Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval

"Deapproval"

Could someone please tell me what the process is (if indeed there is a process) for getting the approval of a bot task overturned? ListasBot's third task was approved after a discussion involving only two editors (the bot owner and one BAG member), and I feel the the decision may have to be reassessed. Thanks, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:05, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Block it, and then create discussion somewhere - an RFC, talk page, or VPM would be fine. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 16:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the official "process" at this time is to begin a discussion on this talk page. Immediate blocking would IMO not be appropriate in many cases; that should only be done when the bot is actively causing harm or acting against consensus and not just because any random admin wants to start a discussion. Anomie⚔ 21:18, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I was assuming harm was being done. No, you're quite right, better to discuss first. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:27, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I've moved this discussion here. Thanks, Matt (talk) 03:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Reexamination of Tomerbot

Unfortunately it was decided not to approve my Bot to its main purpose which is making categories out of lists. I would still need a bot flag for the task of putting Hebrew Interwikis so the bot can operate correctly in the Hebrew Wikipedia. Tomer A. 13:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You may file another BRFA as "Tomerbot 2" if you just want approval to do IW. –xeno ^talk 14:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that should be quick and uncontroversial. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:45, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

10x. Tomer A. 20:08, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

a serious problem

A number of bots rely on the {{DEFAULTSORT}} or {{Persondata}} parameters, or the listas parameter in biography templates. The data encoded in these templates may be reliable for individuals whose names are in the European naming style of inherited surnames.

Unfortunately, over the years, well-meaning, but ill-advised volunteers have mistakenly assumed Arabic and Chinese names should also be shoehorned into the European naming scheme. This is a problem. And bots that treat this data as reliable are compounding an already serious problem.

I suggest no bot that relies on this unreliable data should be approved. Geo Swan (talk) 08:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

People reading this should probably look at WP:Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents#A rogue bot (most recent diff) and User_talk:Mikaey#It is a big mistake to try to shoehorn traditional Arabic names into the European naming scheme of inherited surnames... to get an idea of what's going on. Matt (talk) 08:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The Defaultsortbot is only one of the bots recently approved that compounds this mistake. The recently approved listasbot also relies on the unreliable data in these parameters. Various robot-assisted editing tools rely on the unreliable data in these parameters. Geo Swan (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

As you have been told several times already in the linked discussions, the bot is not adding DEFAULTSORT de novo; it is only copying what a human editor has already placed in a listas parameter, persondata template, or the like. There is not much that can be done about GIGO, so unless you can provide evidence that this problem is widespread enough that a significant fraction of the bot's edits will be erroneous I can't see that anything needs to be done here. One possibility, if you can supply a sufficiently accurate heuristic, would be for the bot to ignore or log pages with seemingly-Arabic names for human review.

BTW, Geo Swan, I notice in your contribs that you recently went through a number of articles on people with Arabic names and removed the listas parameter from {{WPBiography}}. It would have made much more sense to replace it with the "correct" value instead, possibly also with a comment pointing out why that is the correct value. Otherwise, well-meaning but misinformed editors are likely to repeat the same mistake. Anomie⚔ 12:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Let be clear about impatience my raising of the corrupt information the bots are relying on has generated. Don't shoot the messenger. This situation is an enormous mess, and it is a mess I do not believe I played any role in generating. I regard this impatience as inappropriate. I would appreciate those expressing it to reserve any expressions of impatience until after we have discussed the various suggestions I have been getting about what I did wrong.

I know I have been told that the various bots and humans assisted by robot editing tools are not naively shoehorning bogus surnames into articles about non-Europeans "de novo". And I know this is incorrect. Here is an instance:

If you look at the edit summary that includes "AWB", it means that it was actually Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser that suggested that, in the attempt to add the "listas" section to the template. I didn't know it was incorrect, so I let the tool do its thing.

User:Raven1977 was responding to a question I asked him about his or her addition of a bogus listas to Talk:Abbas Habid Rumi Al Naely. A few days earlier another contributor had added a bogus listas to Talk:Abbas Habid Rumi Al Naely. I asked him or her why. And that first contributor told me their edit was based on the (bogus IMO) value in the article's {{DEFAULTSORT}}. I subsequently removed the article's {{DEFAULTSORT}}. So this second guy, with the assistance of AWB, was naively adding these bogus values "de novo". I corrected the articles this second guy was naively munged, that were on my watchlist. When I looked at his most recent contribution history I saw he or she had recently added listas fields to SEVERAL HUNDRED other articles on individuals with Arabic names.

Their comment, "...so I let the tool do its thing." As you stated above, a human should be in the loop. A human should be making an informed choice as to whether to follow, or over-ride, the bot's suggestion. Alarmingly Raven1977 was abdicating responsibility to provide the informed decision-making. I wrote the author of AWB. He told me that AWB only suggested inserting a default sort, or listas, when a human had already made an informed choice that one was appropriate. So, how come Raven1977's use AWB was suggesting bogus values "de novo"? I dunno.

I am afraid you are mistaken. Early in the history of placing DEFAULTSORT and listas parameters there were bots that went around placing wild guesses at what individuals surnames were, without consideration to the billions of individuals who had names that didn't fit in that scheme. User:Jim Cubb acknowledged this on my talk page, and I have come across records of these bot's operations myself. So, no offense, I do believe a "significant fraction" of the bot's operation will be erroneous.

As I tried to point out to Raven1977, when he or she was compounding the problem by relying on unreliable advice from AWB, they were affecting 3 articles per minute. In my limited attempts to clean up after Raven1977 I was averaging about one article every three minutes. See the problem? The clean-up is much more time-consuming than compounding the error in the first place.

Anomie, implicit in your comment is the assumption that treating individuals with European style inherited lastname-surnames should be considered the standard case. I think that is backwards. Billions of individuals have names best sorted starting with the first character, proceeding smoothly to the last character. Arabic influenced names aren't the only ones. 1.3 billion Chinese people have surnames -- but their surnames begin their name, not end it. It is European style names that need to be treated as the exception -- not the default. In my opinion these bots should be leaving alone all biographical articles unless there is some reason to believe the individual's name uses the European style.

Various other people have suggested that, instead of removing the bogus listas and DEFAULTSORT values, I should have replaced them with "correct" values. No one has asked if I think this is a good idea. Actually, I considered doing this. I considered it, and decided it was a really bad idea. I have about 700 1000 articles about individuals with Arabic names on my watchlist. The more references I come across to these individuals, the more choices I see to transliterations and renderings we would need to chose among to pick a base name the other names should be redirected to. Most of those 1000 names have been moved, at least once. When I choose, or participate in the choice of which alternative transliteration should be at the base name, the choice is largely arbitrary. And it is likely to be reversed, or superceded.

It is safe assumption that articles about individuals with Arabic names are likely to be renamed. So, adding in the current article name, in the listas field, and in the DEFAULTSORT parameter, is simply an invitation to an additional maintenance burden. In my opinion, it is a totally unnecessary one. In my opinion it should be the European-styled names that should be considered the exception. Non-European-styled names should be able exist without a mutable, troublesome defaultsort, when the sort key for them is identical to whatever the current name of the article is, not the name that was current when the bogus Europeanized surname was shoehorned in.

Let me be frank. Whoever first thought up the idea of automating sorting, made a mistake when they didn't foresee that the billions of individuals who don't have European style inherited lastname-surnames would require a tag, or some other mechanism, to tell bots this individual should not be treated as if they had a European style inherited surname. There should have been a template with a name like {{NoDefaultSortOk}} or {{NoListasOk}}. This should have been the default. And, I suggest, even though it is rather late in the day, it would make sense to establish a convention that the listasbot, the defaultsortbot, AWB, Kingbotk, and all other bots leave alone artcles with a tag that tells them the article is not someone with a European style name.

Candidly, Geo Swan (talk) 17:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:TLDR. A long rant, examples of human editors screwing up, and assertions without evidence will not help your case. If you want something done, you'll have to provide a clear, concise suggestion of a positive course of action. Random assertions about the population of China mean absolutely nothing; more useful would be the number of articles on the English Wikipedia with "European" versus "non-European" names. Anomie⚔ 19:37, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

It's true that it's a problem. I hope that we can recruit people knowledgeable in Arabic (and Persian) conventions to confirm the sorting of these names. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:04, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Open Wikipedia bot requests for approval

There sure seem to be a lot more pages in Category:Open Wikipedia bot requests for approval than are listed as still open on this page. --Pascal⁶⁶⁶ 05:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I went through and removed those that had been approved/denied, but someone else needs to have a look see which if any have slipped through the net. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 06:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

There are only 15 there at the moment, and they all appear to still be open; nothing looks to have slipped through the cracks. Useight (talk) 03:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InputInit

I added "Estimated number of pages affected" to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InputInit. It's something I've been meaning to do for ages. Let me know if there are any issues. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:29, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

What should be entered for any task that's intended to be an ongoing task? For example, User:WebCiteBOT, User:ClueBot, and so on. Anomie⚔ 23:47, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

n/a? Or perhaps 1 page per day or whatever. Obviously this won't apply to all bots, but it is something that comes frequently and the question is rarely asked enough. If it doesn't apply, bot ops can skip over it or write "n/a". Though I'd imagine even bots like ClueBot have an estimate of how many pages they edit per day. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:00, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and clarified that in the comment. Although really estimating for some bots would require a good deal of study to determine beforehand. Anomie⚔ 02:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Lightbot

With the completion of the date delinking arbitration case, I was just wondering what next steps, if any, needed to be taken by BAG. Lightbot (talk · contribs) hasn't been banned directly, but that's the effective result of the remedies related to Lightmouse (talk · contribs). Just wondering if it's appropriate for BAG to revoke any task approvals for Lightbot that still exist, and ask a 'crat to remove the account's bot flag and block the account in accordance with the remedies? I also note that Lightbot isn't listed anywhere on the status page. Mlaffs (talk) 15:43, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the 'crats should remove the bot flag and an admin should block the account, as Lightmouse is indefinitely prohibited from using any sort of automation. As far as I'm concerned, Lightmouse must (1) successfully appeal to ArbCom to have that prohibition revoked, and then (2) request (re-)approval before running any sort of bot in the future. Anomie⚔ 02:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

User:fl blocked it, but a crat still needs to deflag. – Quadell ^(talk) 12:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested at WP:BN#Lightbot. Anomie⚔ 14:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Done by Dweller Anomie⚔ 00:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Why do we have a bot creating redirects that are handled by case insensitivity in the search box?

Resolved

 – Supplementary BRFA filed by operator to ensure community consensus exists for these redirects. –xeno^talk 13:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

BOTijo (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BOTijo 2. This may have been approved before case-insensitivity in the search field was implemented and the task may now need to be revoked - it seems to be creating many unnecessary redirects. –xeno^talk 21:12, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I've temporarily blocked the bot, I think this task should be stopped while this is looked at. –xeno^talk 21:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Xeno. Please, read this (Other capitalisations, to ensure that "Go" to a mixed-capitalisation article title is case-insensitive). Regards. Emijrp (talk) 22:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I've done a little experimenting, and it is still the case that an article with some words capitalized and some not will not be found by the Go button. Anomie⚔ 23:26, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you give an example? All garblings of an initial-cap title like Francis Ford Coppola are supposed to be handled correctly by Mediawiki. Like fRancis fOrd cOppola, which works for me with the Go button, though it's a red link when bracketed in running text. This is explained in the link given above by Emijrp. EdJohnston (talk) 23:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, a title with all words capped will work. But try something like "barack obama speech to joint session of congress, 2009" which has a mix of capped and uncapped words (as stated pretty much everywhere discussing this issue); it won't bring you to Barack Obama speech to joint session of Congress, 2009. Anomie⚔ 00:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be solved by a fix to the software rather than having a bot create redirects non-stop? However, since this is a new facet that I was not previously aware of, I don't object to the bot resuming operations in the meanwhile. –xeno^talk 00:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The search box is not the only navigation tool. Many of us just type the page name we want directly into the URL. Also, redirects are usefully for linking. One can debate the merits of this task, but basing it on the search box alone is shortsighted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• Based on the new information, all I would like is an active BAG member to rubberstamp the BRFA. The closing statement didn't really give me any confidence in the community's approval for the task. –xeno^talk 00:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
• We have the search box in its present form, with its present limitations. We need a way of working around them, and this bot will do it. When we have a better search function, we can reconsider whether it is still necessary. Waiting for a fix in the software can take years. DGG (talk) 03:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• The software does not handle these automatically. It is quite often that I arrive at a nonexistent page because of miscapitalization. For example, as JLaTondre says, one can simply edit the URL bar to go to an article (or construct such a URL by software), and this does not work when there are capitalization issues. Also, redlinks are case sensitive: Bell Jar really ought to be a redirect to Bell jar or The Bell Jar. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Hmmm, I won't say it's anti-wiki to create these redirects automatically, but it can lead to a lot of noise. Natural creation of redirects is usually better because there's a demonstrable time when someone tried to navigate somewhere and failed. If, after eight years, nobody has bothered to create a redirect at "Bell Jar," I'm not sure I see a compelling reason to do so now with a bot. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I create these when I run into them, usually. I would prefer if there was a bot doing it so I wouldn't notice them at all. But this bot request was even more specific (read: conservative) than that; it only covers things like Urban Adult Contemporary Airplay panel where it is truly painful to guess the right capitalization. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
    • @CBM, yes, I see now that I was working from an erroneous misunderstanding of the case-insensitivity function of the search box. Nevertheless, I'm of the same mind as MZMcBride. While I see now why these redirects are necessary due to the WP:MIXEDCAPS issue, I don't think many of them will ever be used. Especially the "barack obama speech ..., 2009" mentioned above. Doubt someone really knows the full name to type into the search box for that =) –xeno^talk 12:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
• My 2¢: considering that the BRFA was nearly two years ago and generated very little attention at the time, it wouldn't hurt to create a new one for the task in order to properly judge community consensus. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BOTijo 2 (again). Emijrp (talk) 13:40, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Anybot's latest approval

The anybot owner says it didn't change the articles this time with the same bot but with "a different bot."[1] I don't see the bot approval discussion in Martin's edit history.[2]

Please explain the basics of this to me in relation to this group. It seems each bot requires approval by the board on the project page, then flagging by a bureaucrat to operate. And that this must be done for each new task. If this is "a different bot" shouldn't it have a request for approval?

There are a lot of subpages for this project. This post is about "requests for approval," so I think this is the correct place to ask this. Was this bot approved? Did it require approval? Or was I mistaken in thinking that because the bot was blocked the issue could safely be discussed without additional problems arising? --69.226.103.13 (talk) 07:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Request for deflagging and blocking of Anybot

In accordance with Wikipedia:Bot policy#Appeals and reexamination_of_approvals, this is a formal request for Anybot to be deflagged and indefinitely blocked.

Anybot has now had four major runs. The first run, in February, introduced many major errors, by admission of Martin, the bot operator.[3] The second run, in March and April, fixed some of these errors; but it didn't even come close to making these articles acceptable. From April on, Martin was being asked to address problems introduced by his bot, and did not do so. For example, on 6 March Rkitko pointed out that Anybot had wrongly described thousands of cyanobacteria as algae[4], and raised the matter again on 21 April[5], but as of today, 26 June, Rkitko hasn't received a reply[6] and these articles have still haven't been fixed.[7]

Anybot ran for a third time in May and June, and continued to introduce errors. It also exhibited unacceptable behaviours such as edit warring.[8][9] Martin has stated that he did not run the bot at this time, and that whoever did run it was not authorised to do so; apparently anyone could run the bot by visiting a certain webpage; he did not bother to secure the page because he figured no-one knew of its existence—security through obscurity.[10][11]

The extent of the problem did not become clear until the last couple of weeks, when 69.226.103.13, who appears to have expertise in this area, spoke out strongly on the matter at WT:PLANTS. There was a long discussion, during which it became clear that there were so many wrong articles, with so many errors, of some many different types, that the only way they could be fixed is they were individually manually repaired by a phycologist. This would take thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of hours; it would probably be quicker to delete them and write them all from scratch. Therefore I sent all 4000 articles to AfD; consensus seems to be emerging there that they will need to be deleted.[12]

One result of the AfD discussion was that it finally prompted Martin to respond. Having discovered that the bot had been run without his authorisation, he blocked it. He then began working on a bot that would fix the errors. Once this bot was ready, he announced his intention of running it. A number of people objected to the idea that Anybot could be trusted to fix these errors.[13][14][15] But despite these objections, and calls for the bot to be deflagged,[16][17][18][19] Martin unblocked the bot and set it going, apparently without a test run, and without notifying or seeking approval from the BAG.

This fourth run put a great many articles into a novel state, including introducing new errors, such as classifying diatoms as plants.[20] These were all new edits, not reverts; but disturbingly, every edit was marked as minor, and given the misleading edit summary "Restore article to last good version."[21] The bot also edited at least one article that it had never edited before,[22] despite Martin's assurance that it had only edited articles created by Anybot and not since edited by a human.[23] I have now reblocked the bot.

In summary, this bot has been a complete disaster from start to finish. Martin may have the best of intentions but he has presided over a monumental screwup and his bot cannot be trusted at any level. I am seeking to have Anybot deflagged and indefinitely blocked on the grounds that

• it introduces major errors of facts on a massive scale, every time it is run;
• it has exhibited unacceptable behaviours such as edit warring and the use of misleading edit summaries;
• the bot owner failure to secure the bot account;
• the bot owner failed to address and fix errors in a timely manner;
• the bot owner has unblocked and run the bot in the face of community opposition to him doing so.

Hesperian 03:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

anybot (talk · contribs · count) 's BRFA approval page Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/anybot -- Tinu Cherian - 04:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment: Anybot is currently indefinitely blocked. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anybot's_algae_articles#Solution. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like an appropriate solution. Unless any other BAG members object, I'll mark Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/anybot as revoked in a few hours.

As for the deleting, whoever tags the pages for deletion (or runs an adminbot to just delete them) should have that task approved in the normal way; it's not so urgent that WP:IAR is needed, IMO. If no one beats me to it, I may write a quick script to generate the list of pages needing deletion, at which point any admin approved for mass-deletion (e.g. with AWB) could handle it. Anomie⚔ 22:24, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It is done. Anomie⚔ 03:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Anomie, but if the community reaches the consensus that they should all be deleted, then they all get deleted. You don't get to end-run around the outcome of the AfD. If you read the AfD carefully, you will find reasons given why it is insufficient to "delete all articles which have only been edited by Anybot (and maintenance bots such as User:Addbot)". In short, the articles must be assumed to have been error-ridden at the time of creation, and the fact that some have been edited since does not imply that they have corrected or verified; more than likely the subsequent edits were merely cosmetic, since there are very few editors here with the expertise to contribute content or corrections on this topic. Hesperian 04:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't give a crap about AfD, and the unapproving of anybot is exactly what you asked for. What's your point? Anomie⚔ 04:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)