk 00:34, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note that this would be done under Tawkerbot2A, not Tawkerbot2. This would be completely separate from the other bot, and the other bot would not have admin privs. Ral315 (talk) 01:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the last character of the username relevant?! And anyway, you'd soon be asking for admin privs for Tawkerbot2. -Splashtalk 14:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at this point in time I only see Cyde calling for Tawkerbot2 to autoblock vandals it auto reverts multiple times, that isn't consensus in any way shape or form. As I said, the last letter of the name exists for one reason, so Tawkerbot2 will not be able to edit fully protected pages, its a bit of a safeguard. -- Tawker 14:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 110% support. — Jun. 2, '06 [00:25] <freak|talk>
  • Support ONLY if it deals with article space only, and has an exception for reverting move vandalism of stuff like Meals on Wheels (not sure exactly how). I should not be bot-blocked for moving one of my user subpages on wheels, or even moving a Wikipedia: namespace page, at least one that's in Category:Wikipedia humor. --SPUI (T - C) 01:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Would it be acceptable to put some sort of limit on the number of "on wheels!" moves outside article space, i.e. 1 or 2 would be fine, but 3 in rapid succession would trigger the block? I'm not sure what Tawker plans to do, but it would also be disruptive for user pages, and major Wikipedia pages to be moved (i.e. Wikipedia:Tutorial.) Ral315 (talk) 03:09, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well this is very much part of the problem. We're being asked to grant Tawker the right to play around with admin powers however he pleases via some presumably-buggy code. Just because it sounds good in an IRC channel title. A more detailed specification of what Tawker plans to do would help. -Splashtalk 14:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • No. We already may have a problem if say Meals on Wheels is moved - would the bot block you for moving it back? There are just too many good-foith actions that could be picked up as false positives. --SPUI (T - C) 20:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • There are at least 14 such pages. Note that if we start looking for "On Wheels!" he might start using "On Wheels" and then "On Cheese" and then "(band)" and the keyword list just becomes pointless with too many false positives. As it is, Curps bot has hit SPUI how many times? It isn't like reverting all of the moves is hard for an admin, some can do it with a single click even. If the problem is admins aren't around, what happens when the bot blocks someone in error and there is no admin around? Kotepho 20:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Absolutely Support, This would be a very useful tool, and if it somehow malfunctions, it can be blocked like any other bot. Naconkantari 01:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and invite anyone who opposes to agree to manually revert all future WoW attacks. Yes, we are on a slippery slope here, and it's a slippery slope toward freedom from vandalism. --Ryan Delaney talk 03:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would be more than happy for the bot to have a trial run of a week or so, no doubt it will need a lot of tweaking, but I'm confident it will ultimately be successful. Martin 08:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't see why it couldn't have a dry run for a week so we can see whether it actually works or not. -Splashtalk 14:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • And hence test environments were created :) - In short I can have a bot print a list of users moving to "on wheels" but I think most of the proving will be in sandboxen (I'm pretty sure the test wiki has an IRC RC feed we can use) -- Tawker 14:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm not quite clear on how the "test wiki" fits in here. Do you mean the WMF test wiki, or one of your own? Does it feed off enwiki's RC page? Because that's what I'd like to see. Run the bot for a week using the actual RC's and see if it actually works when used in almost-anger or not. -Splashtalk 17:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I will not support this bot unless you make it so that pages with "on wheels" moved to something else "on wheels" don't count. Otherwise, you try to undo a page move (from a->b->c) and then go to edit a page, and Wham! "You have been blocked from editing". The sysop part makes me very nervous, can't you just have it generate an IRC list whith quick block links or something like vandalproof?Voice-of-AllTalk 17:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, its possible to regex it so pages moved from * on wheels to * on wheels won't trigger it (why any page would be "on wheels" is beyond me, but its a possibility that will be addressed. Mostly the bot needs the sysop flag for 2 main reasons: 1) Users cannot delete, and deletion of the WoW redirects is necessary for decent operation and 2) As Cyde suggests, there are a lot of times when no admins are around monitoring the IRC feeds (ctawkbot had complained 28 times about vandalism but nobody around to hit block) - we've already had a bot that does the same thing (Curps) with minimal complaints, this is essentially a replacement -- Tawker 17:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I say that b/c page move vandal might move it twice before tawkerbot catches on, leaving any vandal reverter with bad timming blocked indefinetely.Voice-of-AllTalk 22:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, why would someone move back to an on wheels page, if they hit move they'd have to type in the "on wheels" again I think -- Tawker 23:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When you hit "revert"[17] or in general want to revert a move from a->b->c you have to move from c->b->a. So "b" would have "on wheels".Voice-of-AllTalk 06:55, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Curps doesn't release his code, I've asked in the past with no response -- Tawker 00:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm but his style based on move speed and whitelisting is more robust.Geni 00:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Tawkerbot2A can have a possible multiple moves in timeframe feature, I'm just trying for as safe of an approach as possible. I have a massive whitelist already, so many users are already listed -- Tawker 01:03, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
WOW is not the only page move vandel. The attack line you are looking at is unlikely to be effective in the long term. Blocking all non whitelisted accounts doing rapid page moves is probably the only effective method.Geni 01:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, page move rate would be far more useful.Voice-of-AllTalk 06:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm not going to say support/oppose either way currently, though I do have some reservations about sysopping the bot. Let me work them out in my head, and I will post them. However, as for my comment, I would like to add that I've already writtten quite a bit of code (it's *technically* vb code, but it's primarily JS; the VB routines are easily translatable into other languages) to perform deletions, moves, and blocks that I'd be more than willing to give to Tawker for this purpose. I'm also working on some code for VP to monitor move and other logs that I'll be willing to give once I get it tested. AmiDaniel (talk) 07:14, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • STRONGEST OPPOSE POSSIBLE (all caps for a reason) - per Essjay here. It was said when the bot was first proposed that it would never use sysop capabilities, and now you want it instealled? No, definitely no. NSLE (T+C) at 07:31 UTC (2006-06-03)
  • Following NSLE's example, Strong Oppose from me as well. I like the bot; it does great work--I cannot trust it with sysop abilities just yet. In any case, this must be brought through a standard RfA like any other account, as there must be community support, not just support from the bot approvals group, to give it sysop rights. Page moves, fine; I could tolerate it doing page moves. Then, after it moves the page, it can tag the resulting redirect as R2 and post alerts on WP:AIV/TB2. I smell a slow creep of other tasks slowly being formulated for the bot without appealing to the community first, and I could see the bot eventually going just too damn far. Sorry Tawker, I trust you entirely, but this is unnecessary. AmiDaniel (talk) 07:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Curps ran an anti page move bot with admin powers for a long time.Geni 07:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't without controversy. Point here is that why are Tawker, and/or maintainers of Tawkerbot, deceiving us by originally saying the bot would never need admin abilities, then now ask for them? NSLE (T+C) at 07:46 UTC (2006-06-03)
(edit conflict) Yes, I'm aware, and Curps' bot I'm somewhat okay with. This I'm not. Tawkerbot is about the most active bot on Wikipedia, engaged specifically in dealing with vandalism. Following this, how long until the bot begins blocking users for regular vandalism, deleting nonsense pages, etc., etc. I smell a power creep growing here that will eventually be quite difficult to stop. Also, given that Curps already has a bot doing this.... why do we need another? AmiDaniel (talk) 07:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, just to quote Tawker from his second nom: "I've left a note on Splash's talk page about most of the other concerns but I want to make this one fact boldly clear under no situations whatsoever will Tawkerbot2 touch my "Tawker" account. If a supermajority of users (95% or so) wants the bot to have sysop, sure, I'll think about it, but that would be a clearly marked as bot account being promoted not mine." (emphasis his). AmiDaniel (talk) 07:55, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest Oppose Per my belief that admin tools should only end up in the hands of people, as well as IRC conversations in the not so distant pass (month and a half ago) where Tawker assured us that he would try to get his bot rollback, but never admin bits. -Mask 08:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Ok, well, seeing how Curps's bot (and the lack of Curps bot was the entire reason this proposal came out, there was a need for a replacment and I was asked for one) has magically come back, the need for this bot has been become a lot less critical. Despite the fact that this really is a new bot (I just added its username somewhat similar to prevent major confusion and some vandal took Tawkerbot3 on me :( ) it does appear that people are paranoid about any concept of an automated tool having elevated access. It's pretty clear that a lot of people don't want this bot and I'm not about to break the trust the community placed in me and start sneaking stuff in. As for the scope issue, its a trust thing and if you honestly don't trust me, so be it, I don't have hurt feelings. This bot isn't the autorevert bot, its different but again, from what I've read any such admin bot will be opposed and its your choice to oppose it - I'll accept it, just don't complain about the lack of it later.

Yes, Tawkerbot2 was contoversial when it came out and no, it was other users who suggested it auto block (I said it was technically possible but I've always had reservations about it). Now when Tawkerbot2 goes down I get emails telling me that it's down and that they want it back. I really don't care if this bot goes operational or not, at least now I can go with a clear conscious that my solution was proposed and rejected, nobody can grumble about the lack of automated tools to help. -- Tawker 08:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might not be a bad idea to have more than one bot that checks for pagemove vandalism (and blocks where necessary, maybe with notification via WP:AN/I or log page or IRC feed). Redundancy (or a fresh independent approach) wouldn't be a bad thing. Without getting into details I couldn't entirely guarantee that there wouldn't be any future bot downtime. One issue is that certain interesting but demanding real-life opportunities are pulling in a direction that will likely result in major time, mindshare and connectivity constraints, perhaps a semi-permanent semi-wikivacation. At some point meaningful participation and responsiveness and human oversight gets compromised, and so the viability becomes dicey. So maybe you should go ahead. Obviously bots are a far from ideal solution; really we need to see some significant software and even policy changes to get things on a sustainable basis, but there's no sign whatsoever of this happening, so bots are a "permanent stopgap". -- Curps 20:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with this proposal. I trust Tawker, and I trust his ability to code a bot. Provided that safeguards are put into place (Check if it was created as an "on wheels" page, etc), none of the reasons for opposition to oppose above really address the core issue, and that is: Is the bot harmless? (I believe that it is, provided that there are safeguards); Is it useful? (A no-brainer); Is it a server hog (No more so than TB2); and has it been approved (The only point of contention). WerdnaTc@bCmLt 07:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, you can't move it back because the original page has been made into a redirect, so it needs to be deleted. Rich Farmbrough 19:14 11 June 2006 (GMT).
This is an usual one, and I'm not going to weigh in much on go/no go except to the point that IF THIS BOT RUNS AS AN ADMIN IT SHOULD NOT RUN WITH A BOT FLAG. — xaosflux Talk 01:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Memty Bot

Contributions

I'm admin of the Azeri wikipedia. My bot is Memty Bot and run on the pyWikipediaBot. Bot adding interwikilinks with multilogin function, from All Turkic languages wikipedia (az, ba, cs, kk, ky, tk, tr, tt, ug, uz) and Deutsch wikipedia (de). Memty 13:45, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you semi-fluent in all these languages/dialects? The English Wikipedia requires at least some proficiency in any language you're adding links to and from. Ral315 (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm semi-fluent in all these dialects. I have robot status on az-wiki, it-wiki, tr-wiki and uz-wiki --Memty 14:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scepbot

Scepbot (talk · contribs) I'd like to run a double-redirect fixing bot. The bot will run daily, late-afternoon UTC on weekdays, and mid-morning UTC weekends. The bot will use pywikipedia's own redirect.py, so there would not likely be any error. As someone who had done 800 redirect fixes in a weekend before, I know that it's a boring, repetitive task. There are already three bots that outline use for double-redirect fixing, but two don't actually do much fixing, and the other runs weekly, in which hundreds of redirects can build up. Will (E@) T 20:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No objections. Martin 20:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone have any objections? Will (E@) T 20:42, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've just done two edits on it now, sorry if it was not supposed to have done. Will (E@) T 22:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry about it, thinks look ok from here, just run it in trial mode for a bit and a bot flag will be a non issue -- Tawker 22:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Its first run earlier this evening was OK, no hitches except for a repeated double redirect (which is a problem on the Special page end, redirect.py skips it). Will (E@) T 02:21, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possible maintainence tasks

Special:DoubleRedirects isn't cached that often, unfortunately. I'm also requesting it to be able to do miscellaneous maintainence/backlog clearance tasks if there are no redirects listed on Special:DoubleRedirects. This is a seperate matter for the bot, and would like feedback on this aspect. Will (E@) T 16:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For example categories for deletion has a large backlog of renames that could be done. Will (E@) T 16:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did a test-run two hours ago using five articles in a renameable category. The delete had to be done through my account, I hope there isn't anything too bad about it using my account. Will (E@) T 22:07, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a few more test runs on CFD. I'm using a slightly modified category.py which'll remove the {{Cfr}} and {{Cfru}}, all seems to be working. Will (E@) T 19:21, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Bot suggestion

This suggestion is semi-theoretical, insofar as a) I don't know how to write or maintain a bot, and b) I haven't asked anyone else whether they'd write or maintain a bot, but since the functionality is pretty simple, I figure I may as well ask if such a bot would be approved rather than asking someone to write a possibly unlikely-to-be-approved bot.

According to current policy, users without a bot flag shouldn't make more than about two edits a minute. So my suggestion is to make a bot, preferably with sysop status (yes, already controversial there) that will monitor recent changes for extremely rapid editing by non-bot users. I was thinking something along the lines of:

  • If the bot detects six or more edits made by a single user over the course of one minute, it will internally add one "strike" to that user in its memory, which will expire in 24 hours.
  • Once a user accumulates three "strikes" (i.e., the user has made six or more edits over the course of a minute, occurring three times within 24 hours), the bot will leave a notice on the user's talk page pointing them to WP:BOT and saying they need approval and a bot flag if they want to make such quick edits. The user will acquire no more "strikes" for a period of ten minutes.
  • Once a user accumulates four "strikes" (i.e., the user has made six or more edits over the course of a minute, four times within 24 hours, including once more than ten minutes after they were told to stop), the bot will block them for one minute with a descriptive reason, and leave another notice on the user's talk page. Strike acquisition will continue immediately after the block expires.
  • Once a user accumulates five "strikes" (i.e., the user has made six or more edits over the course of a minute, five times within 24 hours, including once more than ten minutes after they were told to stop and once more after a one-minute block and a second warning), the bot will block user for one hour, whitelist him, and post on AN/I or WT:B or wherever noting the situation. Another notice is put on the user's talk page.

Alternatively, for a less controversial version, discard the blocking and just keep the notices. I think it would be preferable to keep the blocks, just for the purposes of damage control (assuming a large percentage of unapproved bots will either be doing something undesirable such as spellchecking, or will be buggy), but they could be dispensed with, in which case it might be better to post on AN/I or wherever somewhat more quickly. In either case, less flagrant violations of the rules (say four edits a minute) should result in posts somewhere but not blocks.

Of course, probably some people will think this is extreme. Personally, I would take a zero-tolerance policy to unauthorized bots. There's almost never an excuse to be making a lot of edits without a bot flag; it's indicative of a lack of community support. (There are exceptions, such as User:Tawkerbot2 and User:Curps, who could be explicitly whitelisted.) Just last night I had to assist in stopping User:Marudubshinki from rendering Special:Newpages totally worthless, for instance, and I know of at least one more user who I'm pretty sure runs a spell-check bot from his user account. This is Bad, and should be monitored somehow. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:BOTREQ. --Rory096 03:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen it. I don't think it's a useful starting point for my specific purpose. Those who frequent that page are mainly bot-makers; those who frequent this are the ones who decide whether to accept a bot. This bot idea is clearly practical in technical terms, and would not be difficult to construct, so there's no need to run it by the people who know how to make bots. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 08:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I do stub-sorting and spellchecking (both script-assisted, but I'm the one that hits the "Save page" button) quite frequently, and notice in my contributions for today that I've hit three in less than a minute. I doubt this is exceptional, and imagine there are some users who edit similarly. Are you going to implement a whitelist or other method of telling your bot, "Hey, hold on, I'm not a bot!" for normal users? ~Kylu (u|t) 18:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did say six edits in less than a minute for a reason. Six edits is way over the guideline of two a minute for non-bot users. And do recall that you get multiple warnings before any action is taken. But as for whitelisting normal users, well, no, that defeats the purpose. The idea is to stop people from running automated processes without approval, and if they're making six edits a minute, they're pretty obviously automated. Approved bots who have for some reason not been granted bot flags (such as Tawkerbot2) would be whitelisted, as noted. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Werdnabot protecting/editing protected User talk page archives.

Werdnabot's been archiving user talk pages for a while now, and has occasionally had a bit of trouble appending to protected archives. Would it be possible to somehow (1) Allow Werdnabot to edit protected pages; and possibly but less likely (2) Allow archives made by Werdnabot to be optionally automatically protected. I don't really care either way, but thought it might be an interesting thing to see what sort of opinions are held by the community. Werdna (talk) 04:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well short of a sysop flag as far as I know it can't bypass a full protect. I think you know the community's feelings towards sysop bots as well as I do but seriously, publish the code, let a few established users / devs take a look and we can discuss -- Tawker 05:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware of this problem, but was hoping there may be a better way. I've dropped the code in a pastebin. Any experienced user after the codeis welcome to contact me on IRC for a link in Private Message. Werdna (talk) 06:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Making it open-source would be more transparent. Computerjoe's talk 20:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fine. The code is available here. Werdna (talk) 22:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Though I see no need to protect my user talk archives, I understand the reasons why some users wish to do this. I have no opposition to a bot with the protect/unprotect permission assigned (and only that permission, if possible -- is that actually possible now?). Although it will probably first be necessary to convince the community there won't be any "rouge bots" uncontrollably blocking users or anything like that – – Gurch 13:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I promise to keep my bot well towards the violet end of the visible spectrum ;) Werdna (talk) 14:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am opposed to this. I don't think a bot should be going about protecting pages or editing protected pages. I see no reason to endorse blanket protection of talk page archives, and I don't like it. If a specific page is being vandalised, then it can be dealt with on an individual basis. robchurch | talk 23:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have to agree with Rob on this one.Voice-of-All 23:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Objections noted. I withdraw my request. Werdna (talk) 04:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

MarshBot

This bot will use AWB and a simple script to add the {{linkless}} template to all listed orphan pages periodically. I believe this will spur the creation of links to them, distributing the work to people actually interested in the articles, and help deal with the large current backlog. I'd like to run this automatically after some trial runs for a few weeks, as this is a simple, automatic task with little chance for error. --W.marsh 17:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Who owns you? -- Tawker 17:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Whoops, I do. --W.marsh 17:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway to clarify, I'd just like to run it a few weeks manually, and see how it works out. Is that okay? --W.marsh 17:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, go ahead and do a manual run and lets see what it does -- Tawker 20:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'm going to run it for a while manually. I've already encountered and fixed on issue. I'll come back here after I'm sure it's ignoring all the pages it's supposed to (the various disambiguation pages), and there's been reasonable time for any other issues to be noticed. --W.marsh 00:59, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Approved it for a flag. robchurch | talk 01:08, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Beastie Bot trial run

Beastie Bot appears to be working well, apart from some hiccups with the logging output and run speed (py-wp-framework was meant to throttle it). There is more info about the bot above and on its page.

I'd like to get a bot flag for it before I continue it running, if that's appropriate. I welcome any feedback. —Pengo 17:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problems with the bot's contributions; bot owner is polite and co-operative, and damn patient. Flag approved. robchurch | talk 23:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tullbot

Tullbot will be manually operated by JethroT, assisting him to add the interwiki links. The standard, not-altered interwiki.py script will be used. The bot will run whenever a new article is added to the nl:wiki by JethroT to take care of the interwiki links. Thanks. JethroT 20:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for a week-long trial run, please throttle edits to one or two per minute during this time. Come back afterwards and, assuming no problems, a bot flag will be approved. robchurch | talk 23:11, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


RobotG

I request permission to run the bog-standard pywikipediabot on English wikipedia under account RobotG, manually. I intend to start gradually, and will begin by instructing it to do simple category renaming and/or removal per WP:CFD (for which I see there is a small backlog). If I see other tasks I could ask the bot to help with then I will ask permission here first. Category renaming/removal are community-endorsed edits, so the bot flag would help avoid clutter in the recent changes log. Please may I have permission to test it out? --RobertG ♬ talk 09:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are several bots that do this already. Have you asked their owners why there's a backlog? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:18, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Was that an objection? I suspect there's a backlog because these users haven't run their bots recently, and I'm offering to help. --RobertG ♬ talk 07:28, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Given that there were no objections, I boldly instructed RobotG to rename a category per CFD, and it went without a hitch. If there are still no objections then I will continue to do informal, carefully-monitored, trial runs. Meanwhile, any chance of an endorsement so that I can log the trials formally at trial runs? --RobertG ♬ talk 13:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Beastie Bot

It's been well over a week since I requested a bot flag for Beastie Bot. I've received no response. So I've done a trial run and received, well, no response. I'll just keep on running it if I continue to receive no response. If anyone feels like reviewing the bot or asking questions, by all means feel free. Otherwise I'll continue running it and continue to receive no response. Thanks. —Pengo 12:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I checked some of your updates, the all look fine, good job, I also asked for a boot flag long time ago also no answer ....! Stefan 05:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers. Yes, I noticed your request too and found the reply (or lack there of) disheartening. Oh well. I'll start beastie bot up in the morning (around 2300 UTC).—Pengo 15:10, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WinBot

This would be a bot run in AWB auto mode, with supervision by me most of the time while it is running, probably would extend to some time while I am away from my computer. The purpose for this bot is to implement Wikipedia:The German solution for userboxes, and it will be editing like this (more examples) as I am doing now. The only difference is getting a bot flag to run it in AWB auto mode, with edits approximately 10 seconds apart. --Hunter 18:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we'd all like to see a little more discussion about the German solution to the userbox issues before leaping about moving stuff all over the place, and I am aware that Jimbo has endorsed it to some extent. Nonetheless, I think it's a little soon for a bot to start thrashing about. What do others think? robchurch | talk 23:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've already been working on this, it would just be a question of a bot saving the edits every 10 seonds instead of me clickng save every ten seconds, on average.--digital_me(TalkˑContribs) 23:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The first phase would be mainly userboxes under Politics and Beliefs, especially those subject(ed) to a wheel deletion warring of T1/T2 and undeletion in DRV, this is because I believe there are already consensus for userboxes under this category. For other more uncontroversial userboxes in other categories, I will surely wait till the German solution get more discussions and have consensus (on those userboxes) till I act on them. --Hunter 05:41, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, because of the userbox controversy, I am going to withdraw the request of such use and probably re-apply later, rather...

New proposed purpose of User:WinBot

Rather than the above, I would change it to subst user talk templates, using AWB. For example:

  1. Welcome templates (e.g. {{welcome}}
  2. Vandalism warning templates ({{test-n}})
  3. Other templates listed in Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace

Example: [18], [19]

Because of the large number, I'd need bot flag to run AWB in auto mode. --WinHunter (talk) 14:08, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Escarbot

Hello,

I am a French Wikpedian fr:User:Vargenau (where I am sysop), here User:Vargenau, and I ask for permission to use robot User:Escarbot.

This robot will only be used to made interwikis (using pywikipedia interwiki.py).

You can see the interwikis I made by hand on Special:Contributions/Vargenau.

I have robot status on nl: and sr:, demand has been done on fr:, pt: sv:, it:, da:, ht:. Other languages will follow.

Thank you in advance.

  1. Support. Hégésippe | ±Θ± 17:40, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Approved for a one-week trial run. As for the others, I don't envisage problems, so a bot flag is likely forthcoming. Please throttle edits to one or two per minute. robchurch | talk 23:14, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, the one-week trial run is over. You can check the modifications made by Escarbot on Special:Contributions/Escarbot. Regards, Vargenau 13:09, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DumbBOT, second function

I have developed two scripts for checking incomplete AfD nominations and miscategorized prods. Currently, I am maintaining the reports of the first ones manually at User:Paolo Liberatore/IncompleteAfD, and taking care of articles of the second kind myself. I'd like DumbBOT to upload these lists automatically to user subpages. More generally, I'd like to get permission for uploading similar reports to userspace, so that I do not have to request it every time I develop a new script. - Liberatore(T) 13:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another use for User:MessedRobot

I've decided on another use for my bot: fixing double redirects using pywikipediabot. the Wikinews equivalent worked on fixing double redirects there, and it worked just fine. Hopefully, I can bring the same service to Wikipedia. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 03:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds fine to me. Let us know how it goes, as usual. robchurch | talk 01:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

bot flag request for Yrbot

  • Bot will be runing by human revision .
  • Bot will run occasionally for update english articles linked on es but no on en
  • Bot uses pywikipedia framework.
  • Bot will run a script for linking categories by guessing the names using interwikis of the main article, furthermore, I would like to run the standard interwiki.py on w:en to update English articles linked on w:es but not on w:en.
  • I need bot for not flood recentchages. and bot is important for internaziolitation of wikipedia, specifically for w:es

Yrithinnd 23:29, 10 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for a week trial run. I doubt we'll have problems, so come back after that and we'll think about a bot flag. Meantime, please space out edits to one or two per minute. Thanks. robchurch | talk 23:06, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SmackBot task approval V

Task: To delink months of the year and days of the week in a pruned list of articles. Sample edit here.
Method: Automatically using AWB.
Speed: 1-4 per minute.
Number: c. 12,000 articles.
Frequency: Once, possibly followed by monthly runs if needed (in which case a public whitelist will be made available).
Duration: Will take from 3 days depending how many hours a day it is run.
Testing: Several hundred articles have already been changed. A partial run was done earlier this year.
Note: This is not touching the contentious areas of date editing.

Rich Farmbrough 23:26 10 June 2006 (GMT).

History has shown that bots and date de-linking don't mix very well at all. Martin 12:12, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bargepoles! Rich Farmbrough 12:29 12 June 2006 (GMT).
Incidentally even User:Rebecca has said that she does not object to these edits. P.S. good timestamp Martin. Rich Farmbrough 17:27 12 June 2006 (GMT).
lol, i didnt notice that. Well I guess if she isnt opposed to doing this then I don't mind. Martin 18:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fluxbot request for approval

I'm requesting approval to run Fluxbot with AWB semi-automatic mode.

Please consider the uses below seperatley.

Primary Use

It's primary purpose would be updating article categories that qualify under CFDS. I currently run these either by hand, or with AWB under my admin account. Working CFDS requires an admin, as the final step is a deletion. The deletion would of course always be run manually by my admin account.

AWB's throtle feature would be utilized to prevent excessive server utilization.

These categories can be quite large at times, so in addition to running with AWB's automode, a bot flag may be useful to reduce overhead on recent change patrollers. — xaosflux Talk 04:57, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Example of a run can be seen at: Special:Contributions/Fluxbot (run in manual mode). — xaosflux Talk 05:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Secondary Use

A seconday proposed use would be replacing user space templates that have been migrated according to The German Solution. A bandaid solution on these is temporarily leaving Tempalte: --> User: redirects in place, pending cleanups. — xaosflux Talk 05:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From reading many of the above requests, this will proposed fucntion will not be executed in automatic mode until more community consensus for TGS is preseneted. — xaosflux Talk 12:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tertiary Uses

Substing in stylistic tempaltes such as {{clear}} that were not substed in during the original use. — xaosflux Talk 01:19, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

General Discussion

Both uses (#1 and #2 <three added after the fact by — xaosflux Talk>) look fine to me, go ahead and run it on a trial run -- Tawker 05:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good, I'd recommend some form of sanity-checking on the cfd tasks. People make mistakes. If the bot reads some incorrectly formatted (or just plain wrong) category information, some fool will be like "zomg broken bot" and block it indefinitely. — Jun. 13, '06 [03:19] <freak|talk>

Thanks, trials to get going soon. As for the category renaming, the current sanity checks include before/after category counting and random sampling. — xaosflux Talk 10:51, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Robthbot

Proposed disambiguation bot, manually assisted, running m:Solve_disambiguation.py. I will be using this to work on the backlog at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links; bot assisted disambiguation is substantially more efficient than any other method. The bot will run from the time it gets approval into the foreseeable future. --RobthTalkCleanup? 16:20, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wedgewood

This is a bot used on my wiki, that does the following:

  • Block vandals
  • Report blocks of pagemove vandals
  • Protect pages
  • Removes spam and adds warnings.

I will post an example of where the bot has been used over the next few days. It's worked quite well so far. --Sunholm(talk) 20:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: Manually-assisted bot. --Sunholm(talk) 20:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Whoa I oppose any bot with admin rights (re:Block vandals). — xaosflux Talk 01:09, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd need code on this one (email / in private is fine) - the community does not like adminbots (take a look at the discussion when I proposed an addition to an already well known bot) - I'd see no problems with it alerting to WP:AIV or WP:AIV/TB2 - maybe thats something you could do. For that manner, I think you'd need to personally pass an RfA and be around for a before people would take a look -- Tawker 21:25, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I may have come off a bit strong at first, reporting to AIV is a fine option, would like to see more of this bot too, especially sanity checking, there are a lot of others doing vandalism clenaup (even some bots!) and the articles can be revereted within seconds at times. — xaosflux Talk 22:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    The TB2 network prides itself on a under 10s response time :) - Seriously, with WP gtting bigger and bigger we do need some automated help to stop the vandals (who seem to get bigger and bigger) - Personally I'm open to the idea of a bot blocking pagemoves as they're a pain in the ass to cleanup but you mention sysop and bot in the same sentence and most people freak out :o -- Tawker 02:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Letting a non-admin get admin rights through his bot seems like a circumvention of WP:RFA to me. Please apply for adminship first ... I wouldn't ever even consider letting a non-admin run a bot with admin rights. --Cyde↔Weys 14:59, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I would particularly object to the automated protection of pages. (Although not their automated unprotection, I have to say.) Cyde also has a good point. -Splash - tk 15:30, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose admin bots = bad, admin bots for non admins = worse. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 06:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Side Comment How can an adminbot even be considered if the controller is not an admin themselves? Kevin_b_er 23:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Erwin85Bot

This bot will run semi-automatic, meaning that all edits will be reviewed before editing a page. I want to use it for solving links to disambiguation pages, with solve_disambiguation.py (pywikipedia). I can't say what period the bot will be used as this depends on when I want to work on a disambiguation page. I already have experience operating a bot on the Dutchlanguaged wikipedia as nl:User:Erwin85Bot, which I mostly use for disambiguation pages. Regards, Erwin85 21:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Sounds good. — Jun. 24, '06 [14:19] <freak|talk>

Botflag re-re-request

I would like to request permission for a bot flag for User:StefanBot. Please see previous not replied to request above for answers to the most common questions and the talk page for what the bot does, the reson for a bot flag is that the bot does more edits per minute than allowed without a bot flag. The bot will be run ad-hoc every month or so to catch up with new articles and slowly enhanced to incorporate more and more functionallity. Stefan 23:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you haven't changed your operating procedure any since April, just ask a bureaucrat for a bot flag and point them to the above discussion. It shouldn't be a problem given that you've already asked. Ral315 (talk) 20:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd love to do what you say, BUT the procedure clearly states! "After the trial, the bot will be evaluated from someone in the approvals group and you may ask that the user be marked as a bot by a Bureaucrat." Unfortiunately you are not in the approvals group, so I'm wating .... and wating .... Stefan 13:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As per above bot flag approved -- Tawker 02:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bot flag has been granted. Redux 03:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:N-Bot flag

N-Bot has been running on and off for almost a year without major problems, but until prompted on my talk page I hadn't thought to ask for a flag. Well, I am now. ~~ N (t/c) 22:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lo, and another 'crat is pester'd. robchurch | talk 01:18, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:SgtDrini

This bot will run a copy of Tawkerbot2's code, which was developed by User:Tawker based on User:Pgk's irc monitor bot. Its purpose is to help with the revert of blatant vandalism (as it's currently being done with Tawkerbot2 and Cydebot.

It will not run unattended and it's expected to run afternoons and night CST during weekdays.

Now, in the past week a pooling code was added to the code so multiple bots won't conpete against each other but rather will split the work with User:Tawkerbot2 and User:Cydebot, so this doens't represent an additional hog of resources as this bot will work in cooperation with other vandalbots. -- Drini 20:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I need to say this - but permission is granted to run. Obviously no bot flag (as per all of the vandal busting bots) but welcome to the pool -- Tawker 00:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I know it's already been approved but I just wanted to comment that I definitely support this and the work of all the other vandalbots that have been helping out the humans who do RC patrol (such as me), it really helps a lot. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 06:21, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SCGtoSR

It would be nice to get a bot which will remove Serbia and Montenegro from these articles on places in Vojvodina province of Serbia. Article intros are usually written in the form XXXTown nameXXX, XXXDistrictXXX, XXXSerbiaXXX, XXXSerbia and MontenegroXXX so removing of Serbia and Montenegro from this section would be justified.--Avala 15:47, 17 June 2006 (UTC) List of cities, towns and villages in Vojvodina.[reply]

Wickbot

This is a bot created by WickeThEwok originally for the purpose of repairing disambiguation links for Sasha/Alexander Coe. It is manually assisted and will be run sporadically. In the future I plan to use this to assist with other such tasks, most often with respect to electronic music. It uses pywikipedia. I think this is important because there are many similar cases to this I have seen when dealing with music articles. Though if someone wants to run their bot to fix this that'd be great, too. Thanks! Wickethewok 17:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:BetacommandBot Requset for Bot Flag

I have Been running my Bot for a while I have:

  • Username BetacommandBot
  • Total edits 3580
  • Distinct pages edited 3542
  • Average edits/page 1.011
  • First edit 00:26, May 6, 2006
  • (main) 1149
  • Talk 91
  • User 680
  • User talk 1592
  • Template 5
  • Category 57
  • Wikipedia 6

there have Been a few comments About Edit Summeries, and user pagesand a subst'ing error in HTML commentsand Finaly a comment about my bot's edit speed without a Flag. All of the issues I have addressed and resolved. Betacommand 05:24, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Actually, it still seems to be editing at 3-5 per minutes, which if my arithmetic is correct is definitely not waiting "30-60 seconds between edits". Could you take care of that, please, and also (once again) clarify exactly what the scope you're asking to be considered approved? Bear in mind you can ask for further task approval later if your ambitions grow, but a clear initial statement would be good. Alai 05:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:SmackBot request for flag

Request flag per USer:lightdarkness #SmackBot task approval III. Rich Farmbrough 15:10 20 June 2006 (GMT).

Bot had problems in the past, but the user was 100% co-operative. Has been doing useful work and should just be allowed to Get On With It. Behind Rich and LD on this one. Go for it. robchurch | talk 12:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RoryBot task approval

I'd like to go through Category:Redundant media and replace instances of the redundant image/whatever with the new one using AWB. Each image would be fed into AWB by me, so if there are any disputes over whether or not it's redundant (like Image:Flag of the Olympic Movement.svg), then I won't change the usages. --Rory096 18:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it. --Cyde↔Weys 18:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This would be extremely helpful, more so whenever bug 5463 gets fixed. — Jun. 20, '06 [19:14] <freak|talk>

You sound like SPUI. --Rory096 22:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Alphachimpbot requesting approval

This bot would run in AWB's automatic mode on my second computer using my User:Alphachimpbot account. It would automate the tedious task of assigning a particular month tag to articles listed in [[Category:Wikipedia cleanup]]. Wikipedia cleanup states that the pages are automatically assigned a month after 24 hours. In my experience, however, this is not the case. The bot users listed on the Wikipedia:Cleanup_Taskforce/Members/Members_by_interest#Bot_programmers are all currently inactive.

I've been doing this task for several days on my primary (User:Alphachimp} account. To say the least, it is incredibly tedious and easily automated. Admittedly, the changes I've made using my primary account have been somewhat larger than those I am proposing. I have removed multiple wiki links, removed stub cats for large articles, categorized, and unicoded the articles. I am not proposing these changes. This bot would only replace the {{cleanup}} tag with the {{Cleanup-date|MONTH YEAR}}.

As to the scope of the changes, there are currently 1210 pages listed on [[Category:Wikipedia cleanup]]. The bot would specify the specific current month as the situation merited (probably once daily). I would be open to suggestions for best run times to minimize server stress and response times. The bot would run at 30-60 second intervals, as specified on WP:BOT. It would always be attended, and I would be willing to submit to a trial run (although I have already been making these changes manually).

I appreciate your consideration. --Alphachimp talk 22:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would be running as the bot. I am run by Alphachimp. --Alphachimpbot 22:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, go ahead and trial it for a week, it looks ok to me -- Tawker 23:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DumbBOT, third function

On average, between five and ten AfD nominations made each day are incomplete (for various reasons). In at least one case, these can be fixed (semi)-automatically: when all steps are performed but the third (listing the subpage in the daily AfD page). I'd like to have permission for DumbBOT (talk · contribs) to perform the following functions:

  1. list the incomplete nominations; this will be done by
    1. downloading all articles in Category:Articles for deletion with a single export;
    2. check every page and determine if the article is correctly nominated, and create a list of all AfD subpages
    3. download all AfD subpages with a single export
    4. check if every subpage is listed in a daily AfD (this is done by whatlinkshere; this may require another download as the subpage can be a redirect)
  2. for every subpage that is not listed:
    1. add ===[[articletitle]]=== if not already
    2. add :*Incomplete nomination listed now. ~~~~ at bottom (or a similar message)
    3. produce a list of wiki links to be include (manually) in the daily AfD

This is to be done semi-manually: I'd run the first script, then check the incomplete noms that can be fixed automatically and run the second script on them. (Liberatore, 2006). 14:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MichaelBillington - request to run a bot

I am requesting permission to run a bot (in my own account, rather than a new one) under the username of User:MichaelBillingtonBot. First, the function of the bot (in order of what it does):

  • The bot would seek out PNG images from the new pages log. (see below)
  • The bot would then download an image that it finds.
  • The bot would run a series of (lossless) compression algos on the image.
  • The bot would perform a data-integrity check
  • If the check passes and the image is (by a predefined amount) smaller than the original, then it will upload a new version

The purpose of the bot is to Reduce the size of PNG images so that dial-up users can load them faster, and to reduce load on the servers for image requests.

The reasons why I think it would not be a server hog:

  • There are very few PNG images being uploaded, so it would probably only download one every few hours or so (no longer using new pages log)
  • I am on the opposite side of the world to the USA, so the bot would run off peak.

The bot would run a heavily modified version of my recent changes patrolling tool, written in Visual Basic. Image compression would be done with a utility by Ken Silverman called PNGout, written in C (i believe it may be open source, i'll update later) it can be downloaded from his site [20]. Almost all the work would be done on my home computer, so thus it wouldn't suck up much server power. The data integrity check would stop broken PNGs from being uploaded. If there is anything I need to change for this bot to run or any more info you need: i have this page on my watchlist so you can ask here. I hope I said everything you need to know, so I hope to hear back soon. MichaelBillington 06:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm just a user, but do you understand PNG images? There can be dire consensequenses of modifying the chunks in many images or altering the color types. If it really were to run, it would have to run where the ONLY chunk modified is IDAT (the image data) (and also the part of IHDR that holds the line filters). Anything more needs heavy supervision and care. As an example: changing from RGB+alpha (color type 6) to pallet (type 3) can drastically change the rendering of an image in internet explorer. Removing or altering chunks like gAMA, sRGB, iCCP, pHYs can change how an image entirely looks. PNGout, by default, deletes many chunks. Also PNGout is not open source; it is mearly freeware. The author is not looking to open up the code because it contains a unique and very interesting method of ZIP compression which pretty much beats anything companies like WinZip can do. Next, keep in mind that since the mediawiki software uses imagemagic, only images which are not resized will actually make a any difference. I can take a 10 kb image, and the imagemagik resizing will turn it into a 100kb image because of how it blends colors together (making it more like a photograph than a clear digagram-like drawing) and because the imagemagik output doesn't go through any recompression engine. So in reality, there's only a small number of images that it would actually make smaller. Kevin_b_er 07:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's precicely why I haven't gone and made a new account for the bot, because it would be at a very, very low activity. The main idea is that any image that can be made smaller will be compressed, this can be very useful when a dial up user needs a picture of a chemical compound (these are often PNGs) and wants to download the image, if the image was saved by a low-quality image programme such as MS-Paint, then the image size can be reduced significantly. I was not aiming for pages to load faster, but for the actual image to load faster after you go to download the high-resolution version. The kind of problem i hope to solve is when a windows screenshot has been taken in 1280x1024 and saved in MS-paint (probably from lack of a better programme). These images are quite poorly compressed and contain no data such as alpha channels that can be harmed. I could always alter the software to be only semi-automatic and require coinfirmation before an upload if you wish. Also, about Ken Silverman, he has said in doumentation from his website that PNGout contains compression code from Kzip, which uses the DEFLATE algorithm. I'd also like to say that I appreciate your feedback. MichaelBillington 07:47, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Change: I will make the bot collect images from Category:Screenshots_of_Windows_software where there are numerous large images in need of compression. Because of this I will have the bot delay edit by several minutes. MichaelBillington 08:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Change As this task is larger than first thought, I have created the account User:MichaelBillingtonBot to run the bot in if it is approved. MichaelBillington 09:15, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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