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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

Edit warring

Suggestion originally posted here

Please could you update the code of your bot so it will add the RM banner just once to each page, for a particular move discussion. Then if it is removed by a human editor, the bot will not edit war. I think this may be the simplest way to avoid many of the problems documented on this page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:49, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Checking the edit history of pages to see if the bot has previously been reverted is something that could be done, though coding for that isn't a quick 'n easy task. I view this as checking for symptoms. For example you could watch for fuel leaks on the launchpad (symptom) and abort the launch upon detection, but you'll still want to find and fix the source of the leak before restarting the countdown. If this was life and death task I would surely do that, but resources are stretched thin around here, so just keeping this on the back burner for now. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:31, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
This incident has convinced me that I need to bump up the priority of this task; seems I'll never plug all the holes enabling the bot to edit-war as users will always find another way. This is my next significant task, as soon as I make time for it. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:11, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

mw:API:Revisions documents the API for getting the content of pages, including the page history (all revisions). The framework's getpage function sets rvlimit=1 which limits the server to providing only the latest revision. Replacing this with rvend= specifying a timestamp with a sufficient window to detect the same previous edit that was subsequently reverted will enable the framework to stop apps from edit warring. Not sure what the default timestamp should be (1 day, 1 week?) but the RM app could specify the timestamp of the edit that started the RM. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

RMCD bot

Moved from User talk:wbm1058

RMCD bot is having some kind of episode at Twin Towers. Just FYI. Station1 (talk) 17:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Users always ignore rules per WP:IAR and find a way.
I spent some more time thinking about how to do this. Most of the time after the bot gets (getpage) a page it decides that it does not need to POST an update. So getpage just the latest revision is fine.
There's only a need to check for previous bot edits to a page AFTER it has decided it should POST, i.e. edit a page.
Only then call a new function to get an array of previous editors and edit times (no need to get previous content, I don't think) and check whether the bot was a recent editor, especially with multiple recent edits.
This new function will often be called just after nobots has made sure the bot is allowed to edit the page.
Now just need a solid, uninterrupted chunk of time to focus on coding this. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 Fixed to prevent the "Twin Towers friendly-fire war" with bot version 8.40. The bot is limited to a maximum of three recent edits to sync modified notices of move discussions on a page. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:42, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

What happens to RMCD bot?

Moved from User talk:wbm1058

Sorry, but I don't think it works any more, see Special:Contributions/RMCD_bot. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 14:07, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Facepalm Facepalm – I started working on adding a new function to the bot's framework yesterday, and that function had a syntax error (a missing ".") and then I wasn't paying attention because I hadn't yet coded anything to actually call the function. Sorry about that, and thanks for the heads-up. I've been multi-tasking and working reducing on another backlog so far this morning. Need my coffee to kick in before I get back to coding. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

George Papadopoulos

Hi, wbm1058. A user started an RM at Talk:George Papadopoulos and another that affects the page at Talk:Georgios Papadopoulos. This has led to RMCD bot, well.... see here and here. Is there anything that can be done to stop this, other than closing a discussion? – Muboshgu (talk) 15:58, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Belated reply. After becoming aware of this, I cleared out 202 junk bot edits to the George Papadopoulos (junk bot edit dump) and 198 junk bot edits to the Talk:George Papadopoulos (junk bot edit dump). I'm frustrated that after putting a lot of work time into addressing the issues reported previously and making several fixes to address them, my v 7.33 fix of 9 June 2020 didn't address all the remaining scenarios. Also still open is implementing a more robust backup to catch unaddressed issues by making the bot stop #Edit warring. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:45, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 Fixed by bot version 7.60 – wbm1058 (talk) 18:42, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
OK, the v 8.41 fix would have stopped the bot's edit-warring here, if the v 7.60 fix hadn't been implemented. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Bot edit warring with itself

On Ba'ath Party (disambiguation), Talk:Ba'ath Party (disambiguation), and the talk pages affected by my multi-move request at Template talk:G13 soon/styles.css. Not sure what's causing it. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:32, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

TemplateStyles

The bot cannot place notices on CSS pages; I see this error message:
Invalid selector list at line 1 character 1.
Invalid selector list at line 2 character 1.
Then since there's no notice on the pages; the bot assumes that the discussions have closed and thus removes the templates from the talk pages of the others in this multi-move request.
So, as with Lua modules, CSS pages are special cases that need special handling. Hmm, I see Wikipedia:TemplateStyles – I need to familiarize myself with that.
I've made some code changes to accommodate this usage, but still need to make more. Working on it. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
Bot version 7.41 added a check to catch requests to move CSS pages, and handle them in a similar way as requests to move Lua modules. I'm not sure whether there's anything more I need to do here. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:01, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
This page history indicates the issue continued after I posted my "working on it" message and the warring didn't stop until 4:39, 22 October 2020 which was 5 minutes after the RM at User talk:SDZeroBot/G13 soon/styles.css closed. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:32, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
OK, the v 8.41 fix would have stopped the bot's edit-warring here. Not sure about how well the bot may handle future requests to move CSS pages, but I'm dropping this from my to-do list and will deal with any new CSS page-move issues as they may happen in the future. Really, these moves are borderline out-of-scope for RM. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:43, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Ba'ath Party

Ba'ath Party (disambiguation) and Talk:Ba'ath Party (disambiguation) each have hundreds of deleted edits (I buried them to remove the clutter in the page histories) dating from 11:06, 16-Oct-2020. This problem persisted for over three days before I was notified here.

The bot's edit warring started after the 10:48, 16 October 2020 procedural close and persisted until my 21:00, 19 October 2020 edit, which was the second procedural close. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:57, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

The v 8.40 and v 8.41 fixes would have put an end to the Ba'ath Party edit war. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:54, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Dozens of bot edits

Hey, can you take a look at what the bot's doing at Illegal immigrant population of the United States? Looks like it's stuck in some sort of loop. –dlthewave ☎ 12:09, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Update: I added a Bot Deny template to the article and talk page. Feel free to remove it when the issue is resolved. –dlthewave ☎ 12:50, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Dlthewave: This is because Showiecz (talk · contribs) started two parallel discussions about the same proposed move, contrary to WP:MULTI and one or two other guidelines. I've procedurally closed Talk:Illegal immigrant population of the United States#Requested move 28 September 2021 (which was initiated at 03:32, 28 September 2021 (UTC)), and left Talk:Illegal immigration to the United States#Requested move 18 September 2021 (initiated 19:07, 18 September 2021 (UTC)) to run normally. I also reverted your bot deny to allow RMCD bot to tidy up. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:58, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
In fairness to Showiecz – they removed it from the multi-move while in-progress but that removal was reverted. Per WP:TALK#REVISE making changes to your RM after others have !voted, without everyone on board with your changes, is asking for trouble. This started out as a single-page move request, so THIS EDIT that converted it to a multi-move after someone had already voted in support of the single-page request is a definite NO-NO!! – wbm1058 (talk) 15:04, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
 Fixed by bot version 7.57 – this should have been caught and flagged as a malformed request and next time this scenario happens it will be. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
The edit-warring (now seen in the Undocumented immigrant population of the United States page history) would have been stopped by the v 8.40 fix, before bot version 7.57 was installed. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Bot is still not removing notices from multi-move request after someone removes the mass-move request on the original talk page.

Hi, a vandal has returned to make a vandal mass-move request earlier today on a random talk page. The bot posts on every talk page alerting watchers that they should participate in the original talk page of where the mass move request takes place. After someone removed the mass move request for vandalism, the bot removes the transcluded notice off the talk pages from the same group of pages but the text stays put. (Example: as seen on the bottom of this talk page at 10:38 today (UTC). I know this sort of thing does not happen very often but I think that issue should be fixed so that users like me and Struway2 for example does not have to manually remove nonsense posted by a good bot themselves which, of course, only edits by it's programming. Thanks, Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 16:40, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Iggy the Swan: you've linked the wrong Struway there, if it's the football-article editing one I'm thinking of. Seasider53 (talk) 16:48, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
@Seasider53: - which article are you're thinking of? Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 16:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
@Iggy the Swan: I now see you filtered the contributions; it is the same user. Seasider53 (talk) 16:54, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Seems like that part of the confusion has been solved, I hope. Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 16:56, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
I implemented a 20-minute delay before posting notices on other pages in May 2020. A couple of previous vandalism posts of this sort were each reverted after nine minutes. In this case, 52 minutes passed before the revert. I could make the bot wait a full hour before posting these notices, but then I might see people asking me here why the bot is so slow in posting notices. I suppose it's a trade-off. Or maybe increase the delay time for multi-moves with more than a small number of pages involved. If Seasider53 had reverted rather than shrug, then time to revert would have been 35 minutes. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: I spent thirty minutes reverting them before realising how futile it was, since it will likely happen again. I think we need competent bot owners. Seasider53 (talk) 23:45, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Oh. So sorry to see you wasted so much time doing that. Why didn't you make THIS your first edit? The bot would not have edit-warred with you if you had. I guess I need to either bite the bullet and implement code to detect reverts of bot edits, or just pull the plug on notices and just stop posting them altogether. I'm guessing it could take me a couple days or more to implement edit-reversion detection handling. The lack of experienced editor/administrator oversight of the RM process at times is frustrating. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:44, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
My guess would have been that Seasider53 is not familiar with the usual behaviour the vandal has been doing this and last year. I actually missed those replies linked from the discussions I started back in 2020, and there are good points explained there. Additionally @Gricehead: suggested an edit filter to disallow certain strings commonly used in those mass move vandal requests & regularly affected articles, since that filter was active the vandal appeared to stop doing that until yesterday. If that filter can be modified, that would help stop the bot making loads of invalid edits over a small period of time as well. See the relevant edit filter request discussion. Thanks, Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 06:13, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: I think the issue is that on the article page, e.g. here, the bot does remove the whole of its addition, but on the associated talk page, e.g. here, it leaves some behind. If it reverted the whole of its addition, there wouldn't be a problem. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 12:02, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
Struway2, notices on article pages are intended to be temporary, only posted while the RM is still open. In contrast, the talk page notices are intended to last forever, or until archived, as a permanent record of historical move requests. Yes, ideally the bot would be smart enough to distinguish between legitimate requests and vandalism, and would revert only the vandalism, but... Your struggle with my bot to revert the vandalism has convinced me to make this task a high priority, and I intend to implement that fix before I address the specific issue here any further than I already have by implementing the 20-minute delay. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. I did realise (after posting, obviously: sorry I'm a bit slow) that was probably the reason the bot left the notice in place. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:06, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed by bot v 8.41 to stop edit warring in this scenario – the bot is now on WP:0RR for these types of edits. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:11, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Use Template:Title notice instead in articles

Currently, the bot puts {{User:RMCD bot/subject notice|1=New name|2=Discussion link }} at the top of articles requested to be moved. With the recent move to Template:Title notice, the bot should be updated to instead put {{Title notice|1=New name|2=Discussion link}} with no space between the discussion link (usually ending with the year, currently 2019) and the closing braces, and remove transclusions of both the template and the userspace redirect after move discussions are closed. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:21, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

The space between the discussion link and the closing braces isn't there anymore – see editing to remove a space. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
But the bot currently still adds {{User:RMCD bot/subject notice|1=New name|2=Discussion link}}. Could you please update the bot to add {{Title notice|1=New name|2=Discussion link}} instead? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:09, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Recently there were 302 transclusions of {{User:RMCD bot/subject notice}} and 305 transclusions of {{Title notice}}. The difference was these three uses:

  • List of Bhojpuri people, 13 December 2020 – edit summary (Added unreferenced template and requested article name change)
  • Woke Up This Morning, 26 February 2022 – edit summary (To avoid confusion with other songs with that name, this page has to have its title changed.)
  • KBC Void, 4 March 2022 – no edit summary

Coding to support a transition to a new template name isn't as easy as you might think. I have recently made a series of updates to support the new name, and only after I did that, did the bot find and remove these (one), (two), (three) "off-label" uses of the template (where no formal discussion was ever opened). I anticipated that this off-label usage would happen, so I coded the bot to patrol for and remove notices placed on articles without any discussion started on their talk. My thought was that giving the template the bot's name would discourage such off-label usage, which is why I'm hesitating to complete the changeover. I have noticed though, that putting the bot's name on the template hasn't fully discouraged editors from manually placing or editing the template as I'd hoped. I guess I kind of have the same question others are asking you at Wikipedia:Deletion review#Template:Movenotice – what problem is the rename solving?

Also I note there are now five redirects. User:RMCD bot/subject notice is the only redirect supported by the bot. The other four, Template:RM notice, Template:Move notice, Template:Requested move notice and Template:Movenotice, are not supported. Again, I don't understand what problem was solved by their creation. – wbm1058 (talk) 00:00, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Moved to Template:Requested move notice

Not to be confused with Template:RM notice.

After move at Template_talk:Requested_move_notice#Requested_move_9_November_2023, I think it's better for the banner in article mainspace in the code to change from "User:RMCD bot/subject notice" to current title. Usually in article mainspace "User:" is not used. Thanks. Hddty (talk) 11:20, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

@Hddty: FYI, I moved your message from my user talk page to here. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 Fixed by bot version 8.21 – bypass redirect of Template:Title notice to get transclusions of Template:Requested move notice, after the {{SUBJECTSPACE}} {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} subject notice template moved – wbm1058 (talk) 19:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
@Wbm1058 In latest move request pages why it still use "User:RMCD bot/subject notice"? Hddty (talk) 23:17, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 Done in version 8.52 – wbm1058 (talk) 21:11, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
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