Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard

Bots noticeboard

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

Throttling?

Can someone explain throttling? I'm hitting a wall with it, and I'm not sure why. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 20:58, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

What sort of throttling? Do you mean when you try to log in and the API returns a "Throttled" error code? — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:48, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Correct. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 22:52, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

If an IP address tries to login to an account (successfully or unsuccessfully) too frequently, the system will block logins for a time. The MediaWiki default is 5 logins in 5 minutes triggers throttling; I don't know whether this is changed for enwiki. When you get a "throttled" result from the API, the response should also contain a "wait" element telling you the number of seconds to wait before trying again.

The way to avoid this is to store the login cookies across runs, so you don't have to log in so frequently. Anomie⚔ 23:07, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

On the flip side tokens expire (or they did - I'm not seeing the same behaviour on Wikisource that I used to). Any insight into this? Rich Farmbrough, 10:29, 22 November 2011 (UTC).

Edit tokens? It appears Mediawiki stores the token in PHP's $_SESSION, with no additional expiration logic; IIRC Wikimedia wikis use memcache to store $_SESSION, so the expiration actually depends on the memcache settings. Anomie⚔ 12:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah. I sometimes get a bad token response. That would explain why it can be unpredictable. Rich Farmbrough, 15:33, 22 November 2011 (UTC).

Undocumented task of ClueBot III?

ClueBot III runs a task with the edit summary "Fixing links to archived content.", such as here. Why does its userpage at User:ClueBot III not contain any mention of this task? Should it perhaps be added? I think it's a useful task. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe this was due to a bug in the config block that was given as an example on peoples talk pages, once resolved the bot just fixed the previously generated links. Not really a task just self correcting, see User_talk:ClueBot_Commons/Archives/2011/November#Inconsistent_numbering. - Damian Zaremba ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:08, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

It's mentioned on the BRFA: "fix backlinks pointing to archived sections". Anomie⚔ 22:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I will submit an edit request, since the page is protected and I cannot edit it myself. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 23:08, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Bandwidth constraints

I've re-written my bot (MichaelkourlasBot) such that it is now completely automated, and can be left alone for an indefinite period of time. However, I do not have enough bandwidth to actually keep it operational; my ISP cuts me off at 60GB a month, and the bot looks like it would use about half of that, based on some preliminary calculations. Would anyone be willing to host it, or give me suggestions as to how to cut down the amount of bandwidth used? (By the way, just so you know, the bot monitors the recent changes list to find user-blanked pages, then marks them with a CSD tag (db-blanked). It's written in C# using DotNetWikiBot.) Thanks! --Michael Kourlas^{talk – contribs} 04:13, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Can it run on toolserver? tedder (talk) 04:32, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't think so - it runs on Windows, and it's written using the .NET framework. --Michael Kourlas^{talk – contribs} 05:19, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I assumed it would run under mono. How many lines of code is it? tedder (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

It's quite short - see User:MichaelkourlasBot/Source code. --Michael Kourlas^{talk – contribs} 06:10, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

You (by virtue of the DotNetWikiBot implementation) are being pretty quite inefficient on bandwidth. First, you are making a call from the HTML version of Special:RecentChanges rather than getting the same information from the API (e.g. mw:API:Recentchanges). Secondly, your check for "page has been blanked" is to download the current version of the page and test if contains nothing but whitespace. Ideally you should check the page size first and not download page larger than 50 bytes (or something like that). The information on current page size can be acquired from the RecentChanges API without the need for any additional queries. Lastly, you get a page history list from another HTML query that could also be replaced by an API call.

I don't personally work with the DotNetWikiBot framework, but it seems to me like there are many opportunities to reduce the bandwidth you are generating. I'm not sure how easy the changes would be to implement though. Dragons flight (talk) 06:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

These all sound like great ideas, but I don't think there's a way to implement them through DotNetWikiBot - as far as I know, you can't call directly to a MediaWiki API; everything goes through HTML. I also don't think there's any way to check page size either. What would you suggest I use instead of DotNetWikiBot? Is there anything else that works with .NET?--Michael Kourlas^{talk – contribs} 07:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Back to the source- it shouldn't be too hard to reimplement in groovy or java. I might do that, but I'm headed out on vacation/holiday. tedder (talk) 15:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I rewrote the code using some more bandwidth-friendly techniques, and it now uses .1MB/30 sec instead of .1MB/10 sec or less... But could it be run on toolserver through mono?--Michael Kourlas^{talk – contribs} 02:17, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't load the user talk page until after checking that the page is empty. Also, you might consider adding a timer to ensure that you don't query recentchanges more than once every second or so. I'm not sure how fast your script is looping, but it's possible you are pulling from recentchanges more quickly than people edit. Dragons flight (talk) 03:30, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, does exclusionList update correctly when you add to it in checkExclusion, but the updated list doesn't seem to be explicitly passed back? (It may be fine, but it is the kind of thing that will work in some languages but not in others, and I'm not personally familiar with .NET) Dragons flight (talk) 03:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pass by reference for that case.--Michael Kourlas^{talk – contribs} 04:34, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

ClueBot NG

See here. Rcsprinter (whisper) 20:33, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Looking for bot operator

I am looking for a bot operator who is willing to take over some tasks from VeblenBot and PeerReviewBot. These run on the toolserver, so someone with a toolserver account would be able to just copy the code and it would work. The code itself is very stable and has been running for years without trouble. I simply want to reduce the number of bot tasks I am responsible for.

The tasks are:

• Archive old peer reviews, and notify the Peer review project when the page WP:PR is too big
• Update WP:PERTABLE and WP:SPERTABLE
• Make lists of category contents - these are used by the Peer Review and Good Article projects
• Post notices on the village pump about pages that are marked as policies or guidelines

If you might be interested in taking over one of these, please let me know. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I could ... I have a couple of non-admin bot accounts that are inactive. Since User:7SeriesBOT is always running, no harm in running another ... (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 14:14, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

If Bwilkins doesn't want it, I'd take the updating of WP:PERTABLE and WP:SPERTABLE. Anomie⚔ 18:05, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Do I need to submit any BFRA notification to change this to one of my bot accounts? (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 20:18, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but if it's the same code or just minor changes it would be speedyable. Anomie⚔ 15:52, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Bot running without permission (and doing the wrong thing); owner inactive since mid-October

KuduBot (talk · contribs)'s task was to create the Category:Wikipedia files missing permission subcategories, but, due to inactivity on part of the owner, the request was marked as expired. Even so, the bot has continued to make these categories, and it is doing them incorrectly for the single-digit days (see what it created and where the files are actually located), so it should probably be blocked. It would be nice to have a bot that actually does this correctly, though... Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 15:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

That's a relatively trivial bot to write, but I cant. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 15:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree, that's pretty trivial. I can have 28bot do this... do I need to open a formal BRfA for an additional task? 28bytes (talk) 16:55, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Bot blocked. Yes, but I'll speedy approve it. --Chris 17:38, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

BRfA added. 28bytes (talk) 19:02, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikispecies needs help!

I already brought it up to the discuss page at wikispecies but well there aren't many bot-master around to help the issue as someone has said. There are plenty of bot-master here at wikipedia so i think some of them should go to wikispecies to take over the issue. The issue here is there are many missing links connect wikispecies to wikipedia. Plus there are still missing tons of Vernacular names in the Vernacular names section. The Vernacular names can be copy from the links of each other language if they have one. So hope someone will consider this and inform bot-master to go to work over there. Thanks!Trongphu (talk) 02:47, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Skeptical; you can't just mindlessly copy titles and claim they are vernacular names. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 07:06, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Well i don't really get what you mean by that? Ok let put it this way. Let say there is a link to Vietnamese Wikipedia for cat [[vi:mèo]] then "mèo" is a vernacular names for Vietnamese language and could be put in vernacular name section. That's what i meant. Plus that's not the only thing, the links needed to be update. Some of them is missing quite a bit of links to other wikipedia languages that already exist.Trongphu (talk) 23:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Ive got some old code laying around for wikispiecies interwiki links. If you could point me to the relevant discussions on wikispecies Ill take a stab at it. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 02:01, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

DAB (Disambiguation) bot causing problems

There's a bot to assist disambiguating links; however it appears to be damaging pages. I am leaving this note here since the author's page is marked inactive.

User_talk:Josh_Parris

Talk:Augustan_literature

You may notice strange strings of the form link:1 through link:5 on this page. Every time someone clicks a DAB Solver button to disambiguate a term, and tries to fix it, the term is replaced by link:n. The original text is not merely obscured but destroyed from the article source text. So, someone must identify all of these and if necessary go through the article history to recover the missing terms.