Wikipedia:Core bots
This page aims to list bots that are sufficiently critical to the project. I'm loosely defining "core" as whether the bot disappearing would cause noticeable disruption to the encyclopaedia, some significant backroom process (such as AIV), or if the loss of the bot would otherwise meaningfully impact the quality of articles. (Feel free to replace this with a more well-defined definition.) Ideally this shouldn't be a long or exhaustive list of bots.
The intention of this is to help us understand (and hopefully improve) our bus factor for these bots, should the operator become unavailable.
For each category, key bots in the area are listed, along with some comments which address the following questions:
- Does the bot have a succession strategy?
- Are they hosted on Toolforge, ideally with multiple maintainers? In that case, handover could be done by the Toolforge committee
- Is the source available?
- If so, does it look like the source can be easily ran by another user? Or are files needed for execution missing / source is out-of-date?
- How easily could the bot be maintained (and not just ran) by another person? Considerations/factors involved in this include: is the code a modern tech stack, and likely to be comprehensible by another bot operator? Does the bot rely on technology that is unlikely to be familiar to another potential bot maintainer (for instance, ClueBot NG uses ANNs and moreso uses a C framework for ANNs that is not common to use these days, compared to PyTorch etc).
This list is definitely not complete! Please help by adding a bot below.
Main Page
[edit]- DYKUpdateBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Responsible for maintaining T:DYK and queues, which is ultimately transcluded on the Main Page.
- Code available: User:DYKUpdateBot/Code, runs on Toolforge.
Anti-vandalism
[edit]- ClueBot NG (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Reverts vandalism.
- Code available: GitHub, runs on Toolforge. Uncommon and complicated tech stack. Uses machine learning techniques like artificial neural networks (ANNs), and furthermore uses a C framework for ANNs that is not common to use these days, compared to PyTorch etc
- MusikBot II (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Task 3, protecting high-risk templates
- Code available: GitHub, runs on Toolforge
Article maintenance
[edit]- Citation bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Helps maintain/expand citations
- Code available: GitHub, runs on Toolforge
- GreenC bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Archives dead links
- Current code not available. Old version of code available on GitHub. Unclear where it runs
- EmausBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Fixes double redirects
- Code unavailable, but this is a commodity function fulfilled by multiple local/global bots, and similar scripts for this task are open source.
- OAbot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Helps flag open access citations / add open access links to citations
- Code available: GitHub, runs on Toolforge
- InternetArchiveBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Archives dead links
- Code available: GitHub. Runs on Cloud VPS (I think)
Archiving / Clerking
[edit]- ClueBot III (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Archiving discussion pages
- Code available: User:ClueBot III/Source, runs on Toolforge.
- Cyberbot I (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Lowercase sigmabot III (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) (Task: 2)
- Archiving discussion pages
- Code available: User:Lowercase_sigmabot_III/Source.py, runs on Toolforge.
- ChristieBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Maintains WP:Good article nominations
- Code available: User:ChristieBot/Source code. Runs on Toolforge.
- JJMC89 bot III (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Implements WP:CFD decisions from WP:CFD/W
- Code: cfdw.py on GitHub
- Runs on Toolforge in the jjmc89-bot tool.
- Legobot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Maintains WP:Requests for comment lists
- Code available: GitHub, runs on Toolforge. Uses a complicated PHP stack with an internal database, and hasn't been actively maintained for years (although the current operator is the third person to run it)
- RMCD bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Maintained WP:Requested moves, runs on personal machine
- Code available: User:RMCD bot/requestedmoves.php
- User:The Sky Bot is approved as a backup when it goes down
- HBC AIV helperbot14 (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- SineBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Signs unsigned posts
- Code not available. Operator is not very active. Unclear where it runs
Copyright violations
[edit]- CopyPatrolBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Marks possible copyright violations for CopyPatrol
- Code: copypatrol-backend on GitHub
- Runs on a Cloud VPS VM in the copypatrol project (tech docs).
Project maintenance
[edit]- AAlertBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Provides WP:AALERTS for WikiProjects
- Code available: Hellknowz and Headbomb have access to it. Runs on personal machines.
- AnomieBOT (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Many tasks, most of which aren't individually core but the probably add up to a significant disruption if they would stop running
- Code available: User:AnomieBOT/source, runs on Toolforge. Written in Perl.
- JL-Bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Yapperbot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)
- Sends notifications for WP:Feedback request service
- Code available: GitHub, runs on Toolforge. Uses Go (programming language), which is uncommon among bots. Operator has vanished since 2020, and a plan to adopt the bot has been slowly in the works for months