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William Allen Simpson running occasionally as Botryoidal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stated rules for administrator block require that

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

The stated rules for starting the bot say that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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User:ABot update

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

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

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

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

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User:Xbot RFP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Gnome (Bot) I reproposed with a new mission below

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between which projects? Rob Church 01:15, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
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User:AIDbot

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

  1. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Lukobe (rollover) (top)
  2. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:DanielCD (rollover)
  3. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Raghu.kuttan (rollover) (top)
  4. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Hahaandy1 (rollover) (top)
  5. 10:56, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:SpacemanAfrica (rollover) (top)
  6. 10:55, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Vir (rollover) (top)
  7. 10:55, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Pschemp (rollover)
  8. 10:52, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Ugur Basak (rollover)
  9. 10:52, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Jmabel (rollover)
  10. 10:52, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Radufan (rollover) (top)
  11. 10:49, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Wikiacc (rollover)
  12. 10:49, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:172 (rollover) (top)
  13. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Adammathias (rollover) (top)
  14. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Resistor (rollover) (top)
  15. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Bhadani (rollover)
  16. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Ashibaka (rollover)
  17. 10:48, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Silence (rollover)
  18. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Quadell (rollover)
  19. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Carwil (rollover) (top)
  20. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Tombseye (rollover)
  21. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:NeoJustin (rollover) (top)
  22. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:TachyonP (rollover) (top)
  23. 10:47, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Khoikhoi (rollover)
  24. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Stevecov (rollover) (top)
  25. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Neutrality (rollover) (top)
  26. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Cuivienen (rollover)
  27. 10:46, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Wackymacs (rollover) (top)
  28. 10:45, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Waltwe (rollover) (top)
  29. 10:45, 6 March 2006 (hist) (diff) m User talk:Fenice (rollover)
  • The templates thus posted are not in template namespace (e.g.: [1]), so: unnecessary overhead
    • Care to explain in more precise manner? What is the actual problem here? --Dijxtra 13:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
      • Suppose your project has an average of 100 contributors soon; A year later the wikipedia databases contain approx. 5000 times this string:
        ==[[<pagename>]] won!== <div style="text-align: center; margin: 0 10%;"> {| class="notice noprint" id="{{{id}}}" style="background: #ffccFF; border: 1px solid #ff33FF; margin: 0 auto;" |- | [[Image:Aidlogo.png|none|50px| ]] | Thank you for your support of the '''[[Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive|Article Improvement Drive]]'''.<br>This week '''[[<pagename>]]''' was selected to be improved to [[Wikipedia:Featured articles|featured article]] [[Wikipedia:What is a featured article|status]].<br>Hope you can help… |} </div>
        — i.e. approx. 5000 times over 200 characters (didn't count); it's possible to do the same requiring less than 10% of these resources, by typing the above in a template once (replacing <pagename> by {{{1}}}), so the database only has to digest 5000 times a string of this length: {{AIDnotif|<pagename>}}.
        Note that even then I don't think this a good idea. Afaik, all projects sending out invitations on user talk pages by bot stopped doing that (the last project I knew in this sense was Esperanza). --Francis Schonken 17:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
        • Good point! Didn't remember of that. If we decide that it's OK to leave messages on talk pages, I'll make the new template and use it. And the decission whether to leave messages on talk pages will be made somewhere else. I myself don't plan on entering that discussion, I'm interested just in the result of the discussion, so I know how to program my bot. I'll inform the people on AID project to discuss that. For now, I'm dropping all of the features of the bot that are disputable, so we can use the features which are not disputable. --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The bot adds non-content (or "project-related") templates to articles http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roma_people&diff=prev&oldid=42461727 — whether or not such templates are desired in article namespace, should not be decided by a vote on the bot performing these changes: I mean: it is questionable whether such templates are called for in article namespace: I'm merely saying the discussion about these does not have to take place here, on the talk page of the "bots" page. Maybe there was some prior discussion (and approval) of the use of the {{AIDcur}} template, if that is the case: please give a link where such discussion was concluded.
    (PS by Francis Schonken 12:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC):) until such approval is a fact, I suppose:
    • The bot was formed on rules which exist on AID (you can see those here). This bot just does what was previously done by hand. Therefore, this is not the place to discuss such policies. If you do not approve this bot, the templates will be added by hand, as they have been for last few months. This bot does not impose new rules, it just automates the old ones. --Dijxtra 13:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
      • "rules which exist on AID" — but apparently as rules for a small-scale project. You indicate yourself the project has grown quite a bit. Apart from the question whether the involved tasks need to be automated, the question whether it is a good idea to have AID as a large scale project needs to be answered too. Not on this page, as we both agree. But apparently the question wasn't answered elsewhere either (as you don't give a link to such discussion with conclusive decision - note that I didn't ask you to give a link to the page with the rules, but a link to the place(s) where it was decided that there is broad community approval of the mode of operation of the project). I don't see the need to give permission for bot automatisation as long as the other question isn't answered
        Apart from that, I don't think it a good idea to have templates like {{AIDcur}} in article namespace, per wikipedia:avoid self-references. And even less when a bot would be given permission to place such templates in article namespace. --Francis Schonken 17:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
        • As we agreed, this is not the place to discuss that, so I'll do the following: drop that feature untill the thing is discussed somewhere else. --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The AID project is only one (of many) projects on article improvement: I don't say this project is necessarily worse or better than the other projects/initiatives, but maybe it shouldn't have a competitive advantage by being served by a bot (yet). The discussion about the various article improvement initiatives should take place elsewhere, not here on the bot talk page, IMHO. Was there any prior discussion (e.g.) in village pump? announced at RfC? etc... --Francis Schonken 11:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
    • This project has currently 73 nominations. Every nomination has to be checked at least once a day (preferably every 6 hours). To check the nomination you have to count the votes, detect the anonymous ones, remove expired nominations and update header information on nominations. This is a tremendous amount of work, tremendous enough to make me learn python and learn how to write a bot withouth any how-tos. I insist that this project will colapse under it's own weight if this bot is suspended as the number of people willing to check the nominations is very small and shrinking. --Dijxtra 13:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
      • I made no objections to that part of the bot operation, did I?
        • Sorry, I misinterpreted you. I felt that "it shouldn't have a competitive advantage by being served by a bot" was an objection. If it isn't, then everything's cool! --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
      • I objected to the serialized talk page posts and to the namespace where the bot places the AIDcur template. I didn't see you would be prepared to modify your bot on these two points (well, are you?). I think it a bit curious I had to find out about these operations myself (you didn't mention them on the bot's talk page, apart from using the word "rollover", which I didn't know implied all that), so for the time being I'd disable these two operations of the bot (that is: the posting of invitations on user talk pages, and the posting of a project template in article namespace instead of in talk namespace). Unless these objections can be taken into account (or remedied by proof of wide community acceptance), separately from the project page check & update functionality (which I don't object to), I'm opposed to the bot as a whole. --Francis Schonken 17:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
        • Objection taken in account, the two disputed features dropped utill consensus on those is reached. The bot will for the time being do just operations like these: [2] [3] [4] Is this acceptable? --Dijxtra 18:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
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Fetofsbot2

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

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

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

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IW-Bot-as

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

No problems, approved. Rob Church 01:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
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User:ShinmaBot - The Wikipedia:Articles for creation maintainance bot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SmackBot and AWB operated by Rich Farmbrough

Please see:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • This page is for the requesting of approval for a bot flag, not for filing complaints against bots and/or their owners. Please file a Request for Comment or put a notice on the Administrators' Noticeboard if you would like to make a complaint. Thanks. --ZsinjTalk 16:08, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Hi Zsinj,
      1. This request is about SmackBot's bot flag in the first place;
      2. See also Commander Keane's reply here: "Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals#SmackBot_and_AWB_operated_by_Rich_Farmbrough seems to be a good place to allow discussion." - please convince Commander Keane too if you think this has to move elsewhere. --Francis Schonken 16:33, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tawkerbot (1) Fair Use Rationale Request Request

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

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

It would essentially

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Eskimbot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cydebot

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

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

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

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

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

--Cyde Weys 17:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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User:Pegasusbot expansion of usage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the University will

the University offers

the Univesrity is

the University does

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

QovulwBot is run on Python with the pywikipedia framework .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It uses pywikipedia framework.

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

The maintainer is User:Maksim-e.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great! Now I'd like to request a bot flag. See Special:Contributions/NedBot for examples of NedBot's work. -- Ned Scott 11:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
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SmackBot task approval 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stefan 02:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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Alaibot

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

Trial run approved. Rob Church (talk) 16:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Been used a number of times now, please review at your convenience. Alai 06:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
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Dlyons493Bot Request

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did I not give any reasoning? and no duh it's not a vote, that is just my position. ILovEPlankton 17:20, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
I was referring to someone else. --Cyde Weys 17:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Well sorry then. ILovEPlankton 17:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Note that even if this only deals with TfD userboxes, the number of userboxes that go to TfD would make this a major timesaver even if it isn't used for T1 userboxes. . Also, to the various objections above, regardless of one's position on userboxs, this will be a useful bot. Now as a more serious concern, I wouldn't mind seeing it run a few times on a few fake user pages with a lot of userboxes since I naively expect that if there are any problems with the bot they are likely to show up there. JoshuaZ 16:27, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
    • pywikipediabot is a very thoroughly tested framework ... I'd be very surprised if it messed up like this. And anyway, I would be checking Userboxbot's results manually for the first few runs, so if I caught any malfunctioning I could just kill it. --Cyde Weys 16:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I support but only for cases where a template is to be deleted by a TfD consensus. To actions such as silent-substitution-and-then-as-orphan-deletion, strong object, unless a policy clearly banning all political/religious boxes is established. For the latter, your input on my project is appreciated - it's implementation would require a lot of bot usage. Misza13 T C 17:27, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
UPDATE: I just got an e-mail from Cyde. He stated that he might be away for a day or two and asked me to clarify this: what's being discussed here is that the bot being used only for userboxes that are TfD-ed or prohibited by a userbox policy. Note from self: since no such policy exists yet, it boils down to TfD for now. But the project of such policy anxiously awaits experts' input before being officially brought before the wide community. Misza13 T C 18:15, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Since it's only tidying Tfds I'm all for it, anything to take the load of a monotonous task off editors/sysops who are far more useful elsewhere. As long as it's only given the list after the debate is closed I can't see the harm (beyond traditional "zomg, rampage!" worries of course). GarrettTalk 07:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Object until policy exists. No need for such a bot, any more than any other template for which TfD votes subst. Septentrionalis 23:46, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
    • This object vote makes entirely no sense. Should I just rescope Userboxbot as a general TfD closer and then you'd support? Then you'd basically be saying you won't support something that is limited in scope but if it does everything you're fine with it. I don't understand. And thanks, Misza. --Cyde Weys 00:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
      • There are not enough TfD deletions of userboxes for this bot to be useful. Since using it for any other purpose under the present authorization would be bad faith, I do not see a use for this bot. I will consider a general purpose template-closer when I see one. Septentrionalis 01:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
        • Cydebot already does have full approval for TfD stuff. He already has (and will continue to do) encyclopedia-related TfD closures. If Userboxbot is turned down I will just have to use him for userboxes too, though I would prefer not to have to. --Cyde Weys 01:53, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Comments above already suggest that this would not be harmless. — xaosflux Talk 01:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose due to massive concerns about how the bot would work, what rules it would follow and above all concerns about the entire concept of substing every TFD'd template, many userspace templates are deleted solely for the purpose that they should be gone from every page in use, for example attack templates. There's also know way to know which ones are which and deal with special situations using a bot. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 02:00, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Your statement seems to indicate that you don't actually understand what this bot would do. It's not sentient; it's not going to be making decisions about which templates to subst and which to delete. That is decided by TfD. Of course I'm not going to be using it to substitute in attack templates that should rightfully be deleted. --Cyde Weys 02:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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SmackBot task approval III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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User:Ralbot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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