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    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.

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    Can We Get a Ruling

    ...over here? The bot's been doing the same tasks since day 1, no amendments to the code ... today, it's suddenly blocked. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 01:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    The request at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/7SeriesBOT says that only deletions that comply with WP:CSD#G7 will be done. Because G7 specifically and explicitly excludes user talk pages, that means that the bot approval must also exclude such pages. It would probably be better to get consensus at WT:CSD that this bot has an exception to the normal G7 rules. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:CSD#G7 and WP:CSD#U1 both explicitly state that user talk pages are not to be deleted under those criteria. User pages deleted under WP:DELTALK should certainly not be done by a bot, as they are only done in exceptional circumstances, and bots are no good at detecting something as general and vague as "exceptional circumstances". Seems pretty black and white to me. Just because the bot has been doing it for awhile with no complaints doesn't necessarily mean that it's ok, it just means that no one has noticed until now. —SW— communicate 02:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems there is a current discussion about this very topic here. —SW— express 02:32, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I've re-read both BRfAs and the associated deletion criteria. As Scottywong mentions, there is an "except under very exceptional circumstances" get-out clause, and I'd suggest that only one editor (per Task 1) is an exceptional circumstance. I may be a lack of imagination or experience on my part, but I can't see when a Task 1 deletion would be bad. Josh Parris 03:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    ...and look at the incidents where the usertalk page has been deleted ... in one case someone warned them, removed the warning, then tagged for G7 ... looks like an obvious case (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally, when I find those, I remove the {{db-g7}} and replace with a welcome template. Reaper Eternal (talk) 17:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Wouldn't the obvious compromise be to only delete user talk pages if the single contributor was the user? I can't imagine there would be any concerns about deletion then. And really, it's not like there's a huge G7 backlog to begin with. CSD G7 seems fairly clear, and consensus on any exception would have to be made at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion, not here. — madman 17:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    That could therefore possibly be a U1 ... (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 17:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    If someone mistakenly creates a user talk page (e.g. wrong click on Huggle or whatever) and then decides to G7 it, will the user whose talk page briefly existed get a "You have new messages" bar with a red link to their talk page when they log in? That could be a bit confusing for them. 28bytes (talk) 17:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think they will after the page has been deleted. — madman 17:26, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    If that's the case, then I don't see a problem with what the bot's doing. The alternative would be for whoever's requested the G7 to have to wait until it's manually deleted by an admin, and risk giving the innocent user a spurious orange bar pointing them to a scary-looking {{db}} box on their talk page. I think the key concern should be to avoid confusing or annoying a new user. 28bytes (talk) 17:32, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand your concern. But I think that's a fringe case in practice (if users are warning the wrong people that often, they really need to slow down and look at what they're doing; it's not a race). And I agree with the blocking administrator that as it stands, the bot is incorrectly deleting pages per U1 and G7. U1 is absolutely unambiguous, but I do agree that there's a case to be made that G7 should apply to user talk pages with a single contributor. That case should be made at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. — madman 17:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    @Josh Parris: how easy is it to remove the offending code. We want to make sure that it's still deleting compliant User talk:WhoeverWhatever/mysubpage but not User talk:WhoeverWhatever ... is this something I can tweak? (I'm pretty sure the code has not changed since the last one you uploaded). I can run it that way until we clarify things elsewhere (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 16:40, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Give me a few days to find my feet again. Josh Parris 22:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    No problem! Thanks Josh ... good to have you back and around (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 14:02, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    As a temporary fix, I have removed cmnamespace 3 from the code, and have requested unblock of the bot. This will cut out a substantial part of what it's checking, but I'd rather having it limping than nothing (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 18:38, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Kumi-Taskbot and collapse parameters

    I'm bringing this issue here because repeated requests to Kumioko (talk · contribs) to stop removing collapse parameters. This still continues and I don't see anywhere in Kumi-Taskbot approvals that collapse parameters should specifically be removed. It happened most recently today after I had asked Kumioko for the second time to knock it off. The original notice pointed out why the collapse parameter, when it has been set to either yes or no, means there is some reason for it's existence. For that matter, why would an unused collapse parameter bother someone so much that they have to systematically remove them? When an article has many project tags, collapsing the banner shell saves a lot of visual space. Looking at this same edit the only corrections made were to white space which I fail to see any approval for. This most recent behavior is only carried over from months of my commenting to Kumioko about what his AWB obsession has been doing to article talk pages and IIRC at one time Kumioko lost his AWB privileges for the very same reason of making mass inconsequential edits to article talk pages. Brad (talk) 02:36, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Well fme, here are more issues:

    Kumi-Taskbot is only approved for work with wiki project templates. Brad (talk) 02:50, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    I stopped removing the collapsed parameter after the second notice although I still contend that it should be removed. The collapsed parameter completely hides all of the WikiProject templates effectively making them invisible unless the user knows to go looking for them. Second, since I do not have access nor do I use IIRC, IMO, if the comments happened in IIRC about me or my bot, frankly they don't exist to me. I had no opportunity for comment nor discussion there. Thirdly, as with any bot there were a few glitches mostly do to the absolute and complete lack of standardization of the WikiProject templates that I had to work through. Which I would like to say are fixed but I continue to make adjustments for as I find them. --Kumioko (talk) 12:16, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    "IIRC" = "if I recall correctly". :) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah I am not sure the collapsed=yes should be used. However I don't think it should be changed by a bot. The boxes are still collapsed without that parameter set...they just aren't completely collapsed so that the names of the wikiproject tags can still be seen. Collapsing them completely defeats the purpose of the tags. -DJSasso (talk) 14:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks H3llkn0wz for clarifying. I was thinking about IRC. To Djsasso, I already removed the code anyway. I am going to bring up the use of the collapsed parameter on the WikiProject bannershell for discussion and see where it goes. --Kumioko (talk) 14:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    And you still ignore the fact that you're doing work with your bot that has not been authorized. You removed the parameter from the FAQ template after I asked you to stop removing collapse parameters. There is a particular reason for setting |collapse=no on the FAQ template so that the questions stand out and can be seen. You only have authorization to work with project templates; not make white space changes or changes that you feel should be done. My politeness is wearing thin. Can you not just leave the f-articles alone? Brad (talk) 00:23, 18 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Well to answer the question at the end, yes I could, but that sorta defeats the purpose of having an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit don't you think? Your dwelling on a dead issue at this point. I already told you I stopped doing that edit. But just for clarification some of the edits that you seem to have trouble with are general edits generated by AWB. Not the collapsed parameter mind you but the white space edits that seem to be so troubling to you and the only reason they went is because I didn't check the little box in AWB that says skip if white space/minor edit. --Kumioko (talk) 00:35, 18 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    It should be the encyclopedia that anyone except Kumioko using AWB can edit. Since you're a responsible bot owner I'm sure that by now you are planning to go around and replace the parameters you removed. I saw another one of your edits over at George Washington that clipped a working collapse parameter. I'll have to start putting that deny tag on more articles as I'm sure this won't be the last of your escapades. Brad (talk) 18:08, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Well its ok that you think that, doesn't really matter to me that you personally don't like my edits, but its ok. I learned along time ago that you can't, and shouldn't try, to please everyone on here. Since I don't know precisely every edit that parameter was removed from, and in most cases it shouldn't have been there anyway, theres no way I can go back and fix them. My guess is that most of the ones you have a problem with relate to US Presidents so I might go back and check those over. If you see one I missed please let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 19:07, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    What's is the benefit of having collapsed=no in every page? Collapsed is set to "no anyway. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    If you compare before and after you can see that the default is to hide the questions in the FAQ, and "collapsed=no" makes the questions visible. I'm not sure why the bot was making this change if it was not authorized. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    It turns that setting no for collapsed in this banner it changes the visual effect. Thanks for letting me know. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Kumioko is doing it again except this time not under his registered spam bot. In the diff please notice that {{bots|deny=Kumi-Taskbot}} is in place to prevent his bot vandalism. Since he has no authorization to vandalize remove collapse parameters with his bot, he's just doing it without the bot. This is the second or third time this has happened after Kumioko said he would stop. This isn't the fault of AWB, this is a planned removal by the AWB operator. Brad (talk) 19:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    I am confused last time you complained that he was uncollapsing boxes. This time he collapsed a box. Secondly as an editor he is allowed to make those kinds of changes under his own account. And you are able to WP:BRD them as well. There is no policy that I am aware of stating that once someone sets one of those that no one can change them. -DJSasso (talk) 19:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually reading further I do see that the FAQ was mentioned. I was thinking about the banner shell part. But that doesn't change the fact that any editor can do that on their main account. However since he was asked to stop he should stop and discuss. -DJSasso (talk) 19:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    If this were an isolated incident I would not be here complaining. Kumioko is using AWB and a bot to make sweeping changes to articles (removing collapsed parameters) without consensus to do so. This is abuse of both AWB and bot privileges; he does not have authorization or any approval to edit in this manner. Brad (talk) 20:10, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    You gotta be kidding me with this Brad, I made the change, I saw I did it and fixed it, then you reverted my edits fixing the problem to a version you did completely wiping out all of the good changes I did. Then you start forum shopping leaving comments here and on the AWB page calling me out of control. You need to get a grip, grow some thicker skin, stop showing such ownership over the article and stop being a jerk. --Kumioko (talk) 20:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually now that I look at the page history that is true...you did fix it and he blindly reverted. That is not cool. -DJSasso (talk) 20:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    How many BRFA's can I hve pending at one time

    I just wanted to ask how many BRFA's I can or should have open at one time. I had previously thought that bundling like items into one BRFA would be better but after seeing how one of mine has been dragging on I think that was an incorrect assumption. I also tried to do a general one along the lines of Tagging and assessing aarticles but I was told I needed to be specific. So, since it appears that submitting individual tasks is more likely to get approval in a timely manner, and given that I have a list of about 40(and growing) that I am sitting on. I thought I would ask before deluging the BRFA process. Just for clarification, several of these are group items. For example: I have about 30 groupings of articles that need to be tagged with WikiProject banners for various projects (1 for most US Supported States, a couple cities and several others), 5 tasks relating to Main page edits, 3 that relate to cleaning up some items in the File namespace and a few more miscelaneous ones relating to Infoboxes, persondata, categories and portals. --Kumioko (talk) 18:38, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Since knowone has responded then I will assume there is no limit so I am going to start submitting them per previous discussion in my previous BRFA's that its better to submit multiple requests than to grant a blanket BRFA to do things like WikiProject tagging. --Kumioko (talk) 23:38, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Im a bit disappointed

    I must confess that I am finding myself a bit disappointed in the bot process. I am sure some will think I am just a jerk and out of place but I believe I am only going to state a perception that many have of the process here. It should not take a week to get a response nor should it take a month or more to get approval or denial for a request. If the process is that much trouble then maybe we need to just submit bot requests through the Village pump and go by community consensus. I have more than 40 (and growing) tasks I want to submit but it has taken more than a month for the 2 tasks I have open and there are at least 10 BRFA's currently open. I am trying not to swamp the process and only do a couple at a time but if it takes months to get approval I may as well submit them, swamp the process and wait. If the BAG wants to continue to force users to go through this process then they need to be more responsive or we need to find a better way to handle it. We shouldn't be forcing users to wait weeks and months to get approval for, in some cases, a few hundred entries. I am even more troubled in that several members of the BAG do dozens to hundreds of edits per day but they never find the time to contribute to any of the BRFA's or if they do its a casual comment. Not even counting mine there are a couple of tasks that are simple and should have probably been speedy approved once a minimal trial run was done.--Kumioko (talk) 02:29, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Sorry, I actually had intended on trying to help fix this trend in BAG, but real life takes over, and it is hard to get to things in a timely manner. In my experience BAG is one of the most unrewarding jobs on wiki, and one of the hardest approval processes to get right. Some Brfa's can be very hard to judge, particularly because they tend to suffer from wall of text syndrome, and complex tasks generally require a significant amount of reading (not just the Brfa it's self, but also the policy pages, and other discussion pages). And that is not even getting into the technical side of things. Even then, there is no guarantee you will get it right. BAGers tend to err on the side of caution and avoid the long and difficult Brfas, and just deal with just the easy ones. Moving to a village pump system would just create even bigger problems. If you want to help, I'd suggest you join BAG and dive in.
    I would also like to note, that BAG has improved significantly at keeping the Brfa process running smoothly. Currently we only have 11 Brfas open. At points last year we had 30 Brfas open. This is an awesome change, and I'd like to thank all the BAGers (and non BAGers) who have been actively involved, because even small edits or comments make a huge difference to the approval process.
    Go ahead and submit all your tasks at once, it will be faster that way. --Chris 10:07, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, at one point we had 49 active Brfas. I think we've improved quite a bit since then. --Chris 10:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Everyone's a freakin' volunteer, and has real lives. There's not a time limit on this project. Chillax, and don't insult people like this. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:11, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree its unrewarding and hard but it shouldn't be a one person job either. Frankly I don't really think I'm qualified to be on the bag group. I'm not that great of a programmer and some of the tasks amaze me at how they work. I'm also not an admin. I also don't intend this to insult anyone editor but the process itself. I realize everyone is a volunteer, but so are those of us that submit these tasks and are trying to get stuff done. To spend to time in submitting them and writing the code and even in identifying the task to have to wait 2 months to get approval to fix the problem is disrespectful of our time. BTW I truly hate the term there's no time limit. It gives me the perception that people don't care and that I'm just wasting my time. Your right there's not a limit but when I have about 40 or so tasks that I want and need to get done to support WikiProject US so that the project runs smoothly and the articles get maintained and cleaned up (particularly the less edited ones) then it affects not just me but the projects I am trying to help support and the articles they support. --Kumioko (talk) 12:19, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    From what I have seen most of your tasks so far could be done by you on your own account with AWB. If you are that desperate to get to them fast why don't you just do that? Frankly I would be upset if BRFAs only took a week or less. Most complex bot tasks should take a month or more so everything can be sorted out so there is less risk once it goes live. -DJSasso (talk) 13:17, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    In addition to the insightful comments already made, I would add that operators seeking a faster resolution of their BRFAs should (in general) make as much of an effort as possible to demonstrate consensus for their tasks. BRFAs suffer most from a lack of outside input; when it does come at the moment, it tends to come in the form of a vitriolic argument between two opposing sides that haunts the BRFA for weeks. By comparison, generally speaking, coming to BRFA with a demonstrated consensus makes the whole exercise far easier and quicker. BAG members are generally very reluctant to approve even seemingly simple tasks if that consensus has not been demonstrated, and that is what holds most BRFAs up IMHO. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 14:50, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. Kumioko, regarding the current request you have that's open, it's being held up a bit in my opinion due to the task's failure rate, the lack of clear evidence of consensus, and the fact that some of your tasks have caused problems in the past. We have to determine that an automated task is going to be harmless and that takes time, ironing out bugs, and sometimes multiple trials to demonstrate.
    I absolutely would not support any sort of time limit on BRFAs because the longer they stay open, the better we can gauge consensus. In addition, sometimes we need to discuss our concerns about a task and sanity check each other, and that takes time as most of us are in different time zones and thus are not active at the same times. In point of fact, that's why I stepped back from handling your request myself, because I would be inclined to deny it, but I'm willing to discuss it with the rest of the BAG and/or let another member handle it.
    Finally, the fact that we have 10 BRFAs open means little when most are in trial or extended trial. Our response time once an operator indicates a trial is complete is generally very good (even given that it takes time to check the results of the trial). — madman 19:58, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Reply to Djasso - In general you are right, I could do them from my account using AWB and I have in some cases, however, it is my understanding and experience that to do several thousand edits should be done as a BRFA and frankly I have a lot going on myself and don't have the time to hit enter 10, 000+ times in a shot.
    Reply to Jarry - I believe that with the exception of one all the tasks I submitted have been approved by other operators so the consensus is already established. I have quite a few in the hopper that aren't and intentionally waited to submit them until I got consensus and until I established the bot and the tasks I thought were were easy to get approved.
    Reply to Madman - First I partially agree and I believe that I also tried to do too much with one BRFA. I did that in the thought that if I grouped several like items I could get several done at once. I won't do that in the future and will submit each task individually so that many aren't held up by one. I admit I had a few hickups with the coding but most of them are minor, were easily fixable and most are due to the inherent complication of the structure of the WikiProject templates. Which by the way all the other bots with approval to add or modify WikiProject templates also have. I have yet to see one that doesn't have some problems such as wiping out additional parameters, removing the wrong project, adding the wrong project, breaking parameters, etc.
    Just to clarify to all, knowone expects an immediate response but when 5 or 10 days go by without anyone stopping to check on things and make a comment its gets very frustrating. --Kumioko (talk) 23:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    As I said, I wasn't responding with regard to your BRFAs specifically, just BRFAs in general. Thanks. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 00:16, 7 February 2012 (UTC) [reply]
    I do recognize that parsing templates is one of the most complex tasks a bot can do due to their "loose" syntax (it's like HTML in that respect; it cannot be parsed perfectly using regular expressions). I didn't mean any of what I said as criticism. :) When I wanted to make sure that my bot, when faced with that task, would perform it harmlessly, it took me about a week to rip out MediaWiki's parsing code and adapt it to my bot so it'd parse it the same way MediaWiki would and couldn't break anything. I definitely don't expect that of most bot operators. :P More complex tasks are going to take a little more time to test and approve though. Once it's clear you've gotten the bugs ironed out of the process, related requests are going to be approved much more quickly.
    Also, you can combine multiple tasks into one request; I don't think anyone meant to imply you couldn't. You just can't have really open-ended requests like "Modifies WikiProject banners" because there's no way for us to gauge consensus of what tasks that will include in the future. — madman 02:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • As a comment to BWilkins about "volunteers". Yes BAG members are volunteers and so are bot operators. Therefore we should not demand the impossible from BAG members but we should also not make bot operators wait too long. On Commons there is a rather "free" bot policy. If you are an experienced and trusted bot operator you can do almost everything as long as the task is not expected to break anything or make someone upset. On enwiki you have to ask permission to almost everything before you start your bot. Perhaps the bot policy on enwiki could be a little less strict?
    As an example: I nominated 1.100+ files for deletion and I wanted to add a ffd on the file page and leave a note to the uploaders. I was told that I could not do that without asking for a permission. Later a few hundred of the files was withdrawn and I could strike the files from the DR but I could not use my bot to remove the ffd template from the files without asking for a permission. And if I got a permission to do the tasks then what about next time I nominate a lot of files for deletion? Would I need a new permission or could I use the old one? But it was just examples and the problems were fixed so lets just keep it to a general discussion.
    My point is that if it is fast and easy to get a permission to do a task there is a much better chance that someone volunteer do do the tasks requested here or anywhere else. --MGA73 (talk) 14:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    To followup on that, Many of the tasks I am asking for currently and will be asking for in the future are relatively straightforward wikiproject tagging but I have been told I need to resubmit for each new one. Even if its speedily approved it adds additional delays each time. So assuming I submit 2 per week and they are speedily approved it will take me at least 6 months to get them all approved. --Kumioko (talk) 15:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want to promote a relaxation of bot policy then do so, but be aware that the tight policy we operate here on en.wp was borne incrementally from literally dozens of massive flare-ups where fairly obvious (it seemed at the time) tasks turned out to be highly controversial. (Also, there's a degree to which best practice is helpfully shared by BRFAs that would be lost.) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 15:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I know there is a reason not to allow "everything" and I'm not suggsting to do major changes. I'm just suggesting that perhaps it would be a good idea to take small steps in direction of a more "loose" bot policy on some areas. --MGA73 (talk) 15:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, I'm not unsympathetic, but one has to realise that the current bot policy started off relatively lax, and has been tightened incrementally following massive arguments. Thus to "loosen" bot policy, one has to roll back the conclusions of those set-pieces. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 15:43, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    There's a slightly unwritten rule, that you can run tasks under your main account, as long as you don't get caught (i.e. small task, slow edit rate, something with an already established consensus, NO error rate). Likewise, you can to some extent test bots under your main account as long as you monitor them. The main factor in this though, is that if you screw up majorly, you'll be in a bit of hot water (especially, if it becomes a habit). --Chris 15:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure that's an unwritten rule, nor that we should say it is; it's covered by the bot policy. Any task that's not fully automated (e.g. assisted editing) can be performed under your main account. (You could create an alternate account but I recognize that that's a bit of a bother.) All of the conditions you list make such a task more acceptable and lessen the chance of conflict with other editors. — madman 02:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Speaking as someone who was here for The Bad Old Days™, BAG used to follow the model MGA proposes of fairly permissive and broad approvals of experienced operators. Then we had Betacommand, ST47, Geo-tagging bot, Date delinking bot, Plant bot, Bot deletions and a host of other situations which almost led to the disbanding of BAG. To Kumioko and MGA, if you would like to submit a general BRFA for "wikiproject talkpage tagging" or "template normalizing" or "re-categorization of wikiprojects," I would be very likely to grant a broad approval once you had done a small test. Also, even if the rules or convention say 2 BRFAs per person at a time, for the time being, I would not object to upwards of 5 BRFA per person at a time. MBisanz talk 15:49, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks to all for comments. I have gotten a much better understanding of the process, why it is what it is and a broad understnading of the BAG and BRFA process that I didn't have benfore. --Kumioko (talk) 16:20, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah like Kumioko I would also like to say thank you :-) As I understand it it is possible to get a more general permission if I/someone want to do a few similar tasks. That will help. --MGA73 (talk) 20:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Bot bugs not being attended to and bot can't be shut off by victims.

    It looks like this bot is performing quite a lot of unintentional vandalism (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Elvey#Malfunctioning_bot_annoying_uploaders.21 and such.) Shouldn't all bots have emergency shut-off switches?--Elvey (talk) 08:17, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    There's always the block button. →Στc. 08:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Vandalism is a pretty harsh call. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Macy%27s_stupid_coupon.jpg&oldid=427623492 is the version of the image you uploaded that the bot whined about; that version renders with a complaint that WARNING: Fine print does not appear to exist!, so perhaps there was a parsing issue. Josh Parris 09:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I've tried to figure out what User_talk:ImageTaggingBot#Why_are_all_the_images_I_upload_being_wrongly_labeled_as_untagged.3F is about and have failed; there's no user with that name and any editing history on en or commons. Josh Parris 09:20, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Astepintooblivion probably changed their name into User:Obsidian_Soul. -- Luk talk 09:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah. In that case, here's why "as such": http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AObsidian_Soul&action=historysubmit&diff=384077370&oldid=384050156 Josh Parris 10:48, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I noticed recently that there are a lot of Image swith double and triple of some tags, probably partially because the bots adding it multiple times or adding it in addition to others adding it. If the bot is malfunctioning andn can't be stopped with multiple comments going unanwered then IMO the right thing to do is block it until things get sorted out. --Kumioko (talk) 13:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    ImageTaggingBot may add two tags to an image in a situation where an image has two problems (most often, "no source" and "no license"), and it's common for a user to later add a third tag for a violation of the non-free content policy. The bot should never add a tag to an image that another user has already tagged. If you know of some examples, please bring them to my attention so I can adjust the bot's settings. --Carnildo (talk) 03:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The reason why ImageTaggingBot and ImageRemovalBot don't have user-accessible shutoff switches is that users in general are very poor at judging when those bots are malfunctioning. In the case that Elvey appears to be complaining about, File:Macy's stupid coupon.jpg, ImageTaggingBot claimed that the file did not have a license tag. Not surprisingly, the bot was correct: the image had an {{Information}} template and a {{Non-free use rationale}} template, but no license tag. --Carnildo (talk) 02:31, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I wasn't able to determine from the bot's user page or its BRfA what criteria it uses to determine a lack of licensing. It'd be helpful if that was there. Josh Parris 02:48, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    To the bot, "licensed" simply means "the image description page transcludes a license template". The bot has two degrees of "unlicensed" ("no license whatsoever" and "maybe a license, but no template") that it distinguishes between based on various heuristics, but the difference only influences what no-license tag the bot applies and what message it gives the uploader; in both cases, the image is in violation of policy. --Carnildo (talk) 03:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    All bots have emergency shut off switches. Honestly, it's the block function. A lot of bots have non-admin stop features, and that's nice and often appropriate, but it not and should not be required. Think if Cluebot NG had a non-admin stop function :D Snowolf How can I help? 02:40, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    It ... uhm ... does -- Cobi(t|c|b) 22:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    X!'s bots

    Anyone with a toolserver account willing to take over some of SoxBot's tasks? I have not contacted X!, but even if he renews his toolserver account it's probably good sense to move the tasks to active users. Code is I all open source at https://code.google.com/p/soxred93tools/source/checkout.

    Not sure which tasks are still relevant. Some aren't: I've redirected the admin-highlighter tool to a clone. But others should probably be replaced:

    1. Creating the current events pages, like Portal:Current events/2012 February 9
    2. Maintaining RfX tally and RfX report
    3. Keeping {{badimage}} on all file description pages listed at MediaWiki:Bad image list (BRFA)
    4. Maintain {{Cratstats}} and {{adminstats}} (BRFA, BRFA)

    Maybe there were other active tasks that I didn't notice. Neither seems particularly pressing though.

    Amalthea 14:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    533Mb download, in case anyone wasn't expecting that. --Northernhenge (talk) 22:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    And I'm adapting all of it. I am working as hard as I can to get it done quickly.—cyberpower (Talk to Me)(Contributions) 22:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll volunteer for at least the first task, and probably the other 3 too if no one else has a strong desire to claim those tasks for their bot. 28bytes (talk)
    For what its worth I also notice that the edit counter isn't working anymore either because his Toolserver account expired. --Kumioko (talk) 16:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm working on taking over 2, 4, and the edit counter.--v/r - TP 19:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I could help out with the edit counter and SoxBot. I have a toolserver account. (It seems I am not the only one trying to take over.)—cyberpower (Talk to Me)(Contributions) 22:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I would love it if someone would take over the Article Blamer tool from the toolserver account as well. GoingBatty (talk) 00:41, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Getting taken care of.00:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
    No you don't... →Στc. 01:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Not by me. User:TParis is taking care of it and has already gotten the edit counter up and running. You can find it here. BTW, I thought I had one. Turns out I only have the Wiki account. Facepalm Facepalm—cyberpower (Talk to Me)(Contributions) 01:48, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Two more tasks that seem to have been active in 2012:

    2. Remove {{REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD}} from closed AfDs. (BRFA)
    3. Remove {{uncategorized}} from pages that have (non-hidden) categories. (BRFA)

    I may look at these, and #3 above, unless someone else wants them. Feel free to steal them from me. Anomie⚔ 21:03, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Yobot occasionally does #6. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    I've put in a BRFA for #1. Looks like other folks have the rest covered. 28bytes (talk) 22:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    I am rewritting the code behind the bots. This should take care of most if not all of the bots. I will be placing them under Cyberbot [place roman numeral here]—cyberpower (Talk to Me)(Contributions) 03:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that Snotbot already does #5 above, although it only reports pages with this problem to a report page, it doesn't fix the problem automatically (because I believe it was decided that a bot shouldn't do this? I can't remember). As the bot already detects the problem, it could just as easily fix it instead of report it. —SW— chat 08:20, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for that. I hope to have them operational and approved within 7 days. Being that these were already approved bots, I don't anticipate needing to take these through a trial.—cyberpower (Talk to Me)(Contributions) 10:46, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    If you rewrite them then I think you do.
    Personally, I think it makes much more sense if TParis and Anomie take over those tasks like they offered, they have toolserver accounts and can use the tried code directly without problems.
    Also, I saw that you moved some of SoxBots subpages related to WP:CHU clerking: That task doesn't need to be replaced at all, it hasn't been active for quite some time and I believe Chris G is clerking there now.
    Amalthea 13:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Amalthea: No toolserver account for me. But only #4 really needs it, IMO, since {{uncategorized}} isn't very widely used. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Cyberpower678: It looks like everything is "claimed" already. And Amalthea is correct: rewriting it would probably want a trial to verify that they rewritten code was correct, and Chris G Bot replaced SoxBot for clerking WP:CHU a rather long time ago. Most of SoxBot's historical tasks haven't been done by SoxBot for years now, actually. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Scottywong: Please do take #5 then. SoxBot did it once or twice in 2012 already, so if that was decided it must have been fairly recent. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Will do. —SW— squeal 00:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Magioladitis: Will Yobot do it regularly enough, or should I have AnomieBOT do it? Anomie⚔ 17:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I've already got this project started. I've already created User:Cyberbot I to replace SoxBot. The rewrite is basically adapting SoxBot's code and replacing anything with Sox to references to my to be bot account. I've already got the majority of the code translated. My goal is to have Cyberbot I operate exactly like SoxBot did at it's last current state. This would require me to transfer the bots subpages over to mine where needed. (All of them).—cyberpower (Talk to Me)(Contributions) 18:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    What about the tool that can report on contributions? It is broken now but very useful. Anyone took this one over?--Codrin.B (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    TParis should have it. I changed your link. Try it now. I am working on the bots but at the rate I am going, I believe I may get done quicker than he is able to get it done.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 516,979,856) 00:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Cyberbot I is almost ready. There appear to be a few bugs that are causing the bot to hang up.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 519,827,507) 11:11, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Please all see the request for approval here ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 13:59, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Bot owners invited to Berlin hackathon

    Hi. I'm helping organize the Berlin hackathon, 1-3 June 2012 in Berlin, Germany. We're going to be discussing and working on the hosted Wikimedia Labs development environment and bots infrastructure, Toolserver, the future of ResourceLoader and Gadgets, MediaWiki's web API, the new Lua templating system, and various upcoming MediaWiki features and changes. We'd love to have power users, bot maintainers and writers, and template makers at these events so we can all learn from each other and chat about what needs doing.

    That's one of the upcoming Wikimedia developers' events and I hope some of you can make it.

    - Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation's Volunteer Development Coordinator. Please reply on my talk page, here on English Wikipedia or at mediawiki.org. Sumanah (talk) 22:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Looking for Help Gathering Data on Bots

    Hello. Some of you might have run into me before...I am doing a research project on bots, bot operators, and technical tools on WP and WM projects. I'm wondering if anyone wants to tackle this problem, which would help me out tremendously. I am looking for stats and data on bots, especially over time. Things like:

    • (#) of bot accounts registered over time (by month would be fine) (on English WP)
    • (#) of bot edits over time (on English WP)
    • (#) of BRFA approved and not approved over time (on English WP only, obviously)
    • same trends for bot use on other language versions (which would be a bonus)

    I've found some info on these things spread around WP, but nothing that is both up-to-date and reasonably accurate/reliable. I'm not sure if getting this info involves dealing with a data dump (I suspect it does), or if there are simpler ways to do it. If you're interested in investigating this with me, I'd really appreciate the help. Please let me know here or on my talk page.

    And if you're a bot operator or Wikimedia developer (or someone who deals with the technical infrastructure of WP) and you'd like to be interviewed, please see my call here.

    Thanks! UOJComm (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    I could cook some raw data for you in areas where it's not too much trouble. I've been wanting to do some stats myself. But don't hold me to it and I probably won't be of any help with other languages and stuff. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:39, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    An example of BRFAs parse: User:H3llBot/Sandbox2. It's buggy (as hell) and I'll make a proper one and group data when I get some time :) Is this something like what you are looking for? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    HELLKNOWZ, that looks pretty good...I think I could compile some good stats based on that. A few questions: Is the date column the date that the bot account was created, or the date that the BRFA was closed? (and is there a way to grab a bunch of dates...the date the account was created, the date the BRFA was initiated, the date the BRFA was decided?) Also, what are the final 8 columns? Some of them make sense, but I'm not sure of all the abbreviations, so a key of some sort would help. You say it's buggy, but is that something you can work out if you get more time? I just want to be confident in the data. Thank you so much for your help! UOJComm (talk) 00:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I can answer as to those last eight columns; they're the disposition of the request (approved, speedily approved, denied, speedily denied, withdrawn by operator, expired, open, or revoked). Also, that timestamp looks like the date the BRFA was initiated. — madman 21:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I can probably do this for you fairly easily; being able to run queries on the Toolserver will help. I'll give you the results sometime next week. — madman 15:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi Madman...Thank you very much for your help! Since you query the Toolserver, would you be able to get data on other language versions as well? UOJComm (talk) 00:47, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I thiiink so. I can get information on flagged bots and bot edits, but as far as BRFA information, the process may not exist on other wikis or I'd have to figure out how to parse approval, denial, etc. on each one. — madman 21:21, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I don't think many other language WP have such a formalized BRFA process that English does. So just stats on flagged bots and bot edits on other language versions would be quite helpful. Thank you again for your help with this! UOJComm (talk) 22:42, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Any list built from the BRFA pages will have its limitations -- it won't include bots approved under the old approvals process, and it won't include RamBot, which started running before there was an approvals process at all. --Carnildo (talk) 01:16, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Right, there are going to be limitations no matter what, but I'm going to start with data on flagged bots and then expand as information is available. — madman 01:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, there certainly seem to be limitations on any data/stats having to do with bots (or with human editors, for that matter). The best that can be done is the best that can be done, and on my end, I can talk about limitations of these stats as limitations of the study, but also as an illuminating quality of Wikipedia...so much data, and it's difficult to be precise in this situation! Any other comments or thoughts on limitations are surely welcomed! Thanks! UOJComm (talk) 22:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    If anyone else is interested in this data, it's posted here with a summary of the bot edits data here and the bot registrations data here. I find it interesting, but then I'm the type who loves playing in Excel. :) Cheers, — madman 05:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Bot-operator has retired?

    User:Chzz seems to have left, but User:ChzzBot II is still editing (cleaning the sandbox and whatnot). Does anything need to be done in such situations? It Is Me Here t / c 00:43, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Do the bots need to continue operating? If no, the toolserver will eventually expire forcing the bots to automatically shutdown.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 517,570,498) 00:47, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Let's be frank here, this is Chzz, he'll be back. Chzz has already retired once this year, and he'll probably retire a few more times as the year goes on. The part of him that wants to help new users and the part of him that gets pissed off about the governance of wikipedia-en-help are constantly fighting each other, I wouldn't worry about it unless he's not back by April. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Bot task is already duplicated anyway ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 15:01, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, but not all like the informing of new contributors adding new, unreferenced WP:AFC submissions. mabdul 15:05, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Misza13's bots seem to be down

    Has anyone been in contact with Misza13, or know anything else about this situation? Recently-active bots seem to be Wikinews Importer Bot (talk · contribs) and the archiving bots MiszaBot I (talk · contribs), MiszaBot II (talk · contribs), and MiszaBot III (talk · contribs). Anomie⚔ 19:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    It would be helpful if these bots ran again. My talk page is cluttering.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 517,705,980) 19:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I tried to setup ClueBot III, but it ignores {{DNAU}} and doesn't seem to support some of MiszaBot III's features... Is there any chance MiszaBot III will come back? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 03:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Is it possible that the current code used in the bots is the same as archivebot.py? →Στc. 03:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I mentioned to someone yesterday that Mizsa hasn't edited since May 2011 and his toolserver account is probably expired. I think he left a note on Anomies page. --Kumioko (talk) 03:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    His account is not expired. See [1]. →Στc. 03:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)Just checked Toolserver. It's still running which means there's got to be another reason why MiszaBot is not. Has anything changed in the code perhaps? I can access Misza13's repository but I can't find the bot code.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 517,780,421) 03:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh well it was just a guess anyway. I know those things expire every 6 months or so and figured the timing was about right. Its possible he he just logged in and turned them off. We seem to be having a lot of experienced editors and bot operators walking away these days. Maybe hes just another one. --Kumioko (talk) 03:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)4[reply]
    Its possible it was an offwiki program running from his PC. Article alerts works like that. Again, he might have turned it off or maybe the computer crashed. --Kumioko (talk) 03:42, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think you would have a bot running off of the computer. That's a stupid location to store bot code to run. It's possible that maybe the slayerd task (process slayer) in toolserver terminated the bot. MiszaBot III shut down followed by MiszaBot II almost 24 hours later and then MiszaBot I a few hours after that. I checked all the subpages of MiszaBot and they don't seem to be weird although how it's setup. I'm honestly clueless. Misza13 would have to figure this out.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 517,782,202) 03:48, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    It's not as bad as you make it out to seem. I've had bots run on my desktop before -- my desktop regularly has 60-100 day uptimes and plenty of resources to run a bot, and is on a UPS that can run it for hours though. However, I typically move them off to a server once they are stable. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 22:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    One of the login servers (nightshade) is down since the 17th. user:BotMultichillT is also down. Multichill (talk) 09:40, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Very true. Nightshade doesn't seem to want to boot. That would explain it.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 517,840,726) 12:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Right, the presumption is that Misza (and some other bot ops) put their bots in a crontab on nightshade. With that host currently down/out-of-commission, any bots tied to nightshade's cron are not running. As luck would have it, my crontab is on willow. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:10, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    What features does CB3 not support that MiszaBot III does, other than DNAU? (DNAU is a horrid hack that only works with timestamp-based bots -- CB3 actually checks the history to figure out when it was last modified, and so that hack does not affect CB3). -- Cobi(t|c|b) 04:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    On the other hand you can have CB3 look for DNAU stamps to prevent archiving. On the other hand, Misza 13 says that MiszaBot does operate on Nightshade. Misza 13 said s/he will operate them manually on willow for the time being.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 518,046,287) 11:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Toolserver

    Does anyone know if there is somewhere that you can find a list of all the different tools you can use to get reports like the edit counter or the tool to check number of hits a page receives.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:37, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    From the FAQ: Where can I view all of the available tools and their functionalities?: Sorry, but you can't. The best you can do is look at the list of users, and click each username to see if they have an index.html listing all of their tools (it's recommended that all users do so, though I know I don't. ) Or you can Google what you want with site:toolserver.org. Hope that helps. — madman 23:52, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, I've forgotten the very obvious point that operators may list their tools on the Toolserver wiki. — madman 16:01, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    New asin-tld parameter

    The {{Cite web}} template (and likely others) now has the asin-tld parameter. Any bots that now use id with the {{ASIN}} template should switch to using asin with asin-tld instead. – Allen4names 18:05, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    DASHBot breaks some of the references (4% of my watchlist sofar)

    In the past few days, the bot DASHBOT has made four mistakes in pages on my watchlist:

    What went wrong was that an archived link was added to the wrong reference. After I noticed the first mistake, I notified the bot owner User:Tim1357, again after the second mistake, and a third time after the following two mistakes. As far as I know, Tim1357 has not taken any action yet. (No judgement on that, we're all volunteers.) Should the bot be given a temporarily break, to find out what goes wrong? It is probably just a detail, but it's breaking some of the references. --EdgeNavidad (Talk · Contribs) 22:33, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    I was literally about to shut it off to give Tim some time to investigate without more errors being introduced, but in the meantime he's shut it off himself, so kudos to him for that. I suspect he'll post here shortly, the bot was in clear error, after all. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 23:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I am investigating this. Thanks so much for your patience. Tim1357 talk 01:33, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Gameplan

    Jeez. This sucks. I have no idea how I missed this. I checked about 70 edits before I started letting the bot off it's leash. I owe an enormous thank you to Edge for bringing this up. Here's my plan to fix this:

    1. Get a list of every article my bot has touched. Green tickY (There's about 2 thousand)
    2. Scan the articles to find any instances of errors. Green tickY 51 Articles
    3. If there's only a couple, fix by hand. Otherwise, write something to fix them, or revert en-masse. Green tickY
    4. Take a nap.
    5. Take a serious look at what happend, and why. I have a good idea of where the error came from, but I'll do multiple dry runs on revisions of the articles that the bot previously screwed up on.
    I'll be posting updates here as I work through the list. Tim1357 talk 20:20, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, I made 45 edits. Some of the edits I reverted outright, and some of them I salvaged. Tim1357 talk 21:26, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Kudos for an excellent response. — madman 00:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    This seems like strange and preferential treatment

    I have to admit I find it a little bit strange that a big issue was made out of this when the operator accidentally ran it without approval. Yet, when this bot ran without approval it was discussed on IRC, which most editors don't use, and then approved and allowed to go on. This doesn't quite seem equal treatment. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 01:20, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    It would be nice if you would sign your comments with your actual username. And if you read the BRFA, the fact that he run without approval was actually not even a serious concern. Snowolf How can I help? 01:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) Interesting definition of "big issue". The fact that the bot ran without approval was only mentioned twice in the BRfA that I can see, once by Snowolf saying "I noticed the bot is currently operating without being approved for trial. Could you explain that, please?" A question which was never answered. And once by me, saying "... running before approval, which also suggests a lack of bot policy knowledge..." as part of a larger list of various problems. Now I don't really see that as it being made a big deal of, but feel free to correct me. - Kingpin13 (talk) 01:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The bot task had already had 3 BRFAs previous to number 24 which has been linked to. (21,22,23). The task has also already had two trial runs from these BRFAs. The BRFAs have also involved much discussion of the task. Once I realised that the bot was operating without a valid approved BRFA I removed the task from cron and the bot did not run again until approval. ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 01:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Well I don't really have the time or inclination these days to embroil myself in another useless discussion. I just wanted to make a statement that it seems that the good ole boys do what they want when they want and then pick and choose when to enforce the policy, that's all. One case was an open and shut BRFA with almost no trial and the other seemed to have unlimited comments until they finally left the project completely. Yet another user pushed out. We are losing a lot of experienced editors just because we don't enforce policy evenly and fairly. Regardless of whatever that policy might be. As for the IP/Username comment. Either the comment has merit or it doesn't, being made by an IP or a registered user makes no difference. I am sure that you all will just say I am spiteful or butt hurt or whatever. Other than I would have made the statement a little nicer and more tactfully, I would have made a comment about this even if I hadn't been run out. Additionally, a HUGE issue was made out of me using my bot to make a discussion edit just to tell them I couldn't respond. A rule that caused all of my bot activities to be revoked. I would submit that breaking the rule editing without approval is almost as bad. Certainly it was a major issue in the Cyber submission as well. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 02:17, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Just happened to have run into this. I did answer that question with "The bot can be shut down pending approval. I merely ran it to see if it was functioning. I will shut the bot down now." If you want my attention on this, I suggest you contact my talk page. I'm not watching my watchlist.—cyberpower (Chat)(WP Edits: 520,335,904) 02:43, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Kumioko, the reason why your bot approvals were revoked, most of all, is that you used your bot account for block evasion. That in itself shows you're not suited to run a bot. But in any case, I thought you said you retired. Doesn't really look like it. Snowolf How can I help? 02:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) @ 71.163.243.232 - Perhaps if you "don't really have the time or inclination these days to embroil myself in another useless discussion" then you shouldn't start one. You started the discussion, why start a 'useless' one? Did you expect folks to just jump in and say "ohh yeah, you're so right."--v/r - TP 02:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Just ignore him. Kumioko feels like the Wikipedia community treated him badly, so he's decided to troll as an IP until someone blocks him, so he can go on about how badly IPs are treated. Better to just let him continue to rant tediously in hopes he'll eventually tire of it. 28bytes (talk) 03:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Your right 28bytes, I do think that I was treated badly and I think the situation was handed poorly. I think it was an overreaction to a small problem that was easily fixed had I been allowed to fix it (the problem never did get fixed by the way). Just because you don't agree, doesn't mean I am trolling.
    Reply to Snowolf Your partially right, and I can accept the results and I am basically retired, hence the use of the IP. Think of me as a consultant, I can make a comment and you can choose to ignore it if you don't like it. I still contend the block was inappropriate in the first place and only done to kill the discussions and block me from commenting in the 8 different discussions. Maybe if the Wiki software allowed an admin to grant edit ability to say talk pages by exception, rather than restrict the editor only to their talk page, that might be a good thing too. All this is irrelevant to this discussion and frankly as a Steward I would have expected a better comment from you than to just push it back on me. Also, maybe your right. Maybe I'm not suited to run a bot but that really doesn't have any bearing on this discussion either other than to discredit the statements.
    Reply to TP - Actually TP you responded exactly like I expected you too.
    I know that none of you want to hear it, your tired of hearing from me and my comments and you don't think or don't care that you did anything wrong. That doesn't mean my comments are invalid nor that they are trolling. You just spent a paragraph each pointing fingers at me and didn't even comment on why one BRFA was rushed through and the other editor was essentially told we don't really need or want your help and both bots had the same issue (yes I know Cyber's bot had a couple of others as well but they were easily fixed and I think they were doing a good job of addressing those as they came up). I don't expect anything to come of this discussion frankly but maybe it will make you think about the situation when it occurs again the future. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 08:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Your reply doesn't address my question. How does the discussion become useless because it goes a direction you don't like and why would you start a discussion knowing it would be useless? It's your approach that is causing the problem. You need to come at this a less confrontational direction and with serious self reflection. I dont even know you and I can pick that up right away. I'm not even part of BAG and you can't lump me in with whomever did anything wrong. But you're not going to get an open ear from me the way you come at folks.--v/r - TP 13:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    TP you have a couple good points. Since we never had contact till recently some history on my "attitude". I used to taste my words prior to typing them and frequently word-smithed my posts over before hitting enter. I tried to work with every editor that came crying with a complaint about my edits and catered to almost every whim to avoid confrontation. I did that for years. Recently, I was embroiled in multiple discussions and I lost my composure. That's all it took and now, frankly, I don't care so much if my words seem a bit abrupt and tactless. For me the time for diplomacy is over so now I just speak what I think and if that hurts a few editors feelings or ruffles a few feathers then that's fine. In the end I was painted as an editor who is always battling with other editors and trying to "force my opinion on others. When that's exactly what they were doing to me and I just never made an issue out of it. So now, since being the tactful nice guy didn't seem to matter, I just tell it like it is. If I seem like a jerk or have an attitude its just a conditioned response to constant attacks. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 00:10, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Frankly, this new way isn't going to work out better than the old way for you. You need to find a third option.--v/r - TP 02:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Your probably right, but it seems to work for quite a few editors so I figure I'll give it a try. The third option is to stop editing completely by the way and I am well on my way there. I edit less and less every day. Pretty soon the user known as Kumioko will just be a memory in the history of Wikipedia and everyone will be a lot happier it seems. At least the servers will be under a lot less stress without the hundreds of thousands of edits I was doing. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 22:07, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Or, fourth option, just come out and say "Alright, I was mad, but I'm ready to play nice again and I'm sorry" and then probably just avoid BAG since it frustrates you and continue doing the other parts you've enjoyed in the past.--v/r - TP 13:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I already apologized for my actions multiple times and admitted multiple times I let my anger get the better of me. What frustrates me isn't BAG, its people holding me responsible for others actions. Several people screwed up, not just me and I am the only one that got blocked or any other action. Headbomb did eventually leave a message on Brad101's talk page but only because Brad left a message on a BAG page. NO ONE cared what they did or said to me that provoked me and caused me to lose my patience. NO ONE cared that Mark broke the 3RR policy, NO ONE cared that they and others broke several other policies. They only cared that I made a statement that they thought meant I was going to keep reverting. Thats what frustrates me and caused me to lose faith in the system and in the judgement of the community. Including BAG. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 23:46, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, but my point is that still arguing over it isn't going anyway. Your account isnt blocked anymore (that I can see) and it's time you let the issue go, move on, and put it in the paste so you can return to productive editing.--v/r - TP 00:58, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    This is part of the problem, you keep saying things like no one cared about what others did, which isn't true. Mark was warned as were you. He stopped, you continued. Stop playing the victim. What you did was far worse than what the others did. And you DID keep reverting. It wasn't just a statement. You followed through on the statement. -DJSasso (talk) 01:13, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Reply to TP - Your point is taken and understood. After this post I won't post here anymore. I am going to let it go because eventhough my account isn't blocked the account Kumioko is dead and its not coming back. That user loved Wikipedia, believed in it and followed its rules. Others did not and they are still here so I will not be and thats too bad because frankly I was a damn good and productive editor.
    Reply to Djsasso - I'm not sure what discussion you are referring too because the ones I was involved in didn't say anything like what you are saying. I made the statement after I made a reverstion and that was after Mark already broke the 3RR rule twice, on that one occassion which he has done many times before I just never made an issue out of it. The Only thing I did wrong was to have faith in the system and think it would actually work, when I knew better from seeing it in action before and make an edit through a block using my bot and I still contend that was an invalid block only done to keep me from commenting...Guess what! It worked, after I came back, the discussions died out, I had lost my credibility and everyone moved on. But thats ok because editors like Brad101 and all the comments on his talk page and Mark and his little comments and attitude are what people expect from Wikipedia editors these days. Thats why they don't edit and we are losing editors faster than we can add them. Whats even worse is a lot of editors have seen it, I keep seeing my name all over the place so I know I made a difference. At least I can leave with that. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 01:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe then a WP:CLEANSTART is in your future? If so, then good luck with it.--v/r - TP 02:38, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Keep on topic please guys. If you want to discuss Kumioko start a new thread somewhere. --Chris 09:32, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    Indeed. If I may try to rescue the thread, the point is more: "Regardless of the treatment of other BRFAs, was the approval of Addbot 24 a good one?" Does anyone actually have any more relevant thoughts on that to contribute? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:10, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I guess my only concern is that it was closed too quick. BAG really shouldn't get into that habit. The task itself has been done before, it's straight-forward, the botop already filled the same one thrice and was given trial twice. That said, speedy approval should never occur after running without trial, even if there aren't any real problems. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I will happily stop the bot task if there is consensus to do so and will happily have another BRFA opened for this task if need be. Vote..? ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 13:34, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    There's no need for that. The bot was performing well and up to par before the BRFA, and already had trials, so having yet-another BRFA would be nothing more than an exercise in bureaucracy. And considering that that BRFA was already an exercise in bureaucracy... Of course if the rest of the BAG thinks there's some need for such bureaucy, then I won't stand in the way, but I certainly will wonder about where BAG's collective common sense went. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree and think that the original question prompting this discussion has been answered. — madman 17:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough. 71.163.243.232 (talk) 00:10, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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