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Request for deflagging and blocking of Anybot

In accordance with Wikipedia:Bot policy#Appeals and reexamination_of_approvals, this is a formal request for Anybot to be deflagged and indefinitely blocked.

Anybot has now had four major runs. The first run, in February, introduced many major errors, by admission of Martin, the bot operator.[1] The second run, in March and April, fixed some of these errors; but it didn't even come close to making these articles acceptable. From April on, Martin was being asked to address problems introduced by his bot, and did not do so. For example, on 6 March Rkitko pointed out that Anybot had wrongly described thousands of cyanobacteria as algae[2], and raised the matter again on 21 April[3], but as of today, 26 June, Rkitko hasn't received a reply[4] and these articles have still haven't been fixed.[5]

Anybot ran for a third time in May and June, and continued to introduce errors. It also exhibited unacceptable behaviours such as edit warring.[6][7] Martin has stated that he did not run the bot at this time, and that whoever did run it was not authorised to do so; apparently anyone could run the bot by visiting a certain webpage; he did not bother to secure the page because he figured no-one knew of its existence—security through obscurity.[8][9]

The extent of the problem did not become clear until the last couple of weeks, when 69.226.103.13, who appears to have expertise in this area, spoke out strongly on the matter at WT:PLANTS. There was a long discussion, during which it became clear that there were so many wrong articles, with so many errors, of some many different types, that the only way they could be fixed is they were individually manually repaired by a phycologist. This would take thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of hours; it would probably be quicker to delete them and write them all from scratch. Therefore I sent all 4000 articles to AfD; consensus seems to be emerging there that they will need to be deleted.[10]

One result of the AfD discussion was that it finally prompted Martin to respond. Having discovered that the bot had been run without his authorisation, he blocked it. He then began working on a bot that would fix the errors. Once this bot was ready, he announced his intention of running it. A number of people objected to the idea that Anybot could be trusted to fix these errors.[11][12][13] But despite these objections, and calls for the bot to be deflagged,[14][15][16][17] Martin unblocked the bot and set it going, apparently without a test run, and without notifying or seeking approval from the BAG.

This fourth run put a great many articles into a novel state, including introducing new errors, such as classifying diatoms as plants.[18] These were all new edits, not reverts; but disturbingly, every edit was marked as minor, and given the misleading edit summary "Restore article to last good version."[19] The bot also edited at least one article that it had never edited before,[20] despite Martin's assurance that it had only edited articles created by Anybot and not since edited by a human.[21] I have now reblocked the bot.

In summary, this bot has been a complete disaster from start to finish. Martin may have the best of intentions but he has presided over a monumental screwup and his bot cannot be trusted at any level. I am seeking to have Anybot deflagged and indefinitely blocked on the grounds that

  • it introduces major errors of facts on a massive scale, every time it is run;
  • it has exhibited unacceptable behaviours such as edit warring and the use of misleading edit summaries;
  • the bot owner failure to secure the bot account;
  • the bot owner failed to address and fix errors in a timely manner;
  • the bot owner has unblocked and run the bot in the face of community opposition to him doing so.

Hesperian 03:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

anybot (talk · contribs · count) 's BRFA approval page Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/anybot -- Tinu Cherian - 04:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Comment: Anybot is currently indefinitely blocked. – Quadell (talk) 13:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anybot's_algae_articles#Solution. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like an appropriate solution. Unless any other BAG members object, I'll mark Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/anybot as revoked in a few hours.
As for the deleting, whoever tags the pages for deletion (or runs an adminbot to just delete them) should have that task approved in the normal way; it's not so urgent that WP:IAR is needed, IMO. If no one beats me to it, I may write a quick script to generate the list of pages needing deletion, at which point any admin approved for mass-deletion (e.g. with AWB) could handle it. Anomie⚔ 22:24, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
It is done. Anomie⚔ 03:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Sorry Anomie, but if the community reaches the consensus that they should all be deleted, then they all get deleted. You don't get to end-run around the outcome of the AfD. If you read the AfD carefully, you will find reasons given why it is insufficient to "delete all articles which have only been edited by Anybot (and maintenance bots such as User:Addbot)". In short, the articles must be assumed to have been error-ridden at the time of creation, and the fact that some have been edited since does not imply that they have corrected or verified; more than likely the subsequent edits were merely cosmetic, since there are very few editors here with the expertise to contribute content or corrections on this topic. Hesperian 04:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't give a crap about AfD, and the unapproving of anybot is exactly what you asked for. What's your point? Anomie⚔ 04:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Didn't you just scrape a list of articles created by Anybot and not since edited by a human? That's what Martin is proposing in the linked section. And what I read from you above is "Sounds like an appropriate solution.... I may write a quick script to generate the list of pages needing deletion.... It is done." To me, that sounds like a declaration that you intend to implement Martin's solution. My point is that the AfD process decides what to do with these articles, not you. Hesperian 05:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the list isn't completed yet. Whether it actually gets used for deleting the pages or not, I don't really care; I'll just post it (actually, it'll be at least 3 lists: created by anybot and edited only by bots, created by anybot and edited by non-bots, and just edited by anybot) somewhere. I actually forgot about that when I said "It is done", I was referring to the revoking of the bot's approval. Anomie⚔ 05:15, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I see. At present the AfD is based upon the list at User:Anybot/AfD, which was originally a list of articles created by anybot, but has since been refined by the removal of some articles that have been fixed by a human. Therefore a "created by anybot" list would be redundant. But as you say, a "created by anybot and edited only by bots" list would enable the implementation of Martin's proposal, should it be agreed to. Hesperian 05:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Here are the lists:
Do with them what you will. Anomie⚔ 05:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I have removed Anybot's flag. bibliomaniac15 05:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Thank you. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

You know, it would be nice if these articles were ever examined in a way that showed fewer errors instead of more in number and kind. The list with articles that anybot touched but did not create contains a whole new mess of errors, each unique, and each will have to be checked and fixed by a human.

Also, the bot's synonymies are wrong, so probably 100% of its redirects should also be deleted if they can't be 100% checked, although user Hesperian is planning to deal with that.

I hope BAG makes certain that bot created articles in the future are coded properly to NOT overwrite existing articles.[22][23]

It's hard to understand how the bot was ever allowed to continue the first time it was noticed it was doing this. Obscure algae require expertise programmers may not have, but code that allows a bot to overwrite existing, unrelated text, is a major and inexcusable error.

This group tends to ignore comments made by IPs-you don't respond to my posts. But, if you, as a group, did not ignore IPs, someone might have caught and stopped this mess long before it reached this level. The IP 213.214.136.54 edited over a thousand articles, correcting the most egregious errors, and all of his/her edits and hard work are slated to be deleted.

IPs contribute a lot of excellence to wikipedia. I can't stop you from ignoring my every post, and setting an example to bot operators that this is how to act (as Martin acted), but the wikipedia community has decided over and over to allow anonymous IPs to edit.

If this group does not respect the community consensus, it's no wonder that it allows the creation of messes that put wikipedia in disrepute.

A group that can make this much work for other writers of the encyclopedia should be a part of the community, not a non-responsive law alone.

That's just my opinion on the matter. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 06:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

With all do respect, your comment is way off base. No one "ignored IP input", as there was none to consider in the original BRFA. BAG members aren't some kind of super geniuses that can automatically envision every possible problem about every possible subject. The bot was correctly approved based on the feedback that was received during the approval process (which was pretty extensive, by the way). Trying to blame the bad articles on BAG is ridiculous and completely not helpful to solving the actual problem. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:43, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I have two posts on pages by this group that have been completely ignored. One just above this thread.
It doesn't require a super genius in programming to understand that a bot that is creating articles should not be coded to overwrite entire other articles without being specifically coded for that feature.
You're the final say in authorizing a bot, before it's flagged, but you don't monitor problems with the bot; there's nothing way off base about my comments. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:22, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
The BAG (of which I am not a member, BTW) can only go by what it sees and no objections or evidence of problems were raised during the BRFA. It is unfortunate that the bot made a large number of errors and that the operator failed to secure to code, which allowed a vandal to abuse it. However, both of those problems ultimately fall on the bot owner, bot BAG. BAG can't predict the future and expecting them to do so is completely ridiculous. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:28, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
If there were consequences to bot operators who ignored writer-alerts about problems with their articles, then this problem area could be reduced. Note, someone said Martin corrected errors. He did not; he ignored error reports for months, and his early reports of correcting errors are wrong; and, if he had examined the results, he could have seen that he sometimes made the problem worse and seldom fixed it.
Now, it seems once the BAG approves your bot you can do what you want: restart your bot when it's been blocked for a reason, run the bot to do unapproved tasks against the community consensus, and create new bots and operate them without consequences once you have a flagged bot. All of this is a problem with BAG: there are no consequences to bot owners operating their bots in unapproved manners, thus giving tacit approval to bot owners to do as they please. Until BAG requires bot owners to monitor their bots, secure their codes (a simple and basic requirement), and be responsive, in a timely fashion, to bug reports, this problem will plague wikipedia and its articles, creating future messes. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
His bot got blocked. Then, someone assumed good faith and unblocked it. And how on Earth is the BAG meant to force bot owners to monitor their bots anyway? - Jarry1250 [ humourous – discuss ] 20:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Jarry, I think you're mistaken. It's not "someone assumed good faith and unblocked it". The bot owner himself unblocked the bot, not some randomly passerby. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Replies below are chronologically before many of the replies above. This break splits up comments and replies, which is unfortunate. - Jarry1250 [ humourous – discuss ] 20:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

What you have said of substance has been lost in long rants about how horrible the bot is and how horrible we are, which is why I haven't replied to you yet. I don't see that 213.214.136.54 has commented here anywhere. Anomie⚔ 13:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I have not posted long rants about how horrible you are. I posted a series of questions above, while trying to understand is there some way this problem can be prevented in the future. I posted another question elsewhere. You've ignored my questions. If you can't or won't read a systematic evaluation of what is wrong with a bot in an attempt to find a way to fix the problem with programming, then this group is being irresponsible. That's nothing to brag a link about.
I posted lengthy discussions about the problems with the bot because I wanted to be sure I identified all types of errors, initially, when it was thought the errors could be corrected. When I realized they couldn't I posted a sufficient number of examples of the types of errors to make it clear that there was not a set of systematic errors that could be corrected with another bot.
I continued to keep searching for this type of error, something that could save a large group of the articles.
What I've said in my rants is germane to the discussion as long as writers continue to try to save a large quantity of the articles.
No, that's not why you or other members of this board haven't replied to my posts here, such as my questions above: it's because you ignore the input of IPs. This is typical wikipedia from my experience, including, now, this one: trying to get something done about over 4000 really bad articles. Bad in their entirety, bad they should have never been here articles.
IPs are part of the wikipedia community. My rants (thanks for the personally insulting sling about my work) were necessary to describe the massive extent of the errors created by this bot. They were often in response to other writers who were trying to save articles. When other writers had suggestions, rather than ignoring them I attempted to find ways of implementing them by reviewing more articles. I posted the results of these reviews, which you call rants. I guess I should have been thankful to be ignored by members of this group, it seems it was nicer than the personally insulting responses based on ignorance of the work I've done trying to save some of the articles by finding a large group of bot-editable ones.
If I'm missing a compliment I should be giving, please let me know.
Other IPS have posted to Martin's bot alerts board about article problems and been ignored.
I hate to keep having to say this, but, please, stay away from insulting me and focus on the substantive issue.
If my paragraph in the thread above is too long for members of this board to read, then command that folks write messages of only 1 or 2 simple sentences. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:22, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Again, no one ignore you because you are an IP. This is a completely unfounded accusation. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:28, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
We have focused on the substantive issues. See above. Anomie⚔ 17:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
The major substantive issue dealing with programming is preventing a mess of this nature from ever putting Wikipedia in disrepute of this level again. That issue has not been touched by this group. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:33, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
So what do you propose we do? The bot was given 2 trials, and all the reported errors from the trials were supposedly fixed. Ultimately, the responsibility for the bot rests on the operator. Your post above was probably ignored because you gave almost no context for your comments. Mr.Z-man 17:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I think the question of running an unapproved bot was enough that clicking on the links for context was in order. This isn't the first time Martin ran a bot without approval.
There are always a million more ways to work as a group to contribute something positive than there are ways to simple flame war.
A short term solution to part of the problem: Someone mentioned a {{noindex}} tag would prevent the articles from appearing in google search results. While the articles are still being discussed, even for only one more day, can someone who runs bots immediately tag all of the article's on this page with noindex? This does not need to be done to articles not created by anybot, just the ones it created (its deletion edits are among the ones it edited but did not create).
This could serve a couple of immediate goals. The edit summary of the bot tagging could link to the AFD list (User:Anybot/AfD) in its explanation for why a no-index tag was added. Anybot's user AfD list now links to the AfD. It could also alert anyone watch-listing any of the articles about the AfD and the need to remove any of their articles from the list.
--69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
The BAG doesn't have a magical ability to prevent someone form running an unapproved bot. There is no technical limitation that the BAG enables to allow a bot to run. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:28, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Yet there are no consequences to running an unapproved bot. A post about an unapproved bot was ignored. It's not even interesting that someone runs an unapproved bot. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Your assertion that BAG members would ignore an unapproved bot is absurd. The bot that caused these problems was an approved bot. You fundamentally misunderstand the difference between changing an aspect of a bot's code and a completely new task. Of course someone doesn't have to seek approval every time they modify their code. Bots are approved for a task and it is perfectly permissible to change one's code to better do the same task without seeking new approval.
Also, many users have been banned from Wikipedia or otherwise disciplined for running unapproved bot, so there certainly is not "no consequence" as you assert. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I asked for someone to explain this to me. If I get it wrong after asking and not being answered, so what? I tried to learn. I tried to understand.
The bot owner swears it's a new bot, not the same bot.[24] "::::::Just to clarify, it's not being checked by the bot that 'screwed it up', but by a different bot (which operates from the same account). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC)". It wasn't the same task, but a different task. In addition, the code was worse, not better; it introduced novel errors. The bot owner didn't seek approval. There were no consequences.
I see what's here, not the entire history of wikipedia. What's here is a post about an unapproved bot. What's happening is the post was ignored. I don't see the point in continuing this, when the bot owner says one thing, and you come up with something different. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
He used that wording to show he rewrote the code. The task was the same. Also, if it was only checking (not actually writing), that doesn't require approval. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
It was me who suggested that. I actually thought that I'd proposed noindexing the articles earlier this week - but looking back at my contribs, this seems not to be the case (perhaps I got edit conflicted? dunno). Unless this is prohibited by policy somewhere, this would be a Very Good Idea, IMO. 69.226. is correct in saying that these broken articles don't exactly make WP look good... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 18:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
I wish you had. You may have, and maybe I missed it. Let's get it done now if possible, though. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

On the question of what can you do? How about implement the most basic type of rules that programmers use when paid to write code? A simple start is demanding algorithms, maybe only from new programmers. Some programmers have many bots and few errors.

Any competent programmer can read another's algorithm and see they've missed the most basic things like initializing variables (probably why Martin's bot added bad lines of text and created bad taxoboxes, if the information had been gathered from a prior genus, but the next genus didn't mention spore types or its taxonomy, it just used leftover information), no protection against deleting an entire existing article. This is not genius level programming.

Then get specific approval from interested editors in their arena for all bots creating articles-don't just wait to see if anyone objects here, get positive approval. After a bot's initial run creating articles, post the list of its articles on wikiproject plants or somewhere and ask writers to check off on all of the articles.

--69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the anybot edits show allowing a bot to create articles has potential to create an even bigger mess than this one. This appears to be because of a lack of basic coding requirements and fundamental safeguards from the BAG prior to and once a bot is given approval.

Some writers are now battling me verbally to fight this realization. It won't change the situation as it is: bots on wikipedia are not controlled.

As someone else pointed out, if a meat editor had created these articles they would have been permanently blocked as a vandal once they were told of the problem and failed to stop. This block, in the case of anybot, would have occurred after the test run, not after 4000 articles.

I don't think bot owners want to hear this, and I've said my piece, and taken enough insults in exchange. This is a familiar wikipedia response to an editor, particularly an IP or newly registered user, pointing out a problem with wikipedia. This is how wikipedia winds up again with egg on its face in the news: wikipedia editors don't want to hear what's wrong. That's why this mess wasn't cleaned up in February: established editors refused to listen, a phycology editor, and the bot owner, and once a bot is approved its owner is allowed to do what he wants. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Again, you are making assertions without the slightest shred of evidence. Most certainly a human user would not have been blocked after creating a trial amount of these articles. The bot was approved based on the trials going successfully. Why would a human be blocked for creating 50-100 valid stub? They wouldn't.
Most certainly a bot owner cannot "do whatever they want" after approval. This bot did get blocked and deflagged in case you forgot.
Furthermore, you are acting like the bot owner was trying to introduce factual errors, which is absurd. Human editors introduce factual errors every single day, but it seems that all you care is that one bot (out of hundreds) introduced factual errors. I have a strong feeling you wouldn't be happy unless all bots were permanently banned. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:06, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Just want to comment on, the bot owner mentioned about forgetting to reset variables after each run. This is supposed to be elementary programming, but apparently the bot doesn't do that. ThaddeusB, introducing deliberate factual errors is one of the valid reasons to be blocked, see {{Uw-error1}}. We're not debating about whether 1 name is a synonym of another, or whether a genus has X number of valid species (where X is a number in debate in scientific community), we're talking about "common knowledge" errors like classifying cyanobacteria as algae. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Of course introducing deliberate factual errors is a reason for blocking. What makes you think the errors were deliberate though? Apparently they were subtle enough that no one caught them in the trial run. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
The bot never created any valid articles as far as I can tell. I don't see anything that shows I'm acting like the bot owner deliberately introduced factual errors. No one but you has even suggested that about Martin.
I like bots. I'm the one and only editor, besides Martin, who wants the articles recreated by a bot. I even have a bot in mind; and I'm writing the algorithm for the higher level taxonomies. You're making this too personally against me for this discussion to continue, Thaddeus. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:22, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
First of all, if anyone made this personal it was you. At various times, you blanketly accused a large group of editors of being incompetent, not caring about the rules, and blindly ignoring valuable insight because it came from an IP. None of those things accurate describe BAG. Based on the original BRFA, the bot seemed to function correctly. Unfortunately, this perception was incorrect. However, it is quite unreasonable to think BAG could have somehow known this was going to be the case when there was no evidence to suggest the bot wouldn't work properly.
Ultimately, Martin deserves the blame for not properly looking after his own code. A BOT approval is not a license to assume your code is perfect and not bother to check up on it. Attempts to say BAG did anything wrong or failed are unfounded. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Common sense tell us that algae is in plant kingdom while cyanobacteria is in bacteria kingdom. Whoever that study biology or ecology would know, and certainly Martin knows this. ThaddeusB, you shouldn't be going too harsh on the IP. If it wasn't him who raised the alarm, Wikipedia would otherwise have thousands of articles with factual errors. Everyone, including me, should be thanking him for his service for not just whisleblowing, but also trying to save articles from deletion. But given the magnitude of damage, it's impossible to save all of them. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:08, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
My words came across overly harsh and I apologize for that. My gripe certainly was not with anyone for finding the problems and raising an alarm - that is certainly a commendable act. My gripe was with the IP's (apparent) desire to place the blame on the BAG. I do not believe BAG could not have reasonably foreseen the problems that arose based on what I read in the BRFA (which had input from an above average number of editors). --ThaddeusB (talk) 06:06, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


I understand that BAG gets a fair number of passers-by with strange ideas, but the regulars on this page should note that Anybot has done a vast amount of damage, and has caused many people, particularly 69.226.103.13 and 213.214.136.54, to waste an enormous amount of time. It's not BAG's job to monitor every bot, or to clean up mistakes. However, it would be decent to acknowledge that a big problem has occurred, and enquire whether something could be learned from the incident. One lesson seems clear: When a bot is approved to mass create articles, and if the subject matter is such that normal editors can't tell if the content is good or bad, BAG should apply a condition that periodic checking by the relevant subject project must occur: a pause of at least one week after every 100 new pages, and positive approval on the project page (not absence of objections), until the subject project page approves an uninterrupted run. That condition should be required regardless of current consensus on the subject project page.

Also, the statement by the bot owner that "somebody has been running the bot without my knowledge" needs serious investigation, or at least an acknowledgement that BAG members would like to investigate but are unable to do so due to lack of time or whatever. The particular bot owner is not important, it's the general claim that needs investigation.

Finally, I would like to add my voice to those who have elsewhere thanked 69.226.103.13. Thanks for the enormous amount of effort you have applied to investigating and resolving this situation. I know that ThaddeusB has issued somewhat of an apology, but I urge ThaddeusB to strike out the two sentences above starting "First of all...". Under normal circumstances, the text above would be very satisfactory, but owing to the particular circumstances of this case, it is not. Johnuniq (talk) 04:52, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Endorse Johnuniq's comment.

I don't come here very often, but when I do, I consistently get a defensive, even rudely so, response, as though the BAG thinks it has a mandate to defend all bot operators against the horde of clueless non-coding lusers who don't appreciate their work.

I once came here to register my dissent against the BAG's decision to approve a bot that reverted newbs on certain articles for the sole reason that they were newbs. I had, and still have, serious philosophical objection to such a bot. I carefully laid out those objections. The response was "Bots make mistakes. So do you. Show some good faith."[25] Sadly, this is a fairly typical BAG response.

In the present case, I brought to the BAG a request for information on how I could document the Anybot situation, so that the BAG would take the situation into account when considering future applications. I concede that I started off too aggressively, so I won't take you to task for the defensive response. But for a BAG member to then rush off to the main discussion thread and precipitately declare that it was "all heat and no light" was unhelpful to say the least.

I really think there needs to be a change of focus here. "BAG" does not stand for "bot advocacy group". At the very least, you guys should be maintaining files on each bot you approve, soliciting feedback on performance, and proactively responding to reported problems.

Hesperian 05:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Again with the odd, draconian limits proposed by someone in the wake of a bot making errors. Do you realize that "100 stubs per week" basically means "why bother with a bot?", as a small user script would easily suffice. It would take an entire year to create 5200 articles at that rate. And it also seems you (Johnuniq) are unfamiliar with how things often go when soliciting opinions from a project on something relatively uncontroversial (as this was until it blew up): one or two people will comment, followed by a whole lot of silence as everyone else decides "yes, they said everything necessary". I have two or three outstanding requests for WikiProject tagging by my bot where months ago I put it to the project to come up with a positive approval of more than just one or two people and the discussion went in exactly the manner I have described. As for Martin's comment that "somebody has been running the bot without my knowledge", you have apparently missed the explanation; there's nothing more to investigate, as it has already been determined to be operator error. Martin now realizes he made a very bad assumption, and we're not here to babysit people and make sure every single bot op doesn't do every single stupid thing someone could possibly do.
Hesperian, I am the one who apparently "rushed off" to the main discussion and "precipitately declare[d] that it was 'all heat and no light'" [sic]. Way to WP:AGF. I went to the main discussion to try to find out what exactly the problem was (since your original post just referred to that discussion for details), and found it filled with grand sweeping statements by people obviously irate about the issue and nothing to give me specifics about the extent of the problem or even whether it was a bot problem or GIGO from the source data. Fortunately, User:Rkitko was kind enough to clarify the situation. Would you have found it more "helpful" for me to have ignored your post because there was too much heated complaint for me to see anything about the actual underlying problem? If you want to propose a change in BAG's procedures, go ahead and post a clear, calm, well-reasoned proposal at WT:BAG, and be ready to volunteer to "clerk" it so others don't have to deal with excessive paperwork. Anomie⚔ 11:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
A year to create 5000 articles is fine. The bot proposed above could have created over 1500 articles in the 4 months it took anybot to created nothing.
Maybe the way to go is user-operated helper scripts rather than bots for taxon article database creations. This might work better than bots for other types of article creation for the same reasons. It couldn't be worse than the amount of editor time wasted by anybot creating its nothing.
I think that if a group has the authority to authorize something (the flagging of bots by bureaucrats), but makes it clear they have no responsibility for what they authorize, and personally attacks those who bring problems to their attention, it's time to revisit the first part in a wider venue. My opinion. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 16:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I did not miss Martin's kafkaesque explanation, and I know that everyone here is a busy volunteer, so it's understandable that Anomie would completely misunderstand what I said. Johnuniq (talk) 00:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I tried to read this page, I honestly did. But the only thing said in the mess above is a bunch of pointing fingers. Hey guys, a protip on actually fixing things, is actually coming up with something constructive instead of ripping into each other. Furthermore, I apologize to 69.226.103.13 for not knowing the bot approval process. Q T C 00:41, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

  • I hope BAG makes certain that bot created articles in the future are coded properly to NOT overwrite existing articles.

BAG isn't a magical mythical entity that can catch subtle logic errors in all programming. As has been pointed out the bugs found during the trial process were vetted and reported to be fixed.

Overwriting existing text isn't a subtle logic error, it's basic bad programming. If you're not a programmer, you may not see this, but I can't do anything to address that. The bugs were not vetted; vetted means carefully checked, not generally by the same person who wrote the code. That the same bugs existed four months later shows they weren't vetted.
Yes, because similar cases have not happened to experienced developers
Paid developers can be fired when for low-level mistakes. Safeguards are implemented to prevent repetitions of the mistakes, in addition to the developers fixing the mistakes. They also own their mistakes. That mistakes happened doesn't mean there were no safeguards to try to prevent them. BAG doesn't have safeguards in place against the basic mistakes anybot made, doesn't do anything to safeguard against future mistakes except fight people who point them out, and they say they're not responsible for mistakes to begin with. It's an important set of distinctions. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:06, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • If this group does not respect the community consensus

As also has been pointed out, BAG takes into account issues raised by the community during the approval process. Again as has been pointed out, community response during the approval was minimal.

That is probably more a function, imo, of how the BAG addresses community input: poorly. As an example, see the two other BAG threads I started that were ignored.
  • You're the final say in authorizing a bot, before it's flagged, but you don't monitor problems with the bot

BAG, like all the other various people on Wikipedia, is made up of volunteers who do this in addition to the things they do elsewhere on Wikipedia. It would be a pointless waste of effort to sit here all day checking every bot edit. BAG like AIV/3RR/UAV depend on people to report the problem.

No one had to check every bot edit to catch these errors. The errors were repeatedly reported to the bot owner for 4 months. However, since the BAG does not have the capability to monitor bots once they've authorized them, authorization should belong to someone besides BAG, like the community as a whole. This could get people monitoring them.
The community as a whole have not shown the interest, if they would, why would they not join BAG?
The BAG is a closed self-selecting group. It's not open to the community as a whole. It's somewhat anti-wikipedia in more ways than one: being a closed group, owning authority but not responsibility. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:38, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • run the bot to do unapproved tasks against the community consensus,

Unapproved bots are block. End of story. However like above, we cannot go around checking every single edit made on Wikipedia to see if it conforms to all the previously approved tasks, like above it depends on people reporting this.

No, they're not blocked, because the bot owners are the ones who are allowed to unblock them. That's ridiculous. Anybot created over 4000 articles, if you had checked one of the problems, it would have given any programmer pause to investigate the bot's code deeper. People reported it until they were driven away by Martin's lack of response.
Bot owners have no magical power to unblock their bots. The only reason the unblock happened was that the bot owner was also an admin. Don't confuse the issue.
He was given admin powers for the purpose of being able to unblock his bot. In addition, from looking at other bot blocks, it's the bot owner who tells an admin (those owners who aren't admins) when their bots are ready to be unblocked. Bot owners who don't have admin powers just have to wait a few more minutes than Martin does. --69.226.103.13 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC).
  • it's because you ignore the input of IPs

Thank you for Assuming Good Faith. It's hard to reply to people whose only comments are making baseless accusations against you.

See my unanswered thread above this one that I finally crossed out. I have another unanswered note on another the BAG page. There was no need to make an assume, the evidence hasn't even been archived for you to have to dig for it.
There is less then 24 hours difference between your crossed out thread and this one. I would hardly call that ignoring the input of IPs. If it's an urgent matter, use the noticeboard.
Hesperian isn't a member of the BAG, and his reply above is not to my post. He did reply to that post of mine elsewhere, though. No BAG member replied. My first post, also ignored by the BAG, was on June 16th, and it is on the proper specific notice board, not AN, but the bot owner's noticeboard. The 16th to the 25th is more than 24 hours. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:36, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I hate to keep having to say this, but, please, stay away from insulting me and focus on the substantive issue.

Please do the same.

If you'd like to have an honest discourse on ways to improve the process please feel free to start a new topic. Q T C 00:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

No point you raised was accurate, see my unanswered thread above as partial evidence; you admit and further demonstrate you're ignorant of the discussion. This is evidence in the record used to form an opinion. An assumption would only have been required in the face of no evidence.
Assumptions are taken without proof. If you quote "Assume Good Faith" to someone they must have formed an opinion without evidence. I didn't have to, the evidence is here.
--69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The point of this post addressing me personally, and of Anomie's, are to avoid the topic. Again, no assumption necessary, the lack of input BAG coupled with the offensive defensiveness, when threads are not entirely ignored, is the evidence.

The BAG shows no reason it should have authority to give bots the go ahead. It does not monitor the bots. It does not check the code. It takes lack of community input as consensus. It reads the input anyway it wants. It ignores concerns posted about the bot.

Bureaucrats and the wikipedia community should find another venue to address bots for the encyclopedia, a venue where questions are answered, where threads raised by IPs aren't completely ignored when they're about issues that could bring the encyclopedia into disrepute.

Anybot made a mess due to its poor programming, its owner being the one given the power to unblock it, the BAG and the bot owner not responding to concerns (like my unanswered thread above) and personally insulting editors who raise legitimate issues in an apparent attempt to sidetrack the legitimate issue. Again, an opinion formed from the evidence on BAG boards.

--69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry but again the only reason I'm addressing you personally is because you're the only one here making baseless accusations of malicious intent of the BAG. You again haven't shown, with evidence, any of your points are outstanding problems of the system outside of this incident. Like I said in my previous message if you feel you want to have a rational discourse on improving policy I'd be more then welcome to collaborate, but as is I will not entertain any more of this (rather hilarious) finger pointing. Q T C 14:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

My 2 cents.. a bot shouldn't be "writing" articles anyway and I hope such a bot is never approved again. - ALLST✰R▼echo wuz here 08:23, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a huge problem with autogeneration of articles as long as it is done right. In fact I did something similar offline with over 400 Melbourne suburbs, except rather than being a bot it was a massive VB script inside an MS Access database. I generated the articles as text files based on values in the database, and not one of them had an issue. This case, from what I can tell, is one where nearly all of the articles had an issue due to lack of care, attention to detail, or etc. I think 69.226 makes some valid points about the feedback process or lack thereof, and the saddest part is that the problem isn't even exclusive to BAG, I see it in many obscure processes which have come to be dominated by a small group of people. BAG does try to elicit wider feedback, but the way this case has been handled wouldn't exactly encourage first- or second-timers to come back and keep offering. Re: bots edit warring, I've seen The Anomebot 2 doing exactly the same thing at different articles - that may need to be looked into. Orderinchaos 12:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
The posts are too long for one BAG member, not detailed enough for another, too impolite for a third who spends his time insulting the writer. There will always be something wrong with posts when the intention is to use that as an excuse to not engage in a discussion about how to improve bots and the bot approval process on wikipedia.
Anybot should never have been approved, his owner should not have been given the ability to unblock his own bot, particularly since he had already run an unauthorized bot, and bot owners should not be allowed to run unauthorized bots on wikipedia. Bots should not be programmed to edit war and to remove text in articles that is not explicitly coded for.
The BAG members have been alerted to bots edit warring.
These are fundamental programming errors, not genius level. It shows the BAG is seriously deficient in low-level programming safeguards by allowing these errors to happen. No matter how many times the BAG says they can't address an issue because the perfect question has not been posed, it cannot be denied the BAG is seriously slack in their authorization processes and should not be the ones giving the go-ahead for bots to be flagged while showing they have not instituted basic rules to require at least low-level competence in programming.
Allstarecho, good, you're watching this board and commenting about the issue. I disagree with you in general, but agree with you in the specific instance of how the BAG has set up their approval process for such bots. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:32, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to say something that would lead to discussion on improving the reliability of bots operated on wikipedia. This is part of working as a team. This group is not ready for that discussion, because it involves tough issues like, should the BAG be the group with bot-authorization powers, and it involves working with a larger team: team wikipedia. The larger wikipedia community may want to address this question some time.

Bureacrats should question whether they should flag bots on the say-so of a group that denies any responsibility for how bots are operated. That's my opinion. This group is not interested. I can't change that. --69.226.103.13 (talk) 18:06, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

No, BAG is not interested in taking responsibility for work work done by other people. As with manual edits, automated edits are the responsibility of the editor making them. I do not see how BAG can effectively police all bots running on Wikipedia. Even if the code is fine at the time of the approval, there's nothing stopping people from changing it afterward and changing the code is not the same as an unapproved bot. BAG stands for "Bot approvals group" - BAG approves bots to run, after that, the responsibility falls entirely on the operator, and I don't see why that's a problem. As for Martin unblocking his own bot after complaints, I agree that it was somewhat problematic, but blocks and unblocks, even when they apply to bots, are not, and never have been, part of BAG's purview. Mr.Z-man 16:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Should we do more to encourage open-source bots?

By "do more", I specifically mean adding this to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InputInit: 

<!--Source code available: e.g. a link to the source code, "To BAG/Admins by request", "Standard pywikipedia"/"AWB"/etc. Be sure the bot account's password is not given out! -->
'''[[Source code]] available:'''

One of the things BAG is supposed to do is ensure that bots are technically sound; having the source code can help us do that. Note that I'm not proposing we require source code, just that we start specifically asking for it. Unless there are objections, I'll add this in a few days. Anomie⚔ 20:56, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Seems a reasonable, constructive proposal. I mioght tempted to leave out the "To BAG/Admins by request", because, whilst it's a reasonable response, we ought to particular encourage the former option. - Jarry1250 [ humourous – discuss ] 21:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
OTOH, it's easy to ask "why?" if someone does pick "by request"; it could even be "To BAG/Admins by request (why?)" in the comment. But I'm ok with leaving that suggestion out too, it's not at all a big deal to me. Anomie⚔ 21:03, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Q T C 21:01, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
I like that idea. – Quadell (talk) 21:23, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Yup, sounds like a good idea. Open-source = Good :). Also, let's leave the "To BAG/Admins by request" bit out, per Jarry, a simple link to the source is best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd also suggest asking "Exclusion compliant?" in the request, just as a suggestion for people. – Quadell (talk) 14:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I added the fields, leaving out the "To BAG/Admins by request". Anomie⚔ 12:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! – Quadell (talk) 14:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Why do we have a bot creating redirects that are handled by case insensitivity in the search box?

Resolved
 – Supplementary BRFA filed by operator to ensure community consensus exists for these redirects. –xenotalk 13:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
BOTijo (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)

See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BOTijo 2. This may have been approved before case-insensitivity in the search field was implemented and the task may now need to be revoked - it seems to be creating many unnecessary redirects. –xenotalk 21:12, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I've temporarily blocked the bot, I think this task should be stopped while this is looked at. –xenotalk 21:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi Xeno. Please, read this (Other capitalisations, to ensure that "Go" to a mixed-capitalisation article title is case-insensitive). Regards. Emijrp (talk) 22:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I've done a little experimenting, and it is still the case that an article with some words capitalized and some not will not be found by the Go button. Anomie⚔ 23:26, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Can you give an example? All garblings of an initial-cap title like Francis Ford Coppola are supposed to be handled correctly by Mediawiki. Like fRancis fOrd cOppola, which works for me with the Go button, though it's a red link when bracketed in running text. This is explained in the link given above by Emijrp. EdJohnston (talk) 23:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, a title with all words capped will work. But try something like "barack obama speech to joint session of congress, 2009" which has a mix of capped and uncapped words (as stated pretty much everywhere discussing this issue); it won't bring you to Barack Obama speech to joint session of Congress, 2009. Anomie⚔ 00:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Shouldn't this be solved by a fix to the software rather than having a bot create redirects non-stop? However, since this is a new facet that I was not previously aware of, I don't object to the bot resuming operations in the meanwhile. –xenotalk 00:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
The search box is not the only navigation tool. Many of us just type the page name we want directly into the URL. Also, redirects are usefully for linking. One can debate the merits of this task, but basing it on the search box alone is shortsighted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Based on the new information, all I would like is an active BAG member to rubberstamp the BRFA. The closing statement didn't really give me any confidence in the community's approval for the task. –xenotalk 00:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • We have the search box in its present form, with its present limitations. We need a way of working around them, and this bot will do it. When we have a better search function, we can reconsider whether it is still necessary. Waiting for a fix in the software can take years. DGG (talk) 03:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • The software does not handle these automatically. It is quite often that I arrive at a nonexistent page because of miscapitalization. For example, as JLaTondre says, one can simply edit the URL bar to go to an article (or construct such a URL by software), and this does not work when there are capitalization issues. Also, redlinks are case sensitive: Bell Jar really ought to be a redirect to Bell jar or The Bell Jar. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Hmmm, I won't say it's anti-wiki to create these redirects automatically, but it can lead to a lot of noise. Natural creation of redirects is usually better because there's a demonstrable time when someone tried to navigate somewhere and failed. If, after eight years, nobody has bothered to create a redirect at "Bell Jar," I'm not sure I see a compelling reason to do so now with a bot. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I create these when I run into them, usually. I would prefer if there was a bot doing it so I wouldn't notice them at all. But this bot request was even more specific (read: conservative) than that; it only covers things like Urban Adult Contemporary Airplay panel where it is truly painful to guess the right capitalization. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
      • @CBM, yes, I see now that I was working from an erroneous misunderstanding of the case-insensitivity function of the search box. Nevertheless, I'm of the same mind as MZMcBride. While I see now why these redirects are necessary due to the WP:MIXEDCAPS issue, I don't think many of them will ever be used. Especially the "barack obama speech ..., 2009" mentioned above. Doubt someone really knows the full name to type into the search box for that =) –xenotalk 12:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • My 2¢: considering that the BRFA was nearly two years ago and generated very little attention at the time, it wouldn't hurt to create a new one for the task in order to properly judge community consensus. --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BOTijo 2 (again). Emijrp (talk) 13:40, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla filed

bugzilla:19882 - for interested parties... –xenotalk 19:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Which doesn't solve the whole problem per the discussion above. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:04, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
What else is there to solve? (Bug is fixed, would you believe it was a conflict between two similar modules?...) –xenotalk 23:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
See my previous comment above. The bug only addresses the search box which is not the only navigation tool. It solves only 1 of at least 3 different ways. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
The search box is not the only navigation tool. Many of us just type the page name we want directly into the URL. Also, redirects are usefully for linking. One can debate the merits of this task, but basing it on the search box alone is shortsighted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC) ( ? ) I still don't think creating a lowercase redirect for every single mixed case article is a good idea (and your additional points seem to also suggest we should create lowercase redirects for every article! What about that "auto-redirect" function that wiktionary has? I've been redirected from redlinks of words with the first letter capitalized...) –xenotalk 02:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
No, my comment does not suggest we should we should create lowercase redirects for every article so kindly do not put words in my mouth. It says exactly what is says. It says basing this decision on the search box alone is short sighted. It may be the answer is the task isn't needed (and I tend to believe that), but saying that it isn't needed because of the search box alone is a bogus rationale. They are either valuable or they are not valuable. However, they weren't valuable and now not valuable because of the search box change as that didn't fix the issue. While I personally don't see the need for these to be created automatically, I will note that community consensus has been overwhelmingly that they should be kept when nominated at WP:RFD. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
If they were created, specifically, by a human hand, I would probably vote to keep them as well. We save nothing by deleting them. But I see value in stopping them being created en masse by an automatic process. And this isn't based solely on the search box alone, but the search deficiency was the raison d'etre for the bot according to its operator, so it seems like a perfectly good bug to fix and have it de-approved. There's other reason... the fact that most will never get used... they're excessive... etc. But no need to go on about that. –xenotalk 03:07, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Chrisbot

Can this bot be withdrawn please? The way the bot is performing is not satisfactory. See here, here and here. The last one is a case of the bot ignoring a nobot instruction. What the bot is trying to achieved can be achieved faster, and with less damage, by human editors. Mjroots (talk) 05:45, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that {{nobot}} is presumably a typo of {{nobots}} created at some point in the past. The {{bots}} and {{nobots}} templates are just something for a bot to look for in the page, it's the text "{{nobots}}" rather than anything about the template itself that a bot looks for; "<!-- NOBOTS -->" could have worked just as well. Can we G6 {{nobot}} as an actively misleading redirect, or should I post it at RFD? Anomie⚔ 11:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
All three of those templates end up at the same place. Mjroots (talk) 13:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I see you misunderstood me. For bot exclusion, it makes absolutely no difference where any template redirect points to, or what output the template might place on the page, or even whether the template exists or not. As far as a compliant bot is concerned, it just looks in the wikitext of the page for the specific text "{{bots}}" or "{{nobots}}" (or a few variations with parameters specified). So sure, someone could create a redirect from {{Stay off my page, you lousy bots!}} to {{nobots}}, but it would have absolutely no effect on any bots because it is not the specific text "{{bots}}" or "{{nobots}}". As I said earlier, it would have worked equally as well from a bot perspective to use "<!-- NOBOTS -->" instead of {{nobots}} (and some bots from before {{bots}} existed do use something of that style), but then Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:nobots couldn't be used to find pages with a bot exclusion. Anomie⚔ 14:41, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
All of which brings us back to my statement at WP:AN. If I wanted a bot interfering, I wouldn't have tagged the page in the first place. Mjroots (talk) 15:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Your complaint at WP:AN is invalid for two reasons: First, you accidentally tagged it with the wrong template, which is what I have been trying to explain to you. Second, honoring of {{nobots}} is not actually required unless that was stated as part of the bot's approval. Anomie⚔ 16:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I was told to use the nobot template to keep bots off my sandbox. Until now, it had worked as intended. Also, if a bot is ignoring nobots templates, then it should be shown on the user page of the bot, along with details of where this was approved. Mjroots (talk) 16:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Were you told "nobot", or "nobots" with an "s" at the end? Presumably it "worked" until now because no bot tried to edit your sandbox before. If you really think a statement of a bot's exclusion compliance should be required on every bot's userpage, WT:Bot policy is over there. Anomie⚔ 16:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Note: {{nobot}} is now at RFD. Anomie⚔ 16:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
As for the bot itself, I think I see the logic of the complicated replacement process: to swap L and R, the bot first moves all the Ls to some other name, then moves the Rs to Ls, and then moves the temp name to L; to do it in one step, the bot would have to swap L and R on a page and then not visit that page again, even if someone mistakenly reverts the bot's change (even if someone broke the images first, well-meaning editors may just see the diff and revert without looking at the actual images). OTOH, it could be done in two passes instead of three by moving both L and R to temporary names (e.g. L-being-renamed-to-R and R-being-renamed-to-L) and then the temporary names back to R and L. For that matter, all the image pairs could be done at once instead of separate passes for each if sufficient temporary names are used.
I doubt the claim that it could be done better/faster by humans, there are hundreds of pages needing to be edited for some of these icons and mass replacement is something bots are particularly well suited for. Is the actual complaint just that the bot is/was changing images before MediaWiki's image cache clears for a newly uploaded version, or is there an actual malfunction here? Also, BTW, does the cache not respond to action=purge on the image page (it may have to be done at Commons if the image is there)? Anomie⚔ 11:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm sorry but I was on holiday and so couldn't reply sooner. Your new method for the process seems to make sense, I'll think about it and maybe adopt it. The old method (that is no longer used) used to do the three stages in one go, then I would reupload the correct icons, and no matter how much purging was done it would always take a good number of days before the cache was updated, leading to much confusion (so it was abandoned for the new method which takes the cache into consideration). There are no more problems now, the bot skips all pages with {{nobots}} or {{inuse}}, and there are no more cache problems; so can I restart the bot now? ChrisDHDR 10:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Unless Mjroots (or someone else) objects within 24 hours of the date on this post, feel free to restart. Anomie⚔ 13:07, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
I've no objection to Chrisbot restarting, given Anomie's comments and the fact I had wrong tag on my sandbox. Mjroots (talk) 13:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Ok, Chris, go ahead. Anomie⚔ 14:08, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I think most bots check templatelinks (so template redirects don't really matter); trying to parse wikitext would be insane.... --MZMcBride (talk) 14:39, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

AnomieBOT doesn't, and none of the suggestions at Template:Bots#Example implementations do. The wikitext has to be parsed in order to detect the various parameters to {{bots}} anyway, that doesn't show up in templatelinks. Anomie⚔ 14:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Doing a regex on the wikitext of a page before you commit an edit isn't that insane :P Ale_Jrbtalk 15:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Anomie just mentioned the reason that everyone hates {{bots}}: it forces bots to download the content of each page and parse it. Is doing a regex for the string difficult? No, not really. But if someone puts {{bots}} in {{User:Foo/talk header}} and expects it to transcend, it won't work. It's also possible that people would use a database query and exclude the pages from their initial list (NOT IN (SELECT ... FROM templatelinks ...)) in order to avoid having to retrieve the page content of every page. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
As to insanity, for some bots, it would be fine because they do small runs on limited data sets. If SineBot had to download the content of each page it posted to and parse it, it would eat up substantial resources. Same with ClueBot and some others. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Doesn't SineBot have to anyway, in order to find where to put the unsigned template? Or does it determine the section from a diff somehow and load only that section? I wasn't really around when {{bots}} was created, were there better suggestions (that weren't all-or-none)? Anomie⚔ 21:52, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
That's exactly why my bots respect {{nobots}} but not {{bots}}: the former can be detected with an API query; the latter requires parsing wikitext. --Carnildo (talk) 22:09, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

ClueBot sandbox clearing

There's a proposal at BON to make a minor change to the way ClueBot clears the template sandboxes. I don't think this requires a BRfA, since there is no opposition to the proposal and it's rather minor. Please add your opinion to the thread - Kingpin13 (talk) 03:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal at village pump to require BRFA prior to semi-automated article creation

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Proposal: Any large-scale semi-/automated article creation task require BRFA and comment (there, not here). Thanks! –xenotalk 18:15, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Restarting up an old task

Would anyone mind if I started this task back up again? It's been awhile since I did it. I know the prod time frame was upped to 7 days from 5, so I'd up my wait time from 7 to 9 days. I'm probably not required to ask this, but I figured it can't hurt.--Rockfang (talk) 09:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

There is currently a BRFA up for a new bot, wanting to do this task too. Can't see any harm in having two going though. You could talk to User:MacMed. But yeah, you're good to go :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:15, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for the info. One difference between that one and mine, is that I don't go searching for old stuff. I just pick up the daily categories. If that BRFA does get approved though, I'll probably just stop doing mine.--Rockfang (talk) 09:29, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Unlabelled diasmbigution pages

Someone had a good regex for catching unlabelled dabs to skip them, like "' ' ' *(can refer to|can be one of|is one of)". But I can'tfind it. Anyone? Rich Farmbrough, 17:04, 12 September 2009 (UTC).

Expedited process for interwiki bots

I think this may have been proposed before or informally discussed on IRC, but never went anywhere. There are very few bots that we can really apply "precedent" to, mainly because even if tasks are similar, most bots use custom-made code. However, interwiki bots typically all use Pywikipedia's interwiki.py. So I propose a new system for expedited approval of certain interwiki bot requests:

  • If the bot meets the following requirements:
    1. Uses interwiki.py
    2. Has a bot flag on other projects for interwiki linking
  • Then it can be placed in a different section for expedited approval
    • Creating a subpage and filling out the whole preload template won't be necessary
    • Requests will be open for X amount of time (48 hours?) to see if there are any valid objections
    • After that time passes, the bot will be flagged and the request archived.

Its unrealistic to hold operators who run bots on half a dozen projects that aren't their home project (including enwiki) to the same standards that we hold operators who only operate bots on their home project. Given the reliability of interwiki.py compared to the average bot script, its also unnecessary. As long as the operator is aware of the known issues (don't run it in the template namespace ... are there others?), there shouldn't be any problems. Mr.Z-man 15:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems reasonable enough. I would just make sure they're running a new-ish version of interwiki.py. (Slightly related: why the hell do so many of these bots exist and can't a better solution be found?) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I support Mr.Z-man's proposal as it brings us closer to being in line with the global bot policy at Meta. Also, there should be a server-based maintenance script like Template namespace initialisation script (talk · contribs) to go around and update these links ebtween all 700+ wikis. MBisanz talk 20:39, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
@MZMcBride, I recall some discussion where interwiki links would be held in a central location somewhere... Projects would add themself to the unique id when they had a page on it. Seems like a good solution if it's feasible. –xenotalk 20:53, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I and some others have some proposals on Bugzilla to help with this. The simplest is to supress selfinterwikis so that all the interwiki lists can be the same. The more complex would allow transclusion from either an intewiki wiki (for interwikis) or maybe across wikis (for unified user pages, some help pages from meta and certain templating functions). T6547 • T7126 • T11890 • T16724 apply. Rich Farmbrough, 14:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC).
Support, but shouldn't these folks be going for global BRFA? Our local policy would allow them to operate with these restrictions in that case. –xenotalk 20:53, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
That could be another option, sure. Should we require that all eligible interwiki bots just use the global process, or just make it a strong suggestion? Mr.Z-man 21:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I'm not too familiar with global bot approval, so I don't know stringent the approval process is We are the largest project, so some bot-ops might elect to go point-by-point instead. I see value in having a streamlined process if we get a lot of interwiki requests for approval. –xenotalk 21:31, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Is it really necessary? They tend to get {{BotSpeedy}} anyway. Anomie⚔ 21:26, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Not lately. Mr.Z-man 21:37, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Somewhat unrelated to bots, but I think you could be interested in this

I just wrote {{Delayed notice}}. Since lots of you code bots, check requests, do trial runs, etc..., this could prove useful in helping you keep track of stuff. Not sure where the best place on WP:BOTS was to post this, but this seems the highest traffic talk page (and thus has a higher outreach). Move this somewhere else if you think there's a better place for it. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:13, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I can't think of any particular bot-related use for it. Anomie⚔ 01:23, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Not for the bots themselves, but for BAG members, bot-coders & the like. For instance, if a bot is trialed for one week, and you want to remind you that the week is over. Anyway, no one will die if no one uses it. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:50, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Very handy. Rich Farmbrough, 14:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

Is approval scheme working?

It was recently agreed on Wikipedia:Village pump that any large-scale automated or semi-automated article creation task should require BRFA. One concern was that it would be impossible to follow up, has this been the case? Take for instance Sasata's recent large creation of fungi articles. Or Fergananim's very short articles on medieval Irish aboots, like Gillabhrenainn Ua hAnradhain. According to the new regulations these should both require approval, but I can't see that this has been done? Lampman (talk) 14:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

With the exception of the content creation bot BRfA which is open atm, there haven't been many (if any) recent BRfAs for page creation. But then, this proposal hasn't been widely "advertised", and I'm willing to bet that the users mentioned above aren't even aware of it. - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
No, this was an issue brought up at the discussion: that it would be just another layer of guidelines and regulations that nobody would care about or even know about. I should perhaps bring it up at the Village Pump to figure out how it can be better advertised and implemented, otherwise it's rather pointless to have such a rule at all. Lampman (talk) 15:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Since the community has decided that mass content creation must be done by an authorized bot, it can be enforced as part of the existing "no unauthorized bots" rule. Although it would probably be better to just warn the user first for the moment. Anomie⚔ 20:31, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Most likely approve

Why is it bot policy that a bot will most likely be approved after a community discussion? Isn't it that a decision to approve a trial will be made after discussion?

After a reasonable amount of time has passed for community input, an approvals group member will most likely approve a trial for your bot and move the request to this section.

What? --69.225.5.4 (talk) 18:23, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The statement is accurate from a historical standpoint, mostly becuase people rarely ask for approval of a controversial task. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:15, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
It's not a statement about the history of the policy; and the policy isn't just the type of tasks, it's the code, the feasibility, what the community desires. There are plenty of bots that are not approved, so it's inaccurate.
To say the task "will most likely be approved" smacks of a lack of regard for community input.
BAG members should approve trials only if there is support for the bot and the bot is in accordance with policy.
I'm going to reword it, barring input from BAG saying that, indeed, they "most likely" approve trials for bots. --69.225.5.4 (talk) 18:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Since August 1, there have been 4 bots denied, 3 requests expired, and 6 withdrawn by the operator. A good deal of the expired/withdrawn ones were approved for trial at the time of closing. In that time, there have been 33 approved bots. So "most likely" does seem accurate. Mr.Z-man 18:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
It should outline policy, not predict the results of a request. --69.225.5.4 (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Another speedy approval, and speedy approvals and community input in general

Can we give more than 3 minutes for interested users to examine trial runs? [26] There seem to be many excuses for why community consensus is not needed, not given, no time for it. In this particular bot case, the task is straight-forward, responsible and responsive bot owner, dealing with deprecated code, etc., etc. But, sometimes I want to examine the trial runs after they have been run, but before the final approval, to see if they are problems that show up during the trial. A good reason for doing trials in the first place is to examine the results.

3 minutes is not enough time, and I don't see the urgency in approving this bot in 3 minutes. A couple of days for interested users to examine the trial run is not unreasonable, imo, no matter what the task.

One reason for instruction creep, by the way, is that editors seem to other editors to be overlooking common courtesies and common sense. I don't see why the instructions should say wait 2 days or wait more than 3 minutes, except that it is apparently not obvious that waiting more than 3 minutes gives time for community input.

There was no urgency in approving this bot, so allowing more than 3 minutes for the trial run to be examined by interested parties would have been a simple courtesy. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The trial is a technical check. Mr Z-Man allowed time prior to the trial for community input on the task itself. Once the trial was proven to be technically functional - which is the reason BAG members are chosen, because of technical proficiency - there was no reason for further delay. Fritzpoll (talk) 23:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
I would also note that in this case, there was also a bot request open for several days. (Oddly enough, WP:BOTREQ tends to get significantly higher traffic than BRFA). Mr.Z-man 23:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Lots of people want things done for them, but few probably care about unrelated tasks that aren't theirs; there's also probably a discouragement factor for non-programmers, who might be uncertain if their non-technical input is wanted/needed/helpful/relevant (Answer: Yes, it is!). --Cybercobra (talk) 00:39, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

So, it boils down to: after community input, a BAG member "will most likely approve a trial for your bot," (without any reference to the community input), then based entirely on technical functionality, the bot will be quickly approved after the trial. The bot owner is solely responsible for the actions of the bot.

So, BAG does nothing, but allow for a community input board then fast forward bots to be flagged by bureaucrats, or whoever flags bots... Interesting.

I will then move forward with this understanding of BAG's role on en.wiki. --69.226.111.130 (talk) 20:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

If you do so, you will be moving forward with an incorrect understanding. BAG checks if a task seems to have sufficient consensus for how controversial it seems to be (and yes, sometimes something turns out to be controversial that didn't seem like it would be); at times, and increasingly often lately, BAG will insist that wider community consensus must be sought before the request may proceed. BAG also considers the technical aspects of the proposed task; among other things, this includes reviewing the code (when available) for errors, making suggestions on how to do things more efficiently, and pointing out situations to watch out for. If both of those seem good, a BAG member will approve a trial. It turns out that this has historically happened more often than not, hence the wording "will most likely approve a trial for your bot" that you continue to insist on misinterpreting. If the trial is completed without issues and it seems unlikely that there will be further community reaction as a result of the trial edits, BAG approves the bot. Then a bureaucrat comes along, checks the BRFA again for consensus and such, and actually grants the bot flag. Anomie⚔ 21:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
"Insist on misinterpreting" because the history isn't included in the policy? How should someone interpret "most likely" to be approved without knowing the history? It's the bots policy, not a predictor of the outcome of a request, and it should be written clearly and cleanly as a policy that invites both the casual and familiar editor of wikipedia to learn about how bots work on wikipedia. But if you're going to insist upon describing the history of occurrences here instead of giving a clean and clear statement of policy you're going to wind up with people misinterpreting what you mean.
It also doesn't seem that BAG's ability to predict community response is particularly good, since recent incidents of community consensus were wrong, and, again, there's no point in a group wherein individuals are expected to predict the community response. The community can simply give their response. That makes it easy on everyone. BAG members aren't expected to be mind readers. When they're unwilling to do a search and find out the community consensus, they can just wait a reasonable amount of time. Again, community inclusiveness would rule decision making rather than mind-reading skills or some other BAG ability to know what the community wants without asking. There's no other place on wikipedia where editors are expected to individually gauge the community consensus without input from the community.
Asking for sufficient time greater than 3 minutes to be able to look over a trial and input a response is not unreasonable.
I'm not insisting on misinterpreting, I'm simply not making the effort to read the entire history of bag to learn what a single paragraph actually means, when it's meaning is not obvious. Policies in a dynamic community should be written in a way that allows someone to gather the correct policy, not the history of the policy, from reading the page.
Why not be courteous to the spirit of the community of wikipedia as it actually is: people come and go, and the policy could be written out for interested editors who drop by and don't know and don't want to read the history. Then it's clear, also, to others how it is intended. That I'm misinterpreting is also not so obvious without reading the history, by the way. That's what your policy says. --69.226.111.130 (talk) 01:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
"Insist on misinterpreting" because it has been explained to you before, but instead of doing anything to try to "fix" it you just continue to bring up the misinterpretation. Do you have a better suggested wording to describe the typical bot approvals process?
The wording is not that tricky. How about "After a reasonable amount of time has passed for community input, a member of the Bot Approvals Group may approve a short trial during which the bot is monitored to ensure that it operates correctly" like it says on the policy page?
Sure, the community can give their response. But besides you, no one bothers. What are we supposed to do, wait around forever because the community generally doesn't care about bots until after the fact? Also, I suspect you're mistaken in your comment that "There's no other place on wikipedia where editors are expected to individually gauge the community consensus without input from the community". WP:RFR doesn't seem to have much community input, mostly someone requests and then an admin either grants or denies. People doing WP:New pages patrol don't seem to seek much community input before slapping on a CSD tag, and in many cases it doesn't seem like the admins doing the deletion do either. And we have WP:BRD to describe a good way to go about it in relation to general edits.
Have I anywhere asked you to "wait around forever?" Is that comment a necessary part of this discussion?
Permissions don't generally impact 1000s of articles at a time, do they? If they do, they should not be granted without community input. I think that in this case, most of the various permissions become part of other wikipedia editors monitoring/stalking each other.
I think the new pages patrollers are also out of control, but one battle at a time.
WP:BRD deals with individual edits.
Just out of curiosity, do you actually have any comments on that particular trial, or is it just the principle of the thing? Anomie⚔ 01:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I made my position on this particular trial clear in the third sentence above. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
"some other BAG ability to know what the community wants without asking" - We are asking the community, that's what the BRFA is; the community just doesn't respond. You point to a couple of requests that were processed quickly as "evidence" that we don't give the community time to respond, but I could point to plenty that are/were open for weeks with little to no input from outside the bot community. Except for major policy changes, discussions on Wikipedia typically don't last for more than a week. The LawBot BRFA, while it was approved only a few minutes after the trial, was open for 15 days. That's twice as long as we give for deletion and adminship discussions. Mr.Z-man 01:36, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Community consensus is the policy, and that requires time for community input, and that requires more than 3 minutes. There's no policy on moving forward without community consensus, so, until there is, the lack of community input doesn't matter. What matters is the failure to provide time within which the community can comment. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
2 weeks is more than enough time. There's no minimum requirement for what constitutes consensus. Its based on whoever cares enough to show up for the discussion. At WP:FFD for instance, files are routinely deleted with no comments from anyone other than the nominator simply because no one cares enough to comment. BRFAs should not have to take a month just so that we can prove that no one really cares. See also Wikipedia:Silence and consensus. If you want to try to get more community input into bot approvals, that would be great, but requiring some arbitrary waiting period after each step for a process that already takes way too long is not the solution. Mr.Z-man 04:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
It's not "each step." Is it necessary to exaggerate what I'm saying to disagree with me?
Trial runs are an important part of creating and debugging programs. I should not have to point this out, or counter that I'm not asking for a month after each step.
Three minutes is not enough time for the community to view and comment upon a trial run. It wasn't two weeks, it was 3 minutes. Trial runs are not just one of many steps in the process of writing programs, even little scripts on wikipedia.
This is not WP:FFD, which deals with single files, but WP:BOTS, which deals with programs that can impact hundreds and thousands of articles. WP:FFD has specific policies listed to deal with this issue, and they are not the same as WP:BOTS policy. The former has a policy, one assumes made by community consensus, like one assumes the wikipedia bots policy is made. The FFD policy says, "Files that have been listed here for more than 7 days are eligible for deletion if there is no clear consensus in favour of keeping them or no objections to deletion have been raised," whereas the bots policy says, "In order for a bot to be approved, its operator should demonstrate that it performs only tasks for which there is consensus."
BOTS should use BOTS policy. And, meanwhile, FFD can go on using FFD policy. Both, until community consensus changes.
Who asked you to take a month? Where? Quote me on asking you to wait a month, or forever, or two weeks after a trial run. Can you stick with the topic without exaggeration, please?
I'm not "requiring some arbitrary waiting period after each step." So, back to the topic, please.
BOTS policy requires community consensus. Trial runs are a major and important part of programming, not simply one of many steps in the process. The completion of a trial run is a major step in checking the viability of a bot and may reveal problems or additional requirements for the bot. This is a part of the process where it would be appropriate for the community to be allowed enough time to comment. 3 minutes is not long enough. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 04:53, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
(e/c)There's really only 2 steps on a normal bot approval - before the trial and after the trial - so yes, requiring a wait for consensus before trial approval and before final approval would be a required wait before each step. Or, to put it another way, is there any step to bot approval that you don't think needs time for community input?
So, adding a waiting period after the only other step is onerous? If there are only two steps, then waiting after each step is not that big of a deal. So, I stand corrected. You expressed add adding a waiting period after "each step," and it seemed like this was much more than just adding a waiting period after the single other step. Yes, no good argument has been offered for why there should be time for community consensus after one step and not the other, and bot policy is simple in this respect: it requires community consensus, consensus requires time for community input. If there are only two steps, consensus can be gained after each by simply allowing some time for community input. 3 minutes is not sufficient for either step.
2 weeks was referring to how long the community had to comment on the request between the time it opened and the time it was approved. 2.5 if you include the WP:BOTREQ thread as well.
If it shouldn't take a month, how long should it take? 2 weeks is obviously not sufficient to get community input. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SDPatrolBot 4 has been open for more than 6 weeks, its been 3 weeks since the trial ended, and quelle surprise, no community input yet. Mr.Z-man 05:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
No matter how many times the community fails to comment it isn't an argument for disallowing community input, so I'm not sure why BAG members keep bringing this up in this discussion.
Bot policy requires community input, time for it should be allowed. 3 minutes is not sufficient time. What is that time usually allowed for community input? Some fraction of that time for community input on the trial run would be reasonable. The RFBA has been up for the pre-trial time, interested parties can watch list it, they've already had some time to comment, they're aware of the trial run. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 05:19, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not saying we should disallow community input, I'm saying that we shouldn't wait unreasonable amounts of time for input. Do you have any actual suggestions on how to either increase participation, or how long to wait before we can assume no one has any complaints? Mr.Z-man 06:47, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't believe I've suggested an unreasonable amount of time for waiting. In fact, I've only suggested longer than 3 minutes, or some fraction of the time waiting for the before. You don't have to assume no-one has any complaints. That's not part of policy. I asked how long you usually wait for comments in the before period, as I think less time than that is necessary. How about a week? A couple of weeks on an inactive RFBA seems like a good amount of time, more than generous for community input. There are some RFBAs that require less time, edits only non-space, other reasons. But a couple of weeks seems reasonable for an RFBA before trial, and a week seems reasonable for a post trial RFBA. --69.226.111.130 (talk) 07:17, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

We are not a bureaucracy, we can just take action without putting everything up for discussion first. If the community objects then we can act on it, otherwise we can just get the work done. If something goes wrong with a bot then that is what the revert button is for. Chillum 04:58, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

BAGBot replacement?

BAGbot seems to be mostly dead lately and ST47 doesn't seem to be around anymore, so Wikipedia:BAG/Status isn't being updated and users aren't being notified when {{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}} is used (it did a couple other things, but these 2 were probably the most important). I was going to make a replacement, but can't seem to find the time to finish it (i.e. de-crappify my hastily thrown together code). If someone wants to write a replacement for it, that would be much appreciated. If someone wants my code to start with (written in Python, using my framework), I don't recall if the current version actually works or not. Mr.Z-man 04:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... I feel I could probably write something to do this, and I'd be keen to give it a go. DotNetWikiBot is currently refusing to load page history, so it would have to wait until that is fixed. Also, the main problem would be that I don't currently have a computer which I'm comfortable with running 24hrs, so either I could send the exe to someone who does (it wouldn't use much bandwidth, as it's only running once every 30 or so minutes), or I could just run it in the British daytime. As you can see, there are a few complications, so if someone else wants to program it, that's fine with me. - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:37, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
I'll look at having AnomieBOT do it. Anomie⚔ 11:16, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
BRFA filed Anomie⚔ 03:24, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Hypotheticals.

So, suppose someone wanted to run a bot that did admin activities, but was not themselves an admin. (I can't program, so no, this isn't asking about me.) Is this allowed? If it's not been considered, should it be allowed? Also, what about someone who is an admin, runs a useful bot, and is desysoped? (Or, what in the case where a regular user who runs a bot is banned.) I'm just curious how such issues are approached, so I can better know policy. Irbisgreif (talk) 08:10, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not allowed, as it would allow someone access to the admin tools who didn't go through RFA. If an admin is desysopped, their bots would be desysopped to; if a user is banned, their bots would be banned (and deflagged) too. If a user is just blocked for a short time (e.g. a 31-hour block), I don't know whether their bots would be blocked too or if they would be left alone as long as they weren't used for block evasion. A bot's activities (or the operator's activities relating to being a bot operator, e.g. communication) can also be brought to this page for review, which could result in the bot being deapproved. Anomie⚔ 11:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
It would depend why they were de-sysopped. If they just gave up the mop and bucket in a personal role I don't see there's be a problem. Moreover, their bot is not necessarily going to wheel war for them. Baby, bathwater. Rich Farmbrough, 09:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

Quick approvals without community consensus or discussion

There was a remark that this bot was approved without community consensus.[27] ("Bots seem to get approved based on a technical evaluation rather than on whether they conform to bot policy by only making edits that have consensus, as happened here.")

The bot was approved in two days with no input from anyone else in the RFBA process, other than bot operator and single BAG member who approved the bot for editing thousands of mainspace articles after examing some trial edits made by the bot before it was approved for trial edits, also, thereby, eliminating the opportunity for community input on the trial run.[28]

This bot only edits pages which have the parameter blank already, but the parameter does not show up in the article if not filled in (| oclc = | dewey = congress = ), and whether it should be filled in by a bot should be discussed with the wider community to gain consensus for the bot task.

I would like to see some time pass before bots that impact article space widely are approved.

Bot policy requires that a bot "performs only tasks for which there is consensus," means that bots should not be approved for main space tasks without community input. One BAG member does not constitute community input, imo.

Link to discussion calling OCLC linkspam-controversy.

[29]

[30] This link is not about CobraBot. I include it because a quick search shows that OCLCs are something that generates a lot of discussion on en.wiki. This discussion mentions, for instance, that consensus shows "OCLCs are considered superfluous when ISBNs are present." This discussion shows that, contrary to being approved, the CobraBot task maybe should have been denied as there might not be community consensus for the task at all. Consensus is required by bot policy. None was asked for in this approval. No time for community input was allowed before community approval. A prior bot was stopped from doing this task by the community. Maybe this bot task should not have been approved against community consensus.

--69.225.5.183 (talk) 07:33, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume that Kingpin was working under the assumption that this was an uncontroversial task, relatively easily undone that wouldn't be irritating to the community. The question on gaining community consensus for a bot task is tricky - do we need to actively seek it out for every single task? If it affects a specific set of articles, it's a good idea to go to the relevant Wikiprojects to ask for input first if it's going to cause a major change. But if we went and asked for every single little cleanup bot then we'd get no input at all - the community is strangely disinterested in bot operations and would quickly tire of our requests. So, not to dwell on the specific case as you request, the general case is that many tasks will in practice, be approved, when there is no consensus against the task rather than a positive consensus in its favour. Fritzpoll (talk) 09:27, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately in this specific case the task is a controversial task. If the time on the RFBA board had been longer than 2 days, I might have been able to point this out because I've seen discussions on wikipedia about OCLC.
So, if the task is going to impact article space, and it's going to impact a lot of articles, and it is adding something new, this was not the time, imo, to make a quick solo decision the task was not controversial.
Just because a parameter is available in an article information box doesn't mean adding it via a bot is non-controversial. The organism article boxes have dozens of parameters that could be filled with a bot, if you started filling all of them, or even some of the hierarchies in all organisms, the bot would be blocked immediately by one of the biology editors with admin privileges.
Yes, there is a lot of community disinterest in bots. But I don't think this was a good situation for assuming that the bot would be uncontroversial and could be quickly approved, because a search by the BAG member in non-main space would have revealed discussions about the issue, the BOT is adding information to an infobox, the BOT is working in article space, and the BOT is impacting thousands of articles.
In addition, the bot owner was notified that his task was not controversial and should have stopped the bot at that point and revisited its operating parameters at the time, since the flag was given without any community input other than rapid approval by a single BAG member.
I think a default position, when dealing with editing thousands of mainspace articles, that no word against something in less than two days is tacit approval is a poor operating practice in a community that works on consensus. --69.225.5.183 (talk) 16:05, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I'm going to follow your initial suggestion that this was not specifically about CobraBot and not comment on it, since I have no insider knowledge about what Kingpin's reasoning was. As a BAG member myself, I'm also not going to revisit it and try to second-guess what I would have done. The question of community consensus is a witty one in all walks of Wikipedia - what constitutes a consensus, etc. That clause exists not to force us to race out and gather consensus, but to avoid approving things where there is doubt. Sometimes that goes wrong, as may have happened here: perhaps we need to be more thorough and that's certainly a comment I'll take on board. I'm looking at the dates in this particular case, however, and not seeing how we'd have found the main discussion, which occurred after approval. Will re-examine your links to check what I've probably missed. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I'd have to say there was little to indicate that this task would be controversial: The only discussion linked above that dates to before the BRFA was Template talk:Citation/Archive 3#Why OCLC?, which didn't actually generate a lot of discussion and was located on an unrelated template's talk page. The documentation for the template in question does mention "use OCLC when the book has no ISBN", but I missed it at first when checking just now because I paged straight to the documentation for the oclc parameter itself rather than reading through the introductory text. And Cybercobra did stop the bot once it became clear that the task was in fact controversial (although it does seem most of the controversy is due to just one very vocal editor on a crusade).
Sure, this might have been avoided by insisting on arbitrary waiting periods before bot approval and other bureaucracy. But is more bureaucracy really either necessary or desired by the community as a whole? Anomie⚔ 17:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Exactly - a system like this will always allow some number of mistakes to occur - and all that tightening the rules too strongly will do is to make the 99.99% of never-controversial bots that BAG handle much slower to process. Fritzpoll (talk) 17:12, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
If anything is to come of this, I think it should be that unless the task has positive consensus, the bot operator should be willing to stop it at the first sign of opposition and take part in the discussion. Too often it seems that operators refuse to stop their bot until someone really starts screaming. Franamax (talk) 17:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Whatever lack of indicators beforehand there were about the controversial nature of this task, I think it should be considered that the task in general added a lot of edits to article space, added a visible parameter to articles, and this was done without community input. What's important to me, is that a bot not be approved so quickly when it is editing main space, when it is editing it in a way that human editors haven't (it's not changing a template that has been deprecated, for example, but adding something that meat editors didn't put in the articles).
In this instance, and in future instances, where the bot is adding something to articles that will appear in mainspace, and adding it to a lot of articles, and, most particularly when the addition is a link to an external site, the task should not be considered non-controversial as a default value. --69.225.5.183 (talk) 02:57, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
That (like 1RR) is probably a good rule to follow in general, although it needs to be balanced against the ignorance and pointiness factors. Anomie⚔ 18:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)


1RR with bots is a good rule to follow with bots.

Adding thousands of links without community input is a major concern. However, in the case of mainspace edits that contribute to thousands of article additions or changes, I would like to see community input at least given a chance in the future, and anything that makes this explicit to BAG members would be a way of addressing the situation.

At this point, however, I would also like community input about rolling back the bot edits, since they were made without community input, and they link externally. This should not have been done without major community input. And, in the case of future editing mainspace with a bot adding external links, I think the default value should be to not do so if the community has not positively spoken for adding the link. --69.225.5.183 (talk) 02:57, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I actually meant 1RR is generally a good rule for human editors to follow. Most bots should be following something akin to 0RR, although there are a number of exceptions (e.g. bots implementing CFD decisions). As for CobraBot supposedly adding external links, you're making the same mistaken assumption User:Gavin.collins insisted on repeatedly making. Anomie⚔ 03:03, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Oh on the 1RR. I checked, and there was no link before the bot added the OCLC, and there is one afterwards. So, the bot added a link, it's through a template, I suppose, but it is still links. If the links aren't there, maybe you could link to a CobraBot addition that shows the before there is and after there is or before there isn't and after there isn't edit. --69.225.5.183 (talk) 03:51, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
The bot added the oclc parameter to the template, what the template decides to do with it is beside the point. As mentioned elsewhere, if the community decides that external links to WorldCat are inappropriate the template would be changed with no alteration to what the bot did. Anomie⚔ 03:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
It's fine to put functionality in a template that may or may not be used at the time the template is created. Again, this is the case with taxoboxes, for example. There are multiple parameters that are not necessarily used. It's the community that decides, or the individual editors, to use that parameter in the template. In this case, because the community was not consulted the decision to activate all these links was made without a single mention of it in the BRFA or anywhere. Neither the bot creator, nor Kingpin mention that this bot will be creating active links where none existed before by editing this parameter. ::::So, it's another point I guess, for bot instructions, when the edit that is being made will be making links, this should be explicitly stated in the BRFA. And it's another good reason for requiring proactive community support rather than just a lack of disapproval for that particular bot. --69.225.5.183 (talk) 04:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Nearly every bot contributes to thousands of articles. What is or is not trivial/non-controversial is always a judgment call, and therefore impossible to insure 100% accuracy. In this case there was no reason to believe filling in an existing template parameter would be controversial. (And in all reality most controversial requests are unlikely to draw objections until they go live, as 99.9% of Wikipedia pays zero attention to BRFAs.) --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, we've kinda moved on to how to handle it in the future though. --69.225.5.183 (talk) 04:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Even if the application is filed and quickly approved, bots still have more oversight than most users. They have a bot owner who (almost always) takes responsibility for errors, and while many edits may be made, they can be very easily stopped with no repercussions (through blocking or shutoff buttons). More analysis on "pre-editing" in the human wiki world would lead to claims of WP:CREEP. tedder (talk) 04:17, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that "say no to linkspam" says it all, no matter what the age. There was no consensus to actively link to this site, the bot move forward without gaining any community consensus, making en.wiki the "feeder site" to thousands of links to worldcat. The community should decide whether or not the infoboxes provide links to this particular website, not BAG, particularly since BAG's fallback is to generally approve a trial, then approve the bot for flagging based only on technical issues.

BAG itself seems to indicate there is no design for community input: a trial is "most likely" approved, without rgard to community input, then the bot is approved solely on technical issues. Linking thousands of wikipedia pages to worldcat required community consensus, not rapid approval. If this is done here it could be an easy avenue for vandalism. --69.226.111.130 (talk) 21:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm in the camp that says that the bot is not adding the link to WorldCat - the template is. If there's no consensus to link to WorldCat, then the template needs to be changed - if Cobra went through and did it all manually, it would still be overlinked. The bot may have highlighted a controversial template setting, but it didn't create it Fritzpoll (talk) 21:39, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
The bot used a functionality of the template without community input. As I said above, there are dozens of fields in wikipedia taxoboxes. If you assign a bot to fill in every one of them, the bot will simply be blocked by a responsible admin. Even if you approved a bot to fill in only a specific field on every single taxobox the bot would be blocked unless it went forward with community consensus.
The spirit of the policy for community consensus at wikipedia is that the community gets some say in the matter. Find all the technicalities, "the field exists, therefore it should be filled in," it doesn't amount to community consensus. BAG approved a bot to do a task without gaining community consensus.
It's for the community to decide whether or not that field should be filled in on every article, not for an individual BAG member. I've already linked to a discussion showing there appears to be no consensus for that field to be filled in. Bots policy doesn't say "if there's no consensus against something a bot can do it."
What it says is, "In order for a bot to be approved, its operator should demonstrate that it: performs only tasks for which there is consensus." So, let's run with bots policy. There is no link to community consensus for this task, because there was no attempt to establish community consensus for the task.
Other templates have blank fields. If there is consensus by the community to have a bot fill it in, fine. But there isn't. So, rollback of an unapproved bot task is a simple and straight-forward means to take care of the issue. --69.226.111.130 (talk) 01:19, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I would have to agree. There seems to be no oversight or governance policy in operation here. Bots and automated tools seem to be performing many tasks with out consideration to the wider issues involved or the consequences of bot actions. Blaming the template and washing of hands is frankly a cheap way to sidestep the issue of linkspamming. Obviously the principal of duty of care has not permeate down to BAG yet. In theory the bots should be accountable to the wider community. In practise, the legitimate issues brought to the attention of the bot operators are ignored. Its "one rule for you, one rule for me" as far as I can see. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Here's the Relevant ANI thread Gavin is referring to. tedder (talk) 11:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


"I note that User:Cybercobra commented that the bot was being suspended "pending an WP:ANI thread"[184]. If that was changed to "pending a much wider consensus that this is an appropriate task for a bot than the one person who approved it" I would be willing to close the discussion here, because it would not need administrator action such as blocking. I think that there's a much wider issue at stake here about the fact that one editor can put up a bot for approval, and it can get passed by one other editor because it works, without any consideration as to whether there is any consensus about whether the bot's actions are acceptable. At least if we are going to allow that to happen we should have an understanding that a bot operator should suspend a bot, pending discussion, in response to a good faith request by an established editor. WP:BRD is a well-known adage, but, when a bot is doing lots of bold edits it's impossible for a human to maintain the same pace to revert. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)"

So there was an ANI CobraBot's operator knew about, dealing with this issue, that no on bothered to post, and there was a user who was very interested in the topic, and a couple of editors who felt the bot should be stopped? I'd like the bot blocked and its flag removed until community consensus is established and all of the information is considered. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 16:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Task 2 is significantly different in that there is no linking involved whatsoever and also I posted notice of the BRFA for Task 2 to Template talk:Infobox book, where Gavin and Phil were actively discussing the OCLC issue, so the argument they weren't made aware is bunk (not that I think there's any obligation to personally inform specific editors of discussions); Phil even explicitly approved of task #2. As for Task 1, anyone who disagrees with it is perfectly free to file an appeal to BAG about it (no one apparently found it necessary to do so, even though I repeatedly and explicitly informed the aggrieved parties of the option; why they didn't appeal, I have no idea). --Cybercobra (talk) 23:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Further, if you actually read the entire thread, you'll see pretty much no admins found the bot to be at fault. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I should say this is not the place to be pointing fingers at anyone in particular, so lets not get sidetracked by the Cobrabot actions, and assume good faith in the first instance. To be honest, I disagree with Cybercobra, but there is a broader issue here.
My concern is about one thing: the action of bots can overwhelm Wikipedia's entire inventory of policies because the scale of bot actions in a short space of time is far greater than individual editors could achieve in a lifetime. Bots are to spammers as crack is to adicts. I think BAG has a duty to tune in to the issue of duty of care or just admit its a Wikiproject that is "out of control" and is adicted to automated editing as an end it itself, without regard to its wider effect. A question was asked at the start of this thread, and to be honest, there is no more an important question being asked in all of Wikipedia: Is one opinion of one editor good enough to determine whether hundreds or thousands of bot edits are beneficial to Wikipedia or not, and if so should the benefits/disadvantages of these automated edits be dissuessd,and discussed in detail?
I must admit I am really upset about this issue. In the real world, the use of bots (computer databases, automated tools etc) is of major public concern. Spam is so common, we have forgotten what is was like before bots filled our email inboxes with crap. In this Wikiproject, the same attention to duty of care is being ignored: are the bots "doing the right thing?" --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 00:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Following up BRFAs

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.

I've added a new section to the debate and have been reverted. Twice. Without any reverted politely including the insight as to where, besides "a new section" subsequent comments should be made.

So, if not in a new section according to the directions, where should the subsequent comments be made?[31]

Please, could BAG be more accurate in the directions? So many comments about users don't want to participate, but when editors do participate according to directions they are rudely reverted without any help.

So, where? And put that location on the BRFA closure template. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 16:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

How about you actually read the instructions. Did you follow those directions? no. you where reverted because you cannot follow directions and since then there have been adjustments to the wording of the closure templates. βcommand 16:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Personal attacks such as "you cannot follow directions" are being discussed at Betacommand's talk page. Feel free to gang up on me on that issue there.
By the way, I created a new section. I simply didn't title it.
This is about where to locate the subsequent discussions and how BAG should alert editors in a polite fashion about the procedure, rather than simply reverting them. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:31, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
adding a comment is not creating a new section. βcommand 17:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, adding a comment below the archive is creating a new section. If it were in the old section, it would be before the bottom line that says don't modify this. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 17:44, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I agreed with you, which is why I adjusted the appropriate templates to point to WT:BRFA as soon as I saw your edits and the reversions on the CobraBot 2 BRFA. I did not adjust the templates to "justify" the reversions as you claimed elsewhere (but don't worry, I won't take your misinterpretation of my motives as a personal attack), just to give instructions in line with WP:BOTPOL. Anomie⚔ 19:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm just wikilawyering back with that comment. I'm tired of being attacked and told I'm aggressive when my concerns are ignored and I'm told repeatedly I'm the only one raising these concerns. If BAG considered user concerns the first time no one would have to resort to other measures to be listened to.
I'm reading the history of Betacommand and users, and Betacommand and BAG and bots, especially administrators who come to support his personal attacks on other editors, particularly editors who appear to be new editors at wikipedia. I'm also reading the history of complaints about BAG and fast approvals. I'm not pleased that I've been treated by BAG members as if I'm a lone wolf on these issues when it's clear it's not only been a long-standing issues but that problems resulted in Betacommand's community sanctions.
I'm not the only person who has raised this issue. It arose in the arbcom against Betacommand which resulted in sanctions against him.
It's time to start discussing the issue, and time for BAG to stop playing me. It's not about me, it's about the bots and community consensus and BAG. The same things it was about, in part, that led to sanctions against Betacommand. But I'll deal with him in an official request for Arbcom to enforce its decision. Let's get to the issue. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk)
Yes, your issues with Betacommand are wholly inappropriate for this page; good luck with your WP:AE posting. As for the history of people complaining about BAG, do keep in mind that things have changed a good deal in the past year or so and that trying to inject additional bureaucracy into BAG is a favorite tactic of anyone who disagrees with anything BAG does. Quite frankly, your approach is aggressive: you make absolutist statements, you bring up the same issue in multiple places, you seem unwilling to consider other points of view or to compromise, and you are extremely quick to derail the discussion by interpreting statements as personal attacks. It all makes talking with you wearying. (Don't worry, I won't take your statement that I and other BAG members are "playing you" as a personal attack either.) Anomie⚔ 19:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
And I've been trying to be more civil and to discuss the issue. What I get is attacked by Betacommand who personally attacked me before in the discussion about the content creation bot. Then I get an administrator supporting his attack. Then I find out he has a long-standing history of years of personally attacking editors who disagree with him about bots in exactly the same way he's going at me, in addition to finding out that it's an en.wiki tradition for administrators like Xeno to come to the support of Betacommand personally attacking editors about bot issues.
So, I tried, and what I get is a resurgance of attacks. You're weary? I back down, and you keep throwing my history at me, and you all support Betacommand attacking me. And, yes, no matter how many times you say it, "you cannot follow directions" is nothing but a personal attack.
As Betacommand himself seems to says in his latest to arbcom, "you can't let history go."
Since you can't let my history go, why should I? I have to learn from more experienced editors. What I'm learning is attack, obfuscate, and wikilawyer. I backed off it for a while, but now Xeno and Betacommand remind me I should not have.
The topic remains the lack of community consensus, BAG approving bots without it. The policy clearly requires it. Cobrabot was approved without it. Cobrabot should be stopped and its flag removed. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
You are conflating a lack of community participation at BRFA with a lack of community consensus. See Wikipedia:Silence and consensus. –xenotalk 20:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
No, I'm not. Others are. A lack of community participation at BRFA does not mean a lack of community consesus. Nor does it mean community consensus. A point I keep trying to make. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 06:58, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Actually, I do not support Betacommands brash style of expressing himself. But nor do I support your playing the victim or your excuses for your own behavior. As for the rest, take it to WP:AE. Anomie⚔ 20:26, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
If I've made any excuses for my behavior it was completely in error. It's not my problem. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 06:58, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Waiting time - set one, and Community consensus: get it

While reviewing Betacommands Arbcom decisions and etc., I see that the time of approval and BAG's lack of monitoring community consensus have been raised as issues before. I would like the waiting time for post-trial approval to be at least a week. I would also like bots not to be approved when there is no community consensus. As Cobrabot task 1 had no community consensus I would like it blocked and its flag removed. This changes the RFBA for Cobrabot task 2. I would like that revisited, also, in light of the speedy approval. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:15, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

  • Oppose all A week is too long if the task seems uncontroversial and no one bothers to comment. In some cases any delay is really unnecessary if the trial goes off without a hitch, as the trial was preceeded by months of community consensus-building. We do endevor to ensure community consensus for bots, but when a task is uncontroversial no one bothers to comment; trying to require that we wait for Godot is pointless.
    I think it's about time for you to drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass on the CobraBot issue. "CobraBot 1" is not a separate bot, CobraBot does have other approved tasks, and CyberCobra has agreed not to run the CobraBot 1 task, so blocking or deflagging would not be appropriate. You yourself have stated elsewhere that the only problem you have with CobraBot 2 is that you personally were not aware of an ANI thread from 2 weeks before CobraBot 2 was even requested, which is most certainly not a good reason for taking the action you request. Anomie⚔ 19:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I think you dismissed my using "no one bothered to comment" with my suggestion above, so don't turn around and use it as an argument in support of your proposal. It's either valid or not. If it's valid, then I'll take it that a week is already established. If it's not valid, it does not support your opposition.
    • I think that the approval of Cobrabot's first task shows that BAG is not able to gauge community consensus. In this case, the default value should be to do least harm. Least harm is no bot. Bot's aren't mandatory. If there's no community consensus in a bot, it simply should not be requested much less approved.
    • Community consensus requires community input. If you don't have it, the bot is not approvable according to bot policy.
Haven't we talked through this already? Here's my comment from eight days ago. In other words, I oppose WP:CREEP, arbitrary time limits, and really think this should go to WP:VPP rather than simmering here forever. tedder (talk) 19:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Your creep comment doesn't make sense to me. It simply links to an essay, and we're discussing policy here. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
It makes sense in the context of my prior reply. An essay is helpful as a shortcut, rather than explaining something over and over again. Your objections are well-known and have been well-stated. Restating them isn't helping gain consensus, and that's why I suggest taking it to a bigger audience (WP:VPP) rather than continually stating it here. tedder (talk) 20:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, no, when I tried to discuss it elsewhere Betacommand followed me and accused me of forum shopping. So, that's not going to work now that Betacommand has been let loose on me. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:38, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Consider this a blessing to take it to VPP, especially if there is consensus to do so. I really don't understand how taking it personal and beating it into the ground is more satisfactory. tedder (talk) 20:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't understand your first bullet point, unless you're trying to say that "no one bothered to comment" implies "no one cares enough one way or the other" (my view) is the same as "no one bothered to comment" implies "everyone doesn't want this to happen" (your view?).
    Don't worry, I won't take your statement that I am incapable of gauging community consensus as a personal attack. As has been pointed out before, hindsight is 20/20. If you are able to perfectly gauge community consensus beforehand, you should run for ArbCom instead of wasting your time here.
    See WP:SILENCE for a reply to your third bullet.
    Err, I think you misunderstood my statement. I was referring to you beating a dead horse in continuing to demand CobraBot 2 be de-approved despite not one whit of agreement from anyone else. Anomie⚔ 20:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Silence and consensus. Some bot tasks are so mundane as to not attract any attention.
See comment about about essays. But, I do agree some tasks are so mundane as to not attract attention, but BAG didn't judge that appropriately in the case of CobraBot. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Just because something is an essay doesn't mean it's utterly useless. Many essays are written because some common (but mistaken) argument is tiresome to respond to from scratch each time. Anomie⚔ 20:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia essays tend to be poorly written commentaries that get thrown around when someone cannot address the issue directly. There's no point in my reading them. If the instructions are too long, it can be shown they are redundant. If they were already being followed this issue would not have arisen. Obviously the instructions are not long enough because the issue has arisen, in fact, the speedy approval arose in the most recent arbcom about Betacommand. I'm not a lone wolf. The instructions are not too long, because they don't address this community concern. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't really see anyone else complaining. –xenotalk 20:26, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
You are making an unwarranted assumption. Some are poorly written, but some are good. Anomie⚔ 20:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I read the first half dozen that were thrown at me to sidestep issues I raised. Xeno just threw one at me that supports my stance, not his. I don't see that most editors throwing them around are reading them themselves. It's a non-issue. They're not policy. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to withdraw from this discussion. You are not arguing sincerely. –xenotalk 20:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Believe that if you want. Anomie⚔ 20:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Of course I'm not arguing sincerely. Every time I post a sincere comment for discussion I get derailed, by Betacommand and you his ardent supporter, with ridiculous comments about "waiting for Godot," when it's well know what community consensus is, by hyperbole about waiting forever, and closing down BAG. I can't argue any of that with sincerity, as its purpose was not to raise sincere issues but to attack me personally and avoid discussing the issues at all. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
As for the CobraBot thing, can you point me to this lack of community consensus? –xenotalk 19:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
No, I can't point you to something that doesn't exist. But here's the link so you can point me to the community consensus.[32] --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't see any objections. Have you reviewed the essay I linked above? Just because it is an essay does not mean that it does not have relevant material within. Linking to essays are a useful method of not repeating the same thing over and over. The task seems mundane to me, no objections were raised during the BRFA, and there were no objections to the OCLC paramater in the talk page & archives of Infobox book. Objections were raised only after the task commenced. I don't know why you feel BAG is at fault for this. –xenotalk 20:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
According to your essay, "Consensus can be presumed to exist until voiced disagreement becomes evident." So, you provided an essay that supports me. What do I do with that? --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
At the time there were no objections. –xenotalk 20:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Considering that we live in linear time, objections that occur after the bot's approval cannot have been considered during the bots approval. Now that disagreement has been voiced, CobraBot 1 is no longer running. Please leave the poor dead horse alone already. Anomie⚔ 20:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
No, it wasn't stopped, since it was still a flagged bot when Cobrabot2's request went up. Please leave the dead horses alone, Anomie, and stick stick stick with the topic. It's not dead horses, it's not closing down BAG, it's not waiting for an unknown (community consensus is a known). --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:41, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
And with that, you have crossed my personal line of "someone who is so illogical that further discussion is pointless". Have a nice day, maybe we can have constructive interaction elsewhere in the future. Anomie⚔ 20:43, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
For Cobrabot 2, Cybercobra notified multiple projects (at least 2), they had 10 days to come and comment on the BRFA, and only one user did. If we reject bot requests simply because almost no one from the community comments, the only result is that we won't have any more new bots. The community has shown numerous times that they do not care about bots (with a couple exceptions like adminbots and welcoming bots) until one of them screws up. Unless this proposal is combined with some way of increasing community input, or there's evidence that longer waiting times actually lead to significantly more input, this idea is doomed to failure. Mr.Z-man 20:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Where's the evidence a week is too long? Where's the evidence 3 minutes is long enough? There is none. The time was not long enough. The consensus does not exist. There was none for Cobrabot 1 to begin with. In fact, it's owner failed to link to discussions that showed a lack of consensus. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Where's the evidence that a week is not too long? Where's the evidence that 3 minutes is not too long in some circumstances? We could play that game all day, but I have better things to do. Anomie⚔ 20:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
So, now you want to argue that 3 minutes is sufficient? We could play all sorts of games, or BAG can, instead of addressing the issues. And it's clear you're willing to. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure where I said a week is too long. I merely said that they had 10 days to comment (the actual BRFA lasted 14 days). If you want us to address the issues, perhaps you should start by a more usable proposal. Your current proposal is both unfair to bot operators and to the community. You're telling the operators that they can't run any new tasks unless they force the community to come to a consensus for it and you're telling the community that if they still want the benefits of bots, they have to come and get involved. Mr.Z-man 23:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I personally welcome any constructive measure to get the community commenting on bots, and if IP has any thoughts, great. But shutting BAG down in pursuit of consensus on the basis of "if we build it, they will come" is unlikely to gain traction as there will be next to no new bots. The odd slip by BAG is worth the efficiency of getting 99.9% of the bots that are approved ruuning quickly. Fritzpoll (talk) 20:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Who suggested shutting down BAG? You say I'm wearying to discuss things, how much hyperbole is necessary? You can't address the issues I raise. You ignore my posts. You have a community-sanctioned ex-member representing himself as a BAG member, you support him personally attacking me. (You as the plural.) Do you realize how easy it would be to just discuss the issues, not get personal, not raise the ridiculous? Much easier and less wearying. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


Of course I'm not arguing sincerely. Every time I post a sincere comment for discussion I get derailed, by Betacommand and you his ardent supporter, with ridiculous comments about "waiting for Godot," when it's well know what community consensus is, by hyperbole about waiting forever, and closing down BAG. I can't argue any of that with sincerity, as its purpose was not to raise sincere issues but to attack me personally and avoid discussing the issues at all. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 20:50, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't really care about Betacommand, and barely know him, so don't know where that's coming from. My "shutting down BAG" comment should be read in the context of the general response to your suggestions: what if the community can't be bothered (as now) to show up? Do we do as we do now and try getting them involved (except in a couple of cases), but ultimately approve on technical merits if it appears uncontroversial? You seem to be suggesting that this is unacceptable: if so, the reality is that BAG's processes will grind to a halt because noone in the wider community seems to care - that, in essence, is "shutting down" BAG. As I keep saying, tell us if you have some idea of getting the community involved, because we really, really want them to be. Fritzpoll (talk) 21:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, maybe you should know who Betacommand is since he recently, in a comment to me, represented himself as a member of BAG.
You made these huge assumptions, that if no one comments then the whole process grinds to a halt. It doesn't, in any way, follow.
Not all bot tasks are equal. If they were, simply looking over the code might be an allowable way of operating BAG. If no one comments on the RFBA for the replacement for the RFBA board bot, that won't harm the community. If no on comments on a bot that adds thousands of links, even if the link is added via a template, that could harm the encyclopedia if the bot were allowed to go forward. So, there's plenty to actually discuss, that the hyperbole casts aside. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:21, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
You need to re-read what people say. I never said that I was BAG my exact quote was if there is a specific BRFA that you want reviewed let us know and we can take a closer look the we that you see there is referring to is the community. So please stop putting words in my mouth that I did not say. βcommand 21:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I am not omnipresent on Wikipedia - I know Beta vaguely and indirectly through various appearances at Arbcom and ANI, but not personally, and certainly not his interactions with you. I am not making huge assumptions - I am demonstrating the logic of your proposal: you appear (that's an invitation to correct me if I'm wrong) to be saying that all bot approvals should require community input. My comment is that the status quo is that noone comments. Given these two points, a need for input to approve coupled with a lack of input will mean that the approvals process will grind to a halt. You said in another venue that we haven't tried everything to get the community engaged, but won't tell us what to try - if you tell us something must be done that we aren't doing, but won't help us by tlling us what that something is, then this conversation will never have a conclusion. Fritzpoll (talk) 21:45, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

In fairness to IP69, the CobraBot 1 BRFA was not appealed by anyone (I think that's what they're trying to pursue here, along with several other things) and is still valid; I only paused running it until the discussions about it were resolved (with no consensus against the task); the reason task 1 isn't running currently is because CobraBot successfully completed its pass over all the articles in Wikipedia using {{Infobox book}}. If IP69 wants to appeal task 1, they are free to do so. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like it rolled back, also, if there is no clear idea that the community wants these links activated. Probably a rollback discussion will gain more community input. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Why would that be superior to just simply modifying the template? --Cybercobra (talk) 21:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't considered that. I personally think modifying the template to make it an inactive link would be preferable, kinda the best of both worlds, since that was one of the big complaints about the OCLC< but others may have ideas about the best course of action, if any. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Then I would encourage you to rekindle the discussion at Template talk:Infobox book regarding changing the linking of the OCLC parameter. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:44, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
In our defence, that's kind of what we've been saying about this issue for the past few days. If you get consensus, I'll edit the template myself! :) Fritzpoll (talk) 21:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, yes, but you're so hostile to outsiders it's not a surprise that editors are uncomfortable coming here to discuss issues. Why not just answer my initial posts as if they were discussions instead of going overboard.
And, no, it still doesn't add up to no bots on en.wikipedia. Some bots don't need much or any community consensus. The bagbot for example, bag operators will monitor it, the operator is experienced. It doesn't even really matter if the community has any input on it, it's not working in mainspace.
A bot that adds links to mainspace by the thousands? It doesn't matter that it was through a template. If BAG doesn't have the sense to know this needs community input, then this should be put in the rules. Bots that edit mainspace require community support. Lack of disagreement is not sufficient. Some times it won't matter much. The Zh bot is editing an already deprecated template. The operator knows he can't step into the mess around simplified/traditional and made it clear he won't.
But, the BAG conclusion that just because en.wiki editors don't come here willingly to get fried by BAG means any bot can be approved if it's technically accurate is not a sensible decision.
I'll ask at infobot book if the template needs to be changed or the bot needs to be rolled back. But, cobrabot 1 should be blocked. It's not been approved by community consensus. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 06:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but where have I been hostile? I am trying to engage in discussion with you, but you won't answer my questions, which would help me out. Instead you seem to be tarring me with some brush based on negative interactions with other users. On that basis, I will disengage from this discussion until answers to my questions on clarifying your position and how we can engage the community are answered. Fritzpoll (talk) 07:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I posted a discussion as suggested. [33] I notified everyone who had commented on that page. I have not notified anyone who commented in the AN/I, although there may be other interested users from that list. I will also post a link to this discussion at the Village Pump. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 06:55, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I am very disappointed by the response here. Issues about consensus, duty of care and general governance are being sidestepped. It seems that no complaint or concern about the wider issue of bot operation can be discussed here without memebers of BAG seeing it as an attack upon them as a project or as individual editors. This should be forum where all the issues about bot actions should be put forward, discussed and resolved to everyone's satisfaction, rather than taking place at individual template or article talk pages. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:02, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Gavin - I am trying to engage with it - I keep asking what ideas people have to get the community more involved. That gets sidestepped - we have a problem, because we want to get the community more involved but they do not come. IP says there are ideas we have not tried: I simply want to know what they are. That is not seeing it as an attack, nor is it sidestepping - but considering we've been through this issue a lot, we need fresh ideas, not just to be told we need to do better. It is the difference between "you are failing!" and "Why haven't you tried method X of getting people involved?" - one is constructive and can progress dialogue, and the other is simply highlighting a problem we are already aware of. Fritzpoll (talk) 12:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)


I agree with you 100%, Gavin. BAG members see complaints, even questions, as attacks. BAG boards should be where where issues are discussed, but it's not allowed. If an editor comes here with concerns they should expect to be personally attacked, goaded, insulted, flamed and blocked, like I have been. Now it appears I am to be stalked by Betacommand, a sanctioned and once banned wikipedia editor and BAG member, who sees BAG as a safe place for admin-supported name-calling. And for good reason. It is. IMO, you are right, Gavin, that this is a problem for the entire wikipedia community.
However, there is an underlying issue about this CobraBot, linking to the worldcat. Outside links should have widespread community support before implementation. Right now community members are discussing (at the template talk page) what BAG should have gained consensus for before approving the bot: should the template link to worldcat. If community consensus is that it should be linked, adding the OCLC becomes simply a technical issue with a bot: is there a bot that can do it.
BAG failed to gain community consensus for other bots. At this point, the BAG seems to be saying they have no duty to gain consensus and that lack of comment equals community consensus. IMO this is wrong. But the issue of community consensus for bots requires a wider audience that cannot be gained at BAG due to the hostility here toward outsiders. I think that the wider audience at BAG for the Cobra Bot issue in general (fast decisions by BAG members without community consensus) may be gained in part from editors discussing the OCLC linking, and from those who participate in other discussions about community consensus for bots. IMO it's a way to start trying to get community members to come here and discuss bots.
Since all of my suggestions here get me attacked by BAG members and former BAG members, there's no point in my suggesting ideas. So I'll try it this way and see how it works. I have other ideas. IMO BAG has no community blessing to move forward with bots just because no one said "no." In particular this is the case for a BAG that is so hostile to outside opinions that any member of the community would be a fool to step forward, speak up, and chance becoming a target like I have become. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 22:34, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Input on CobraBot - how I got it

I searched to find discussions about the most important part of the OCLC issue, and I found a place where it was being discussed. I invited editors who had expressed an opinion in the past, inviting all editors in a discussion, whatever side of the issue they were on, delivering a neutral invitation and not opening the discussion with my own opinion on the issue. Invited editors came by, expressed their opinions on the matter. It appears there is support for linking the OCLC number externally to the worldcat website. Not just by numbers, but generally there were positive expressions for the functionality of the usage.

I have an additional concern about the linking, that I would like to be addressed, there, but I don't think it stands in the way of this issue.

In my opinion this is one very positive and straight-forward way to gain community input on a bot: 1. identify any issues that are community concerns rather than mere technical concerns. 2. find the community this impacts 3a. neutrally invite members of that community to a neutral and logical location for discussing the issue 3b. create the discussion.

It seems to me this isn't that hard. The animosity of the bot boards toward outsider opinions makes it hard have an opinion here. Wikipedia isn't the only place where I participate in discussions with strangers on the web, but it's the only place I have such a negative reputation. I'm not the only one to mention how hostile the bot boards are to outsiders. If you want community input, you have to learn to identify the community as people who are potentially outsiders. If someone is not concerned in a negative way about an issue, they may not bother to speak up. If they are concerned, and they speak up here, they need to be deal with for their concerns directly, in a civil manner at all times.

The discussion about OCLC.

Once the underlying community impact concerns are dealt with the bot is just a matter of technical approval. Does it do what it says, is the operative willing and able to respond to community issues that may arise, a trial run, does the trial run raise any glitches. None of this really needs more than monitoring by bots members, if they are monitoring that. It also kinda negates the issue of timelines if the community support is in place and the bot is reduced to technical matters.

So, imo, this is how it can be done in a way that gets community support for bots. Find the community that is impacted, politely and neutrally seek their input, allow them time to speak, then move forward on technical matters. It seems to me, also, from the bots policy, that this actually what was originally intended for how the bot approval process should work. However, bot members have moved from failing to get community input, due, imo, to how hostile this area is to outsiders, to saying that community consensus is not necessary or that if the community doesn't offer any negative input then the bot can go ahead.

--69.225.3.198 (talk) 21:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone disagrees with your basic point about community input and all would agree that, in retrospect, it probably would have been better if CobraBot 1 had remained open longer and/or been publicized (I just didn't think of it at the time and Kingpin didn't think it would be a controversial task [nor did I for that matter]). Perhaps "notify related talkpages/WikiProjects" should be a required step in the application form, but then there could be talkpage spam and WP:CREEP issues. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I think the current instructions cover it already. And creep issues don't bother me when the rules seem obvious, but aren't followed. I think that requiring or asking the bot owner to make a better effort to gain community consensus, with some offered guidelines to finding the potential community issues, would not be a bad thing for bots on wikipedia. Again, once you eliminate community concerns by gaining community consensus for the bot in the first place, the rest of it is just technical issues. I don't see any particular failures in this area for the bots on wikipedia that need more attention then they're already getting.--69.225.3.198 (talk) 22:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
This goes back to the dead horse of trying to get more community input. As been shown before they largely ignore what happens with Bots unless they disagree after the fact. Q T C 22:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I just got community input about the bot. It wasn't that difficult. What dead horse of trying to get community input? --69.225.3.198 (talk) 23:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
You got input on the bot (sort of), but you did not get consensus for it; technically you only got community agreement about linking to the Worldcat site in the template. That indirectly removed the one known objection about the bot, but no one actually knew that the link to wordcat would be controversial until after the bot ran. That didn't get consensus for the bot, only one aspect of the task. There's still the issues of whether it should be used in situations where we have the ISBN and whether it should be populated by a bot at all. These just haven't been found to be controversial. By the definition you were using earlier, they still don't have consensus because they have not been specifically discussed. Its a lot easier to do such things in hindsight. What we need to be able to do is determine the things that might be controversial before the fact. Mr.Z-man 23:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, these are all valid points. I did not essentially get community consensus for the bot. This might be harder to get. In fact I picked a task that was recently discussed so that I could get interested editors to comment on it. I think the issue of whether it should be populated by a bot should have been addressed before it was done, also. And, no, it doesn't have consensus. And, yes, bots needs to be able to determine whether something is controversial beforehand.
So, how do you do this? Well, in my opinion, you correctly identified these as issues that need addressed for future bots: should the task be done by a bot at all? It helps by breaking it down into specific tasks. Is there consensus for externally linking the parameter has the potential for being the most contentious issue about this one bot, and bots adding external links should always have higher scrutiny, imo. So, the bot operator may have to initiate a few discussions, including a major one about whether the task should be done by a bot at all. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 23:44, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, this is a little in circles, because you're saying seek community input, but ignoring our basic problem that they won't come here. So ok, here is a possible solution - in the BRfA, the operator must show that they attempted to gain consensus for an action that widely impacts the articlespace. That is, by starting discussion in an appropriate location, which will hopefully be watched more than the approval itself would ever be - we do this during the approvals process now for a lot of bots, so let's formalise it and make it apply to all bot requests that impact the articlespace. For instance, there is some bot that is up for approval to substitute one template for another, to which my first comment was "the linked discussion shows no consensus". If we get the operator doing the work first and showing positive consensus (or silence) in a different location to our domain, and at least showing a reasonable effort to get the same, then we may gain more confidence in our activities. Not sure about the details of this - might need some work, but I guess if I want a constructive and new idea I must propose one myself. Fritzpoll (talk) 23:08, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, imo it's important enough to gain community consensus for bots that impact mainspace that it should be actively sought. If editors won't come here, it should be, imo, the responsibility of the bot operator to show their task has consensus in some way. I suppose for some tasks showing a lack of concern or lack of input would be okay. For example, with already deprecated templates. Sure ask the community, but if the community has already decided to change the template, and no additional comments are forthcoming, then it's probably fine. Yes, reasonable effort to gain community consensus, for bots that impact mainspace, then the activity for bots members really is about technical aspects of the bot. For bots that would impact the servers, maybe some time of community consensus should be required also, but that's really a technical issue.
Again, once you turn it into just a technical issue for BAG members and the interested community if any, times aren't that critical, either.
I think that bot policy as it stands already requires this, but it's not implemented because of the difficulty in gaining community consensus, so maybe just a formalization of methods for showing community consensus or something would suffice. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 23:17, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I think we'll have to allow for silence to equal consensus - but by forcing bot operators to show they tried, it allows us to view whether they've tried sufficiently hard. BAG is essentially selected on the basis of technical expertise - all we're ever going to be able to do is judge based on other discussions whether there is consensus. If the rest of my colleagues will agree that we should add another parameter to the request for approval template of "Show links to community discussion for mainspace edits:" or words to that effect, with a short update to the documentation, then I think this will resolve all possible concerns and give us a more viable process. I invite thoughts from the rest of BAG Fritzpoll (talk) 23:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I think in some cases there will have to be an allowance for silence equals consensus, particularly if bot operators showed they made a well-founded attempt to gain community input. There may be tasks where the default value should be not to go forward without positive community consensus, though, such as adding anything in mainspace that links externally. Adding words to that effect may be useful. I remain concerned that a bot that added external links was quickly approved without consensus, though, so I would like some notice to BAG members, or some sign, that indicates that community consensus is important, so, preferably the issue does not rise again, that a bot is quickly approved without input from the community. If it does happen again, though, what should be done about it? --69.225.3.198 (talk) 23:49, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I would support something along those lines, but I would be a little worried by a blanket statement like "any bot editing mainspace". A bot doing interwiki linking or category maintenance doesn't need the same amount of consensus as a bot editing the content or references, though they're all editing mainspace. However, a bot leaving messages on user talk pages like for image copyright issues may need more attention due to potential WP:BITE issues. Mr.Z-man 00:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree that bots doing interwiki probably need no consensus or rather already have it. With category maintenance bots, are these bots changing cats that have changed due to user discussions at CFD? Or elsewhere? In these cases, without instruction creep, can we say that consensus is already established?
Another good particular point, bots leaving message on user talk pages need more consensus than an interwiki bot. Tjese bots appear to be questioned extensively at bots, and there is the opt-in, opt-out issue. If the bots are opt-in only, it's a different issue than bots tagging user pages. I don't think we can cover everything, and I'm not sure what should be done about these, or what problems there are with these bots, if any. I assume users might get ticked off at having messages on their talk pages. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 00:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I thought about that after I logged off - I guess what we'd be after is non-maintenance editing of articlespace and talkpage editing should probably get a similar consensus, but presumably our standard of venue (not necessarily documented, but in practice) should be higher in scale with the potential impact of the bot within the community. If a bot is editing biographies only, we might be satisfied to ask the relevant Wikiprojects and policy pages to chip in, but talkpages might require at least an invitation at a centralised discussion venue. Wording that into a bit of general guidance (so that we don't have to specify every possible scenario) would be helpful Fritzpoll (talk) 07:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I sneer at concerns about instruction creep, but, then, when faced with this and all the exceptions I see the problem. Personally, I think that the community consensus requirement already in the bots policy covers this, along with common sense. The issue is to make sure that all BAG members are on board with the understanding that mainspace edits and user talkpages require proactive community consensus, before a bot is approved, or really even discussed at RFBA, in other words, a link to the discussion specifying that the bot task is desired by the community. Interwiki edits to mainspace probably don't require any community consensus. Deprecated templates require a link to the change of template. Talk page edits require broad community discussion and support. Can this be bulletted and linked to rather than actually put in the policy, sort of like guidelines?
In my opinion, the bot policy already requires all of this, but it has not been actively honored, due in part to the lack of community input on bots, and possibly also due to lack of clarity in policy being applied to different categories of bots. I don't think that most members of the community would disagree with these basic findings in wrap-up: mainspace bot edits require proactive community support, except for interwiki edits, except for maintenance edits; talk page bots require broad community discussion, any type of bot that will be placing something on a user's talk page. Once this has been cleared up, and bots are put on this board for RFBA requests, the rest is technical input from BAG.
Maybe what could be added, as someone suggested above, is a place in the RFBA template to link to the community discussion. Then a bot owner could link or note the bot is only doing interwiki? Plus a notice to all BAG members about the requirements here? --69.225.3.198 (talk) 08:07, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I think the practical outcome of this discussion will be a template change and a small instruction addition to fill it in, but we need to discuss it this way in part to try to make our approach to its use consistent Fritzpoll (talk) 08:12, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, well, I think this is a big step in the right direction to making bots more of a community work. I agree with Mr. Z-man that there are a lot of holes still, but I think it will only get better from this point with a focus on not just how but when to get community consensus, or when it matters. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 08:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to make minor adjustments to approval process

To satisfy the concerns of the above and punt issues back to the community before mistakes can be made, and following on from the above, I propose the following:

  • Bot operators requesting approval must show, where appropriate, that community discussion has occurred and established consensus for their task, or that an attempt was made to obtain the same with no or limited input from the community. A field should be added to the request form for this.

Issues may arise around "appropriate", but I do not think we should formalise this in some policy. Instead, as guidance, the question must be of impact - if the bot edits mainspace content then an attempt must be made by the operator to get some wider approval.

This is not wildly variable to what we do now, except we place the onus on the bot op to obtain consensus in advance of an approval request, allowing us to concentrate on technical aspects. All we have to do, then, is to be happy that the criterion in bot policy have been met. This can also give the flagging crats a discussion that is independent of BAG.

To conclude, a minor change, but one that improves our workflow, cuts down on erroneous approvals (at least from a consensus point of view) and improves the appearance of BAG and what we do. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:14, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not sure it is all that useful to add a field to the BRFA form that a significant fraction of requests will have no use for (and that the requestors of those requests will likely be confused by). It might be better to just update the comment on the "Details" and/or "Discussion" sections to point out that links to previous consensus on the issue are greatly helpful, and to use {{BOTREQ|advertise}} more liberally. And IMO, whether the community consensus happens before the request or whether the request gets put on hold while consensus is sought is no big deal, since either way BAG will have to look over the consensus discussion and since the major problem with our workflow is in most BAGgers being relatively inactive rather than in having too many discussions to manage. Anomie⚔ 16:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure it matters whether the discussion is before or after the BRFA, but it makes it clearer, IMO for BAG and for bureaucrats flagging bots and for users who participate in the bot boards and on the bot discussions, if the discussion is simply had prior to the BRFA. It also, imo, deals with the issue of bureaucrats making the same mistake that BAG members have about level of controversy.[34] So, I would rather see it done before the BRFA. It makes it straight-forward what BAG does, which is largely what BAG has been doing, going over the technical aspects of the bots.
I'm not sure it matters, either, whether it is in the request form or on the details or discussion sections. If it's on the request form, operators who are doing interwikis can simply state there that it's an interwiki, operators doing maintenance on categories that have been changed can note that and link to the category discussion. The form is not that onerous, and, again, it makes it easier, imo, for everyone else outside of BAG to be sure that everything is done. It has the potential, imo, to eliminate a lot of problems if it's simply on the form. It can say if applicable as a disclaimer. My tendency is to think it better on the form, but it seems it would be better to have it on the form. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 20:06, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
We'll end up having some discussions "during" the BRFA anyway, since people are not good at following directions and IMO it would be annoying and pointless for the prospective bot op to have the request denied just because they didn't take care of the consensus discussion beforehand. Whether a field ends up in the template or not, I don't care that strongly.
I'm about to make a few preliminary edits to the BRFA instructions, but that's not an attempt to derail this discussion, it's just one step here that we should obviously take care of. Anomie⚔ 22:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
As a practical consideration I'm fine with not denying a bot because it wasn't discussed beforehand. Experienced operators will know to do it, and this might end up with turning off inexperienced bot operators, which would be a bad thing, imo. So, although I prefer to have it in the template, I'm okay if it's handled another way. And, if it's in the template, I'm fine with not denying a bot if the community consensus discussion doesn't take place before hand. In addition BAG members or community members may feel that an additional community consensus discussion or another type of community consensus discussion is what is needed, rather than what was done beforehand. It appears that BAG members don't mind if bot requests sit on this board for a while, so I don't see that as a problem. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 23:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
For things like interwikis and CfD bots, it should be sufficient to point to another bot that's already doing the task to show that community consensus exists. --Carnildo (talk) 22:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, Carnildo, essentially for interwikis and CfDs the consensus has already been obtained. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 00:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change to template

"If your task could be controversial (e.g. most bots making non-maintenance edits to articles and most bots posting messages on user talk pages), seek consensus for the task in the appropriate fora. Common places to start include WP:Village pump (proposals) and the talk pages of the relevant policies, guidelines, templates, and/or WikiProjects. Link to this discussion from your request for approval."

This looks fine to me. The instructions are not as onerous, imo, as many on wikipedia, and they're actually written and designed for the inexperienced user to be able to follow them. A bit strange the place on wikipedia where a template can actually be followed by a new user is the template least likely to be used by an inexperienced user.

And, thanks Anomie, for changing the wording earlier on the approval of a trial. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 00:32, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there is need to get prior community approval as long as it is reasonable to think there will be no objection and the bot is approved here. We don't need to do a big discussion for everything, only those things expected to be controversial. While the words "where appropriate" seem to cover this, it also makes the statement fairly meaningless imho. Chillum 00:35, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
The question, though, is where to draw the "reasonable" line. Historically we've erred a bit on the side of assuming things will be unobjectionable. Since I joined BAG I've tried to swing that a bit more towards having the discussion. IMO, the changes discussed here aren't explicitly changing anything (no one seems to be proposing changes to WP:BOTPOL), just making the need for consensus more visible with some broad examples in the BRFA instructions and some still-to-be-determined changes to the BRFA form. Anomie⚔ 01:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, not really changing anything, but it's still important though to create an understanding of how things will work best. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 01:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
It doesn't say "where appropriate," or it might elsewhere, but on the bot template it says "seek consensus for the task in the appropriate fora." The parenthetical remark gets BAG members and bot operators past thinking that mainspace edits will be non-controversial. --69.225.3.198 (talk) 01:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
I like the edit made by Anomie (well, I would, wouldn't I? :) ), and think it responds to many of the concerns made before. I suggest that this subject can now be dropped, provided we are all happy that, for now at least, the issue is resolved? Fritzpoll (talk) 12:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
There is still the question of what (if any) changes should be made to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InputInit. Anomie⚔ 13:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I would like it to include a request for a link to the community consensus discussion. As someone mentions above, bot owners with interwiki bots can state they're established usage or something, maintenance bots can link to the change of template, whatever. As an alternative BAG members can simply ask for this each time, but I prefer it in the requests form.
Yes, I think a commitment by BAG to making sure there is community consensus for the BOT is sufficient-it reduces BRFAs to technical matters, leaving consensus matters to the community, and bureaucrats can maintain their current level of responsibility in regards bot flagging. All BAG members have been notified of the change and appear to be on board, or at least there's no indication they're not on board, and as members they have a responsibility to the notifications.
The CobraBot issue is still messy due to lack of prior consensus as Mr. Z-Man points out, but having watched a community consensus discussion about the primary concern, adding a externally linked parameter, lead to a general consensus of the usefulness of the linking, there's not much else I'm interested in doing about that.
So, I think it's on to business, lke sorting out what type of community consensus the bot putting multiple templates on new articles needs to acquire. --69.225.2.24 (talk) 21:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Per BRD, have added a line to the default script in order to wake us up a little bit - feel free to RD my B Fritzpoll (talk) 08:58, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
"If your task could be controversial" - every jot and tittle is controversial on WP! Rich Farmbrough, 09:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

Any way to get a BRFA moving faster?

Speaking of uncontroversial tasks, is there any way to get the process moving on RSElectionBot? I fulfilled the bot request within about 8 hours of when I was asked, but now it looks like the bot's going to just stagnate on BRFA and the election will be over before anything happens with it. rspεεr (talk) 09:30, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm on it :). Sorry about the time issue. There's a very small active workforce here, so it does take us a while to respond, and it's even worse then normal at the moment. - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Uncontentious trivial changes

There are a number of uncontentious, trivial changes (for example, changing 'Image': links to 'File:') for which no bot solely performing them is likely to be approved, even if they were all grouped together.

AWB applies those fixes as a matter of course when doing other work.

Would it be reasonable to have a "bot" that represents these trivial fixes, and approve each fix; this "bot" could be then coded by the various framework maintainers and it's approved tasks could be applied by any real bot in addition to their own approved tasks? Josh Parris 03:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Open_Wikipedia_bot_requests_for_approval

Is there any automated process for cleaning out Category:Open_Wikipedia_bot_requests_for_approval? Josh Parris 03:39, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Nope. Manually for now. Tim1357 (talk) 01:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
I can code a *drumroll* bot to handle it. It won't be very difficult; I'll just make some adjustments to a category maintenance script I already have employed. @harej 03:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
As the community, I assert that there is a consensus for a bot to do this. Please, won't somebody make a bot to rid us of mis-categorized Category:Open_Wikipedia_bot_requests_for_approval entries on an on-going basis, preferably by ensuring that open bots are on the BRFA page, forcing a BAG member to close them, and thus following procedure? Josh Parris 03:29, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Of course, the bot won't actually close requests. It will only see if a given BRFA is closed, and if it's closed, it will proceed to remove the category. I already have the script done (I ripped it off from another script) and I will make it a part of my next BRFA. @harej 03:34, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
Make sure bot gets Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/mississippiforbes, proposal got created and never added to BFRA. Josh Parris 04:06, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

AWB in bot mode

I'd like to make some bulk edits such as removing {{Gaelic Games in Ireland}} from pages that it shouldn't be listed on or adding {{GaelicGamesProject}} to pages in Category:Gaelic Athletic Association and it's branches which aren't tagged and as such am not requesting a new bot. Do I need to request approval here or can User:GnevinAWB be changed to allow automatic editing ?Gnevin (talk) 16:34, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Every task which is fully automated needs to go through a BRfA; it's the task which requires approval, not exactly the bot (although it is partly the bot to, since tasks aren't interchangeable between bots). So yes, GnevinAWB would have to have a BRfA before being allowed to do the tasks you describe (in fact, you'd have to create a new account with "bot" in the name, to be used only for automated editing). However, the second task you describe is a very common bot job, and as such there are a number of bots which are already approved to do this, and could do that task for you (see Category:WikiProject tagging bots). The first one would however, require approval through BRfA. Hope that helps :). - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:45, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that reply . Very helpful Gnevin (talk) 17:55, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

User:FritzpollBot

Hi. Since User:Fritzpoll has left, that leaves his bot inactive. I've offered to take over Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FritzpollBot 4 for him, and am expecting the source code shortly. So I'd like an okay from a BAG member (other than me) to run this (previously approved) task with User:KingpinBot. And was also wondering if they'd be any other volunteers to take over FritzpollBot's other tasks? Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:22, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe this will be fine; you're transferring approved source-code from one approved operator to another. Request: Approved.
On a related note, I see only one other operating bot: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FritzpollBot 3, an interwiki bot. At this time, I'm not interested in taking up that mantle. Josh Parris 13:45, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Bot account for AWB use

AWB has a limit of 25K when creating lists of articles to edit. In order for the list tool to create a longer list, one needs a bot account. Note that this is true even if the number of pages that will actually be changed is far less than 25K. In my case, I am trying to fix issues in articles that transclude {{Infobox single}}, o which there are more than 25K. The great majority of the articles won't be changed: filters in the settings of AWB will cause most articles to be skipped.

Another project that is directly related to this is an investigation of if/how to merge {{Infobox song}} into {{Infobox single}}. To do that, I want to find articles that use certain template parameters and make sure that my proposal for a merged template won't break any articles, or I will find and fix such articles first, etc. Either way, I need to be able to search all the transclusions of {{Infobox single}}, not just the first 25K.

So... how do I get a bot account for this use? The request process here seems oriented to standalone bots. — John Cardinal (talk) 21:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

You can create tracking categories instead. Many projects use categories such as Category:Biography articles without living parameter to track the use of certain categories. This can be done by requesting changes in the banner's code. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

When do I start developing?

During which step on the list should I have my bot readied? Should I have finished it before I even suggest it? I find the instructions here very confusing.  Awesomeness  talk  16:03, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Your choice really. For my first bot I coded it all before proposing it (but maybe I got carried away with the excitement ). If you do code it first it means that you'll probably have to change some stuff, and also you risk wasting your time if it's not approved. It's best to have at least some idea of how the bot will work, or you waste our time if it turns out you can't create it. You can't do any testing before approval (Except in your own userspaces). Personally I find it's best to program at least some of the bot first, but you may think it's not worth it, as I said, it's a matter of choice. By the way, what language are you using? Ahh, Java. - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Yeah. I know how my bot will work. It's very simple, but has been requested many times. See TidyBot for details.  Awesomeness  talk  17:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, I see. I'd suggest you put in a catch so it only edits that page if it hasn't been edited for x minutes (so that if the user who added it vandalised then the bot gives RCPers a chance to revert). Have you considered making it patrol the recent changes and revert edits which only add wiki markup instead? I think there was a Soxbot which used to do this or something, but haven't seen it for a while. Anyway, feel free to start up a BRfA any time :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 17:20, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
I might do that. However, if I can't get the API to work for me, the bot probably won't happen at all... =( Look at the errors I'm having with the basic 'read a page' example that they had... Do you know what's going on? I've never encountered this before.  Awesomeness  talk  16:15, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Intermittent automation of occasional manual tasks

I am an experienced admin who maintains and runs the OpenOffice.org Forums as well as a couple of wikis using the Wikimedia engine, but I am also involved in Wikipedia as a normal editor. I am currently doing a project with another editor to add a CFS sufferers category to Bios of CFS sufferers very much the same way that many people who are HIV positive or suffer from other widespread illness are tagged. (See my sandpit CFS people). If we come to the point where we decide to implement these category insertions, then I can see that they are four sensible possible approaches:

  1. Use the list and manually repeat a block of [edit, select, cut select, past, select, cut select, past (to add the category and edit comment) then save the edit]
  2. Generate a temporary user page with a bunch of equivalent {{fullurl:XXXXX|action=edit}} links, fire up a new page for each, and use a small client-side greasemonkey script to automate this.
  3. Use a dozen line PHP / Perl / Python script (I am fluent in all) calling the relevant API wrapper to do the same. In this case I am familiar with botclasses.php so I would probably use PHP.
  4. Write a standard bot which would take a page with one category on it and a list of pages and apply that category to those pages.

(4) isn't one of the current standard bots, but the personal overheads of seeking approval for this just don't seem worth it. If this were one of my own wikis then I would just use (3). However, since I would be writing back to (main) name space articles, then I assume that the precautionary principle applies and I would therefore still need full approval. (1) is just tedious beyond words and such repetitive manual tasks are very prone to the risk of keying errors. So by my understanding I am left with (2) and as long as I include a per page visual check and the actual save is manual then this falls within Wikipedia:Bot policy#Assisted editing guidelines and therefore doesn't need the bureaucracy of formal approval. Am I correct in this? -- TerryE (talk) 17:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, your task sounds perfect for AWB (depending on the number of edits), which is a program designed to aid users in doing repetitive tasks like this one, but with a manual check for each edit, so there would be no need to get bot approval (similar to your second option, but you'll probably find it easier to use). You have less than the 500 article edits suggested before approval to use AWB, but you seem competent, and have a good reason for approval. So either I can approve you, if you want that, or I can do the edits myself. Let me know either way. If it's a larger number of edits, then you may find it's worth getting bot approval, how many pages are you thinking of categorising? If it's just the ones listed at User:TerryE/CFS_people then I'd say use AWB. Best, - Kingpin13 (talk) 18:43, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately AWB is an MS/.Net 2.0 app. I have Ubuntu x64 on my laptop. OK, I also have dual boot XP and an XP VM (I am a moderator on the VirtualBox Forums as well) but I haven't started XP for over 3 months. (I gave up with WinXX because I found Vista such a dog compared to Ubuntu). There is also the learning curve of using a sophisticated app when I already know javascript and DOM inside-out. There's no rush. I just didn't want to cross any lines unknowingly. What I already do if I want to analyse content of pages and their history is to use the standard Export and Import functions to copy them onto a non-prod local wiki on my laptop or one of my servers and use scripts to hit the content there. I might just write and test the scripts, document them on a sandbox page and then we can follow this up with some specific code / documentation before any live use. Thanks again. TerryE (talk) 20:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Very well, you're free to make semi-automated tools (where the program still needs a humans a-okay before editing). So you'll be with-in policy if you do that. However, my offer to do the categorisation with AWB still stands. It'd be quick and easy, and wouldn't require you to do any coding or such stuff. - Kingpin13 (talk) 20:35, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I am grateful for your offer and I might still take you up on it. I might also pull your source down from svn and have a look at how if might be moved into a full open stack. It's all a balance of interest, other commitments and priorities. I had to take early retirement a year ago as a result of illness and am now pretty effectively housebound, so what I do have in excess is time and experience :) -- TerryE (talk) 14:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Read-only bots

Greetings-- I'm hoping to put together a read-only bot that I can use to develop statistical sampling techniques of Wikipedia. Since the purpose of the bot is sampling, it shouldn't be a bandwidth hog in any way. In particular, not unlike some researchers, I'm hoping to compare site traffic with edit traffic in a statistical way. Would this kind of bot be approved? How can I develop the software before it is? Thanks, Owensmartin (talk) 23:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think read-only bots require approval. –xenotalk 23:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps you're right-- I only tried a pywikipedia script and it was rebuffed for not being a registered bot, but I wouldn't be surprised if that script was asking for write access. Furthermore, I can put the queries straight into my browser, no issue-- surely I can do it from the terminal as well. Question: should I register a new bot account for these queries even if it doesn't require approval? Owensmartin (talk) 03:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
If you're not going to be editing, then there's no need for a separate bot account. Josh Parris 05:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If you're not editing you don't need a separate bot account or approval (although an account with a bot flag may be useful as it allows for higher api queries). Please make sure you use a descriptive user agent with a contact email address in it or domas may ban your IP address. --Chris 08:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

How do you get a bot flag? Put it up on the requests for approval list? Owensmartin (talk) 17:07, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but (if you're not querying for text) for the data you're after may be a better idea to acquire a toolserver account; there you have SQL access to the underlying database. Josh Parris 23:39, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Erm, I applied for a toolserver account maybe 6-8 months ago and never got it. Is getting a toolserver account supposed to be easy? tedder (talk) 00:16, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Depends. Where did you apply, what did you say, and what was the response? At some point they migrated from a page at Meta to a system using JIRA tickets. A lot of requests simply got lost in the shuffle. Other possible issues could include a worry about German privacy laws, not enough of a track record on Wikimedia sites, not a clear enough description of what you intend to do with the account, etc. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:27, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Transfer SuggestBot from ForteTuba to Nettrom

I'd like to transfer ownership of User:SuggestBot from myself to User:Nettrom, who has both more time and energy to keep it going and make it better. I've updated the bot's page itself, I think. Let me know if there's anything else that needs doing. -- ForteTuba (talk) 21:10, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay for language change

Just wanted a quick go ahead from another BAG member to change KingpinBot's wikiproject tagging from using AWB to using C#. Cheers, - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems fine. As long as the script does the same thing, it shouldn't be a problem – just make sure it works first! — The Earwig (talk) 20:01, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

How does the approval system really work?

So I have followed the process documented for seeking approval for a bot. Now the question is, what do I actually have to do to get it reviewed and hopefully approved? --Traveler100 (talk) 08:19, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes you just have to give us a little prod. I for one looked at your request a few days ago, but since I know nothing about AWB and cannot even run it I was hoping someone else would jump in. Anomie⚔ 16:23, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

New method - new bot?

If I want to achieve the same result by a slightly different method does this need a new bot and new approval or can it run on the existing bot user? To be more specific can User:People-photo-bot#Specification 2 (proposal) be run under the same bot as User:People-photo-bot#Specification 1 (active)? --Traveler100 (talk) 14:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

There is no need for a new bot account in most cases, although some prefer to run different tasks in separate bot accounts. As for approvals: In general, it depends on whether the slightly different method is really slightly different or not. In your specific case, I'd suggest requesting a new approval as your "slightly different method" is adding a slew of extra pages to be processed. In particular, I would be concerned about the usual semantic drift problems when categories are processed recursively. Anomie⚔ 03:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ganeshbot 4

This is about the bot Ganeshbot4. The discussion about whether the bot should be approved for the task of creating gastropod articles is about this bot creating 600 species Conus articles. The bot owner says the bot was approved for creating thousands (or more) of gastropod species articles from WoRMS. I do not see this in the approval discussion.

The bot is creating bad articles. WoRMS is not as careful about its taxonomic experts as it should be. This bot is creating articles about species that are listed from a single 18th century identification followed by an amature's out-of-print book, that has been verified by the WoRMS "taxonomist"--an amature shell collector.

I was surprised by some of the gastropod species listed next to a new article I created. I attempted to verify the species were correct, but could find no sources except for WoRMS, the out-of-print book, and, now Wikipedia.

What gives? Was this bot approved to add all of WoRMS to Wikipedia? I think Wikipedia might be creating species. JaRoad (talk) 22:40, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I checked some articles created by the bot. They have incorrectly or non-validated taxonomic names, subspecies listed as the wrong species, bad descriptions, and the taxoboxes are junky. I have not found one article created by this bot that is correct. JaRoad (talk) 23:30, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I posted information about this bot at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I think the bot should be stopped until editors can clean up its articles. I think its articles should be deleted if editors are not willing to individually fact-check every one. This is irresponsible article creation by Wikipedai. A google search turns up these articles at the top of short lists. Please be more considerate to Wikiepia readers when approving the creation of 1000s of species articles from databases. Maybe most of the articles will be okay. But I checked 6, and the 6 I checked were all bad. The bot operator does not have good answers to questions about where the approvals are, who is making sure the articles are correct, or anything. JaRoad (talk) 23:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC) [35]

Specific request for bot to be blocked and unapproved

I request this bot be blocked, its 15,000 articles individually checked and verified by gastropod editors or deleted if that is not possible, and that the bot's task for creating an unlimited number of species stubs be discussed formally on the requests for bot approval page rather than in a secondary discussion elsewhere.

In response to a post about another bot that created bad species articles (with disastrous results. I still have nightmares about Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles.) the bot operator said,

"This task is no way close to what AnyBot did. I had clearly mentioned that about 580 stubs will be created (nothing more). The list of articles that will be created are already listed in the data page (first column). The point of creating these articles is so that the Gastro team can come in and expand them. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 01:45, 18 March 2010 (UTC)"

I added the bold marks to Ganeshk's text, they are not in the original.

The bot operator aske for this approval of "580 stubs ... (nothing more)" for a single species, Conus, then decided he did not need approval for other families, ":The bot approval was for the task, to create species using the WoRMS as reference. I don't see myself getting approval for each mollusk family. As for the 100 edit restriction, they were lifted at this discussion. — Ganeshk (talk) 04:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)"

Again, I added the bold.

Maybe the misunderstanding is strong enough that bots need to be explained better to this editor before he continues to run any bots on Wikiepda. In the meantime, this bot should be blocked and its approval for creating 15000 gastropod stubs should be revoked. JaRoad (talk) 05:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC) JaRoad (talk) 05:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I am the bot owner. I think this is a taxonomy level issue best discussed at the project talk page.
  • The user has not engaged in any discussion with the Gastropod project members so far.
  • The user has not explained what is wrong with the articles or has provided any links to articles that have an issue.
The bot runs after the project approves each family for a run. This does not require a new bot approval as the automation is exactly same as what was requested on the bot request page. Please see discussion on the project talk page where a project member responds to the User:JaRoad's concerns. I request the user once again to please engage in the discussion on the project talk page. Thanks. — Ganeshk (talk) 10:36, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Surely the bot was approved for conus, not whatever species the gastropod project approves? If the bot is to do the latter it should only be run after appropriate broader approval ftom BAG. Whether the code is identical is irrelevant to the need for approval. Thincat (talk) 18:44, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Ganeshk, there's nothing at the link you gave that relates to lifting your restriction on edits. Could you find a diff please. Thanks.Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:02, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Elen, try this one - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:04, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Kingpin. I note from the discussion "I don't really see the need for a limitation. I think the bot should be able to create the articles all at once, or at least over the course of a few days; waiting half a year to create 560 pages is a bit overkill", so it's clear that the limitation was lifted only in respect of the 560 articles.Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:19, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree, that discussion shouldn't have been taken as the bot being approved to create more than the specified ~600 pages. I think it was clear the discussion was about the rate limit, because otherwise the task would take too long. - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:23, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I've also read the bot approval [36] and can confirm that it only approves creating around 600 articles on conus. There was a great deal of opposition, and concern that we should not be importing Wikispecies wholesale. Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
My reading confirms that the bot approval was for a very limited number of pages, and that very strong opposition to automated stub creation was expressed. This bot has created over 10,000 pages over a number of years, so its owner may have felt confident that no particular problem would ensue, but it is not satisfactory for strong concerns and limits at a BAG approval to apparently be ignored. Johnuniq (talk) 11:16, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I read the bot approval as a technical approval to run the under the project supervision. On hindsight, I should have alerted the BAG that I am planning to do this and get their advise. The bot has created 15,000 articles so far. The Gastropod project members have been adding additional information to these stubs and have not found any major issues with them. The project members provide me with a introduction sentence and approval to run a family. The bot then creates the species within that family. The full list of bot-created articles is at User:Ganeshbot/Animalia/History. I will wait to hear what the next steps are. — Ganeshk (talk) 12:27, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Personally I feel that the next step is to get approval, if you want to keep creating these pages, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ganeshbot 4 was a one-time run, for a small number of articles, this has now been completed (as I understand), so you can not make more edits using that BRfA as your approval for those edits. Also, I wouldn't, and I imagine the rest of BAG wouldn't, be approving a BRfA for more of these edits until you've also got approval from the community that they actually want this. It's not good enough (at this point) that the WikiProject supports you, I feel you need to make sure there is actually consensus that this task is wanted. - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. There is certainly a section of the community that feels that endless stub articles that do no more than alert one to the existence of something are not of particular benefit to the encyclopaedia. I am particularly concerned that the bot clearly had authorisation for only 600, and a review was to be carried out before it was used again, but 15000 stub articles have been created, many of which will be for varieties of slug about which there is very little more information than in the WoRMs listing. Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:39, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
(after edit conflict) The contender writes here above "The bot is creating bad articles. WoRMS is not as careful about its taxonomic experts as it should be. This bot is creating articles about species that are listed from a single 18th century identification followed by an amature's out-of-print book, that has been verified by the WoRMS "taxonomist"--an amature shell collector." This information is wrong. So far, and as far as I know, none of the created articles has been wrong. The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), on which the bot relies, is maintained by the best experts in the field. If User:JaRoad, a user who just began at wikipedia a few days ago, wants to pretend otherwise, let him give better credentials than the experts and let him take it up with them at WoRMS. As to his other contention about an "amature", I have given an answer at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods#Phalium articles. The Ganeshbot has saved thousands and thousands hours of dull and repetitive work to the members of WikiProject Gastropods, time we have spent on writing articles on gastropods. The work we are facing is enormous (there are about 100,000 gastropods and a few hundred thousand synonyms !). Even with this bot, it will take us decennia to bring this project closer to its end. Without the bot, it is hopeless. JoJan (talk) 13:58, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
This is not the place to discuss the quality of the information available to create the article, and JaRoad should really stop raising it here (take it to the slug's talkpage). This discussion is about whether the bot has permission to run. There is a discussion to be had as to whether Wikipedia needs articles on 100,000 gastropods, most of which have only two sentences of information, but that I think is for the wider community.Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Moving forward?

The facts here seem clear:

  • Ganeshk and WikiProject Gastropods misunderstood the bot approvals process, thinking that the approval for creating Conus stubs meant they could create more stubs without approval. I'm don't know why they thought this, but I don't see any point in dwelling on the issue unless someone thinks this mistake is likely to be made again and has suggestions on how to prevent it.
  • JaRoad's assertions that the stubs are inaccurate or of low quality are not supported by WikiProject Gastropods, and do not seem to be supported by any other editor. Absent any new evidence or opinion, I think we can consider that matter settled. If JaRoad wants to pursue this argument, he/she should pursue that at WT:WikiProject Gastropods.
  • At this point, blocking the bot would be punitive and there is nothing to be unapproved as the bot was working outside of its approval in the first place.

To move forward, I suggest the following:

  • Ganeshk should request approval for creating gastropod stubs in general, following the existing process of having the WikiProject approve the batches of articles to be created as this seems to be working well. From a technical standpoint there should be no issues with approving the request, but we do need to ensure community consensus.
  • Some form of rate limiting should be implemented, to ensure that the bot doesn't create thousands of stubs that the project will not have the manpower to review in a timely manner. This will also increase your chances of getting community consensus. I can think of two methods offhand that might work:
    1. The bot creates X stubs for some reasonable value of X, lists them somewhere or tags them in some manner (e.g. with a tracking category), then stops. As the project reviews each stub, it removes it from the list or untags it. The bot may then create another stub to bring the total back to X.
    2. The bot creates the stubs as subpages of the WikiProject. As the project reviews each, it then moves these to article space.
  • The BRFA should be advertised to the appropriate places to allow all interested parties to weigh in.

Opinions? Anomie⚔ 16:18, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the only issue with that is that the bot has already created "a lot" of stub articles (15,000 was mentioned, but I'm not sure if that's its entire output, or the output since it started operating unapproved) that haven't been reviewed. It seems most reasonable that it be stopped until those have been dealt with. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:26, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
I totally agree, and it should be a meaningful review, not just a quick look at a few samples, but a serious examination of content accuracy and suitability (how many articles? is it really useful to have that many?). Johnuniq (talk) 08:05, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The bot has been approved per Wikipedia talk:Bot Approvals Group/Archive 7#Wrong way of the close a BRFA. How the bot work has been for example also in the Wikipedia Signpost: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-04-26/WikiProject report. The Bot has unified support by Wikiproject Gastropod members. Maybe Bot approval group would like to know in detail, how the bot work: 1) User:Ganesh will get clear instructions what to do by me or directly at Wikiproject Gastropod talkpage; 2) User:Ganesh will run the GaneshBot and it will do the task. That is all. I can personally guarantee that the bot runs OK. There is no need restrictions or restrains from "Bot Approvals Group" because nobody of the "Bot Approvals Group" is able to evaluate if informations generated by a bot are correct or not (see for example another overview what the bot have done User:Snek01/Taxonomy). By the way, it even seems that "Bot Approvals Group" is even unqualified to close BRFA correctly. So feel free to formalize bot's approval, but do not restrain useful work that is being done.

I will give you an example to compare:

--Snek01 (talk) 00:03, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The fact remains that the bot was approved to create the Conus articles only. The discussion with the rest of the community (i.e. besides you) may well have gone differently had the request been to create many thousands of stubs. That no one has noticed that the bot is operating outside its approval until now is irrelevant. At this point, if Ganeshk uses the bot to create any more Gastropod articles it may be blocked by any administrator per both the bot and blocking policies. The only reason the bot hasn't been blocked already is that Ganeshk has already stopped creating the articles until the situation is resolved. Anomie⚔ 01:39, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
I have created Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ganeshbot 5. I think this discussion can move to the bot request page. — Ganeshk (talk) 01:48, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

BrokenAnchorBot no longer using AWB

User:BrokenAnchorBot uses AutoWikiBrowser to make it's edits. The code behind it just exports an AWB xml settings file with simple, case sensitive replacements and a list of articles that need to be edited. My bot uses the fact that AWB can automatically show the replacements that were made in the edit summary. Sometimes AWB creates summaries like this because [[this is a long article name#and a section|and a label]] can end up being quite long, and edit summaries have a limit to how long they can be, breaking the link in the summary. I would like to improve these edit summaries by avoiding {or at least mitigating) such broken links. A smarter edit summary could omit the labels to make the text in the summary shorter, or do a few other things to be smarter about this. I'm not a windows guy, and learning C# doesn't appeal to me all that much, so I'm reluctant to take on the task of an AWB plugin myself. Should I submit a BRFA if I do decide to ditch AWB? I'll add any code to the repo before anything goes forward. Winston365 (talk) 06:29, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

(Sorry for the late reply) As long as you exercise due care and be sure to properly test the new code, you shouldn't need a whole new BRFA if the task remains the same. –xenotalk 17:21, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Question

Would tagging articles en masse be wanted since I was considering learning programming to create a bot specifically designed to go through articles and tag them with the relevant issue needing addressing whether it be wikifying or a quick copyedit. If a bot like this would just be too hard or unwanted is my question. I was referred here by Arbitrarily0 a while ago but I never got to doing that (out of laziness). Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм | Champagne? 06:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

There are possibly more editors watching WP:BOTREQ and that is usually for requests/ideas. I suggest you repost there. On the task — how would the bot actually determine what tag a page requires? Do you intent to preview the page first yourself? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Another objection to cleanup-tagging bots in the past has been that flooding the already-overloaded cleanup categories with more articles isn't going to do a whole lot of good. Anomie⚔ 13:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I intend to review the articles first. Also the intention is tagging articles that need wikification, copy-editing. Cleanup is far too much trouble and should be individually identified since it's too much trouble. Ғяіᴆaз'§Đøøм | Champagne? 09:01, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
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