Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval

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Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MGA73bot 3

I think that this bot should remove {{Move to commons}} - example Bulwersator (talk) 18:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes it should. In fact there is a lot of things there would be nice to change. I have been thinking that perhaps I should just retire the bot but Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Images_and_Media/Commons/Drives#Files_in_Category:Move_to_Commons_Priority_Candidates_that_are_already_on_Commons made me start it up again to help the current mtc-drive.

User:Fbot should remove the {{Move to commons}} shortly after my bot adds {{NowCommons}} untill the bot is fixed or a new is made. --MGA73 (talk) 15:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems that Fbot is not removing the template. I can do it if you want me to. See [1] as an example. --MGA73 (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

User:Taxobot 2

User:Taxobot 2 appears to be running as a bot without the bot flag enabled. Could someone taks a look & see if anything needs sorting out. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:27, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

User:Lightbot

This bot was indef blocked back in Oct and unblock was denied. Since then, the owner of the bot, User:Lightmouse, has not edited. I've marked the bot page accordingly as indefblocked and changed status from approved to inactive, although given that the block was for allegedly unauthorized tasks, "retains the approval of the community", which is what the bot template produces for inactive bots, is a bit iffy in this case. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:12, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it retains the approval of community on the approved tasks (which are BRFAs). I guess that line doesn't specify that it's only approved for the tasks outlined in the bot's BRFAs or sometimes otherwise. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Just wondering but are the tasks performed by the bot being done by another bot? Or did we just lose the ability when the bot was blocked? --Kumioko (talk) 19:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The main problem appears to be that the tasks approved are as clear as mud. Perhaps they should be compacted into a clearly stated, single approval page? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

As near as I can tell, the original intention was basically "add {{convert}} everywhere possible", with some extra MOS 'enforcement' (primarily Lightmouse's interpretation of WP:OVERLINK) thrown in for good measure. Which tended to cause conflict with other editors, and in combination with the date delinking mess led to sanctions, and then we ended up with these CYA BRFAs that go into great detail in idiosyncratic writing style while being as wide-reaching as possible within their scope. Anomie⚔ 19:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what to say given that it was blocked after those CYA BRFAs. Not CYA enough maybe? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:19, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Update: the blocking adimn has provided a link to the discussion prior to blocking [2] Besides the issue with overriding the manual conversions (and arbitrarily picking the 1st value as correct), another problem was spotted by User:Smalljim (at 21:59, 10 October 2011 in the discussion) where the bot was ungrammatically rewording sentences. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Yobot blocked

I recently blocked User:Yobot for repeatedly making inconsequential changes using AWB (e.g. [3], [4]), despite requests not to. The bot owner now claims that the list he was working on is now empty, and the problem should be resolved. Could someone more knowledgable about bots than me have a look at the issues, and decide whether this should be unblocked, or requires re approval, or what? If they think it should be unblocked, feel free to do so without my permission (or let me know if you're not an admin). Thanks.  An optimist on the run! 21:39, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem of Yobot making 1-2% of edits that change nothing on the rendered page when working on given lists is a known problem. This is not always the case. When Yobot runs frequently the lists are always up-to-date. Sometimes it takes me a lot of time to load a list due to software restrictions. (toolserver gives max 500 entries per page. Error 61 has 110k entries. I had to load 2200 pages manually.) I have already asked for a solution to this problem. [[User:Reedy] an other AWB developer who has toolsercver access has been informed on the problem and (I hope) they will help solve it. More significant code changes are scheduled for the next months to solve this problem once and for all by changing my method after a lot of suggestions done by many editors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:57, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a full list can be downloaded from [5]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This list is TWO years old. Jan 2010 and not Jan 2012. I asked for an updated version of this file. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

There are several issues pertaining to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 16.

• The task request is somewhat open ended, covering a large number of different WP:CHECKWIKI fixes.
• The edit summaries used for this task are completely insufficeient; they all say "WP:CHECKWIKI error fixes + general fixes using AWB" regardless of the purpose of the edit. This makes it impossible to tell why the bot edited any particular page.
• The bot request stated "AWB will run with "Skip if no changes", "Skip if only whitespace", "Skip if only casing is changed", etc. activated.". However, the bot has had problems with making insignificant edits even during the testing phase.
• Just before the recent block of Yobot, the blocking admin pointed out "I ran AWB manually last night on all items in my watchlist ... Yet since I ran that, Yobot has made insignificant changes to four of those articles. [6]

I think that one reasonable solution here is for Yobot to do the following:

• Disable all general fixes during these CHECKWIKI runs, so that the only changes specifically related to CHECKWIKI are made
• Use a different edit summary for each CHECKWIKI task, so that it is clear what each edit is supposed to fix.

I think those changes would resolve all the concerns behind the block. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:16, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems like the old addage "if we make the edits more difficult to do then no one will do them" catch-22 situation again. Or the even more popular "We must increase the bureaucracy to keep pace with the expanding bureaucracy". As I stated before I personally think that the edit summaries are as clear as they need to be. CBM, as is fairly usual, over simplifies the problem and over complicates the solution. The edit summaries in question include a link to the Checkwiki page as well as the AWB general edits page. To address the first issue, there are quite a few different checkwiki fixes and somem of them affect more than one edit. Although there is no doubt that all of us, Magio included with Yobot, would like to have a clear and concise edit summary that accounts for every edit. But this leaves us with 2 problems. We either allow for a more generic edit summary so that more edits can be allowed to the article at one time or we make the edit summaries more specific and it often requires us to make several concurrent edits to the article in order to make the summary the "clearest possible". Both scenerios pose problems and both scenarios attract complaints. Additionally, by forcing every edit to maximize the edit summary what we end up with is an extremely long edit summary that sometimes scrolls off the end of the summary due to edit summary size limitations. --Kumioko (talk) 23:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The bot is just running a list of CHECKWIKI tasks. There is no reason not to run task 1, then task 2, then task 3, ... This is what most bots do, in fact, and it makes for more accountability and for more granularity in the edits. Users can undo just one change if they need to. And this makes it easier for the bot editor: just write a loop that does each task in sequence. It's pretty trivial to write loops. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Your partly right and I believe that is what Magio plans to do based on conversations but has been doing the best he can with the limited time he currently has available. Of course I don't want to speak for him but that is my perception based on discussions I have seen. I am sure that if you were willing to help him out with it he would most likely be willing to accept help in rewriting the code so that Yobot could more work more efficiently. Even with writing in loops yous still frequently end up with overly long and complicated edit summarys because it has to attach each summary in seq as it completes its work. Thats even excluding the general edits of AWB, which I do not agree should be excluded from the task. It just causes the bot to have to edit the article multiple times. --Kumioko (talk) 23:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This is what I mean in pseudocode:

foreach $task ( @list_of_tasks ) { 
 $edit_summary = "Making edit for task " . $task;
 do_task ($task, $edit_summary);
} 

That way there is no need get long edit summaries. As for general fixes, the purpose of the bot job is just to do the CHECKWIKI part, so if the general fixes are causing problems then there's no reason to leave them enabled. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:14, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thats interesting thanks I think I can use that too. I also still don't think its the general edits causing the problem. The "problem', if its even a problem is that the bot was doing a couple of template renames because of the Rename template redirects logic. At worst I suspect he could add a line or 2 to skip this specific task but there are a lot of good edits in the general edits of AWB that I think we should try and take advantage of. --Kumioko (talk) 23:21, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Bypassing template redirects is listed at WP:GENFIXES, so the bot should already be skipping these if it is skipping general fixes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Right but what I'm saying is there are a lot of useful tasks in the Gen fixes logic that we should allow the bot to do such as citation, punctuation and date fixes. The reality is the number of inconsequential edits the bot performs to # of significant edits is pretty low and we are really making a much bigger deal out of it than needs to be made. The process of getting bot approval is a long and painful one and we are getting less and less bots doing fewer and fewer edits. We really shouldn't be stopping a useful bot for such a small problem. --Kumioko (talk) 23:34, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely, if there are 1% GFs only, we are throwing away 99% GFs that come with a checkwiki when we turn them off. That is the difference between the pragmatists and the bureaucrats. The pragmatists have seen that massive clean-up can be achieved by bundling as many fixes as possible into each edit. The bureaucrats want each change to be a separate edit, while there is elegance in that solution, it is (to put it bluntly) dumb in the real world. It's like paying for every item separately at the supermarket, so that if you return one item you can use a dedicated receipt. Rich Farmbrough, 03:10, 30 January 2012 (UTC).

I agree with Rich. I spent a lot of time to do as much as possible in one edit. we gain a lot of resources doing that, we don't have to revisit pages each time and watchlists are less disturbed which it's supposed to be the reason most of other editors complain. If a bot could make all the cleaning stuff alltogether the page would appear only once in the watchlist and this single time would be a minor fix by a bot. -- 16:07, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

If I may summarize: AWB doesn't have a "skip if no rendering change" option, which template renaming would trip. As AWB stands, if genfixes was off, the problematic edits would not have been made. Because the list of affected articles is cached, YoBot was changing some articles that had already had the problems identified in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 16 fixed. Right? Josh Parris 03:22, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

AWB does have such an option, and the blocking admin said he even checked that AWB should have skipped over certain pages [7], but Yobot still made these edits to them. There is probably some reason why this happened, which Magioladitis may know. However, if general fixes were turned off, so that the bot simply did the things that the bot request was intended to cover, it does seems like that would eliminate these problems. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:27, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

In fact the last suggestion is very good. We could separate "minor fixes" (awb's definition) to those which change rendered version and those which don't. The reason I need to have all genfixes turned on is that awb throws almost all GF under "minor". -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

CBM it doesn't and in fact it can't without solving the halting problem. Rich Farmbrough, 11:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC).

That sounds like a good solution; I approved the bot under the provision it wouldn't make non-meaningful, non-rendered changes. MBisanz ^talk 23:15, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll try to add an option to the code which diactivates redirect bypassing. I think this is a big step forward on the direction described above. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:38, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Can we unblock and proceed, please? Current list is now obsolete and a new one will arrive to my email soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm confident with you unblocking it unless someone objects. MBisanz ^talk 12:00, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll unblock it. I think it's better to avoid developing a pattern of bot operators unblocking their own bots unless they placed the original block. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I would concur, I just knew I was going to be busy hosting a dinner party, wouldn't have time to attend to this request, and knew very few other people follow this page. MBisanz ^talk 15:50, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Updated BRFA form

As a heads up, I thought I'd go ahead and update the form so that "automatic or manual" became "automatic-unsupervised, automatic-supervised, and manual." It seemed like most people were just sticking "automatic" or "manual" there, which led to the inevitable question of just how automatic a given run or series of runs was going to be. *shrug* Cheers =) --slakr^\ talk / 00:07, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! MBisanz ^talk 00:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Makes sense to me too, good initiative. --Kumioko (talk) 00:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Seems a bit long to me, now the label goes more than half way across the page on my screen. Anomie⚔ 01:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, I thought the comment above was good enough so operators knew they could specify automatic supervised. But I don't feel strongly enough about this change to revert it. — madman 18:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

One issue I have is that I never quite believe people when they say "automatic supervised": or at least, I get the impression that what I think of as "supervised" (watching every edit, e.g. watching AWB more or less the whole time while it runs in bot mode) and what they think of as "supervised" are two completely different processes. Do people agree with my interpretation or a different one (I have a flick through every evening of the edits made that day, perhaps). - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 18:45, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

"supervised" implies every single error will be corrected within reasonable time, because the botop is checking every edit eventually. But the bot itself doesn't stop to ask user permission to edit. That's how I interpret it and that's what the comment says. But yes, I also never believe people on that :) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I have the same interpretation (instead of my bot framework printing diffs and confirming before edits as it does in semi-automated mode, it saves them for later review in supervised mode). — madman 18:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

In which case, I'm not convinced that its useful to have a supervised vs. unsupervised comparison, since the scope is so broad, and in any case it encourages a little creative accounting with regard to promises to check bot logs and how often (especially as it will be recalled that every bot operator must be responsive when concerns are raised). Might as well trim it back to manual vs. automatic only IMHO. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 21:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, instead, to talk about the level of supervision: all edits reviewed before being made (manual), all edits reviewed, editing audited using a formal process, some edits reviewed, no edit review except on complaint (automatic unsupervised). Josh Parris 02:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I should say that for most cases, we don't really care: post-error responsiveness is far more expected. In some cases, we would, but I think we could ask specifically in those cases rather than polluting the main form. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 09:55, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

May be to simplify then:

• Manual: all edits are reviewed before being made
• Supervised: all edits are reviewed soon after being made
• Automatic: edits are not reviewed, except when issues arise

—  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Questionable WP tagging

Why was Kumi-Taskbot approved to add a WikiProject United States banner to every article that had "American", "United States", or "US" in the title? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:21, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Including redirects which didn't already have a talk page?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

In fairness I removed a lot of articles that contained those terms that did not relate to the United States. This particular "problem" stems from some members of WikiProject Connecticut who feel that other WikiProjects such as United States should not be tagging articles in Connecticuts scope. I have explained to them that Wikipedias policy is that any project can tag any articles they feel are in their scope and that as far as I know Connecticut is in the US and as such, to force the project to remove their tag reflects undo ownership over the articles. I have also explained to them that, if they got consensus to do so, I would remove any WPUS tags from any connecticut articles that do not also fall into the scope of one of the WPUS supported projects. SarekOfVulcan, as a highly respoected and experienced editor I am quite surprised that you are taking such an obvious stance. --Kumioko (talk) 15:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Also to clarify the comment about redirects. WPUS, tags redirects so that if the article/redirect is submitted for deletion, the project will be notified by Article Alertbot of the action. Without this we have to manually watch all the for deletion/discussion boards and manually try and spot which articles are ours. --Kumioko (talk) 15:41, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Kumioko generated the tasking for the bot. He was pulled up on tagging a non-US article during trials. As operator, he is fully and solely responsible for its actions. Josh Parris 15:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Your absolutely right Josh and I have absolutely no problem fixing problems or removing articles that shouldn't be tagged. This is a symantic argument over whether certain articles in Connecticut should or should not also be tagged as United States which IMO has no merit and is an inapropriate show of ownership of the articles. --Kumioko (talk) 15:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Did I say anything about Connecticut? I'm talking about these redirects I just deleted, and a whole bunch more I just gave up on. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:59, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

You mean the redirects you incorrectly deleted I think. If projets were not allowed to tag redirects then we would not have a redirect class. Since we do have a redirect class, wether you agree with that or not, you should not be "deleting" talk pages of a redirect if a project tags it. There are several reasons why its good to tag a redirect but I'm not going to bother explaining it because you shouldn't be deleting these in the first place. By the way, per the G6 criteria those don't even meet the criteria for noncontreversial housekeeping and cleanup. --Kumioko (talk) 16:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

its good to tag a redirect but I'm not going to bother explaining it--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

For example, you tagged Talk:Americans of European descent. Are you seriously suggesting that Caucasian race is in the scope of WPUS, or are you just trying to cover for your lack of discrimination in creating these lists? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2012 (UTC)