Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/JATMBot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was

Request Expired.

JATMBot

Operator: Tymon.r (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 00:16, Friday, March 15, 2019 (UTC)

Function overview: Maintenance – automatic (procedural) closure of WP:AfD discussions when nominated pages do not exist

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: standard pywikipedia

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): n/a

Edit period(s): continuous, being run every 3 minutes

Estimated number of pages affected: up to a few a day

Namespace(s): Wikipedia

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No

Function details: Closing per WP:PCLOSE AfD discussions when nominated pages do not exist, e.g. when they've been already speedy deleted or their title is mistyped. Informing a nominator about a closure on his user's talk page. In every run bot will go through AfD log pages for last 7 days and check for existence of nominated pages. If a nominated page doesn't exist, it will close (edit) page's AfD discussion in accordance with WP:AFD/AI and then inform a nominator about closure performed, stating possible reasons of the closure (title mistyped, article speedy deleted, etc.). The bot shall not perform any actions/closures when a decision oughts to be made. In future bot's functionality could be extended to other XfDs, but if so, it'd requested in separate BRFA. Best, Tymon.r Do you have any questions? 00:16, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I note User:AnomieBOT does something similar for WP:TFD and WP:FFD (and some related tasks at WP:CFD, but currently detecting the nominated categories there seems too prone to errors), although that doesn't preclude your bot doing this task for WP:AFD.

I see your BRFA says the source code is "standard pywikipedia", but I don't see any script included with Pywikibot for doing this task. Useful additional features compared to your manual diff include relaying the deleting admin and deletion reason from the log (after verifying it's not a deletion log entry previous to the AFD itself), detecting "moved without redirect" as being distinct from "nominated title does not exist", and allowing the deleting admin a chance to manually close before the bot does it for them. Anomie ⚔ 13:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomie, thanks for your input and your work with User:AnomieBOT! Agreed – my description of the programming technique used to create a bot is imprecise. The bot'd based on pywikipedia, but, as you mentioned, it'd need to use some additional self-written scripts to handle non-standard operations, e.g. checking a log of a deleted page. For the time period in which an admin could close AfD himself – I'd propose 10 minutes of delay before performing an automated closure. Best, Tymon.r Do you have any questions? 13:24, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Tymon.r: I have two questions:

I note that AnomieBOT's tasks specific who deleted the relevant page (FFD, TFD) - do you intend to do the same?
Would there be a way for admins to opt-out of having their deletions closed for them?

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:53, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DannyS712, thanks for your input.

Ad 1 – I believe it'd worth to have an unified message form used by bots (procedurally) closing XfDs. Therefore I'd probably retrieve this particular information from the page's log for each closure. I don't see it as something necessary, though. Getting to know this is as easy as pressing the red link.
Ad 2 – I don't see it necessary. First and foremost, because of a delay before which the bot won't be automatically closing discussions, leaving an adequate timeframe for a closer to do it at his own. It's in the best interest of a smoothness of a deletion process and no one will ever forbid a closing administrator from editing an AfD discussion, e.g. by adding some comments regarding deletion, even after it is closed by the bot.

Best, Tymon.r Do you have any questions? 14:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You are planning on "a few" edits per day, but need to run this 480 times a day? Are you going to be hosting this somewhere for continuous operations? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux, Yes, to catch all potentially interesting changes for the bot and to ensure that no discussions on an already removed article remains open for too long. Well, this script wouldn't need many servers' resources – running it, even more often, would be still cheap. I've been considering hosting it on WP:TOOLFORGE or my own VPS. Best, Tymon.r Do you have any questions? 14:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I share the concerns of DannyS712 above. Additionally, if this is going to be posting to user talk pages it should really be exclusion compliment (especially as posting to User Talk isn't AFAIK standard practice when closing an AfD)

I would also question the benifit of running this over all 7 days worth of logs rather than just recent nominations - how common are pages being deleted for unrelated reasons after being at AfD for more than 24 hours or so?

Finally, like Xaosflux above, I'd question why this needs to run every 3 minutes; I'd suggest every 15 minutes at most if you are going to scan all AfDs is likely more appropriate. Mdann52 (talk) 07:42, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Mdann52, thanks for your input. I hope you'll consider my replies to Xaosflux and DannyS712 above. Regarding exclusion compliment – definitely agreed. Posting to users' talk pages should be definitely facultative. Best, Tymon.r Do you have any questions? 14:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

{{BAGAssistanceNeeded}} It's been over a week already and no decision regarding the trial's been made. Tymon.r Do you have any questions? 10:13, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I know I'm coming a little late to the party, but do you have any specific stats for how frequently this problem arises? I ask mainly because of the previous questions about how often this will run; if (for an extreme example) there is one "event" per day, it doesn't make much sense to have a bot do this task as there will undoubtedly be plenty of editors who will catch the mistake themselves. Primefac (talk) 20:55, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

{{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}} Primefac (talk) 15:42, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Primefac: Just fyi the user's last edit was almost 2 months ago --DannyS712 (talk) 07:24, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely no. If an admin speedy deletes an article that's being discussed at AfD, they must close the discussion themself. This ensures they are aware of the discussion and for example, haven't missed any valid "keep" !votes. Such omissions are more common that we would like to imagine. A human editor patrolling the AfD pages has the chance to evaluate the situation and nudge the admin if there has been such an omission. A bot can't do that. And if a page doesn't exist because of a typo or other error in the nomination, it's usually much better to let that be fixed by the experienced editors patrolling the AfD nominations, than to close it and leave it to the initiative of the nominator, who's most likely to be a newbie and so have a harder time of it. Also, the bot isn't going to make much of an impact on the existing workload. Closing a discussion can take as little as a single click with tools like XFDcloser. The bot that closes discussions at TfD was developed – I assume – before such tools were available, and it genuinely saved admins the effort of manually adding the boilerplate texts to the closed discussion. If it's still in use there, that's partly because editors are used to it and partly due to the generally lower stakes in TfD discussions, where the potential for errors is seen as acceptable in light of the gains in efficiency. That's not the case for AfD: it both deserves and manages to attract greater participation. – Uanfala (talk) 12:40, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Uanfala on this. Any article that's deleted in the middle of an AfD should have extra eyes on it, and the deleting admin needs to be aware of the discussion. Any errors in nominating articles for deletion (mistyped titles, etc.) get caught fairly quickly at AfD and corrected manually as well – I would presume that broken nominations usually need to be fixed rather than automatically closed. – bradv🍁 21:48, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Request Expired. User is inactive. Primefac (talk) 15:58, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.