Wikipedia talk:Bot policy

How to ask for permission:

If you want to run a bot on the English Wikipedia, please follow the policy at Wikipedia:Bots and WP:BRFA.

How to file a complaint:

If a bot has made a mistake, the best thing to do is to leave a message on its talk page and/or that of its owner. For bots on their initial one-week probation, please also leave a note on this page.

If a bot seems to be out of control, ask an adminstrator to block it temporarily, use WP:AIV for an immediate block, and make a post below.

Authorized bots do not show up in recent changes. If you feel a bot is controversial and that its edits need to be seen in recent changes, please ask a Bureaucrat for the bot flag to be removed.

Archives
Archive 1	Archive 2
Archive 3	Archive 4
Archive 5	Archive 6
Archive 7	Archive 8
Archive 9	Archive 10
Archive 11	Archive 12
Archive 13	Archive 14
Archive 15	Archive 16
Archive 17	Archive 18
Control proposals
Archive policy
Archive interwiki (also some approvals for interwiki bots)

Proposition

I have recently gotten the approval to run and have received a bot flag for my bot user:BetacommandBot. during this process I noticed that the procedure for getting the preamble for running a bot can a extreamly difficult and time consuming process. I would like to make a suggestion. Split the page Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals into five six pages.

• Bots that are being discussed
• Bots that have a aproved trial run
• Bots that are approved and waitng a flag
• Bot that are approved and wish to get approval for another task
• Bot disscusion archives
• and disscusions that have stalled and are over60 days old without any edits

which is something simialar that is uses for WP:CFD/ WP:RFA and the use of subpages for each bot Betacommand 07:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no problems with the first four; the archives should be, well, archived, and so should anything more than a month old. If the bot operator can't be bothered to come back and say "Uh, hello?" they're probably not that dedicated to having their bot, and we need people who are going to be dilligent with regard to thier bots. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

This seems to imply that quite a number of recently-archived discussion with no approval, disapproval, or pending questions from the AG will presently be getting unarchived and having "uh, hello" suffixed to them, somewhat defeating the point of archiving them in the first place. This might more usefully have been done on a somewhat more gradual and selective basis. Alai 03:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The vast majority of the 90+ requests that I archived had not been commented on in months. Months. I don't see a problem, in the least, with removing requests that are doing nothing but taking up space and making the page unmanageable. The archiving has been done for several days now, and I've yet to see a single old request pop back up. If a large number of them pop back up, my first question is going to be "Where have you been for the past three months, and will you be dropping out again, leaving questions about your bot unanswered for three months or longer?" Until a problem surfaces from it, I say it was a good solution. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 08:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

please let me clarify i didnt want them it be unachived, just put on a seprate achive somthing like WP:BOT/no consensus. as for the other approvals i suggest something like WP:BOT/Approved & WP:BOT/denined or something like that so it would be easier to find a bots status. Betacommand 16:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

To give due credit, E. seems to have sped things up enormously, so I'll file the above under the general heading of "startup costs" of new system, and "all's well that ends well". I just rather had visions of endless "churning" of requests without resolution... Alai 17:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Running bots

I'd love to learn a programming language and run a bot... but I don't want to download programming software. Is there an alternative to downloading software? --Gray Porpoise 15:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Many users apparently having problems with cydebot actions

I, and apparently, many other people are having problems with the actions of User:Cydebot (see User_talk:Cydebot, especially sections 38, 41, and 43, though there may well be additional notes on this page from dissatisfied users.) I wonder if someone could block its actions and suggest that it is changed to merely put a note on people's user pages asking them to manually edit the pages, as this seems to be the simplest option. I have had to revert my page, and have yet to work out what I must do to successfully achieve what the bot was trying to do. Thank you.  DDS  ^talk 22:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I've left a message on the operator's page at User talk:Cyde. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response and the actions. I noticed that complaints are still being made by people on the talk page of the bot, and looking back over the previous messages, it seems that similar problems were being complained about since May of this year at least. It appears that nothing has been done with respect to those previous requests, and so I wonder whether this bot could simply be blocked unless or until its owner replies speedily and change its behaviour almost immediately.  DDS  ^talk 10:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

User:Cydebot, despite being blocked once, has now been unblocked and is still apparently doing things it is not supposed to do, judging by fresh comments made on User_talk:Cydebot. Can something not be done to fix this once and for all? Is this the correct place to draw someone's attention to it who can act to fix the problem, since Cyde seems not to respond to any calls to fix his bot?  DDS  ^talk 16:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Blocked until Cyde contacts me -- Tawker 16:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure this is the right place to bring this up. I am not happy with some recent actions of Cydebot. The bot's action basically made the articles orphans (without categories). Without the categories, there is no way to get to these articles. This is like destroying constructive work of others and make the encyclopidia building process difficult. The bad part is that the bot did not inform any one about this. I had to find this on my watchlist. I am not for this bot empyting out categories. Can someone please stop this bot from doing this? Can someone put this job, "Emptying out deleted category" to a vote? - Ganeshk (talk) 16:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Surely the bot was removing the category due to a WP:CFD discussion? Martin 16:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Martin, thanks for the response. I have moved my question to WP:CFD's talk page. - Ganeshk (talk) 16:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Make yourself easier to contact then. Where did you go? --Cyde Weys 17:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Cyde, I am easy to contact. I have posted this problem here. Please give your comments over there. - Ganeshk (talk) 19:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Think he meant Tawker. ;) Syrthiss 21:03, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Ganeshk's problem appears to have been resolved by Betacommand. It had to do with a redlinked category added to an article, and deciding which extant category a nonexistant category might have been a subcat of is usually beyond bots. I tried to solve the other thing (about the removing cabinet of norway's cat) and I cannot figure out what happened unless it was something similar (cab of norway was redlinked when cydebot was given the task and had since been created and populated). Cab of norway was only created September 6th or so. Syrthiss 18:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Even further investigation shows that it removed Category:Cabinet of norway (redlinked) and Category:English Cartographers (also redlinked). Both were typo's for real categories Category:Cabinet of Norway and Category:English cartographers. Looks like the objections were from well-intentioned editors who seem to expect omniscience. Any objections to me releasing the block? Syrthiss 18:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Please, go ahead. I won't do anything but uncontroversial standard CFD work until I talk to Tawker at least (in case this is about something else). I must admit, his block reason didn't exactly give me any information about what was going on :-( Cyde Weys 18:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Unblocked. Syrthiss 18:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Not-logged-in bot

There’s a not-logged-in bot working under IP address 129.125.101.164, but there is no note on the talk or user page. --Van helsing 08:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

This could be User:JAnDbot who was performing similar types of edits around the time in question. (See contributions). I'll post a message on that page, just to see. Update: It is not the user in question. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 12:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

As long as it keeps up it's ultra slow editing pace [1] this doesn't seem to be a problem right now. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It's possible that it is some bot that periodically loses its "logged in" status, but it is vital to be able to monitor the bot, so it can't be run anonymously. The rambot has accidentally run as an IP before, although that was back when most people knew what it was. But it should have been blocked then so that RC patrol can verify that it isn't a vandal or a malfunctioning approved bot. The speed of additions is irrelavent. Of course on a practical note, an anonymous bot has no bot flag, so it will uncessarily clutter the RC. All this is previous precedent to support blocking. But you are correct: It is good that it seems to have a slow pace. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 13:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Might be Thijs!bot (talk · contribs) operated by Thijs! (talk · contribs) losing login every now and then? --Francis Schonken 14:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is: see nl:Overleg gebruiker:Thijs!#Overleg gebruiker:129.125.101.164 - summary of the conversation there: Is this your bot? Yes it is. --Francis Schonken 14:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I've unblocked the IP, since it is an approved bot, albiet occasionally getting logged out. Looking at the recent archives, this problem has occurred before without any apparent resolve, so we may want to consider a more permanent solution. Update: It's not on the list of Registered bots, but as it's only a manual bot I won't mess with blocks again unless someone else find a problem. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 16:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Regarding my comment on speed, this "bot" is making less than 1 edit per day, that's hardly enough to need to go through the bot process, in fact if they would have not put the word "robot" in their edit summary, would we even be having this disucussion? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:34, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

This bot has made over 200 edits in the last 24 hours, as of my posting this. They all seem to be interlanguage wikilinks. — Ram-Man ^{(comment) (talk)} 22:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Please correct me if I'm worng, but their Contributions link does not appear to support that. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn’t it be very likely that Ram-Man was talking about the contribs of Thijs!bot and not the IP? Anyway, I don’t see a problem anymore; the link between bot and IP is made and a small note on the IP talk page is sufficient. --Van helsing 07:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The Red Button

...I know this may sound kind of stupid, but I always wonder what the red button on the bot page is for, it says it'll block the bot, but mabye... will it block the person who presses it? (please respond on my talk page.) Tinlv7 18:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Category:Protected deleted categories

There's been some talk at CFD about having a bot patrol Category:Protected deleted categories to make sure the categories stay empty. Does anybody have a bot that can do that? - EurekaLott 02:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Copied to Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Category:Protected_deleted_categories. TimBentley (talk) 16:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Useful categorisation of bots?

Is it possible that we could get some useful categorisation of the bots? I'd be interested in seeing them categorised by programming language (so people can find similar examples) and open sourceness (likewise looking for code to use), and also if there's some way to categorise their general wikipedia functions.

I guess it might be useful to have different categories for Pywiki or AWB bots etc. though AWB is generally not used as a bot specifically, so it might get a bit confusing. Categorisation by task could be pretty useful. Martin 14:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Bot Communication

How does a Wiki Bot communicate with English Wikipedia? Does it request pages like any browser with HTTP, or does it use another protocol? Thanks in advance. -ENIAC (Talk) (Current Projects) 12:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Like a browser with HTTP. In addition, I know of User:Yurik/Query API, which is for retrieval only (although quite elegant). --Ligulem 12:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

There has been talk of a bot interface, but I don't know if it will ever be more than that. Martin 12:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Addition to policy

I propose that we add a statement to this policy that all bot edits (and edits made with any software assistance) must abide by all existing guidelines and common practices. The reason is that I occasionally notice bots/javascript etc. edits that change articles in a manner - that while not necessarily wrong - is not consistent with the normal wiki-style. Normally this is limited to minor formatting things, but it is still needlessly annoying. Martin 21:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I am going to add this ammendment now, as I think it is uncontroversial, largely because it is simple commen sense. Martin 20:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Overactive unlinking bot.

Greetings; There is an apparent job or bot that is unlinking of “common words” which seems to be running overboard in a number of instances; it is delinking items that while on their face may seem "common" may in fact be apropos to the article. Also, in general I prefer to see and abundance of linking, makes for richer exploration. I have seen some errors where it has removed the link around a year but truncated the value (1993 became 993). The bot appears to be operated by User:Colonies_Chris and the changelog url is [2]. Thank you for looking at this. Bdelisle 08:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not a bot, but a person operating a piece of software to help them. As for the unlinking, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Overlinking, the links to words like "Saturday" are hardly relevent to the context of the article. Martin 09:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Are they required to have a bot flag to make multiple edits per minute? And it is debatable whether "Overlinking" applies in a blank sense to all links that they have on their list. Ansell 10:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Obviously there are times when a link to "Saturday" is in context, it is up to the editor to make this judgement. Martin 10:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Spam reversion bot

On another wiki where I'm a sysop under a different username, I've got a bot that looks for spamming, then reverts it with the edit summary of (Spam reverted - AUTOLINKREMOVE - Please do not mass-add external links!)

I'm wondering if I should use this bot here on Wikipedia; it's a semi-bot, not a full one. --LiverpoolCommander 11:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

How do you detect "spam" ? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

bot with bad edit summaries

MelancholieBot (talk · contribs) did this edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mexico&curid=3966054&diff=79370151&oldid=79163821 and had the only edit summary "robot", also, the bot didn't do much. _→AzaToth 01:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The interwiki bots don't seem to mention rearrangements just additions modifications and removals, that edit it seems just involved rearangements. Plugwash 23:39, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Bot making useless redirect fixes

See Wikipedia talk:Bots#"Robot-assisted disambiguation: U.S. Highway 1", in which I notified Rschen7754 that his bot Rschen7754bot (talk · contribs) is making useless edits. He has not stopped the bot, which I assume is because he is away from the computer. --NE2 03:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I just stopped the bot, but I disagree with "useless." --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 03:51, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

See User talk:Rschen7754 and User talk:NE2 for continuing discussion. --NE2 03:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

new section needed "assisted bots"

It is time we added a new section specifically dealing with assisted bots/software (WP:AWB etc. ). Though the spirit of this policy is obvious, I would like to express some principles clearly:

• Assisted bots are defined as any software that allows rapid editing of articles.
• Typical assisted jobs include those which are repetitive, but need some human interaction e.g. Disambig repair, re-categorisation.
• Assisted bots don't necessarily need bot approval, though some software has built in approval detection, whereby approval from an admin is required (developers are encouraged to build in approval mechanisms).
• A separate account is advised if many edits are going to be made.
• Always make extra sure there is consensus before making a large series of edits.

I don't think any of these points are new or remotely controversial, so I'll add them pretty soon. thanks Martin 06:34, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this and there is nothing controversial here. I would say though that in some cases it may make sense to get a bot flag if there are a large enough number of edits that are not one-time-only. It isn't clear from the above when such a bot should go through the process. Perhaps "when in doubt, go through the process". -- RM 19:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, that is sensible. thanks Martin 20:34, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Simple Bot

My idea: Create a bot that checks the new changes and finds those with multiple exclamation marks (!!!!!!!!!11). 50% of all the vandalism I've seen has that. --Jinxs 12:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That is part of TawwkerBot Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 13:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep !!!!!! gets auto reverted -- Tawker 18:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion: Auto-signature bot

I have noticed that perhaps six out of seven anonymous users who leave comments on talk pages do not sign their posts properly. I have usually added the {{unsigned}} message after those posts when I have encountered them. However, this could be a job for a bot: scan the Recent changes list limited to the Talk space, and if a comment is made by an IP-address, check it for a signature and add one if necessary. Of course logged in users also forget the signature sometimes, and those could be checked too, if it doesn't take too much resources. Alternatively only check those users that have not created an user page yet, they are often new to Wikipedia and do not know about signing their posts. Is anyone with the skill/equipment up to this? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 11:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

This soudns like a tricky one, but possible. Request for someone else to make a bot can be placed at: WP:BOTREQ. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Tricky for sure, but it might be able to be pulled off. I would expect it to go through a number of iterations correcting for mistakes before it was fully successful though. -- RM 12:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! I posted this suggestion to that page too now. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 20:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought about this before, and I realized it would be very hard to make it accurate. For example what about when someone adds a new paragraph to a message they already wrote, or altered a peice of common text on a talk page. I could not think of a way to avoid false positives. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:59, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Spellchecking

I noticed that it is stated that no spellchecking bot could ever function without assitence. Now I understand the fundemental faults with spell checkers, lord know I have tried to depend on them in the past due to my deplorable spelliong. But it does not seem accurate to say it is not technically possible to automatically correct spelling.

What about a bot that only changed diferentiate to differentiate? To say it is not technically possible to create a spellchecking bot is just wrong. The scope simply needs to be limited.

What needs to be done for such an automated bot(which I for one am not skilled enough to create) is to provide a list of words and their mispellings where there is no possible alternate meaning to the word. Such as sofisticated turned into sophisticated, no possible error in mistaking it for another word. Not trying to change the world/wiki, just pointing out what I see, wheeeee. HighInBC 01:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

What would the bot do when it encountered a quotation from a book where the original author spelled it as "diferentiate"? --Carnildo 06:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ohhhh, ya got me. I was wrong, the page is right. No automated system could account for that. I retract my contention. HighInBC 06:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a simple solution to that - any quotation that includes a misspelling or grammatical error should include [sic] after the error. This is something editors should be doing independent of any consideration of spell-checking bots. I was interested in creating a bot much like HighInBC's suggestion, although the use of "predominately" (which is not a word, but a common misspelling of "predominantly") was my target. If Carnildo's objection is the only one, I don't see it as a real problem. | Mr. Darcy talk 18:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

For every solution built, someone builds a better idiot. What about someone who cites from a book as "predominately"   [sic] or any of a thousand other variants? Automated spellchecking is FTL. That's why semi-automated corrections (via AWB) are allowed, but fully automated "corrections" are not. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 16:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot?

I am unfamilar with bots to say the least but was curious if User talk:84.244.80.3 is an unauthorized bot, or simply one not logged in. Dark jedi requiem 02:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Likely not logged in authorized but but we really have no clue short of checkusering the IP which is a privacy vio -- Tawker 03:47, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks like it's been very low volume, and not recent. If it starts going bezerk, it can be blocked, you can report it here, or even on WP:AIV if its really crazy. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I was just curious since I thought all bots had to be logged in. Dark jedi requiem 18:26, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Unauthorized Bot?

See a super-human rate of edits coming from user 141.84.69.20 (talk). Was concerned it was an unauthorized Bot, and possisbly doing damage? --KeithB 20:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to have stopped since I left a message on the talk page. --KeithB 20:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

User:Skumarlabot, new one. Possible owner User:Skumarla 203.185.57.117 07:09, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, blokced User talk:Skumarlabot. — xaosflux ^Talk 07:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Rollback to the bots!

I have made a proposal to let some bots be granted the rollback feature at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Rollback to the bots!. Crossposting as this proposal is relevant to this policy (comment there). Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Where is the API?

I've spent hours scraping around and I can't find the API? Where is the documentation that says "This is what you need to send" and "This is what you get back". I don't want wrappers or dll's or libraries, I just want to know what strings of bytes I need to send, where to send them and the format of the replies. TIA for any assitance. 87.112.20.152 08:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php --Carnildo 09:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

No good, that is just gobbledegook to me since I don't know php. It also does not explain how to write pages.

I'm looking for the definition of the actual API. Not a wrapper or example in some particular language (unless there's a c++ example).

Something along the lines of {Open port 80 and send "title=Wikipedia_talk:Bots&action=edit&section=21&data=the new data"}, the returned data will be {format of returned data}. 87.112.20.152 09:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

It appears the "api" is only for reading information at the moment, it seems to make actual edits you still have to use the interface designed for web browsers, that means you need to read up on enough html to find and parse a form and enough http to post the results of editing that form back to the server. Plugwash 13:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks, that's easy. I thought that was deprecated though, as it's effectively the same thing as screenscraping as far as server load is concerned. 87.112.20.152 15:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Do Wiktionary bot approval requests go on the same page as Wikipedia ones?

I can't find any way to link to a page specifically for Wiktionary. 87.112.20.152 15:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary is a separate community from Wikipedia. Like all sister projects, it has its own request pages. Bot votes on Wiktionary can be started from wikt:WT:VOTE but usually require some discussion about what is intended, first, either in the Grease pit or in the Beer parlour. See also wikt:WT:BOT. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 15:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I have not seen that page before. 87.112.20.152 16:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Modifying warnings

OK. I was dealing with a vandal, as was another user, and the bot reverted an edit and provided the vandal with a generic warning.(given test1, then test2, then generic)

Is it appropriate that I replaced the bot's warning with test3, and signed it?--Vercalos 07:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC) yeah the AVB bots are not that smart to figure that out. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 07:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Documentation for the Python bot framework.

Can someone please tell me where to find this?

I gather you can call the package to log in, read and write pages, but there is no documenation with the package and I can't find any here.