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Fluxbot request for approval

I'm requesting approval to run Fluxbot with AWB semi-automatic mode.

Please consider the uses below seperatley.

Primary Use

It's primary purpose would be updating article categories that qualify under CFDS. I currently run these either by hand, or with AWB under my admin account. Working CFDS requires an admin, as the final step is a deletion. The deletion would of course always be run manually by my admin account.

AWB's throtle feature would be utilized to prevent excessive server utilization.

These categories can be quite large at times, so in addition to running with AWB's automode, a bot flag may be useful to reduce overhead on recent change patrollers. — xaosflux Talk 04:57, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Example of a run can be seen at: Special:Contributions/Fluxbot (run in manual mode). — xaosflux Talk 05:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Secondary Use

A seconday proposed use would be replacing user space templates that have been migrated according to The German Solution. A bandaid solution on these is temporarily leaving Tempalte: --> User: redirects in place, pending cleanups. — xaosflux Talk 05:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

From reading many of the above requests, this will proposed fucntion will not be executed in automatic mode until more community consensus for TGS is preseneted. — xaosflux Talk 12:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Tertiary Uses

Substing in stylistic tempaltes such as {{clear}} that were not substed in during the original use. — xaosflux Talk 01:19, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

General Discussion

Both uses (#1 and #2 <three added after the fact by — xaosflux Talk>) look fine to me, go ahead and run it on a trial run -- Tawker 05:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'd recommend some form of sanity-checking on the cfd tasks. People make mistakes. If the bot reads some incorrectly formatted (or just plain wrong) category information, some fool will be like "zomg broken bot" and block it indefinitely. — Jun. 13, '06 [03:19] <freak|talk>

Thanks, trials to get going soon. As for the category renaming, the current sanity checks include before/after category counting and random sampling. — xaosflux Talk 10:51, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Trials have goon rather well, see 2000+ edits. — xaosflux Talk 03:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
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User:Alphachimpbot requesting approval

This bot would run in AWB's automatic mode on my second computer using my User:Alphachimpbot account. It would automate the tedious task of assigning a particular month tag to articles listed in [[Category:Wikipedia cleanup]]. Wikipedia cleanup states that the pages are automatically assigned a month after 24 hours. In my experience, however, this is not the case. The bot users listed on the Wikipedia:Cleanup_Taskforce/Members/Members_by_interest#Bot_programmers are all currently inactive.

I've been doing this task for several days on my primary (User:Alphachimp} account. To say the least, it is incredibly tedious and easily automated. Admittedly, the changes I've made using my primary account have been somewhat larger than those I am proposing. I have removed multiple wiki links, removed stub cats for large articles, categorized, and unicoded the articles. I am not proposing these changes. This bot would only replace the {{cleanup}} tag with the {{Cleanup-date|MONTH YEAR}}.

As to the scope of the changes, there are currently 1210 pages listed on [[Category:Wikipedia cleanup]]. The bot would specify the specific current month as the situation merited (probably once daily). I would be open to suggestions for best run times to minimize server stress and response times. The bot would run at 30-60 second intervals, as specified on WP:BOT. It would always be attended, and I would be willing to submit to a trial run (although I have already been making these changes manually).

I appreciate your consideration. --Alphachimp talk 22:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I would be running as the bot. I am run by Alphachimp. --Alphachimpbot 22:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, go ahead and trial it for a week, it looks ok to me -- Tawker 23:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The 1 week period is over. All told, Alphachimpbot updated over 1300 articles, reducing the size of the general cleanup category by over 80%. I modified the find replace to include common misspellings and mistakes involving the cleanup templates, which further helped remove articles. In one week's operation, I received one complaint, namely, that the bot did not mark edits as minor. It has since been corrected.
If you review the bot's contributions, please note that the last section of contributions were made manually before permission was granted to trial the bot. They were the result of logging into Alphachimpbot in IE while AWB was active.
Moving forward, I would like permission to add the following features/scope:
  1. Append date specific wikify tag (a large portion of articles are tagged for both cleanup and wikify)...this would cut down on edit numbers.
  2. Replace subst'ed cleanup templates from general cleanup and cleanup-by-month categories per Wikipedia:Template_substitution#Templates_that_should_NOT_be_substituted
  3. Unicode articles flagged for non-month specific cleanup. These articles are already being edited by the bot. (I'm sure that this has been proposed before...just figured I would ask).
So yeah. If I were you, I would approve Alphachimpbot for continued use. Let me know if you have any questions or issues needing clarification. Appreciate it, --Alphachimp talk 02:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Can someone approve my bot? Thanks! Alphachimp talk 00:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me, bot flag is on the way -- Tawker 04:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Set. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 04:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
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Tawkerbot clone; User:The Spanish Inquisition

Requesting approval for this, a simple clone of tawkerbot, will be added to the pool when needed (high levels of vandalism or the other bots die) Shaun Eccles-Smith 08:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC).

Yep, another one for the lovely TB2 pool, this one will be good to go in a second -- Tawker 17:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Why are there so many Tawkerbot clones? Does Tawkerbot die that often? --lightdarkness (talk) 04:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
If I'm not mistaken, the clones are designed to load balance tawkerbot2. It does sort of make sense. Coincidentally, if an bot approver reads this, please approve my bot above. Alphachimp talk 04:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it's all load balancing, the two main boxes that TB2 run on can get overloaded at times, spreading it out a bit reduces the load on mine and Joshbuddy's connections :) -- Tawker 05:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
It needs a better name. One that a) is easily identified as a bot and b) isn't creepy/newbie biting. Do you want to be reverted and have automated messages from the Spanish inquistion? Kotepho 04:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I actually kinda like the name, nobody expects User:Spanish Inquisition :) Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 05:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it's kind of funny, but I also agree that it's probably inappropriate for an anti-vandalism bot, mostly due to its namesake. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 06:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I have to admit fault for this one; we were tossing around name ideas and I made a joke about calling it "The Spanish Inquisition" so it could leave talk messages with "Nobody expects (to be reverted by) the Spanish Inquisition!" (Monty Python joke for those who might not know). I think the above concerns are valid, though, and if Shaun will let me know a new name, I'll rename it. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 08:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think it would be very funny, if we could guarantee that everyone would take it with the humor and grain of salt that it was intended. Unfortunately, we all know that would not be the case. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 09:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't like the name at all. I'd support a more appropriate name, but not this one.Voice-of-All 08:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
No worries guys, fully understand all your concerns. Getting renamed as we type. Expect to see User:T-850_Robotic_Assistant non-redlinked soon. Such a difficult decision to come up with a good name... Shaun Eccles-Smith 15:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC).
Like the new name, signifies that it's a bot (in a somwhat subtle way) and won't be utterfly harsh or confusing to users. Pegasus1138Talk | Contribs | Email ---- 20:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I like the new name too. Good job. I also approve of another Tawkerbot2 clone, though how many are we planning to have in the long run? I imagine more than 8 or so would be overkill. EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 21:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
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Tawbot

Tawbot uses Tawbot framework (in Perl). It has over 100000 edits on pl.wp. It is maintained by me.

It never runs automatically.

The only thing I intend to use it for is importing stubs for Polish members of Parliament, probably just 2001-2005 and 2005-2009 terms. Example (in Polish) - pl:Jacek_Bogucki.

I've spoken with the user on IRC and can vouch for their sanity and approachability. I like the idea. Prior to approving the whole run, though, I'd like to see a quick sample of what the stubs would look like in English. Taw, can you produce maybe five pages and then show me? I don't foresee too many issues. robchurch | talk 09:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Here here - User:Tawbot/Sample Polish MP stub. Taw 12:07, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Having spoken to the user further on IRC, I'm going to authorise the batch creation of stubs on Polish politicians. robchurch | talk 12:18, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
So, could someone set the flag ? Is it a bureaucrat thing or a steward thing these days ? Taw 13:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, so first round is done. 439 new stubs were created, 24 had pre-existing articles and weren't touched by the bot.

I'd like to do Senate (100 people + replacement MPs / term) and earlier terms.

I think it would make sense to import every MP since 1989. Earlier (Communist) parliament wasn't that important, and I think significant number of MPs from that time weren't really notable enough for encyclopedia. And there isn't that much data about those times on parliament's website in any case.

So we have five terms to do: 1989-1991, 1991-1993, 1993-1997, 1997-2001, and 2001-2005. The first two have no photos (but many MPs were also in the parliament later, so we may still have their phonos), but these were pretty hot times, so it would be silly not to have them described. As 43% of current MPs were in parliament before I guess that would be some 1700 new stubs.

The data for each term is different, so I'll make a few samples before running.

Any comments ? Taw 20:46, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

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TuvicBot

I would like approval to run my interwiki-bot TuvicBot (using Pywikipedia). This bot will run in manually assisted mode, adding and updating interwiki-links, using the Dutch wiki as a starting point. I'm mostly planning to solve interwikis that autonomous bot skip because they're ambigious. --Tuvic 20:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Trial run of one week approved, please throttle edits to 2-3/min and check back here before asking for a flag. Usual stuff. robchurch | talk 20:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Starting trial run soon. --Tuvic 12:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Trial done now. I have not encountered major problems. Didn't get any complaints either. I made a few small mistakes, but corrected them myself. --Tuvic 18:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. I assume you need a flag? Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:44, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, please. --Tuvic 09:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
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FFBot

If approved, this bot will be a semi-automated maintenance bot, performing tasks such as template substitution using AWB. It will run automatically (without each edit being manually approved) but will be supervised at all times. The main use of the bot will be subst'ing certain user talk messages such as {{welcome}} per WP:SUBST. Thanks, — FireFox 17:23, 03 July '06

Fine with me. One week trial approved. Report back in a week, if you have problems halt the trial, yadda yadda. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 04:48, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I've been running the bot for the past three days, done about 4000 edits, specifically subst:'ing templates on user-talk pages. Nothing's gone wrong, everything seems to have gone fine. — FireFox 15:11, 09 July '06
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Keiteibot

Greetings. I'm requesting affirmative go for the running of a keiteibot by a keitei. The bot is automatic and runs on pywikipedia. I'm open to input on how often to run it, but every 10-30 minutes is ideal. The purpose is for the Mediation Cabal. Currently it's a mess to add new cases, with several templates and complicated instructions. This bot would just compile a list of pages in a category and list them at the bottom (There's an inputbox in the works that would complete the super simple process). If there's no change, it doesn't edit. With additional community support, it'd do the same for open cases, at the same time, on the same page. Mostly I need it because I'm not awake 24/7 and because I'd like the MedCab to be more friendly and easier to use. The script was written by Ericj and is available here. He notes that it's not polished yet, and may change. I don't think this bot would ever require a bot flag. Pretty please? :] --Keitei (talk) 12:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

It will be running unsupervised? robchurch | talk 12:19, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, as a sort of archiving function. Or as a DPL substitute. I can't supervise 24/7, but if you can suggest any improvements/safeguards that would be necessary/help, I'm sure it can be coded in. --Keitei (talk) 12:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
It's similar to DumbBOT above, in the sense that it processes a category, but the process is even simpler. Due to the simplicity of the bot and the way it is written, any possible damage would be limited to the target page, no injection is possible, and it could be stopped by removing the delimited region from the target page. Moving cases from new to open to closed is still manual, and always would be. EricJ 00:47, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Trial run approved. robchurch | talk 20:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Bot has been running smoothly (once the regulation was figured out) without a hitch. No borking of any pages has occurred! --Keitei (talk) 08:05, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good, full run approved. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 08:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:MiszaBot

I'm the owner of the account MiszaBot (talk · contribs · count) and have already been performing some tasks using it (the bot has been listed on Wikipedia:Bots under "bots running without a flag" for a long time now). The bot's duties include:

  • Delivery of the Esperanza Newsletter (roughly monthly).
  • Bypassing redirects (example diffs on his userpage) - service inactive at the moment.
  • Archiving of my talk page (every now and then - run manually).
  • Changing the WikiDefcon level on requests from #vandalism-en-wp.

Technical details:

  • Self-written Perl framework (at first), now hybrid with the pywikipedia framework.
  • Before being "let go" with a new duty, every new feature is being thoroughly tested in a sandbox.
  • Once performing mass spamming, he is monitored using a Vandal Fighter.

As of now, the newsletter has been delivered succesfully 4 times, with much success (only a few errors which have since been corrected). The spamming is getting heavy though (400+ members) and hard on the RC (many complaints about poisoned watchlists also), which leads me to request a bot flag. Misza13 T C 12:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The newsletter delivery is fine, per the same type of authorization as the Signpost's bot, as is the archiving, per the same authorization as Werdna's archive bot. If you're going to actively use it to do mass bypassing of redirects in the future, you should bring the proposal here first for a quick scan, but that's unimportant at the moment if it is not actively doing this.
As for the Defcon updates, it strikes me this might be best done with a second bot account. The newsletter delivery and such could well be done while flagged to avoid flooding RC, but the Defcon reporting, if permitted, should not be being done at a speed necessary for a bot flag, and really isn't the kind of thing you want hidden from RC. The idea itself is something that I've not seen proposed before, and I'm leaving it open to community input. The other two functions, though, are fine. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 12:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
{{Wdefcon}} editing has been detached to User:WdefconBot. I'll also come back here when I find a way to automate the redirect fixing task, thus I'm crossing that one as well. Misza13 T C 15:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Seems harmless to me. Alphachimp talk 19:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  • With the defcon issues moved to a different bot, this one can be approved. Approved for the deliveries and archiving, check back here before doing any substing or adding any other features. If you want a flag, ping my talk page and I'll set it. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 01:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:KonstableBot

I request to run an AWB based bot under the account User:KonstableBot. I intend to initially use it to do automatic Unicodification of articles relating to New Zealand. There are a lot of place names and terms used throughout the articles which are in Te Reo Māori and it can be needlessly difficult to read and edit some articles due to use of HTML special characters rather than unicode. Later on I may expand to unicodify other areas of Wikipedia if there is a need. The bot would make edits automatically using AWB's existing features (unicodification only, everything else turned off). --Konstable 15:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC) After some thinking I realised that the Unicodification task of NZ articles would only take a couple of days at the most. So I would like to extend my request to allow me to help out with subst:'ing templates, more specifically for user and user talk namespaces. I would choose targets using "What links here" for each template found under: Wikipedia:Template substitution#User_namespace.--Konstable 00:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

  • How would you select the articles to target? — xaosflux Talk 15:45, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I've added KonstableBot to the WP:AWB useage page if you want to provide a FEW samples (until someone from the approvals group comes along) under that account. (Note: I did not enable the auto- feature). — xaosflux Talk 15:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment. Is unicoding actually that important? I understand that it is hard to edit non-unicode characters. I think that there are some issues with unicoded characters rendering properly in IE. Alphachimp talk 17:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
      • A good example can be seen on a some edits I made using AWB earlier: [1], [2]. I would select articles using Category:New Zealand and its sub-categories. Unicodifyied articles is handled by the MediaWiki software so that browsers that don't fully support the unicode characters get the HTML codes for the characters instead, so it has no dangers. In fact there used to be a bot (now inactive) doing this - User:Curpsbot-unicodify--Konstable 00:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Good examples. It looks good to me. The one problem I see is something I mentioned to Winhunter. Have you also selected the "Apply General Fixes" option? The diffs I was looking at seemed to have some whitespace and category order moving going on (contradictory to your comment above?). Apply general fixes is generally OK in articles where unicoding is already happening, but I'm very apprehensive about moving around whitespace when it's the only edit. Am I looking at the diffs correctly?Alphachimp talk 02:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
          • The diffs I used as an example were made by me manually (and from my usual account). I won't have the general fixes option turned on while running the bot automatically - apart from the whitespace problem I also generally don't want AWB to just swap around the stub and the Category tags. With Auto-tag I'm not sure if it can create some problems, so I will leave that turned off also. So the only option turned on will be Unicodify whole article.--Konstable 02:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
            • Looks great. I think just unicode is the best options config. There are already two of us asking to subst talk page templates, but I'm sure that there's room for one more =). Alphachimp talk 02:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I see no reason not to give it a try. Don't start the subst: function until after your trial, but you're welcome to do a trial on the unicodification. Try to throttle edits to 2-3 a minute until a flag is approved, and check back with us after a decent test set has been done. (Usually we'd say a week, but you may well be done within a week, so check back after having done enough for us to have a good idea that everything is okay.) Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
    • I have run it for a while before and now I'm running it again - as far as I can see there are no problems.--Konstable 01:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
      • While there were no problems created by this, I am not satisfied that this is useful enough for the New Zealand category. The problem is that the amount of articles with proper Māori spelling is pretty low (me and another user are already in the process of fixing the spelling, but this cannot be done with a bot). The result seems to be that the bot ends up doing mostly minor things like replacing superscript, dash and space special characters with unicode. So instead I will continue unicodification on Arab-related articles instead - I had a quick run through it and it definitely needs much more work than the New Zealand categories.--Konstable 03:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Ok, it's been a few days and I think I have done enough edits now to give a very good idea of what's going on. It's filtered through over 10,000 articles and at the time of writing has made 620 edits. I could not spot any problems myself and none have been reported, not even complaints about me clogging up the watchlists.--Konstable 04:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
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Alphachimpbot, Second Function

I'd like permission to assist FFBot in subst'ing warnings/message templates on talk pages (using AWB). I have discussed this with FireFox and he has welcomed my assistance.

Even though I've already said it, Alphachimpbot is a directly monitored bot account of Alphachimp, an established user with over 6000 edits in the English wikipedia. Alphachimpbot currently replaces cleanup templates with cleanup-by-month templates to replace work once done by other bots. Alphachimp talk 16:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

No problem, same terms as the FFBot approval. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:TuspmBot

Hello. This is my first time trying to request permission to run a bot so I apologize if some things aren't so neat. Anyway, I am requesting permission to run TuspmBot (as you can see, I've already set up a userpage for it). I plan on this bot being a spell-checking bot and manually operated. You can expect the bot to run everyday. The language the bot will use will be English. The purpose of my bot is to correct spelling errors on Wikipedia and make it a more better website. I've been part of the Wikipedia community since February 2006 and I already have over 2,000 edits (most of which are reverting vandalism). I would like to have this bot to assist me in fixing common spelling mistakes. Thank you. --Tuspm Talk | Contribs | E-Mail Me 17:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Who owns you, you posted as an IP -- Tawker 17:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
My bad. I was logged out at the time. --Tuspm Talk | Contribs | E-Mail Me 18:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
What programming language would the bot be using? Am I correct that it would be manually controlled? Alphachimp talk 18:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct, Alphachimp. Again, this is my first time requesting for a bot and I sincerely apologize for any mistakes. --Tuspm Talk | Contribs | E-Mail Me 18:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
No worries man...everyone has a first time. You still didn't answer my question about what programming language it will be running. Alphachimp talk 18:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay. Had a little problem. Anyway, the language will be pywikipedia, I think it's called. --Tuspm Talk | Contribs | E-Mail Me 18:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
No worries. Sorry to seem like I'm grilling you. I've seen a lot of problems with spellcheck bots. You might wanna read this. What would be the target of your spelling correction? Would you be individually approving all edits? Alphachimp talk 19:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The target will be commonly misspelled words and I will be individually approving all edits. --Tuspm Talk | Contribs | E-Mail Me 00:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Could you please provide a list of the common misspellings you plan to target? There are, of course, national differences about which words are actually misspelled, and it would be helpful to know exactly what you plan to be checking for and changing before loosing a spellcheck bot on the site. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 01:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for not responding. I was busy with other things. Anyway, it has occured to me that I no longer need a bot and I realized that it would interfere with other projects with me having to assist the bot. So, I apologize for any and all inconvenince this may have caused any one of you but I would like to delete the TuspmBot userpage and continue with my other projects. Thanks. --Tuspm Talk | Contribs | E-Mail Me 15:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


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User:Alaibot: refile

Previous request for full approval and bot flag was archived here, without explicit approval, disappoval or pending questions from the AG. Can someone finish reviewing, or clarify if there are any outstanding issues? Thanks. Alai 03:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Per the earlier response, you are approved for your trial run. Please posts some results and difs when complete. — xaosflux Talk 04:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and the linked-to request was for final approval. (Seemed inappropriate to file this under "one week trial", give the timeframe.) OK, here's some diffs chosen arbitrarily from the contribs. All arise from SFD discussions, or I think in one case a discussion with clear consensus (nay, unanimity) at WP:WSS/P. Alai 05:38, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

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Fritzbot

Since there are so many orphan images on Wikipedia, I've been using AWB for the last couple of days to tag unused fair use images listed at Special:Unusedimages with {{Orphaned fairuse not replaced}}, but clicking "Save" every 30 seconds is getting a little bit boring, so I'd like to get a bot permission for this so I can use AWB's auto mode. I will of course still monitor the process. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 14:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Your contribs look fine to me, I've added it to the AWB bot checkpage, please keep an eye on it and keep edits to once every 30s or so until it's botflagged -- Tawker 15:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Great, thanks. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 15:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Bot has been running for a week now and I encountered no problems. --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 09:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:WdefconBot

Requesting permission to run WdefconBot (talk · contribs · count). This is a combo of an IRC bot (nick WdefconBot) that sits (so far only) in #vandalism-en-wp and:

  • announces the current {{Wdefcon}} level (and description) on request,
  • does so when pgkbot says it's been edited and WdefconBot notices the level's been changed,
  • enables users to edit the template using the User:WdefconBot account with a syntax: !wdefcon edit level=[0-5] info=<situation description>

The bot is live - you can visit #vandalism-en-wp and try it yourself. While people aren't eager to use it yet, some have expressed interest in its services. Misza13 T C 15:34, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

sounds liken a good idea only one sugestion make sure that when in IRC not to let it run in an un secure channel that way a users cant abuse the bot, the Idea looks great. Betacommand 03:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
So far it runs in #vandalism-en-wp, where you can find rather responsible people. ;-) I don't plan on extending it's coverage in the near future. Misza13 T C 21:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Can this bot have a throttle (e.g. 1 edit/5 mins) to prevent high speed editing? — xaosflux Talk 04:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Not a bad idea. I'll get to it as soon as possible. Misza13 T C 15:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Given there have been no objections, the bot can run for a week or so to ensure everything works fine. Drop us a quick report back in a week and we'll do final approval. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 08:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
    • One suggestion: Wdefconbot should display (in IRC channel) which wiki user last edited the template, so that vandalism on the template itself can be easily detected. --WinHunter (talk) 14:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No major objections really, but allowing any user in the channel to use the bot to make an edit seems to me to violate the policy against role accounts... accounts for a specific role that many people have access too... The policy allows exemptions agreed to by the foundation (their PR firm or somesuch was allowed one). Perhaps you should ask for one for this as well? -Mask 01:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I have no problems with this one, as for the role account concerns, I think it's pretty obvious what it's doing and isn't a concern at all (in that sort of regard the Tawkerbot series is a role account as multiple people have access to those accounts) - Essjay has my full approval to flag this one -- Tawker 02:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It was my impression that they could change the behavior of the tawkerbot accounts, but not make a specific edit with them as this allows and is designed to do... I don't really have a problem with this bot, either, I'm just pointing out one thing I see with it. -Mask
Well, yeah, I guess I'm the only one with the password to the bots. I don't want to tell anyone that the password is "password" now would I :) No seriopusly, the TB2 set is fairly secure, seeing how its a fairly high profile but it better be :) -- Tawker 05:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I see no issue with it; it's performing the function it's designed to do, and it can't be used for anything but this single task. It's hardly a public account. I don't however, see a need for a flag; this should be in recent changes, and shouldn't be running fast enough to cause problems. Full run approved, no flag unless a good case can be made for why users shouldn't be able to see this in thier watchlists/recent changes. Essjay (Talk) 09:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
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DumbBOT, third function

On average, between five and ten AfD nominations made each day are incomplete (for various reasons). In at least one case, these can be fixed (semi)-automatically: when all steps are performed but the third (listing the subpage in the daily AfD page). I'd like to have permission for DumbBOT (talk · contribs) to perform the following functions:

  1. list the incomplete nominations; this will be done by
    1. downloading all articles in Category:Articles for deletion with a single export;
    2. check every page and determine if the article is correctly nominated, and create a list of all AfD subpages
    3. download all AfD subpages with a single export
    4. check if every subpage is listed in a daily AfD (this is done by whatlinkshere; this may require another download as the subpage can be a redirect)
  2. for every subpage that is not listed:
    1. add ===[[articletitle]]=== if not already
    2. add :*Incomplete nomination listed now. ~~~~ at bottom (or a similar message)
    3. produce a list of wiki links to be include (manually) in the daily AfD

This is to be done semi-manually: I'd run the first script, then check the incomplete noms that can be fixed automatically and run the second script on them. (Liberatore, 2006). 14:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

No problems encountered regarding the first step. User:Redvers voluntereed to watch the report page, and solved most of the nominations that could not be completed automatically (because no rationale for deletion is given). The second step sometimes produce slightly incorrect results when the nominator did not use {{subst:afd2|...}}, and in one case the edit of the AfD subpage failed due to an edit conflict. However, after manually adding the orphaned AfD subpages to the main page, I am checking the AfD page and fixing such problems manually. (Liberatore, 2006). 12:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
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RobotG

I request permission to run the bog-standard pywikipediabot on English wikipedia under account RobotG, manually. I intend to start gradually, and will begin by instructing it to do simple category renaming and/or removal per WP:CFD (for which I see there is a small backlog). If I see other tasks I could ask the bot to help with then I will ask permission here first. Category renaming/removal are community-endorsed edits, so the bot flag would help avoid clutter in the recent changes log. Please may I have permission to test it out? --RobertG ♬ talk 09:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

There are several bots that do this already. Have you asked their owners why there's a backlog? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:18, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Was that an objection? I suspect there's a backlog because these users haven't run their bots recently, and I'm offering to help. --RobertG ♬ talk 07:28, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Given that there were no objections, I boldly instructed RobotG to rename a category per CFD, and it went without a hitch. If there are still no objections then I will continue to do informal, carefully-monitored, trial runs. Meanwhile, any chance of an endorsement so that I can log the trials formally at trial runs? --RobertG ♬ talk 13:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Update: things still seem to be going OK, even though there's been no response here. I'm not getting at anyone - I understand all about backlogs! --RobertG ♬ talk 16:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. You've obviously been doing trial runs, so do a week's run starting now and bring us back results this time next week. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 04:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

As requested, I continued running the bot, with good results. I have improved the code since first requesting approval so that its edit summaries give links to the discussions it is implementing. I can instruct the robot to do category renames per WP:CFD, and I also run a version which implements category redirects, taking over from the currently inactive bot NekoDaemon. It works fine, and I have received unsolicited positive feedback! Regards, RobertG ♬ talk 10:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:WinBot

I am requesting to run an AWB bot to 1. Subst talk page templates listed in Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace, especially {{unsigned}} and test templates. 2. Unicodfying China-related articles, with article list from categories and stub categories. --WinHunter (talk) 16:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Subst'ing of unsigned is a tad contoversial, the 2nd option would be interesting, can you provide an example diff? -- Tawker 18:16, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
How about subst other non-controversial user talk templates? As for examples of unicodfying China related articles, here are a few examples: [3][4][5][6][7]. --WinHunter (talk) 20:13, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Unicodifying is a good idea. It appears, however, that you are also using the "Apply General Fixes" setting in AWB. This will probably lead to a lot of unneccessary edits for things like page reordering and the like. Is there a way to make it only apply those general fixes on pages WITH unicode changes?Alphachimp talk 20:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Appearently not, so I think I am going to turn that option off in bot edits. The option in the bot would be "Auto tag" & "Unidifify whole article" with "Apply general fixes" unchecked (those diff links are human-assisted, so it's ok to edit with that option). --WinHunter (talk) 20:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
That seems a lot better to me. Obviously having "apply general fixes" checked is OK for human-assisted edits, but for bot edits it can be a bit troublesome (you don't want your bot just moving whitespace). I'm still a little confused about the "auto tag" feature (see here on AWB page]. I've racked up a couple thousand manual edits using AWB, and have never really seen it in action. Do you have any examples of that option at work? Alphachimp talk 20:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Yea.. auto tag rarely kicks in, so I think I can't really provide diff links. In my memory, it only happened a couple times in some very short articles where it automatically tagged them with {{stub}}, so I think it's ok to unicodify with that option on (though I don't really mind turning it off since it rarely kicks in anyways). --WinHunter (talk) 21:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I've had the same experience. It rarely kicks in. Personally, I would not check that option, just because we don't really have any hard and fast diffs. But yeah, looks good to me. I guess you just need approval from someone in the Bot Approvals group. Alphachimp talk
  • Barring any objections from Tawker, who has already commented, a week trial run of the unicodification is fine. Throttle to 2-3 a minute, don't use "auto tag" or "apply general fixes." Check back with us after a week and we can approve the full run, a bot flag, and deal with the subst:ing issue. (Don't do subst: for now.) Essjay (Talk • Connect) 05:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Similar to KonstableBot, WinBot have gone through at least 10,000 articles (can't remember the exact count though) and made 1,464 edits to this moment, everything looks good so far. While I am doing this, I came up with a method to find articles that needs to be unicodified from DB dump, using the regex similar to this one: "&#(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9)(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9)(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9)(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9)(0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9);". I am wondering if it is possible to use this method to generate list of articles to work on? Many thanks. --WinHunter (talk) 09:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:Scepbot

I was given permission a month ago to run a special redirect fixing bot in trial-mode. I'd like to see if it can be fully approved. Its contributions are here. Will (message me!) 18:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

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User:XaxaBot

  1. This bot is supposed to be manually run.
  2. I will run XaxaBot once, before examining the output and making any code changes. If I write code to upload pages, I will upload one page per test run.
  3. This is a python bot written in the pywikipedia framework.
  4. This bot is only for sandbox purposes. If I'm going to write a bot to help Project Echo, I need to know it's going to work before I submit it formally. I'm a bad programmer (methodologically speaking), so I need to test each line or function of code before moving on. As far as importance, I will also be using this bot to test code for bots for the Bot Request page.

More comments: In it's current state, it fails the usefulness requirement, but that will necessarily change in time. I can vouch for it's harmlessness because I meticulously check output for errors before running a real test which includes an upload action. It will not be a server hog because I will happily use database dumps (they're as good as the real thing, right?).

Basically, just a SandBot. Xaxafrad 07:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the test wiki would be a better place to run this -- Tawker 18:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
If you'll only be running it in your sandbox at this point, there is no need to request approval. Do your testing in your sandbox, get it working, and then bring it back to us once it's ready to do what it's programmed to do. And be sure to tell us what it is that it's going to do (you mention Project Echo, but didn't really say what it's going to *do* for the project). Essjay (Talk) 14:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Just so I understand things clearly...If I ran a snippet of recursion code to progressively download every non-orphaned article with the pywikipedia framework, there's a built-in throttle so there'd be no problem, right? And so you understand clearly, any uploading will be to the bot's userpage (but I'm not working on that part yet). And that's okay? Xaxafrad 04:34, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


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LDBot

Yo, per the request of Joturnner, I've expanded the functionality of LDBot to create the new subpages for the Current Events portal. An example edit can be seen here.

I'm not sure if I can approve my own bot, as I am in the approvals group, but I see no problem with it, as it's behaving just as the AFD functionality does. It'll create the page at midnight EASTERN, rather than UTC like the AFD functions.

Any questions, or concerns, let me know. --lightdarkness (talk) 18:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

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User:Grafikbot

  • What: The main role of this bot will be to deliver the WP:MILHIST newsletter every month to people who subscribed to it. Currently, we have to do this by hand and each month, our coordinator has to search for volunteers, while a bot could do the job pretty well (it is messages appending).
  • It will also deprecate some existing templates, as our templates system evolved in the past months. It is a one-shot job, but there are at least 2000 links to be updated. The job is simple enough to be given to a bot.
  • It will sometimes be run in semi-auto mode when making article tagging. (I just don't want to do this with my main account).
  • It will run using AWB in automatic (first case) and semi-automatic (second case) mode, and AWB is quite time-tested, so no code of my own is involved. In any case, it will run under a constant supervision. I'm sure I will find other uses for him, but these two are very important by themselves. Thanks, -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 12:29, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Outreach, I can only see 15 people subscribed to the newsletter, is there a need for a bot to deliver newsletter? --WinHunter (talk) 12:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Nope, the letter is diffused to all people registered at WP:MILHIST#Active_members, and they are almost 300 as of now, which is quite different from 15 :) The Outreach part only covers particular delivery wishes - such as full content delivery, no delivery and delivery to non-members. By default, anyone on the former list gets a link to the newsletter on his talk page. Cheers, Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 13:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Ok, so how about providing some example diff links (using AWB) of both delivering newsletter and depreciating templates? --WinHunter (talk) 13:21, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Of course.
Here is an example of newsletter delivery (the link is red since the July letter is not ready yet :) example 1, example 2
Deprecation of a template: [8], [9], [10]
It is something really simple but really boring to do by hand, which is why I would like to automate it :) Thanks, -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 14:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The newsletter delivery is approved outright; you're welcome to begin that whenever. If you are going to use the same bot account (I'd suggest using different accounts to do different things, making it easy to keep track of what is going on), then we will need to wait for the necessary trials to complete before flagging. Likewise, the template matter can be done without any problem. As for the last two, I'd prefer you came to us with specific examples of what you plan to do, as in "I will be working on [List of pages] doing [action]." It seems to me this is really a matter of two separate bots: one that does the WikiProject's work, and another that does your personal work. I'd suggest splitting the two so we can go ahead and flag the project's bot and keep discussing yours. Essjay (Talk) 00:56, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Since the template thing is related to the WikiProject too, how about keeping these two together since they're both automated, and since deprecation is a one shot job so once it is done there will be no "different things" :). As for the rest I think I'll keep my main account for the time being. How's that? :) Because I guess I need your approval to ask a bot access to AWB... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 01:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I think I may have been misunderstood: The first two tasks (What: The main role of this bot will be to deliver the WP:MILHIST newsletter every month to people who subscribed to it. Currently, we have to do this by hand and each month, our coordinator has to search for volunteers, while a bot could do the job pretty well (it is messages appending). It will also deprecate some existing templates, as our templates system evolved in the past months. It is a one-shot job, but there are at least 2000 links to be updated. The job is simple enough to be given to a bot.) are no problem, can be done from the same bot account, and you can begin doing them with the bot whenever. I take your answer to mean you'll be doing the other tasks under your main account for now, and if that is the case, let me know and you can be approved for AWB and a bot flag immediately. Essjay (Talk) 20:26, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it is all settled then, I will proceed as you say :)))
Should I apply for AWB myself or can you authorize my bot to use it directly? :)
Thanks! Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 20:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I've added your bot to AWB for non-automated edits at this time, someone from the approvals group can move it as needed. — xaosflux Talk 00:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
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DumbBOT, fourth function

I'd like DumbBOT (talk · contribs) to produce, on a schedule, a list of prod'ed articles with times and reasons, such as User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary. This requires loading the category Category:Proposed deletion and all articles therein, and parsing the Template:Dated prod template arguments (Liberatore, 2006). 11:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC) P.S. I was thinking to schedule this to be run each six hours or so. (Liberatore, 2006). 11:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

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User:Wikipedia Signpost

I would like to request a bot flag for the User:Wikipedia Signpost account. The account will be a backup to Ralbot (approved in May) when Ral315 is unavailable, except that it will only spam the people on the Wikipedia Signpost spamlist, using only AWB. This will be manually-assisted; in other words, while the "automatic" feature will be used in AWB, it will have to be started manually and be monitored at all times. Given that I can't program (well, excluding java, which isn't an ideal language for bots), the account will not and can not do much else. I am also aware that manually-assisted use of AWB doesn't require a bot flag; however, I would like to not flood RC with the nearly 200 users on the spamlist. The account will only run and spam the people on the list on distribution days (usually late Mondays or early Tuesdays) when Ral315 and Ralbot is unavailable, meaning that the account should be sparingly used. I don't anticipate a problem with using AWB for this purpose. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine..but if there are going to be many bots doing this, you might want to make a task page, to check off when distributing (shhh, can you hear the process creeping?). — xaosflux Talk 00:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I have no objection. I have a python spambot lying around that I use for the Mediation Committee, if you'd rather have something like that than AWB. Otherwise, approved. Essjay (Talk) 03:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
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EssjayBot

EssjayBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

As anyone who pays attention to such will know, Sandbot (talk · contribs) died on July 14th, roughly a week ago. I've been waiting and watching to see if it would come back to life, or if AllyUnion would be around to fix it, but that hasn't happpened. As such, I've gotten ahold of a sandbox reset script (thanks Jude) and set EssjayBot up to be able to run it. Assuming there won't be any objections, as all it does is reset the sandbox, I'd like input on how often to have it done; there is a manual reset function as well, located at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~essjay/sandbox.php. For me it's just a matter of setting the crontab and letting it run; I just need to know what to put in.

For the moment, I have it set to reset my own sandbox, to prevent abuse until everything is cleared; I will look at the best way to have it do everything that Sandbot handled shortly. I intend this as a temporary measure, with every confidence that Sandbot will be back; if not, I'll register a more appropriate name and set it up dedicated. Essjay (Talk) 06:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, test it, flag it and you're good to go Essjay -- Tawker 07:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, here's the update. I've gotten everything worked out so that it will cover all the sandboxes that Sandbot covered; a full list is on User:Essjaybot. There are manual resets for all the sandboxes (but not the talk pages) listed there. Additionally, unless I've messed up my crontab entry, it should run to clean the main sandbox & talk page every 12 hours (noon and midnight), and to clean all the others on Sunday night at midnight (I assume that is local time for Zedler). Per Tawker's authorization, I'm flagging it as a bot. Essjay (Talk) 12:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

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User:CrazynasBot

This bot would run using AWB in bot mode, replacing _ with _ on Templates subst'ed by User:BetacommandBot. Crazynas t 01:10, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

That seems fine. Approved. Essjay (Talk) 02:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:Alaibot, stub template merger

There's a substantial backlog of re-sorting tasks for already-identified stubs in oversized categories. Sometimes these are double-stubbed with two stub types that now have been given a common child type, and this is in such cases becomes a purely mechanical task of replacing {{X-stub}} and {{Y-stub}} with {{X-Y-stub}}. To help deal with these, I've written a simple extension of replace.py (please excuse my Python) which does such replacements, on an "all or nothing" basis (that is, it makes no change if it's not able to replace both original templates with the new one). This would run on lists of double-tagged articles produced from an offline partial database dump, and/or StubSense. As this uses different code from that already trialed and approved, I suggest a new trial run under a non-bot-flagged account, User:AlaibotToo, with the final-approved (if and when) updates to be done with the existing bot-flagged account. Alai 04:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Trial started, a couple of hundred done so far; feel free to review whenever's good for the AG. Addendum: I'd also like to "roll in" the related task of re-stubbing single existing stub types, using the standard template.py code. Should be straightforward from a code point of view, being unmolested by my rehacking, the art in this instance is running it on the right stubs... (Generated from category intersection, as above.) For example: the members of both Category:Organization stubs and Category:Non-profit organizations, changing the stub type (only) to Category:Non-profit organization stubs. Alai 06:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Ran trial of both the above functions; no problems that were evident to me (aside from an error caused by operator typo in the first of a "batch" (I always inspect these for just such an eventuality), which I fixed up by hand), and no hate-mail. No additional flagging required, please [11] for final approval. Alai 04:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
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User:RebelRobot

The bot is manually assisted, performing interwiki links and standardization, plus handling double redirects. It runs in the pywikipedia framework. It shall mostly see to that articles from the Romanian Wikipedia get linked to their homologues in the English one. --Rebel2 19:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright, week's over. Seems fine to me. --Rebel2 02:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

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EssjayBot II

EssjayBot_II (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

EssjayBot's little brother, EssjayBot II, would like approval to archive pages in the same fashion as Crypticbot did. This is not the Crypticbot code, but a pywikipedia version worked up by Misza13. It archives based on the last timestamp in a section, working in whole-number days; sections without timestamps will be untouched.

Since WerdnaBot is handling most of Crypticbot's old haunts, my intention is to set it up to do various other pages that are not regularly archived: WP:CHU, WP:BN, and the talk pages of each. My intent is to have anything older than 2 days archived off CHU, anything older than 7 days archived off BN, and anything older than 10 days archived off the talk pages. Anyone interested in using EssjayBot II for archiving should drop me a talk page message.

I've done a quick test in my sandbox and everything seems in order. Due to the nature of the bot (archiving pages) and the limited number of times it should be editing, I don't think a flag is needed or desirable. Approval requested for the pages mentioned and others as needed. Essjay (Talk) 16:49, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine just fine, fine just fine, fine. Recomend no flag. — xaosflux Talk 23:49, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Approved for one week trial (or however long it will take to provide the diffs), post results when complete. — xaosflux Talk 02:47, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
It creates archive pages where necessary; the archive number is hard coded for now, so when it needs to move to a new archive, I just go in and increase it by one, and if the page doesn't exist, it will create it. (This makes it unsuitable for large pages like AN/ANI right now, but I hope to have an autoincrementer available before too long.) It's already done archiving of BN, & the talk pages of BN & CHU, as demonstrated in it's contribs. I've also offered the functionality to the Arbitration Committee for their talk page, and perhaps the Requests for Clarification section of RFAR. Due to the low volume of comments on BN and the talk pages of either page, CHU will probably be the only page it archives in the next few days. Essjay (Talk) 05:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Looks a lot like Werdnabot, please point out the differences, cheers —Minun Spiderman 13:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Apology, I checked the user page and understand now, so I agree with the new bot —Minun Spiderman 13:26, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Oy, I notice that Werdna648 (talk · contribs), who runs Werdnabot (talk · contribs), has not edited since July 20th (a week) and indicates he may not be back for several months. Given that Crypticbot, which did what WerdnaBot is doing now, was quickly blocked when Cryptic left, it looks like I may need to have EssjayBot II do some of the pages Crypticbot/WerdnaBot was doing, in particular, AN & ANI (I don't want to get into user talk page archiving as WerdnaBot did). I'm going to ask Misza13 to look into an auto-incrementing archive option (right now you have to hand-insert the archive number into the code) in case EssjayBot II is needed for AN/ANI. I would normally say that this would be included in the original authorization I requested ("the pages mentioned and others as needed") but I thought it best to bring it up anyway. Essjay (Talk) 05:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Having several archive algorythm holding bots exist is fine by me (even VoABot has some build into the RfPP archive, though it is a bit more complex). I'd rather they be maintaned by active editors like Essjay.Voice-of-All 07:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I've gotten a request to put the bot on ANI, as Werdnabot is having difficult with sections that have === subsections. My intent is to have the bot archive anything older than 24 hours once a day at midnight; I would go with longer, but the page is hovering near 300KB with anything over 48 hours old being archived 4 times a day. I'm also going to put in a manual archive trigger, though I don't plan to publicize it highly since manual archiving shouldn't be needed. I've run a test in my sandbox and everything worked fine; can I get an approval to go ahead an put the bot on ANI on this schedule? Essjay (Talk) 06:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure go ahead with a 1 week trial. --pgk(talk) 09:35, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
It's been working fine elsewhere, so no need for more trials. --pgk(talk) 09:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.


The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

User:Drinibot

In the past I've been using Drinibot to handle tasks related to TFD (substing or removing templates prior to deletion, changing templates, etc). Now I?d like to request permission for Drinibot to handle CFD taks as well.

So in detail, this is what I need drinibot to do.

  • Keep the capitalization-redirect creation capability (used once in a while).
  • Substing, remove or replacing templats (for tfd)
  • Moving, renaming and emptying categories (for cfd)

-- Drini 19:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, go ahead --pgk(talk) 19:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

User:Wherebot

I would like permission to run a bot to tag newly created copyvio articles with {{db-copyvio}} (although I would only tag with {{nothing}} and exit so I can look over the edit until I am confident in its accuracy in identifying copyvios). The bot is written in perl, although it calls replace.pl (from pywikimediabot). Once I work out the bugs, I would want to have the bot running continuously. -- Where 01:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

How do you intend to gather the "newly created copyvio articles"? — xaosflux Talk 03:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
The bot watches on the RC feed at browne.wikimedia.org. Every new article is downloaded, and the text is run through a yahoo search to see if there are any matches outside of Wikipedia. -- Where 04:12, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
But what if the text is a GFDL or PD source, or quotes a GFDL/PD source?--Konstable 04:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, how about fair use quotes? --WinHunter (talk) 05:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Wouldn't it be better to report potential copyvios (at an IRC channel, and at WP:AIV or a similar page for non-IRC folks) instead of just tagging them outright? Also, you could use Copyscape, similar to how the Spanish Wikipedia implemented this idea. Try talking to User:Orgullomoore for ideas. Titoxd(?!?) 06:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, I suppose since the bot is bound to have a large number of false detections of coyvios it would be best to report it in a way other than simply tagging articles for speedy deletion. I like Titoxd's idea of listing the possible copyvios on a page similar to AIV (later, perhaps, I can implement an IRC notification bot if this goes okay). I looked at copyscape, however, and it only will allow for 50 scans per month unless I pay them money, which I am not willing to do. Thanks for your time! -- Where 14:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • What would be best is if it put a notice on the talk page "This article might be a copyvio" and added that article to a daily list (in the bot's userspace) of suspected copyvios. Then humans could use their judgement to deal with them properly... overall I think it would speed things up tremendously, since we'd have all the likely copyvios in one place. It should probably avoid testing any phrases in quotation marks, but other than that, I don't think it would pick up a huge number of false positives. In my experience with newpage patrol, for every 99 copyvios there's maybe 1 article legitimately copied from a PD/GPL site. Like I said earlier, it's rather amazing that we don't have a bot doing this already, and I'm glad someone's developing it finally. Contact me if you need any non-programming help with testing. --W.marsh 21:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
    • The problem with putting a notice on a talk page would be that it would create a large number of talk pages for deleted articles; that being said, if you still think it is a good idea, I will trust your judgement and implement it anyway once I am confident in the bot's accuracy. Also, just out of curiosity, what do you think is wrong with searching for exact phrases? (when I was not testing for exact phrases, the bot claimed that a page was a copyvio of a webpage that listed virtually every word in the English language). Thanks for your suggestions, and your time. -- Where 23:02, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, you're probably right about the talkpages, I hadn't thought of that. For the other thing, I mean that it shouldn't search for phrases that were originally in quotation marks in the test article, since those are probably quotations that might be fair use. But it should definently search for other exact phrases from the article on Google/Yahoo whatever. By the way, I think Google limits you to 3,000 searches/day, Yahoo might too... not sure if that will have an impact. --W.marsh 23:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I got the impression that yahoo was more lenient than google. But if worse comes to worse, I will have to just use the web interface rather than the API (which should allow me unlimited searches). -- Where 23:31, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
This seems like a good idea, but the only concern I would have is that the process be supervised by a non-bot (i.e. human, hopefully). Tagging the talk page or on an IRC channel seems like a good idea; admins would simply have to remember to check those often and make sure that the bot is accurate. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 05:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree; the bot will have a fair amount of errors because of the concerns voiced above. Thus, the bot will edit only one page, which will be outside article space. This page would contain a listing of suspected copyvios found by the bot. During the trial period, I would set the bot to edit a page in my userspace; if the bot is successful, perhaps the page could be moved to the Wikipedia namespace. Does that address your concern? If not, I'm open to suggestions :) -- Where 18:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I like this idea in general. My only concern is that even with liberal filters it could create a massive, unmanageable backlog. Have you tried to estimate how many pages per day/week would this generate? Misza13 T C 19:10, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I have not done so yet; however, based on tests so far, I would estimate that the backlog would be manageable. It is hard to tell for sure though, without a trial. Thus, I just started the bot so it commits to a file, and does not touch Wikipedia. When I finish this trial, I will be able to give an estimation of how many suspected copyvios it finds per day. -- Where 19:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I just did a 36 minute test, in which 4 potential copyvios were identified. If I did the calculatins correctly, this would mean that 160 potential copyvios would be identified on a daily basis (assuming that the rate of copyvios is constant, which is obviously not the case). This is a lot, but should be manageable (especially if A8 is amended). Also, I should be able to reduce the number of false identifications with time. Two of the items identified were were not copyvios; one was from a Wikiedia mirror, and I am still examining the cause of the other one. -- Where 21:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, having the bot edit one page and listed the alerts there would alleviate my concerns. The test is also quite interesting, though I would like to perhaps see a longer test - maybe 24 or 48 hours? 36 minutes may not be reliable data to efficiently estimate the daily output. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay; I am starting another test and will have it run overnight. -- Where 00:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The bot is currently listing possible copyvios to User:Where/cp as it finds them. -- Where 01:56, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion, could you change the listing format (see below)
  • Thats the current format
Good idea! The bot now uses that format. Thanks! -- Where 15:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
New format looks better, but of the 3 items listed on there right now, none are actionable, see comments per item on that page. — xaosflux Talk 01:03, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks :). I removed the items. -- Where 01:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Howdy. The bot has been running for a tad over a week. If anybody has any suggestions for improving the bot, I would be appreciative. Also, I am kind of curious how long the trial period lasts. Many thanks, -- Where 03:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Been looking pretty good, some false positives though, so think this should stick to listing on a copyvio patrol type page rather then tagging the articles (early request). The trial period usually lasts a week-whenever it's done :) Upon going live, do you have a project page this would go to, or would you keep it in your userspace?; if possible perhaps a "reported at ~~~~~" or a per day break might be helpful. This bot looks like it's being useful though, just have to get the results in front of some live editors. — xaosflux Talk 03:58, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely that the bot most certainly cannot be trusted to directly tag articles (if I change my mind, I would come back here, but I don't think it is possible to get it at the desired level of acuracy). I would prefer to move User:Where/cp to Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations, or something of that nature. The bot now includes timestamps, as you suggested. -- Where 02:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Bot approved, no bot flag though (edits are not high-speed, and the edit summaries may be useful on a watch list).— xaosflux Talk 04:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Final suggestions on this page:If possible take the parts out about "remove this line" from the edit summaries, make the project page, and a /Reports subpage; transclude the subpage to the main page (that way people can watch list it serperatley if desired). Then get the word out (WP:AN, link on CAT:CSD, WP:VP, etc pages. — xaosflux Talk 04:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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