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Bot edit war

Can someone help me understand what happened with the image at Molana Alvi Birotvi? Three bots were duking it out over a deleted Commons image, and I'm not sure whether they were all working as designed and/or if "as designed" is the best situation in this case.

• CommonsDelinker removes the image because it's been deleted at Commons
• Commons fair use upload bot comes along a few minutes later, uploading the image here and reverting CommonsDelinker
• ImageRemovalBot removes links to the Commons image an hour later, orphaning the local upload

I don't understand why the fair use bot uploaded a copy in the first place (it doesn't upload copies of all copyvio-tagged images), unless it was somehow triggered by a human edit. Perhaps the biggest thing is that the fair use upload bot uploaded the image under a new name but simply reverted CommonsDelinker, so the old image name from Commons got put in, rather than the image's new name. Could it be instructed to link the name it's just uploaded? Could ImageRemovalBot be instructed not to revert the fair use upload bot unless a good deal longer than an hour has passed? Is something else the solution? I'll notify Carnildo, who operates ImageRemovalBot, while the upload bot is operated by User:Dcoetzee, who's done little since New Year's and nothing in two months. I can't figure out who operates CommonsDelinker; is it an internal piece of software, comparable to User:Conversion script? I'm also going to ask help from the Commons admin who deleted the original image, since s/he may be able to understand something I don't, especially the possibility of a human tagging the image at Commons for upload here. Nyttend (talk) 22:33, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I can't speak to the other two bots' actions, but from ImageRemovalBot's perspective, here's what it saw:

1. At 16:53 UTC, User:Malik Shabazz deleted File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi - from Commons.jpg and File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi.jpg (which was a redirect to the "from commons" image, but there is no way for the bot to know this).
2. At 16:54 UTC, Malik Shabazz restored File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi - from Commons.jpg, but not File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi.jpg
3. At 16:55 UTC, ImageRemovalBot retrieved a list of all images deleted since its last run, which included both File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi - from Commons.jpg and File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi.jpg
4. Approximately 30 seconds later, ImageRemovalBot noted that File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi.jpg was still a red link, so it removed the image from Molana Alvi Birotvi. It noted that File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi - from Commons.jpg had been undeleted, so the bot skipped over it.

I can't see any good way for ImageRemovalBot to deal with this, because from the bot's point of view, everything it did was correct. Once an image redirect has been deleted, there's no reliable way for a non-adminbot to tell that it was a redirect, or that the target image is the same as when the redirect was created. --Carnildo (talk) 23:32, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I didn't really have any idea whether the bot should be improved, and I wasn't completely sure that it was behaving properly. I know that bots can do API queries, but since I don't really have a clue what an API query is, I thought perhaps it would let the bot look at deleted revisions and act on those. Nyttend (talk) 23:47, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, as I was asked by Nyttend to comment from a Commons' view:

On May 13 the file on Commons commons:File:Molvi yaqoob Alvi.jpg had been requested for speedy-deletion due to copyvio-suspicion.

Before deleting the file, on May 14 I added the {{fair use delete}} template, as the image was in use on :en and as the depicted was already dead, whereby it might be eligible for fair-use.

After the fair-use bot had left a note on Commons that the image had been copied to :en, on May 15 I performed the initially requested deletion. --Túrelio (talk) 07:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Really weird

46.119.117.72 (talk · contribs) is posting random strings of characters on talk, Wikipedia talk, file talk and template talk pages. I have no idea what it is trying to do, and looks quite botty. Could an admin please block the account for now? Adabow (talk) 11:38, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

I've blocked the IP. It looks like XRumer. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 11:45, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Normally us spambot blockers would have stopped this for 3 months to a year, but see if it comes back next month or not. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:20, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yobot making inconsequential changes

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Yobot is again making inconsequential changes, against WP:COSMETICBOT and AWB's rules of use. Usually a message on its talk page gets it to at least pause but not this time: [1].--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 12:13, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

JohnBlackburne you are discussing a very few faulty edits on a series of thousands correct edits. The last page you reported has an HTML named entity and bot failed to fix it. I am working on fixing the code. I already reported a similar bug on Wikipedia:WPCleaner's bug page. (Check here) It is a new bug report and as it seems we are not perfect. We are considering to re-disactivate this list. I try to reply every single report made to my talk page or my bot's talk page. Thanks again. You might also want to know that other fixes are underway. (For example User_talk:Frietjes#May_lists discusses how to update code in 2-3 error reports to be more accurate i.e. less false positives). -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:43, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

I emptied the list causing one of the main problems. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:25, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Legobot is warring with me over an RFC

Please take a look at the edits since yesterday (2014-06-03) at WT:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality where User:Legobot and I are disagreeing about whether an RFC that was started only yesterday has already expired. I'm probably doing something wrong that is making Legobot think it is an old RFC. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:43, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

@Dodger67: Bot is working as designed. The very first timestamp after the {{rfc}} is 18:42, 30 April 2014 (UTC) which is more than thirty days ago. This sort of thing comes up quite often at User talk:Legobot. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

There's a workaround documented at User:Legobot#Opt-out. (And, BTW, an edit like this one doesn't work - to ping someone you have to link to their user page and add your signature, in the same edit) -- John of Reading (talk) 11:13, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I moved the template down to the "split" where I noted the start of the RFC. The fist timestamp after it is now in my signature on that note. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:19, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

BAG membership nomination

Per the bot policy, I am making this post to inform the community of a request for BAG membership. Please feel free to ask any questions/comment there. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:35, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

StradBot

So, I've been doing some semi-automated editing using my alternative account User:StradBot, and I've been shouted at because it looks like an unapproved bot. Which is fair enough, because it doesn't have a bot flag, and the name ends in "Bot". What's the best way forward here? Do I need to file an RFBA for the next AWB-like task I do using StradBot? Or do I just need someone to give the account a bot flag? I'm new to all of this bot business, so any advice would be appreciated. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Since you're manually reviewing every edit, you technically don't need a bot flag, but most people would appreciate if you did get one. Legoktm (talk) 08:38, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Makes sense. Off to the bureaucrats' noticeboard I go, then. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:41, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Err, I forgot to answer the second part of your question. To get a bot flag, it'll have to go through WP:BRFA first, and then the crats will flag it after BAG approves it. Legoktm (talk) 08:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Ah, that's important. I'll do that if I have a run involving a large number of pages, then. Thanks for the advice! — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:45, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Using a bot flagged account for manual edits is also frowned upon, because bot edits don't receive the same level of scrutiny. Not that I mind that much, just alerting you to the rock-strewn path. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:31, 17 June 2014 (UTC).

User:Citation bot - mass creation of sub-templates

Citation bot (talk · contribs) is creating a massive number of sub-templates which store citation data within the Template namespace. I have read thru the various past approval requests listed at User:Citation bot#Bot approval, but I can't find an explicit request where they ask for approval for the mass creation of pages (request #6 mentions creation of subtemplates, refering to request #2, but that request doesn't ask for that ability). This bot has been operating in this manner apparently for many years, and the result is about 49k of these templates within Category:Cite doi templates, as well as some other types of citations. There are over 67 million DOIs in existence, so this could continue to grow indefinitely if left unchecked.

I'd like to ask that this bot be blocked temporarily until the operator can explain where and when he got community approval for mass creation of pages, and until this function of his bot has had a proper discussion (and moreso, the general problem of external data being stored in the template namespace). -- Netoholic @ 08:20, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I can't see a problem with this. This is a very useful function that CitationBot's author clearly doesn't receive enough kudos for. It's not indiscriminately sucking up the entire DOI database, but just the information that is required to put properly formatted citations into articles, as and when that information is needed. The exact same information would have needed to be put in the articles directly by hand, if CitationBot wasn't doing this. Can you tell me what your alternative proposal is? -- The Anome (talk) 11:05, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem is the mass creation of pages. There is no problem with filling out citations within the articles. --Netoholic @ 17:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

@The Anome:: May I suggest that if it finds an improper formatted citation, it put the properly formatted citation into the article itself, not create a template itself and then reference the template? If a bot were to fix all citations to a website, IMDb for example, no one would suggest that it create separate templates for every page (either the ones used or every page that exists) in the hope that someone could refer to that page. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:29, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The explanation is in the docs shown at {{cite doi}}. The idea seems to be that if a ref has a DOI, you can just put {{cite doi|xxx}} (where xxx is the doi) in a reference. If the same doi has been used in another article, the job is finished because the first usage will have created the template. If this is the first usage, the bot notices the missing template and does the grunt work of filling in the citation and creating the template. It seems like a good system. To work out if it is effective, someone would need to count how many such templates exist (49k from the above), and compare that with the number of times a {{cite doi}} template is used. Johnuniq (talk) 11:30, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Two comments: (1) {{cite doi}}, {{cite pmid}}, {{cite isbn}} templates are only generated as needed and certainly not for every doi in existence and (2) not everyone thinks they are a good idea (see this discussion). Boghog (talk) 12:24, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Citation bot does one-by-one creation of these templates at the explicit request of editors. The OP appears to misunderstand how and when Citation bot operates. Citation bot is extremely useful in replacing tedious human work with robot work. Like Reflinks, Citation bot operates on demand only, and has a few bugs, but is on balance very useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:03, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Citation bot never sought approval to create new pages. Bots are specifically restricted in what tasks they perform. -- Netoholic @ 17:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I support this bot's activity; with the caveat that I see it as a precursor to moving all such citation data to Wikidata, in the long term. As an aside, that data should also include the ORCID identifier of each author, where known (see WP:ORCID for more, incuding my interest as Wikipedian in residence with ORCID)). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

This issue at hand is that this bot has exceeded its mandate - the approval requests that were made were to update/fill-in citation data (which is uncontroversial), but has change his method of doing this into the mass creation of pages (which is definitely controversial) without seeking approval. The bot's function should be stopped immediately and evaluated. --Netoholic @ 17:00, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I guess it all depends on your perspective, The bot could be stopped, and the issue discussed, the outcome would be that there isnt an issue. The bot has been doing this for almost 6 years, which predates MASSCREATION by about 3 years. Given those factors this is a non-issue. Werieth (talk) 17:12, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The bot policy has always stipulated that the functions a bot performs must be approved. This bot has been performing a function that it never requested, and just because its been working and largely out-of-sight in the template space for 6 years doesn't mean its appropriate to let bots drift from their mandates. Its the bot owner that has the responsibility to prove that he has community approval, and the community has said for many years that mass page creation is something they want discussed. -- Netoholic @ 18:48, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

And the functions are approved, filling in references. Given that CB pre-dates the policy on mass creation, the bot falls under the grandfather clause. Can you point to any kind of discussion where users have had issues with the bots actions? From my perspective the bot is following the mandate given by users to support the process of filling in DOI and other reference material. The approval is fairly broad, the bot is doing it. You seem to be the only one objecting to how it does what it was approved to do. Werieth (talk) 18:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

This has been raised before at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/Archive 4#A separate template for each cited source?. I believe it was during this that User:Smith609 gave his own bot tacit ex post facto approval to create new pages. Also this discussion shows that there is a strong indication that users may not want this. The bot could do its function (filling out citations) without creating new template pages. --Netoholic @ 19:12, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

@Werieth: You ask "Can you point to any kind of discussion where users have had issues with the bots actions?" - just look at the number of unresolved bug reports at User talk:Citation bot, some of them go back months. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:14, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

@Redrose64: There is certainly an issue that the bot owner has said that he doesn't have much time to maintain the bot, and it can be weeks between Wikipedia logins. He has said "The code is open source and interested parties are invited to assist with the operation and extension of the bot ... ", but quite frankly it seems more appropriate to transfer ownership to someone else with more time. But that's a side issue, I think. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:40, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The issue of creating separate template pages was raised in March 2009, as pointed out above - see Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/Archive 4#A separate template for each cited source?. Like many discussions on Wikipedia, it ended with no consensus or resolution. So things have continued on, as is, for over five years.

I think it's important to focus on issues caused by the approach used by the bot, rather than whether there was appropriate approval. (Even if there had been approval, it can always be revoked.) So, possible issues:

1. Extra pages - I'd argue that this is a minor problem, at worst, since the pages are in template space, where the are ignorable. And the cost of storage and extra processing to create article pages is negligible. Plus, as noted in the March 2009 discussion, if the English Wikipedia ever decides to have a Reference namespace, as is in place for the French Wikipedia (and others?), this might be useful. (Or not).
2. Problems with editing the references. This is, to my mind, the big problem, something that may not have been as clear as it could be in my March 2009 posting. Using a doi cite template is fine for readers, but when someone goes into edit mode, what he/she sees is a naked template that cannot be directly edited. So (a) we're asking editors to know (yet) something more - what the curly brackets mean, and how to go to template space to edit the contents), and (b) we're adding a significant additional step for the editor who does understand how to edit that cite doi template.

One way to fix the second problem would be for editors and the bot to use "subst:"; that locks in the text so that going into edit mode makes all the citation information available. This approach would be compatible with having separate doi templates, and reusing the information on them. It would, however, mean that subsequent changes to a doi template would not automatically be reflected in articles using that doi source.

There is, however, something new that potentially impacts this discussion: Visual Editor. In edit mode when using VE, an editor can see all citation information. However, based on a test I just did, he/she still can't edit it - but perhaps that's coming. (I'm going to ask, at WP:VE/F). If/when that happens, and if/when the majority of editors are using VE (I predict that to happen around 2016), then the second problem goes away, at least for those using VE. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:40, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The operator asked for help way back. Not long ago I raised a request here to get him a relief operator and was met with resounding silence. Is there now an assumption that bot owners are perpetually on the hook for keeping the bots up to date, or what's the story? Anyhow, notwithstanding that this particular use of Citation bot in template-space was always a bad idea, we still need that bot to be fixed for its vast utility in article-space. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:58, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

• Nominator right to be concerned, but stopping bot is not the answer The answer is more discussion about citation practices. This is one of the more complicated issues which the community faces.
  • I listed all the outstanding proposals for citation reform in meta's IdeaLab
  • A talk is happening at Wikimania in London August 2014 to address this problem
  • This Sunday 15 June 6pm UTC a team is inviting the public to a meeting in Google Hangout to talk about not just hosting 49k citations in Wikipedia, but actually the entirety of available academic literature in Wikisource

For anyone concerned with this, I might suggest that they try to join this Google hangout, read the list of projects on Meta, attend Wikimania or watch the video of the talk after, and otherwise participate in the conversation. At least 50 highly engaged Wikimedia community members have ideas in this space.

I do not know the right course of action, but if I named the most likely one, it would be that Citation bot or its successor puts the citations on Wikidata instead of English Wikipedia, and then all Wikimedia projects in all languages call the citation from there rather than storing it locally for each project. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:40, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Thank you for the update. I hope consideration will also be given to how Visual Editor should handle "cite doi" templates, or their successor. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:52, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

One major appeal of templates is that it puts formatting and navigation out of the hands of the "casual" editor, to prevent impacting other articles unintentionally. This points to two issues: VE should not generally make editing of templates from within an article edit easy, and data which should be easy to change and related to article content should be in the article itself, not in a template. No matter how one slices it, data about a citation (title, author, etc) must be present in the article. If anything, everything you've brought up points to strong reasons why this bot should be stopped from creating new templates, and instead just recover information from offsite and make use of {{cite journal}} or other similar standard citation template which keeps the data in-article. --Netoholic @ 15:42, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

You say "data about a citation (title, author, etc) must be present in the article itself", but you do not say why. Indeed, I think you are, to put it bluntly, wrong. Certainly the reader must be presented with that data when reading the article, but that is not the same thing. Why would we think that it is a good thing to have a hundred variant citations of a source edition if that source that is cited in a hundred different articles? Each of the hundred will be variously incomplete, incorrect, or quirky in punctuation etc. Corrections made to one will leave the other ninety-nine still in error. To illustrate, consider OL 2527037W, or if you prefer the WorldCat version. This work lists many editions, true, but many of the edition records are redundant, with trivial variations such as missing pub date, year-only versus month-year; "Cassell" vs. "Cassell & company, itd." vs. "Cassell and company, ltd."; "Rev. [i.e. 8th] ed" vs. "[8th] rev. ed." etc. Such variations are also found in other catalogues (both single-library and union) but do not fundamentally impede the identification of the work or edition. Admittedly, in almost every case it is far more important that a reader knows what work to seek than what specific edition. If a reader goes to her library and finds only the "wrong" edition, it will almost always still contain the cited passage, though perhaps on a different page. That is usually sufficient to verify the supported text, which is after all the point of the whole endeavour. Once an editor identifies a source, the tools should make it as trivial as possible to cite it. In cases where all the metadata is available, it is lunacy to require an editor to do more than pick the cited edition from a list of similar instances, then add a page number. We've simply become accustomed to tolerating this lunacy because we have done it for so long now. This entrenched folly exacts a huge cost in missing or incomplete citations, unverifiable assertions, and longstanding errors that cannot be checked simply because the (incorrectly) cited work cannot be found. We see instances of this all the time at wp:RX. Have a look at Comparison of reference management software to get an idea what's possible with existing software, much of which is freely licensed and some of which has even been implemented on mediawiki platforms. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:04, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Tell me, what if one of those "trivial variations" in edition leads to a completely different conclusion? 'Facts' tend to have a certain half-life, and lots of things we thought were true at the beginning of the Wikipedia project have been replaced by new facts in later editions of references. Seeing the exact edition of a reference being used in an article is important because it can flag material that needs to be reevaluated or updated. Also, the metadata should be in each article itself, in the form of a 'cite journal' or other standard citation template, because that preserves the data with the text that makes use of that reference. This makes portability of our articles much easier for when its mirrored elsewhere. Creating a parse for 'cite journal' (such as recreating that template on their wiki, or using some other code) is trivial. Expecting them to not only download the article text but also several cite doi subtemplates separately, then tasking them to merge those templates back into the article text, is burdensome.
Look, this is a discussion that is out of place on this page, which is devoted to the operation of bots. I think though that it is valuable in showing there are many perspectives on how to properly handle citation templates, and that the topic deserves a lot more discussion. The bot, then, should not continue on a path that could be changed, since the work required to correct it will only increase as it continues. The bot has bugs, is doing a mass page creation function that it never got approval for, and the operator is frequently unresponsive. It should be stopped until the proper course can be decided and the problems with its operation are addressed. People can revert quite easily to using standard citation templates in the meantime, which can be migrated to a different solution if that's what's called for. The mass page creation, though, is a major administrative concern and is causing a lot of workload for people that have to manage orphaned cite doi's. -- Netoholic @ 02:35, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps I drifted off topic. I was principally referring not to different editions, but rather to different ways of describing the same edition, such as "Rev. [i.e. 8th] ed" vs. "[8th] rev. ed.". Ideally we should have only one definitive bibliographic record per edition, irrespective of how many times or ways that edition is cited. This proposal is an attempt to get that addressed.
I agree entirely that the cite doi templates are a bad idea, but we should not address that by stopping the bot: that would only leave a lot of incomplete template subpages. Rather the template itself should be deprecated, and creation of new instances prevented. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:41, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

DPL bot now writing dead links on user talk pages

As has been well-discussed at the village pump and the admin noticeboard, toolserver is officially dead. Which means DPL bot (talk · contribs) is now inviting people to solve disambigs using the old toolserver link. (recent example) Of course, you click on that, and find it's dead. Since the bot frequently notifies newbies about their errors, this is bad news.

IMHO all bots that write toolserver links to user talk pages should be shut down until their code is fixed to point to wmflabs. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:37, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, this needs to be fixed; but it's not simply a matter of changing "toolserver.org" to "tools.wmflabs.org", because the tools in question have not been ported to Labs. I don't see any need to shut down the bot; although the dead links are not ideal, the "harm" they cause is relatively minor compared to the beneficial work the bot is doing. Let's give JaGa a few days, at least; he's still around, although not as active as he formerly was. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:27, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

It was a fantastic tool, why couldn't the foundation support him and keep it?♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:43, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: I would rather not air the user's dirty laundry, but basically boiling down to the tool owner wanting to write a new tool that is both technically resource intensive and possibly legally problematic for the WMF. The user is attempting to use their tools as leverage in that disagreement. (There minimum demand is a 24TB storage array, not including the disks needed to back that much data up). Werieth (talk) 19:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Pish. 24 Tb is nothing to the WMF. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:11, 3 July 2014 (UTC).

I see, most unfortunate. It actually made dabbing fun. Now I'll have to rely on User:The Banner to do it all :-)♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:59, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I think you guys just have to switch to WPCleaner. Works perfectly when you want to clean up article by article. The Banner talk 20:15, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

And no, Dr. Blofeld. I am not going to solve them all. Sometimes I come across articles that are so specialist, that the content is almost Chinese for me. In those cases, I use the classic tactic of making a runner. And I think that it will be very difficult to get and keep the number of links to disambiguation pages under 50 000. The Banner talk 20:31, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

 Done I just stripped out the text that included the bad links. Such a shame, it was a fantastic tool. --JaGa^talk 03:17, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

But to use WPCleaner, you have to run Java, which exposes your computer to security risks. --Lineagegeek (talk) 14:45, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Using internet is already a security risk. The Banner talk 13:14, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Question at WP:VPI

FYI: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Bot_name_changes. I've given my two bits, but if other bot operators/BAG members want to weigh in, that might be helpful... Hasteur (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I commented there. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:52, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

SineBot dead

Just for those who missed it, SineBot stopped working a few days ago. See related discussion here. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:41, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

It's running again. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:54, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Bot that are inactive for the last 2-4 years and may lose bot flag

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

This is an (incomplete) list of inactive interwiki bots that not been re-purposed, not edited since February 2013 and in most cases since even earlier. For security reasons and following advice given at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Remove_bot_flag_from_inactive_interwiki_bots.3F, these bots should be de-flagged.

• User:ZéroBot
• User:Zorrobot
• User:WikitanvirBot
• User:WarddrBOT
• User:Vagobot
• User:VolkovBot
• User:TXiKiBoT
• User:TuHan-Bot
• User:TjBot
• User:Synthebot
• User:SundarBot
• User:StigBot
• User:SteenthIWbot
• User:Snaevar-bot
• User:Soulbot
• User:SilvonenBot
• User:SieBot
• User:SantoshBot -- संतोष दहिवळ (talk) 13:56, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
• User:SassoBot
• User:SashatoBot
• User:Rubinbot
• User:Ripchip Bot
• User:RibotBOT
• User:ReigneBOT
• User:RobotQuistnix
• User:YFdyh-bot
• User:RedBot
• User:Razibot
• User:Ptbotgourou
• User:PixelBot
• User:NodBot
• User:NjardarBot
• User:Naudefjbot
• User:MystBot
• User:MSBOT
• User:Minsbot
• User:Mentibot
• User:MenasimBot
• User:Manubot
• User:MalarzBOT
• User:Luckas-bot
• User:LucienBOT
• User:LaaknorBot
• User:Kwjbot
• User:KamikazeBot
• User:Justincheng12345-bot
• User:Jotterbot
• User:IluvatarBot
• User:Gerakibot
• User:Idioma-bot
• User:JhsBot
• User:GZ-Bot
• User:HRoestBot
• User:HarrivBOT
• User:GhalyBot
• User:FoxBot
• User:FiriBot
• User:Fajrbot
• User:EnzaiBot
• User:EleferenBot
• User:DSisyphBot
• User:DorganBot
• User:Dinamik-bot
• User:D'ohBot
• User:DEagleBot
• User:CSBot
• User:CocuBot
• User:ChuispastonBot
• User:ChessBOT
• User:ChenzwBot
• User:Botpankonin
• User:BotKung
• User:BOT-Superzerocool
• User:BendelacBOT
• User:AswnBot
• User:ArthurBot
• User:Analphabot
• User:AmphBot
• User:Alirezabot
• User:AHbot
• User:A4bot
• User:Example bot to keep — xaosflux ^Talk

-- Magioladitis (talk) 08:31, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Next Steps

This is a rather simple request, proposing the following steps to complete (note when complete below) for this one-off batch:

1. Ping each operator as to this discussion. Any operator responding that they plan on reactivating their bot can strike through and sign their bot's name above.

    Done. Notifications sent, was a fun tour around all the other language wikipedias, I'm pretty sure I updated the operator's talk pages there, and not the main pages :D — xaosflux ^Talk 12:34, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

2. Wait 10 days for response and community concerns. (Time's up has started. (refresh)) Done
3. De-authorize the remaining bots (2 BAG endorsements here <for the batch>) Done - see below
4. Ping WP:BN for de-flagging. Done - All bots in the list above are deflagged ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 12:22, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
5. Update bot pages to reflect no longer authorized.  Done ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 12:45, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

During the wait period, should a community consensus to change this process emerge, all steps to be reconsidered. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:38, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Why it has to be that complicated? If someone wants their bot flag back they can request to be re-flagged. In most cases these bots were bot operated by editors from other projects and most of them are located in the deprecated (if still exists) toolserver. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:42, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm sending all the notification now, I suspect this will be a completely non-controversial action, but have run in to sensitivity issues before in cleaning up old permissions, and don't want to open the door to offending editor/operators. I'll have the notifications out today, and if no one shows up it will be done. Gathering the endorsements should be easy too, assuming we will already have yours. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:48, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, thanks Mag and xaos. Removing the flag is not urgent, so leaving a note and providing some time for response is appropriate. –xeno^talk 11:56, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Xaosflux's arguments convinced me. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:59, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Also endorsed by me, and if nothing comes up I will go through the list once the 10 days has passed remove all of the flags, no need to bother BN :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:46, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Addshore thanks! Since my list was hand-made I presume there are more bots that are inactive for more than 2 years and were not included on this list. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:57, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

There probably are! Infact I did know of a tool that would provide us with such a list but I dont seem to be able to find it anywhere! ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 12:58, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Addshore using AWB's list comparer I found 1,368(!) bots in "All Wikipedia Bots" since are not in "Unapproved Wikipedia Bots". User:ZsinjBot is inactive since 2006(!) but it has no flag and it it is not in "Unapproved Wikipedia Bots". Maybe we should add that category ot remove the "All..." one? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:04, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Well I have removed 116 bot flags today (and put 116 bots in the 'Unapproved' category). Feel free to come up with another list for me ;p Bots in general need a bit of a cleanup! ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 13:23, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Note on global bots

While running through notifications, noticed there a few of these bots that are ALSO Global Bots, this clean up resolve their account on en:; but they will still have interwiki global bot flags, further discussion on cleaning them up would need to go to meta: — xaosflux ^Talk 12:14, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed! If you start a discussion I would love a link! ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:46, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Community Discussion

(Note dropped at WP:VPR)

Any local bot (that is, bot that isn't a global bot) should be geflagged if inactive gor a year - between the fact that this frequently means that the bot's task is over; and the fact that our policies change over time, and aren't alwqays reflected in th \e policy changes, we need to prevent these "ghost bots" from starting up again without discussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:47, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

I might suggest a higher threshold (2 years?) but we have certainly deflagged long-inactive bots in the past. We should conduct a similar notification as above to the long inactive bot/owners and go from there. –xeno^talk 17:26, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Inactive bots - break

This is going to be the biggest deflag in Wikipedia's history. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

So I have removed around 300 bot flags today from interwiki bots and bots that have not edited since the beginning of 2010 (excluding some bots that showed they were using the bot flag for reading using high limits). I think this is probably as far as I will 'clean up' for now. So there are still bots with ~4 years inactivity with the bot flag but this has certainly made a large dent in the list :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 00:14, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Addshore, guess you win the top user permissions log for July already :D — xaosflux ^Talk 00:39, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I actually removed another 30 flags this morning. This leaves the line currently at bots with 4 years inactivity. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 10:16, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

• Are we no longer notifying the bot/operator that the flag is being removed prior to removal? –xeno^talk 14:11, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

xeno I think Addshore stopped removing flags some days ago. I think they removed some without notifying and gave access back to those who requested it. If you could help please use User:Magioladitis/Bots. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:16, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

There is no rush, so please let us notify these folks that we are removing the flag prior. [2] And user:addshore, please also send out the notes that you've removed the flag from these bots without prior notice. –xeno^talk 14:25, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea, a few may return to en.wiki. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 15:45, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the majority of flags were removed from bots that are no longer approved for use by the community, ie. old style interwiki bots. The notes will be sent to all of the users that had flags removed. Remember they should also automatically get an email about the flag removal. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 14:14, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Peachy users (Assertion failures runs in an infinite loop)

To those who you Peachy 2, if you have experimental updates switched on, you may find your bot stuck in an assertion failure loop. This can be fixed by switching experimental updates off and letting Peachy install the latest most stable version, by restarting the bot. Sorry guys for the bug. We should have it fixed soon. It can be tracked here.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 11:48, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

This should now be fixed. Apologies for any inconvenience (mea culpa). - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 13:22, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

As I have said before, Peachy would benefit from some sort of release cycle rather than all of the bots auto updating from master! ;) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 14:16, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

All bots running Peachy auto-update from stable by default, which didn't have this serious bug. Master gets merged into stable when it's been found to be sufficiently stable to run.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 14:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Citation bot

Please see User talk:Smith609/Archives/#Citation bot bugs and User talk:Citation bot/Archive1#r561 can't fill in cite doi templates when there is more than one author. I realize that the bot owner is no longer so active on-wiki, and that is understandable, but I hope that someone else who watches here may be able to help solve the problem. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 15:13, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Cydebot

This appears to be down, and Cyde hasn't been around for a month. Any ideas, anyone? Peridon (talk) 11:41, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Cydebot shows recent activity, are you referring to a specific task or sub-bot account? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:48, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

There's a message "Cydebot has stalled" on the admin dashboard, by where the PRODs due for deletion are usually listed (but aren't), the admin stats are missing and the RfA/RfB box is missing too. Peridon (talk) 17:08, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the admin stats are Cydebot - aren't they Cyberpower's? Peridon (talk) 17:11, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

@Peridon: can you provide some links? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:17, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Peridon/links Peridon (talk) 19:25, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, still not following you. Are you expecting User:Cydebot to have editing something but they are not? Please provide a link to a specific example page. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:49, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

That IS the page I am referring to. The page (apart from the 'Things I might need' section at the bottom) is the admin dashboard which comes as template {{admin dashboard}}, and there are things missing. In the 'CSD / proposed deletions' section, the list of prodded pages due for deletion has gone, and there is a little message saying that Cydebot has stalled. Maybe not connected to Cydebot, but also missing, are the admin stats and the RfA/RfB boxes. Peridon (talk) 09:43, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

User:Cyde/List of old proposed deletions is where the stalled message is. The message was manually added April 15, 2014 by Ronhjones. --Bamyers99 (talk) 14:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

That's better @Cyde: will have to check upon return; in the meantime you could request someone else code perform this at WP:BOTREQ. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:59, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I noticed the list wasn't getting updated, so I added the message - rather than showing out of date data. As Clyde appeared to not be login on that often - I sent him an e-mail. When nothing happened, I assumed it was some major issue. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 23:38, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm on it. This should be pretty easy. FYI just because I haven't edited on here in a little bit doesn't mean I'm not around! --Cyde Weys 19:00, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

It's working again. The root cause was the i18n library is now a git submodule, which aren't installed by default on a clone or pull, and none of the other bots I'm running required it. --Cyde Weys 18:20, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Changes to the API are being planned

It's tempting to give this a different headline:

But I don't know if any of them will actually break, because I don't understand all the implications of the changes that are being discussed or know how many bots are relying on which details of the current implementation. I strongly believe that most of you need to watch and participate in mw:Requests for comment/API roadmap. This is a technical discussion with other developers; your technical comments really are wanted. If there are changes being discussed that will break your bot, then please speak up. If you're not sure, then ask. If you can help others, please do. (Overall, I think the plan sounds pretty good.)

This discussion was mentioned in last week's m:Tech/News (you can subscribe here), but the relevance may not have been clear to everyone, and I don't want any bot owner to be surprised by this. If you're going to have to make adjustments, then I'd prefer that you had as much time as possible to do that in. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the head's up en. certainly has a HUGE number of critical bots! — xaosflux ^Talk 19:55, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I'll be sure to update Peachy 2 accordingly to make sure bots using it are able to continue running.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 18:38, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

This is irritating, 90% of my tools will break I suppose. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:14, 5 August 2014 (UTC).

Actually the proposals look sound and the deprecation process does too (though my tools are in mothballs so it may all have happened next time I use them). I wonder what is driving the change? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:22, 5 August 2014 (UTC).

I don't know. I know that there are a lot of technical RFCs going on. It seems like I'm hearing about a new one every week. But I don't know what the driving force behind any of them are.

I'm glad that it seems sound to you, but I wish it wasn't going to break 90% of your tools. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

The driving force is that we can clean up the API and make it even better than it currently is if developers are no longer required to support legacy code/features. Most of the changes have been problems for years, and it's fantastic that Anomie is sitting down and fixing all of them. Legoktm (talk) 00:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, even if that means Peachy is going to break but I am more than ready to implement the changes, so bots using them aren't going to notice any changes.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 05:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

DPL bot malfunctioning?

Sorry for posting this on User talk:JaGa already, but I think a response might be faster here.

Why did DPL bot create Template messages/Cleanup, Template messages/Cleanup/sandbox, and Enquire/sandbox? These are all in the mainspace. Is the bot malfunctioning? Piguy101 (talk) 23:11, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Its page creation log looks pretty low, don't think we need to block this min, JaGa pinged already. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:22, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Scope creep after bot approvals

I'd really like to see bots like User:XLinkBot not get approval, or if they do get approval, the approval process should definitely establish a consensus based procedure for what links such bots can remove; the decision should not be left at the whim of the bot operator. What's going to stop it from removing links to cnn.com etc.? JMP EAX (talk) 13:21, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Common sense, and admins with blocking powers. Is there an actual problem here, or are your objections mostly/purely theoretical? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:57, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Labs tools directory

Labs has a new tools directory. --Bamyers99 (talk) 19:49, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

ClueBots

Cobi (talk · contribs) hasn't edited for three months. Who else operates the ClueBots? Problems are being reported at User talk:ClueBot Commons, which are being ignored - eventually they get archived without resolution. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:42, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Great question, but with suspected malfunction and an unresponsive operator our only remedy will be blocking. Pinging Cobi (also leaving talk message and email to check in.) — xaosflux ^Talk 23:29, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Sent 1, 2, plus wiki-mail. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:35, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I'll get ready to spend my next few days on Huggle, then.. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (lecture) @ 23:37, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm NOT proposing all of the ClueBots just because the operator is absent, only specific malfunctioning ones (in this case CBIII, a page archiving bot). — xaosflux ^Talk 23:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Rich Smith and User:DamianZaremba do IIRC. Legoktm (talk) 23:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I keep an eye on things, and so do Rich Smith (talk · contribs) and DamianZaremba (talk · contribs). -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 23:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for checking in, obviously the edits in question were not severe to the necessity of immediate blocking. The thread on the CB talk should be able to handle the rest of this discussion. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:36, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Rich Smith is active recently, and DamianZaremba is probably available if you contact him via his talk page. --k6ka (talk | contribs) 21:47, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

User:HBC AIV helperbot11

User:HBC AIV helperbot11 is malfunctioning. Kept removing my report about an IP from WP:AIV claiming the IP has been blocked indef when it is not blocked and continues to vandalize. HkCaGu (talk) 08:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

IP has been blocked by CambridgeBayWeather and article semi protected. 71.12.206.168 (talk) 08:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• The bot believed the IP to be blocked because the outdated Perl code does not handle unexpected Unicode in an IP address very well. Specifically, in your report, your {{IPvandal|58.97.142.152}} contained a Unicode E2 80 83 character at the end of the IP address before the closing braces. Google says this is apparently an "em space", which is invisible while editing the page, but still present - probably something you copied in from somewhere. The bot rendered it as "58.97.142.152â" in the logs, which caused it to erroneously match against other blocks and think the IP was blocked when it hadn't been. In the future, my advice is to re-enter your report by hand (without copy/pasting or reverting) if one of the helperbots repeatedly removes it. —Darkwind (talk) 08:58, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Perhaps this could also be fixed in the bot. Coincidentally(?) I had the same problem yesterday. Perhaps some part of Wikipedia recently changed to include an extra "em space". —WOFall (talk) 16:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Slight correction for any future reader. It is "E2 80 8E", which is "LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK" (&lrm;). —WOFall (talk) 15:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Cydebot keeps creating duplicated categories

Cydebot, owned by Cyde, does a great job but it keep creating duplicated categories. This was reported 8 years ago, a year ago, a month ago and today. The owner did not reply to these requests. What should be done? -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

How often are these errors occurring(both in frequency and as a proportion of edits)? — xaosflux ^Talk 12:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

xaosflux no idea. Yobot and BG19bot clean duplicated categories daily. But it would save us enought energy if Cydebot was checking if the category exists before upmerging. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:25, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Cyde any workaround for this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:33, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

OK there was a reply here. Not a biggie but if we can solve it then it's going to be awesome. Less work for my bot. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:34, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Look into a bot's function

I was hoping someone with bot knowledge could investigate Theo's Little Bot's Task 22 (to populate data on film articles that utilize {{Rotten Tomatoes score}}). The bot has not made a positive contribution to a template subpage since April 17, 2014, with the few attempts at the end of August/early September 2014 producing the template's error message. I have personally created a template subpage for use on a film page (Guardians of the Galaxy (film)), in hopes of intially "kickstarting" the bot to come by, but soon realized that I would have to manually update it (as seen in the edit history). I have attempted to contact the bot's owner, Theopolisme, as well as Technical 13 as they have previously helped with the template/bot, but did not receive any answer from either. I'm hoping someone here can look into the bot's operation, the code, and how the task is being executed, to find out if the bot is the problem, or possibly Rotten Tomatoes' API has changed, preventing the bot from working as it needs to. This bot was really helpful for updating this data, and it will be a shame (though not the end of the world) if the task no longer works. Thanks in advance. Note: This was originally posted at the WP:VPT. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 04:22, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

IP doing what looks like bot edits

See 62.25.109.197 (talk · contribs). Is this a logged out bot? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 11:03, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@Dougweller: yeah, looks like it. Softblocking is probably appropriate. --Mdann52talk to me! 11:06, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's an approved bot logged out: a properly approved bot would be using edit summaries. Could be the IP is used a modified version of AWB. Not sure blocking is appropriate, at least not without warning as the edits appear constructive. –xeno^talk 11:08, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Soft blocked. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. And thanks to User:McGeddon who first noticed this. Dougweller (talk) 12:34, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@Xeno: How could an IP user modify AWB to use on the English Wikipedia without being listed on WP:AWB/Checkpage? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:10, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

It's open-source and I don't think it's too hard for a competent coder to strip out the checks. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) –xeno^talk 01:14, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

xeno. True. Very true. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

xeno My experience says that this guys was using python or something but not AWB. But I have seen anonymous IPs using AWB lately. I wonder if we can limit this by adding flood to anonymous IPs that disallows more than x edits per minute. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:14, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Let me think, open source is not a factor. There are few softwares that can decompile codes and can do reverse engineering. Jim Carter (from public cyber) 14:06, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

BG19bot defect

Please examine this sequence for Opple Lighting

• Opple_Lighting&oldid=625935136
• Opple_Lighting&direction=next&oldid=625935136
• Opple_Lighting&direction=next&oldid=626041344

You will see that the first had a mix of = = and == == combinations, which despite the single equal sign error (WP:MOSHEAD), did maintain the Table of Contents with subdirectories.

When BG19bot made its edits in the second, it converted the = = combination but not did not attend to the the == == combination. Thus, the Table of Contents lost all notion of subdirectories, as everything was a level 1 heading.

I made the repair in the third, reestablishing the subdirectories.

Please disable the BG19bot tool until this has a fix as it is currently doing more harm than good.

Peaceray (talk) 05:34, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a duplicate of User talk:Bgwhite#BG19bot defect so please discuss there, per WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:21, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Peaceray always try contacting the bot owner first. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:36, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Magioladitis, I did leave a message on the owner's talk page first, but I also thought that the damage it was doing was serious enough to raise it in this forum. I probably should have posted something here pointing at that discussion as per Redrose64's comment, but it was late at night for me, & we do not always make the best decisions when tired. Peaceray (talk) 05:23, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

PeerReviewBot

PeerReviewBot (talk · contribs) has recently closed two peer reviews in controversial circumstances, where it would have been better to wait. The owner, CBM has disappeared, and nobody else can do anything about the bot. What options do we have? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Ritchie333 blocking is our option. Please provide the links here to: The examples of the errors and the attempted operator contact. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:25, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Rumors of my disappearance are exaggerated. I can be easily reached by email, which I check often enough. The bot's user page has a precise description of the criteria for archiving -- which were explicitly requested by the peer review project, approved in the bot request, and have been followed to the letter for years now. The bot's page also has a link to a detailed log with a reason for each archival.

Ritchie333 is incorrect in claiming that these were "controversial circumstances" or that "it would have been better to wait". The bot is doing exactly what it it should be doing, according to its bot request. Both of the peer reviews that Ritchie333 refers to could be archived by anyone under the explicit Wikipedia:Peer_review/Request_removal_policy. It is unfortunate that Ritchie333 has blamed the bot rather than educating himself about the peer review process.

At the same time, I have indeed been looking for a replacement maintainer for PeerReviewBot for some time. The reason I am still the maintainer is only that no volunteer has surfaced. If anyone has the necessary background to run a bot on the WMF Labs server, I would be glad if they could contact me by email. I would be happy to give them access to the bot's project there. I am not likely to respond again on this thread. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:46, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on the design of a bot-centric web API

Greetings bot developers and administrators! I'm the author of a software library called WikiBrain that democratizes access to Wikipedia-based algorithms from the fields of natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and GIScience. We would like to make these features available to bot developers and Wikipedia researchers through a web API, and have written an individual engagement grant that would support this work.

We need your help in designing the API! Do you have a bot that wants a bigger brain? Head over to the use cases feedback page, review the features WikiBrain offers, and add a sentence or two to tell us what you'd like included in the API. I'd also love pointers to other places to get in touch with bot developers. Thanks! Shilad (talk) 14:28, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi User:Shilad,

Do you know about mw:Requests for comment/API roadmap? I think you'd be a great person to help out with those plans. In the process, you'll also encounter a lot of people who know the API and are interested in improving it. Good luck, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I didn't know about it. Thanks for the pointer! I'll repost over there. Shilad (talk) 03:32, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Substitution bot?

Does someone have, or could someone gen up, a bot that would substitute all occurrences of something like WP:X to W:Y? The number of occurrences is small, like less than five hundred. NE Ent 13:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

@NE Ent: Could you please post all the details on WP:Bot requests? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:35, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Category sort keys needed

Some 1500 stub articles have recently been added to Category:Megachile. Can any of your bots please add sortkeys to these pages so that they are sorted according to the species name like [[Category:Megachile|Mucida]]? The operation would be quite simple: If the page name begins with "Megachile" and contains two words, take the second word and use it as sort key beginning with an upper case letter. De728631 (talk) 13:48, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

@De728631: I suggest you post on WP:Bot requests instead. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 14:38, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, right. I couldn't remember that particular page. Thank you, GB. De728631 (talk) 19:00, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Bot requests

DPL bot

The DPL bot is going cuckoo and needs to be stopped. See for an example: here. Trying to contact the owner failed so far. Prior discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links#Brian Bennett, User talk:DPL bot and User talk:JaGa. The Banner talk 10:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

It looks like it is only malfunctioning on Brian Bennett, I've placed page protection on that page for 1 day while this is being checked out. Please report if other pages are also being impacted--if many bot can be blocked pending resolution. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:39, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Ehm, not only there...

Google Street View in Chile, Age of Empires, RTB2, RTB1... The Banner talk 18:16, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

The bot also fails to see fixed templates like Template:Metropolitan cities of Japan, clogging up maintenance lists like "Templates with disambiguation links" and "Articles With Multiple Dablinks". The last list is now [overrun by Japanese cities due to the failure of DPL bot. The Banner talk 18:26, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I've done some investigation of this. It appears that the issue is not in the bot as such, but rather that the database replica on Tools Labs has gotten out of synch with the master. I've reported this to the Tools Labs mailing list. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:31, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

So the end of this joke is in sight or do we have to wait till Christmas? Any idea how long it can take? The Banner talk 23:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC) The Banner talk 10:38, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any more behavior, do you? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:39, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't bots working on both the replica and the live wiki have some precautions for such cases? Like "don't edit a page that is newer than you expected". — HHHIPPO 06:36, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

The maintenance lists are not yet updated, so the real effect is not yet visible. The Banner talk 10:41, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Here's the status. I reported this issue yesterday, but so far there's been no response from Tool Labs about what they might do, or when. I suspended the problematic bot task yesterday. (Although JaGa owns the bot, I have access to its account on Tool Labs, so I can start and stop it, but not do much else with it.) I think I fixed the issue with Brian Bennett manually (by making a non-null edit to the page's categories), but the only way to fix all the other issues reported by The Banner, absent a database repair, would be to find and edit every "false positive" disambiguation page individually. I am going to try running the bot shortly (one time only) to see if the Brian Bennett issue goes away, and if there are any other problem pages that can easily be identified. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:36, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Aha. The Banner talk 19:27, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, seems that now Templates with disambiguation links has some hiccups. The list is empty for two days, but I have already repaired two templates. The Banner talk 19:05, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Bot edits from IP address

I appreciate that a bot is fixing links to archived content such as this edit, but it appears that the bot is operating from an IP address. Anyone know which bot this is, so they can notify the bot owner? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 12:08, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be ClueBot III operated by Cobi. Others have reported it on the bots page. --Bamyers99 (talk) 14:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, do not recommend blocking at this time, also left a note on the ip talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Assuming that 10.68.16.32 (talk) and ClueBot III (talk · contribs) are one and the same, it seems to be having a lot of trouble at the moment. The vast majority of attempts to archive a page are failing: the threads are added to the archive, but not removed from the main page. Instead, they are then removed from the archive again, with an edit summary like "Unarchiving 1 discussion from ... (Archive failed) (BOT)". --Redrose64 (talk) 09:54, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

If it's only having trouble archiving some pages would that count as it malfunctioning? We need to get something done about this either way because when the bot is unarchiving it is setting off spam filters which then trigger reports to AIV 5 albert square (talk) 01:35, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

In the last 50 edits by the bot, I count

3 instances of "Archiving n discussion[s] from x. (BOT)" on an archive that are balanced by an "Archiving n discussion[s] to x. (BOT)" on the archived page (these are the successes);

17 instances of "Archiving n discussion[s] from x. (BOT)" on an archive that are balanced by an "Unarchiving n discussions from x. (Archive failed) (BOT)" on the archive

6 instances of "Archiving n discussion[s] from x. (BOT)" on an archive that are unbalanced

With three successes out of 26 attempts, this is a failure rate of 88.5%. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:40, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I left a talk note, and email sent to Cobi; will block this IP if not-resolved within the day. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:25, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Good! because I can here to make the same statement. It is not a good idea to have IP addresses messing around with archives and talk pages that are not frequently changed and so may not be on watch lists. -- PBS (talk) 18:05, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I suggest maybe leaving it 2 days? I have emailed @Rich Smith: to see if we have any other way of contacting Cobi 5 albert square (talk) 20:39, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll go to 24 hours from that post--so some time tomorrow. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:21, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I managed to get phone numbers for Damian and Cobi. My phone is telling me that the message to Damian didn't send so presumably not working. I also sent one to Cobi but not sure if that went through as it's a USA number. We can only hope 5 albert square (talk) 22:16, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I just got the following text from Cobi :

Ever since Damien and Rich moved it to wmflabs, I do not have direct access to that server. I still contribute to the code, but I currently cannot restart the bot. 5 albert square (talk) 22:38, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

• 10.68.16.32 has been soft blocked for one week, hopefully Cobi can regain control of his bot. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:46, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

• • Notice left on WP:AN and bot talk. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:50, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to try and get hold of Ryan Lane or Erik from Wikimedia on Monday to see if I can get my labs access reactivated, then I need to hunt down where both CBNG and CBIII are and then work out what went wrong, I'll keep you guys posted - Rich^T|C|E-Mail 23:53, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all your assistance with this @Rich Smith:. It's very much appreciated :-) 5 albert square (talk) 00:13, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

 Done Turned it off and on again and it seems to be editing logged in again - Rich^T|C|E-Mail 22:37, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the update, I removed the IP block on that toolserver address. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Rich_Smith Ah.... The software engineer's solution to live/the universe/everything. *grins* Hasteur (talk) 20:02, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Hasteur Ohhh yes! - Rich^T|C|E-Mail 22:07, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Two office hours about the Bugzilla-to-Phabricator migration

Next week Qgil-WMF will host two office hours to answer your questions about the Bugzilla to Phabricator migration:

• Tuesday 18 Novembre 16:00 UTC
• Tuesday 18 Novembre 23:00 UTC

These will be on #wikimedia-office ^connect. Information about how to join is available at m:IRC office hours. The plan is to start the migration on Friday 21 November at 00:30 UTC. More information will be posted at mw:Phabricator/versus_Bugzilla. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

SineBot

As of this writing, SineBot, the infamous robot that automatically signs unsigned comments, has not edited for over 10 days. Attempts to contact Slakr, the bot operator, has been unsuccessful. If there's an alternate maintainer that could restart the bot, that would be great. In the meantime, human editors can quickly sign unsigned comments with User:Anomie/unsignedhelper. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 12:37, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been on vacation then subsequently sick. Should be back now. --slakr^\ talk / 01:04, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

WP:ANRFC wiped

ClueBot III seems to have entirely wiped ANRFC in an attempt to archive two discussions. Something clearly went wrong. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 09:58, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it was caused by these three edits by Technical 13 (talk · contribs). I cannot find a discussion where these changes were agreed, requested, or even proposed. Accordingly, I've reverted all three edits. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Lugnuts (talk · contribs) reverted the bad archiving edit, and I've deleted Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure/Archives/ 16 (which was misnamed, observe the space) under WP:CSD#G6. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

It was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Lack of archiving (FYI) –xeno^talk 14:27, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you Xeno, that is in fact where it was discussed and agreed that anything helpful to reduce the amount of time completed closures stay on the page is a good thing. I also specifically asked for help with this on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132#ClueBot III where I even pinged the bot maintainer and there are still no replies. I followed the specific instructions for setting up the bot per User:ClueBot III. I'll go back and restore the reverted call and make some changes that I expect should fix the issue. Apparently it doesn't respect the only archive things with those templates after ##hours. So, I'll set the age parameter to something higher than the 40 days for lsb. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 16:04, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

User:HBC AIV helperbot11

HBC AIV helperbot11 (talk · contribs) appears to be editing logged out as 10.68.16.36 (talk · contribs). I've left a talk message an email for operator @Darkwind:. Volume is low right now, blocking is not yet needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:48, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, but I don't think it's my instance of the AIV helperbot doing this. The logs show only the edits to UAA to remove 'Lmaoshesucksdick' and 'Suckmybuttttttt' at 1:00:46 UTC and 1:38:26 UTC respectively, which are the last two edits under the correct username. There are no logs reflecting any other edits being made or attempted. Occam's razor suggests another one of the helperbot copies is at fault. All the same, I've killed the bot for now, and cron won't restart it for another 50 minutes or so. —Darkwind (talk) 05:11, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, any way to tell which bot/operator we may be dealing with here? — xaosflux ^Talk 05:15, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

The only other instance I know of that runs from Labs is HBC AIV helperbot5 (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) which is run by JamesR (t c). —Darkwind (talk) 18:19, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, whoever it was, they have stopped now. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:43, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be happening again, this time at 10.68.17.184 (talk · contribs). I suspect it's HBC AIV helperbot5 (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) as it hasn't edited since before the IP edits. Sam Walton (talk) 10:36, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Left talk page messages for @JamesR: and @Darkwind:. Sam Walton (talk) 10:40, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I concur that it's probably HBC AIV helperbot5 (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights). I was again unable to match any of the IP edits to the bot logs for HBC AIV helperbot11 (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights). —Darkwind (talk) 20:07, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

User:DcoetzeeBot

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

 Done

This bot is currently indef blocked, as its operator has been banned. Additionally there are no currently approved tasks for this account. I propose that it is deauthorized/deflagged. Should the operator ever become unbanned and return to the project they can follow the standard request process for bot approvals. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:21, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

While the bot flag won't do the account much good while blocked save for bypassing the API rate limits, there's no reason why it should have the flag either, so removing it sounds perfectly reasonable. – Reticulated Spline ^{(t • c)} 15:33, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Bot owner is locked, and another bot of him (see WP:BN#De-flagging bot) has been already de-flagged. I support it. Wondering why WMF legal didn't locked this one. — Revi 17:11, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

• I've deflagged the bot. Bots that are blocked do not have authorization, so I don't think any formal "deauthorization" is needed (indeed the bot has been dormant since 2012). –xeno^talk 18:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

AIV helper bots marking removals as minor

I've noticed that User:HBC AIV helperbot11, User:HBC AIV helperbot7 and User:HBC AIV helperbot5 mark the edit as minor when removing reported users at AIV and UAA. On the other hand, User:HBC AIV helperbot doesn't mark them as minor. I think the later is preferable since the removal doesn't show up in watchlists if the minor bot edits are hidden, meaning one doesn't know if the user was dealt with or not, or if the page is empty. @Chillum, Darkwind, Wimt, and JamesR: informing owners. Cenarium (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello. I am running the original User:HBC AIV helperbot which I have made some improvements to it. Specifically I made it handle log outs better using the newish assert=bot param, as far as I can tell if the API does what it should then it will never edit logged out again. The new code uses minor only when it is adding or removing backlog templates, otherwise does not mark as minor. Bot operators should consider upgrading to the new code. Chillum 18:19, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The new code is here User:HBC AIV helperbot/source and here User:HBC AIV helperbot/source/mwAPI.pm. Chillum 18:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

helperbot5's code is updated and running again, apologies for the logged out editing, not sure what was going on there. — JamesR (talk) 10:55, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

De-authorize 7SeriesBOT

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

As 7SeriesBOT (t · th · c · del · cross-wiki · SUL · edit counter · pages created (xtools · sigma) · non-automated edits · BLP edits · undos · manual reverts · rollbacks · logs ^{(blocks · rights · moves)} · rfar · spi · cci) (assign permissions)^{(acc · ap · ev · fm · mms · npr · pm · pc · rb · te)} no longer has administrative permissions, it is no longer capable of completing any tasks. I move to deauthorize/deflag this bot/account. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:19, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Notifications

Ping to operator: @DangerousPanda: — xaosflux ^Talk 17:19, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Ping to active BAG members: @Anomie:, @JamesR:, @Magioladitis:, @MBisanz:. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:39, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Comments

xaosflux I agree. the bot was not active in the last 4 years anyway. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:09, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Support as above. — JamesR (talk) 20:44, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any need to deauthorize the bot, although I would encourage the operator to make sure its tasks still make sense before reactivating it (should the operator desire to do so). Anomie⚔ 00:47, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

This is an adminbot that has lost its admin bit, it has no available tasks. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:13, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't know that we need a formal finding, but I agree. MBisanz ^talk 19:40, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• I've removed the bot flag. –xeno^talk 22:54, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ClueBot 3 not archiving

I came across this after a report to ClueBot NG's page, apparently ClueBot 3 is not archiving?

ClueBot 3's contributions will show it's not archived since 5th January and I'm not sure why--5 albert square (talk) 21:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Bababa67

Could somebody knowedgeable with bots, bot flags and BRFA please have a look at User:Bababa67 and subpages? User seems to have a lot there concerning bots, including two subpages of python code (I don't know python at all, so don't know what they do). --Redrose64 (talk) 15:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• Red, from my little bit of ability to read the code, it appears to be someone attempting to imitate User:Lowercase sigmabot III. I'd block the account and get some feedback from The Earwig and sigma on it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 16:59, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Red I'd say blocking them is the best course of action, unless they are willing to remove the content, and seek approval from the BRFA before making any further bot edits. I can confirm, AFAIK, the code is a copy of LSBIII, so probably shouldn't be there. --Mdann52talk to me! 17:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
    • I don't see any need to block them; they just seem to be testing things out and not causing any tangible harm and haven't actually made any "bot edits". Why not just edit off the offending content and engage in further dialogue? –xeno^talk 17:23, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
      • Agree, no disruptive editing at all is taking place, so no block is warranted. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:32, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
• I'd argue that an attempt to impersonate another user (Lowercase sigmabot III in this case) is grounds for blocking. I've made sure that Earwig and Sigma are aware, and I'll leave the rest to you all. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 00:42, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

  Yes, fair enough. I've deleted all those pages and warned them on this: special:Diff/640019781. –xeno^talk 01:03, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

  Seems ok, @Technical 13:; may be the lack of diffs, etc above--but these edits were all isolated to their userspace, still appears to be a type of testing, can you point to any specific diff of them impersonating the real account with an edit outside of their own userspace? (For blocking grounds). — xaosflux ^Talk 01:23, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

  • This user page is officially controlled by The signmabot? User talk:Lalala6788 (which suggests there needs to be a CU to check if this is the same user using 112.198.99.18 (talk · contribs · WHOIS))? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 01:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, seems to be quacking..., may want to cross post this to ANI unless Xeno wants to keep running with it. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:50, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks like they've edited that bit off. Could be friends/siblings messing around. To me it still seems like they're just testing stuff and I don't really see a pressing need to tell them to get off our lawn just yet ;>, it doesn't seem malicious. But yes, if the situation worsens it should probably go to another venue because there's no actual bot activity/problem. –xeno^talk 04:05, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, all; but I think we should keep a lookout for a while longer --Redrose64 (talk) 15:55, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

fyi, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bababa67. --Mdann52talk to me! 17:30, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

This guy, whilst no longer pretending to be a bot, admin, rollbacker, autopatroller or whatever other hat that he's decided to give to himself this week, is clearly WP:NOTHERE - more than 500 edits, only about 20 of which are outside User:/User talk: space. It's even more so with his pages on meta: and commons:, etc. on all of which his User:/User talk: edits constitute exactly 100% of his total edits. I sent a note, but they didn't reply; although they certainly saw it. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Labs disk maintenance

Labs has scheduled disk maintenance on January 15 at 18:00 UTC for up to 24 hours. Tools/bots may be affected during this time. Full details available on the Labs mailing list. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:12, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Maintenance aborted after 2 hours due to performance issues. Will be rescheduled in the future when more disk space is added. --Bamyers99 (talk) 20:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps next time notification of this "scheduled disk maintenance" can be done maybe just a little bit more than two hours in advance? --Hammersoft (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Hammersoft: The mailing list can be subscribed to for more advanced notification. --Bamyers99 (talk) 21:50, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Will the people who scheduled that maintenance please restart Cyberbot I (talk · contribs), which went down at (presumably) 18:00 and is apparently not self-starting? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:34, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd rather not subscribe to the whole mailing list just to listen out for things like this, could notifications be given here a day or so in advance in the future? Sam Walton (talk) 21:55, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Concur. Perhaps (ironically) a bot could do the notifications for you across many language wikipedias? --Hammersoft (talk) 23:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Cyberbot I, which normally runs continuously, restarted at 00:00 and seems to be running normally. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:18, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Legobot

I don;t know what's actually happening but it seems like Legobot is malfuntioning. It is notifing Example (See User talk:Example) when GA reviewers start or pass/fails an article instead of notifing the nominator. I tried to contact the bot owner Legoktm (talk · contribs) on his talk page, but they haven;t replied. Thanks, Jim Carter 04:42, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The bot defaults to Example when it can't find the nominator, meaning that someone probably didn't set up the template correctly. Legoktm (talk) 04:45, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Bot tagging revision

We had a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 117#Bot tagging of edits, where there was pretty strong support to allowing bots to tag individual edits. Based on the discussions, I would say that bot owners should be encouraged to modify their bots to do so, if it would be appropriate. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:33, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The ability for bots to do that doesn't actually exist yet. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Labs instances reboots

Due to a newly-discovered security vulnerability all labs instances will be rebooted today. Full details. --Bamyers99 (talk) 17:54, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Inline template "Verify credibility" moved to "Unreliable source?"

Resolved

The inline template {{Verify credibility}} has been moved to {{Unreliable source?}}. A redirect remains for the old template. Please update any bot actions accordingly. Jason Quinn (talk) 06:47, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

AWB updated. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

ClueBot III and Cyberbot I created pages in the wrong namespace

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T87645

User:ClueBot III and User:Cyberbot I created pages in the wrong namespace on January 27, 2015. They created pages in the article namespace (0) with page names starting with User:, Book talk: and Template:.

See All pages with prefix User, All pages with prefix Book talk, All pages with prefix Template or see New namespace 0 pages for Cyberbot I and New namespace 0 pages for ClueBot III.

Here is an edit that Cyberbot I made here.

I found this while looking at an InceptionBot new article report; InceptionBot does not look at the User and Book namespaces. --Bamyers99 (talk) 03:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Reported as a MediaWiki issue here. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

More at Wikipedia:Help desk#User:ClueBot III/Indices/Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:13, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Also some pages that were supposed to be in the Wikipedia namespace: All pages with prefix Wikipedia. A couple of other bots were affected too. New namespace 0 pages for Legobot, New namespace 0 pages for AAlertBot, New namespace 0 pages for VeblenBot. --Bamyers99 (talk) 00:54, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Here's a full list of pages on enwiki affected - [3]. Mr.Z-man 01:12, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Yobot

A user posted at WT:TWINKLE asking that Twinkle be modified to apply {{refimprove}} instead of the redirect {{ref improve}}, because a bot (apparently Yobot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) was coming in after his tagging and "fixing" the redirect (example). After looking a little closer, the real problem appears to be not with Twinkle, but with Yobot and WP:COSMETICBOT. Yobot's recent contribs are filled with plenty of edits that have zero impact on the rendered page. A small number of examples are [4], [5], [6], [7], and this particularly blatant case. Looking at the relevant BRFA for the majority of these edits, it seems that there were concerns expressed back then that the bot would be making insignificant changes, and I agree with the concerns. Moreover, the final approval was not clear on exactly what fixes were approved, which may be part of the problem. I believe that Yobot needs to stop doing non-rendering changes (unless a rendering change is also made) per WP:COSMETICBOT, and to cover the other issues, the operator (Magioladitis) needs to make sure to have AWB skip pages when the main task makes no changes. Additionally, I cannot find a valid reason for AWB to be "fixing" a template redirect when the "fix" consists solely of removing a space, and so that change ought to be removed from AWB completely. The version with the space is slightly clearer and more readable anyway. jcgoble3 (talk) 11:00, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

jcgoble3 removing empty nowiki tags is a task in the frame of WP:CHECKWIKI. I can fix the rest. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 13:01, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Bgwhite and GoingBatty: -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Magioladitis: And yet removing empty nowiki tags has no impact on the rendering, therefore I see it as a violation of WP:COSMETICBOT unless you can offer an explanation of why it is critical that they be removed. jcgoble3 (talk) 13:10, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Additionally, I cannot find "empty nowiki tags" on WP:CWERRORS. The closest match is #23, which is a nowiki tag without a closing tag, and that's something totally different. jcgoble3 (talk) 13:12, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

jcgoble3 It's error #85 which was expanded recently. I work a lot on the area of cleaning wiki code with the cooperation of Bgwhite and Frietjes. More editors help in this direction. You could contact me directly before bringing the matter here I think. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:15, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see #85 now (I was scanning the page for "nowiki"). Still, it seems like a cosmetic change that shouldn't be made by itself without a simultaneous rendering change, especially by a bot. jcgoble3 (talk) 13:18, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

jcgoble3 well. these changes helped us fix many infoboxes that in the past did not supported bulleted lists and fix them. (See also [8] and the relevant discussion at User_talk:Frietjes#More_pages_with_empty_nowiki_tags). Moreover, we spotted many left-overs from Visual Editor's older(?) bugs.

On the "br tags" fixing. It is error #2. Since it was a new entry we (Bgwhite and I) used the latest database dump instead of daily scans. Everything worked almost fine since there were very fews cases that the tag has been removed before my bot arrives. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:22, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I get that the nowiki tags were once needed to support lists, as I've dealt with that on external wikis. But with the infoboxes themselves fixed, there is literally no difference in rendering between leaving the tags in and taking them out. Hence why it shouldn't be done by itself. And I'm not disputing the br tag fixes, as correcting invalid HTML is IMO a justifiable reason for what otherwise might be a cosmetic change. My only issue with that task was the edits that produced true cosmetic change without a change to a br tag. jcgoble3 (talk) 13:31, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

jcgoble3 Yes, I agree on that. It's a longstanding problem which has been reduced but never fixed in the whole. There are so many tasks I a trying to do all together that creating dozens of skip conditions sounds a terrible thing to do. The only trick done so far is to work with daily scans instead of monthly scans hoping that AWB will fix the error an if not then fix the bug. When working with monthly scans as we did this time comes with the drawback you reported. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:36, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh no. The supposed "fix" in [9] is depending on phab:T14974, which is a behavior that really really really should be killed... You should have just added a newline before the parameter. Anomie⚔ 12:36, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not able to comment in any depth since I'm away from home on my mobile device, but I personally don't think Twinkle should be be injecting redirects into hundreds or thousands of articles in the first place. There are multiple ways of `fixing` the issue. First, we could leave things as they are and have AWB stop fixing these, but that requires a coding change to an established tool and doesn't fix the additional server load these redirects cause no matter how minimal. This doesn't seem like a particularly good option. Second, we could have the Twinkle developers stop using the redirect unnecessarily. This seems better as it reduces the reliance on redirects that really aren't needed, but I still don't think it is the best option as it requires the coders of Twinkle do something that's already been suggested and they have refused to action. Third, and the best option IMHO is to move the template code to {{Ref improve}} and deprecate {{refimprove}} all together. Just my thoughts, and I'll be happy to expand when I get home tomorrow if needed. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

See Template talk:Refimprove#Requested_move_3_February_2015. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Abandoned Labs tools

You can comment on a proposal about abandoned Labs tools. --Bamyers99 (talk) 19:32, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Possible Bot Issue

User:HasteurBot is removing useful categories from all AfC articles which was not approved in its bot request. I found this category quite useful and find it harmful that it is being removed where it is needed. Thanks! EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 06:19, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Clarification_of_CSD_G13, User_talk:EoRdE6#CSD_G13_Discussion, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Blast_from_the_Past, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Category:AfC_submissions_with_missing_AfC_template,Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#Lecturing_to_the_choir_regarding_G13_and_Category:AfC_submissions_with_missing_AfC_template, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Unauthorized_Bot_Use for all your WP:FORUMSHOPing/Harassment needs. Technically, I should never have tagged these pages because they were not identified using the originally authorized task. Since EoRdE6 decided to misuse the purpose of the identified category of that task I decided that enough drama had arisen from my unapproved use of the bot that I should remove the pages so that we can start the nice burecratic process of re-asking for permission (or not asking for permission again and forcing EoRdE6 to learn how to do technical things since they're so experienced with the project overall that they mess up CSD tagging on a frequent clip). Hasteur (talk) 06:45, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

And technically the unauthorized task was the tagging that occured under the auspices of Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HasteurBot 5. Tonight's de-tagging was undoing the tags after I more a certain user decided to cause drama over this category. Hasteur (talk) 06:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

• I'm requesting further discussion here. As I stated on the talk page of the user who hatted this discussion, An unapproved bot task was reported, admitted to by the accused, and as a result, I think the misused bot flag should be removed from the bot until BAG can decide what to do about it. As such, I'm requesting exactly that. Please remove the bot flag from this bot until a member of BAG makes a statement on the behalf of BAG that it is okay cause disruption with a bot carrying out tasks that, using Hasteur's own comment, were not identified using the originally authorized task. Thank you. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 23:55, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

collapsed edit warring-related squabble --slakr\ talk / 05:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@Hasteur:, @Technical 13: : STOP edit warring over if this should be closed or not, if you have additional information to contribute, please discuss below; if this is resovled someone uninvolved can close it. — xaosflux Talk 14:33, 16 January 2015 (UTC) Xaosflux I was called out on an error, I explained the error and why it was reversing a previous error, I made an apology. The thread was closed by an uninvolved user. The thread was re-opened a week by a user with whom I am mutually User Talk page banned from (I banned them, they banned me) for what appears to be WP:WIKIHOUND reasons. I've gone to AN to ask for a full interaction ban because T13's actions do not improve wikipedia and appear to have the goal of driving me out of Wikipedia. Hasteur (talk) 14:39, 16 January 2015 (UTC) Hasteur: There should be no need for T13 (or anyone else) feeling they need to raise this, nor a need for you to be performing self-closure it without having taken action first. These things should just be done without having to ask or remind bot operators' of basic policy and the need to be civil and responsive. Please, pretty please, fix your bot and its attitude, listen work with others constructively, and chill out. —Sladen (talk) 02:27, 25 January 2015 (UTC) …WP:IAR works with consensus, something clearly not present here: so please leave any closing[10] to others in a position to take an objective overview.

I see that this thread is a little dusty and the bot seems to be operating normally at first glance, but I need some basic info (just like reporting a bug):

1. What are a couple examples of the unapproved behavior? WP:DIFFs help.
2. Is the unapproved behavior still ongoing? Again, WP:DIFFs help.

--slakr^\ talk / 05:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Slakr [11] is an example of the initial unapproved behavior. The bot did not get it's list from User:Petrb/Weird_pages, it was me trying to be clever and bypass the "find the pages that are odd" list and go straight to tagging pages that might be eligible.

[12] is an exmaple of the second unapproved behavior. This was done because I had failed to adhere to the exact authorization provided in the BRFA. A side benefit was preventing a user who was deliberately misusing the purpose of the category from disrupting Wikipedia by nominating some of these pages directly for G13 when the pages had only been edited a few days previous and therefore ineligible (under the consensus at the time) for CSD:G13.

This behavior has not continued [13] therefore there is no ongoing issue (only editors seeking to stir up trouble for "opponents"). Hasteur (talk) 06:16, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@Hasteur: So basically you ran an unapproved task and then tried to revert it, which made a giant mess of things and caused several editors to get frustrated and eventually outright angry. People get angry when unexpected things happen and they feel they have no recourse; this applies both to real life and here. Here, when an editor does something another doesn't like, someone can revert them with a few clicks. If a bot makes a mistake—whether or not another editor is making a mistake at the same time—there's no practical recourse for the editor (other than making thousands of clicks and/or learning a skill they neither already have nor possibly want to know). Case in point, because of this relatively minor screwup in the grand scheme of things, already one person has become frustrated enough to edit war—to the point of getting blocked himself—just because he was presumably, well, extremely frustrated, angry, and wanted someone to alleviate his concerns—something that could have been done had you filed a BRFA in the first place. ( Facepalm).

I, personally, would not recommend removing the bot flag or blocking the bot at this point because neither are urgently necessary given the information at hand; the actions are in the past, and there's no imminent threat of the bot doing it again—that is, provided I'm understanding correctly that that's the case from what you've said.

I, personally, am not going to take action against you, because I know you'll do things by the book in the future. This entire saga won't have to be repeated again, because you now know that even something small can cause unexpected and unintended consequences, and should mistakes happen, you'll consult others before implementing the fix (at the very least as a sanity check) should that fix have to affect numerous pages. I mean, all of that's entirely up to you, but I promise that if you can find the patience to deal with BRFA even with minor things, life becomes a lot easier when the torches and pitchforks come out. And, when bugs and unexpected conditions surface—and they will surface—WP:IAR becomes a geometrically weaker argument in proportion to the ripple of the waves that bug causes (i.e., the perceived damage/stress starts to feel, to the community as a whole, that it outweighs the marginal gain to the encyclopedia provided by whatever action the bot is doing). Again, that's why there's BRFA; it's a place to point to and say, "oh crap, we didn't think about that when we were discussing the thing the bot's supposed to be doing. We'll come up with something to fix it ASAP!" Et voila! Everyone's happy. Problem is pretty much as good as solved to a frustrated editor, and you get plenty of time to fix any issues that arise.

On a related note, you should be aware that this kind of stuff has gotten bot owners sanctioned by Arbcom in the past. Today you angered two people. Do it again, and more will join the bandwagon over time, because that's just what they'll expect. Future out-of-policy screwups, however innocent, will simply confirm ill-seated suspicions about you, and no amount of pointing out their own faults will put a dent in the oncoming tide of anger (not that I would suggest you even do that in the first place *cough*).

TLDR? There be dragons here, and we have precautions to help prevent you from being burned, prevent others from feeling burned, and as a whole keep everyone happy, calm, and cooperative, even if some of those precautions can be bureaucratically annoying.

Consider yourself warned; cue the ominous music. :P

--slakr^\ talk / 07:16, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Slakr This was already agreed to in the 06:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC) response, it was a deliberate and vindictive attempt by the user who keeps trying to get sanctions to stick that is prolonging this drama fest. Even further this understanding was reiterated in the 14:39, 16 January 2015 (UTC) response, yet the vindictive editor brings is up again and demands a pound of flesh. Now we'll go through the nice burecratic process of waiting months/years for someone to step up and decide that this dandelion is high enough to get attention focused on it from bot writers and editors to get a BRFA passed as I wash my hands of the task due to the vindictive and inappropriate uses of the output of the bot task. Hasteur (talk) 14:27, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, in that case, unless anyone else on BAG has any issues or disagrees, I consider this  Done. :P Others are obviously free to update it, but the archive bots will take care of this thread if there aren't any other responses. :P --slakr^\ talk / 21:08, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

• Slakr, This bot is still operating out of its approved scope. It was only authorized to Notify creator of AfC submission that their submission is being nominated. There is no task I can find where it is approved to notify other editors. Since it is posting on pages outside of its own userspace and preforming and unauthorized task, I do not consider this as done at all. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:00, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Technical 13 You are really going to nitpick over something that was requested nearly a year ago by Anne Delong, DGG and Martijn Hoekstra that is harmless, is usefull, doe not consume resources unnecessarily, performs only tasks for which there is consensus, carefully adheres to relevant policies and guidelines, uses informative messages, appropriately worded, in any edit summaries or messages left for users for users who have opted in to getting notifications for at User:HasteurBot/G13 OptIn Notifications? I note that in the place where we looked for ways to try and develop a solution YOU commented then and saw no reason to object then. Statue of limitations being long since expired, is it not reasonable that users who have opted in (unlike the exceedingly poor decision to use the Mass Message System to send out a bunch of holiday wishes)? Slakr, I ask that you close this out as NOT ACTIONABLE and strongly warn T13 that the next time he pulls something like this that he could be sanctioned more harshly than he has (and gotten out of) this time (See 48 hour Edit Warring Block, Removal of Rollback, and the paper thin "It's not my fault" arguments against the block). Hasteur (talk) 23:51, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Considering it is stacked on a long history of bot misuse and abuse, that you claimed has been completely fixed which is apparently not, I would suggest that you should leash your bot and make sure it does exactly what it was authorized to do and nothing more for awhile. If you want to accommodate requests to send these notifications, request a new task for that purpose or even better, have have it post the notifications to its own userspace on a page that users that want the notifications can transclude instead of clogging up page histories of multiple editors for this. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
      • T13, have you actually asked the two users who are recieving these notices to determine if they are "clogging up the page histories" before launching into this jihad? Probably not as your modus operandi is to accuse first and retract afterwords. I'm filing a BRFA since you're having such a tantrum about this. Hasteur (talk) 00:06, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
        • And I just approved it. T13, will you drop this now? Anomie⚔ 00:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
        • Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HasteurBot 9 For your dumass records T13. Hasteur (talk) 00:11, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
          • Hasteur, I know T13 has been annoying you about this, but please keep it civil. Thanks. Anomie⚔ 00:13, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
        • This resolves the current concern about the bot, I'll take my increasing concern about the editor to the appropriate noticeboard. Thank you Hasteur and Anomie. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:16, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

• • • • • Hasteur: Thank you for coming into compliance. I hope this will continue to be the start of a new era, and one with civility at its forefront too. —Sladen (talk) 00:44, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I made it clear that I personally very much wanted these notices, but it is also true that I, and I think everyone else who gets them, would very greater prefer them merged to a single notice. We've ask for this for a year now. Is it beyond everyone's abilities to program this? (I would suggest the logic flow, that if there was a previous notice on the page within , say, 12 hours, it merged it. Don;t we do something similar with warnings processed through huggle? DGG ( talk ) 06:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't mind taking a quick look, if I can find the code of the bot, and see if I can make a pull request. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 01:43, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Martijn Hoekstra, thank you for offering to share your time help Hasteur with the bot; there were some ideas in this Old revision of User talk:Hasteur#Hasteurbot batching if they're any use. Hasteur, would you be able to assist with pointing Martijn to the right place to locate the latest snapshot of notification source code? —Sladen (talk) 06:14, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Martijn Hoekstra/Sladen https://github.com/hasteur/g13bot_tools/blob/master/g13_nudge_bot.py#L257-L274, though I think I need to re-design that bit of code so that the "interested editor" notifications happen independently of notifying (in case the notifying thread croaks as it's submitted on the batch cluster with ~300ish jobs). I'll toy with re-writing the code tonight. Question to Anomie: Because this is a functional change to what exactly gets put on the interested users pages, do I need to fill out a new BRFA? Hasteur (talk) 13:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome to batch the notification delivery without a new BRFA. You can also adjust the content of the individual notifications however you want, as long as it could reasonably be called "a short notice" and each individual notice is triggered as described in the BRFA. Anomie⚔ 00:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Interested spectators (Anomie—DGG—Martijn Hoekstra) Test [14]. I moved the "interested users" notification out to a separate program that gets ran at 3 AM UTC (~10 PM Eastern US). The new notifications will go out starting today/tomorrow (depending on where you are in the world). Hope this truly cleans out the last of this issue. Hasteur (talk) 21:15, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Hasteur Really good to see this in action now and working as a batched edit. Kudos for getting it done! —Sladen (talk) 03:15, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Labs outage Tuesday February 24, 1500 - 1800 UTC

Labs outage for disk drive addition. Full notice. --Bamyers99 (talk) 15:34, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Is LegoBot malfunctioning?

I found out that on the section in which a user wanted to change his username because it's inappropriate, but even though he censored the vulgar word, "pussy", LegoBot said there's no problem with the username. Does the bot detect problems with the usernames with a similar censoring method or is this bot malfunctioning? Snowager (talk) 06:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Report moved from WP:ANI to here. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 06:39, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

@Snowager: Can you post some specific diffs that you suspect are running afoul of this bot's approved tasks? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:18, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

i think he's confused about the actual task. as I understand it, legobot only checks for technical problems with the requested change. in that sense, it did exactly what it is supposed to do. -- Aunva6^{talk - contribs} 17:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

• This edit shows that Legobot hasn't noticed that the two usernames are identical. This edit also sparks evidence that the bot may be going astray, as he also detected no problems before a user found the name as promotional. Snowager (talk) 20:49, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

  Legobot just checks if the request is technically ok: the username isn't in use, not in SUL, etc. It doesn't assess anything about whether the new name is appropriate or not. Legoktm (talk) 05:51, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

  (Hi Lego) How long until SUL finalization is done to the point where we can close WP:CHU/S and WP:CHU/U? If it's long enough to be worth it, I suppose you could make the bot's message clearer, along the lines of "No technical barriers to rename detected.", if you wanted to. Anomie⚔ 12:37, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

  @Snowager: The first example are not identical - AFAIK, MediaWiki is affected by capitalisation in the username. As for the second, it has already been accounted for. Can I suggest this is closed, unless other diffs are found? Mdann52 (talk) 17:22, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

• Very well. We may close this, since Anomie's idea would be good since the message would be clearer, thus possibly LegoBot can detect more problems in censored usernames containing profanity or sexual slang. Snowager-Talk 01:57, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Malfunctioning WP:UAA bot

(moved from WP:ANI) At WP:UAA, there are a lot of usernames reported, but I managed to find some that have been already blocked but not removed by HBC AIV helperbot, which means a possible malfunction. --ToonLucas22 (talk) 23:20, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, your report is that sometimes User:HBC AIV helperbot is not making an edit that it should? (e.g. not something that can be fixed by blocking and will require the operator to review) — xaosflux ^Talk 02:27, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

The bot saw something it did not understand so it intentionally stopped in order to avoid a malfunction. I make them do that so they do not become skynet. It is running again now. Chillum 02:32, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Just a question in re Category:Deaths from surgical complications

Hi. This category was deleted on February 26, 2015 (see Category:Deaths_from_surgical_complications). However, the red-linked categories remain on all the articles in which the subject had this category. Just wondering if this is a problem or if the bot hasn't gotten started yet. Yours, Quis separabit? 03:21, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Is there a reason why no one is answering this very simple question? This is the third thread I have tried. Quis separabit? 02:54, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Have you asked the person who deleted the category? Following your link, I see from the log entry in the pink box that it was JzG (talk · contribs); this also shows the URL of a CfD discussion, specifically Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 8#Category:Deaths from surgical complications, which was also closed by JzG (even though the visible part of the link in that thread reads "Guy"). --Redrose64 (talk) 15:12, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. My name is Guy, my username is JzG, short for "Just zis Guy, you know?", which was my original username. I don't know why the bot has not done its funky thing. I will have a poke around. Guy (Help!) 16:07, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Tagging orphaned fair use images and removing fair use images from userspace

Tagging orphaned fair use images and removing fair use images from userspace used to both be done regularly by bots. Is there no longer a bot doing these tasks? I have removed a handful of fair use images from userspace in the last few days and I'm guessing there's no bot automatically doing that any more? --B (talk) 16:54, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

• User:DASHBot used to handle both tasks, but no bot seems to be doing either task for the moment. I typically tag orphaned non-free files manually instead. I sometimes try to remove files from pages outside the article namespace, but there are too many of them and it takes too much time. I've though of writing a bot for handling both tasks. Maybe I should do that. See quarry:query/1225 quarry:query/1226 for lists of files violating WP:NFCC#7, and quarry:query/1203 quarry:query/1694 for lists of files violating WP:NFCC#9. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:47, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Interesting. I wasn't around in March of 2013 for much editing, GiantSnowman, can you point me to the discussion or tell me how DASHBot (task list ⁽¹⁾ · logs ^{(actions · block · flag)} · botop ^{(e · t · c)} · contribs · user rights) was malfunctioning when you blocked it? I'll see if I can email Tim1357 for the source code (per the infobox on the bot's userpage) and see if fixes can't be made to get the bot fixed and running again from toollabs. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:52, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I would not recommend using old code to tag orphaned non-free files. Due to a bug in Mediawiki, Special:WhatLinksHere and imagelinks provide incorrect data for some files. Old bot code might not take this problem into account. For example, one bot stopped with this task after Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive805#Hazard-Bot false positives flood. See also Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/Archive 8#Database problem - all 'bots which use certain information should be suspended temporarily. I could try writing a new bot which takes this into account and submit a request at WP:BRFA.

From what I can tell, we need three bots:

• NFCC#7 bot, tagging unused non-free files (used to be done by DASHBot, Hazard-Bot and other bots).
• NFCC#7 bot, tagging non-free files with unused revisions (used to be done by Fbot).
• NFCC#9 bot, removing non-free files from non-articles (used to be done by DASHBot). --Stefan2 (talk) 20:25, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Also files where the FUR does not name all of the pages where the file is used (WP:NFCC#10c). See Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard/Archive 8#Bot for files description and the threads that I linked from there. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:40, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

We have lots of files transcluding {{di-missing some article links}} which I believe was added by a bot long ago. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:59, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Stefan2, I was not suggesting using the old bot code specifically, I was suggesting taking the old bot code and running it through a rewrite to produce currently desirable results. Either encouraging Tim to come back and operate it or send me the old code to learn how "it use to do it" so I can better accommodate a new pywiki script to do it right for the future (and run it as a new T13bot task (w/ approval from BAG)). I'll happily also look into what Hazard-Bot (task list ⁽¹⁾ · logs ^{(actions · block · flag)} · botop ^{(e · t · c)} · contribs · user rights) and Fbot (task list ⁽¹⁾ · logs ^{(actions · block · flag)} · botop ^{(e · t · c)} · contribs · user rights) did exactly too and if needed make multiple separate tasks for T13bot to deal with it.

RR64, I'm not sure I follow. If you have some free time, can you email me specifics? I'm seriously interested in putting the bot task(s) together for this, and want to make sure I understand the full problem before I start coding. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 20:50, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Did you follow my links? As I noted at e.g. Wikipedia:Media copyright questions/Archive/2013/December#Bot to detect WP:NFCCP#10c failures?, there are people who will take a non-free image of a TV or film character, that is already in use on the article for the character, and put it on the page for the actor as well. The file description page will probably have a valid FUR for the character's article, but will probably not have a FUR for the actor's article (perhaps because of WP:NFCC#1). Since there are no individual FURs for all of the pages where the image is used, WP:NFCC#10c is violated. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that the best solution would be that I start writing some code and then submit three separate BRFAs. The WP:NFCC#10c problem is more complex, so I'll happily leave that for someone else. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:09, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

• Let me know if I can be of any assistance Stefan2. I'm willing to see what I can do with the 10c stuff too. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 21:22, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

@Technical 13: - edits like this where they were adding referenced articles to a log of unreferenced articles (which they did multiple times) which I raised with the bot-owner here with no response. GiantSnowman 08:28, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Hosting for semi-closed source bot

I'm currently running User:ThePhantomBot but can't run it 24/7 without an external host. The bot deals with detecting LTA so the source can't be public, (there are probably some LTA users willing to look through it to find out how to get around it) I don't care if certain people see the source (trustable users) but my understanding is that tool labs can't be used to host a bot without making all the source code public. Is there any way to host a (semi) closed source bot on tool labs, if not is there anywhere I can host it for free? I assume a free host would be very difficult to find, I've done some searching and haven't been able to find any. In terms of performance, the connection speed is most important, each change takes a very short amount of time to check and of that time almost all of it is API queries. PhantomTech (talk) 19:58, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

While Labs requires that all software be under an open-source license, it doesn't require that the software be made public. See this mailing list post for an official response on that topic. Anomie⚔ 10:10, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm pretty sure having it under an open source license would allow anyone who can view it to legally distribute it, but since in this case it seems like it would only be the people running tool labs I don't have a problem trusting them with that ability. PhantomTech (talk) 15:32, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

CydeBot

Cydebot has managed to delete at least three pages incorrectly recently, User:Muffingg, User:333-blue and Wikipedia:Five pillars. Seems to be a common problem with categories which are also page names within a namespace other than main, such as Category:Wikipedia:Five pillars. This was raised here but Cyde has not replied and seems largely inactive at the moment. Does anything need to be done : E.g. can anyone fix ithe bot or should it have it’s admin bit removed, or be blocked, until it is? The latter seems drastic but it should not be running unsupervised while able to incorrectly delete pages.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 14:39, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

(Copied from @Cyde: talk):

Your immediate attention is requested at Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#CydeBot, as your bot deleted protected page Wikipedia:Five pillars. Please identify where your error is and how you will remedy this type of error. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:51, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Email sent as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:55, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Cross posted to WP:ANI. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:01, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

My guess is the double colon in the page title. That seems to be the unique pattern. 24.236.232.136 (talk) 01:18, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Good insight. --Cyde Weys 02:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne:, bot operators are responsible for all the actions of their bots, so yes something needs to be done and it needs to be done by the op. The most recent log actions by this bot appear to be in order, so it is not completely out of control where immediate blocking would be in order. However, if this is not addressed blocking would be the next step. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:29, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, yes. I realise this is not urgent urgent, with three incidents in the last 2 months (I looked through the bot's deletion log as far back as mid December but those were the only ones I found). But it is a major problem; disturbing for the affected user, disruptive if it's a project page. Apart from fixing it there is a potential workaround; monitor Categories for discussion for categories matching page names and remove them and deal with them before the bot does. A lot of work for someone though, of the sort the bot is supposed to take care of, and someone might object to discussions being closed too early.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:58, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm looking into it now. --Cyde Weys 02:54, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Should be straight-forward to figure out at least. It definitely has to do with PyWikiBot getting confused between what is the namespace of the page and what is the name. --Cyde Weys 02:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! — xaosflux ^Talk 02:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

@Cyde and Xaosflux: If it's a namespace issue, is it related to this problem which (since phab:T87645 is still open) is apparently still not completely resolved? --Redrose64 (talk) 12:28, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

That seems unlikely. Anomie⚔ 13:08, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The first deletion was on Jan 23 which is before this bug was reported as starting.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 13:29, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Or is it just a parsing issue, appears this is happening with deleting Category: %1 where %1 begins with a name that is equal to the name of a name space, e.g. Category:User:USERNAME. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:00, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

The bot deletes the category, then checks if there is an associated talk page and deletes it if necessary (or probably it just deletes the talk and ignores any error saying that the page did not exist). For example, the bot deleted [[Category:Films produced by Georges Méliès]] then immediately deleted [[Category talk:Films produced by Georges Méliès]]. In the latest problem, the bot deleted [[Category:Wikipedia:Five pillars]] then [[Wikipedia:Five pillars]], so I wonder if the problem is a failure in the logic that attempted to generate [[Category talk:Wikipedia:Five pillars]]. Perhaps something tried to normalize the title and stripped off "Category talk:"? Johnuniq (talk) 23:45, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

We should be good now. Also, in a nice case of fixing two birds by killing them with one stone, categories should also be moved now (rather than having their text copied over). Please keep a closer eye on CFD for a bit and let me know if anything goes wrong, but I think we should be good. Thanks to anon and Johnuniq for the insights. --Cyde Weys 00:33, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the update! Happy editing, — xaosflux ^Talk 02:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Lowercase Sigmabot not archiving at AN3

Resolved

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Did something get messed up with the archive configuration at AN3? No threads have been archived in a week, but they should be archived after 48hrs. Stickee (talk) 23:33, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

The issue is occurring on other pages too. Stickee (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Nevermind, seems to be working again. Stickee (talk) 05:44, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Problem in deleting pages

Hi all, I am sorry for putting the issue with other wiki project. On Hindi wikipedia I am not able to delete pages with bot since last few months. I don't know, why it is happening but it shows error given bellow. I am using pywikibot code. Error message: http://hi.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&meta=userinfo&uiprop=blockinfo|groups|rights|hasmsg|ratelimits|preferencestoken Please help me to get out from this problem.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 16:46, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Please copy the error message you are receiving and paste it directly into here. The URL you provided produces different output for every user, as it shows the info for whatever IP/user is viewing it. jcgoble3 (talk) 03:00, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Exact output is as:

Processing page सदस्य वार्ता:संजीव कुमार/test
Error downloading data: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 14: ordinal not in range(128)
Request hi:/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&meta=userinfo&uiprop=blockinfo|groups|rights|hasmsg|ratelimits|preferencestoken
Retrying in 1 minutes...
Error downloading data: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 14: ordinal not in range(128)
Request hi:/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&meta=userinfo&uiprop=blockinfo|groups|rights|hasmsg|ratelimits|preferencestoken
Retrying in 2 minutes...

☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 03:40, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Someone might recognize the issue, but the next thing would be to specify exactly what script you are using, and the command line used. Do you know if you are using the core or the compat version of pywikibot (perhaps a version line is displayed when you run the script)? The error message above is simply saying that the script expected "ascii" (that is, simple English text), but found UTF-8 characters (Hindi). That sort of problem can occur when a script tries to output a message to the computer screen, but there is an encoding mismatch. A Google search shows confusing results, with this page being #2! Have any pywikibot commands worked on the wiki? Johnuniq (talk) 06:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I am using the default delete.py file which can be found by running command

$ git clone --recursive https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/pywikibot/compat.git pywikibot-compat

Exact command line is: $ python delete.py -page:"सदस्य वार्ता:संजीव कुमार/test" -summary:"test"

$ python version.py gives me:

Pywikibot: [https] r-pywikibot-compat.git (00a8cba, g11165, 2015/03/24, 20:48:03, ok)
Release version: 1.0b1
Python: 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 22:59:56) 
[GCC 4.8.2]
config-settings:
use_api = True
use_api_login = True
unicode test: ok

Other commands are working. Like, replace.py, category.py (without redirect too) and many others are working. In August, September and October 2014, it used to work, but from December 2014 to now, it doesn't work. I am using Python 2.7.6 with bash shell.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 06:37, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I've never used any of the scripts like delete.py from pywikibot, so you would be bettter advised elsewhere, although I'm not sure where. On Linux you should be able to get UTF-8 to work in the shell, so you might contemplate whether anything changed in your setup. If you're not sure about the shell, Google something like "bash utf8" and see what is needed.

As a workaround, I suggest creating a text file with a simple name like delete.txt containing the titles of the page or pages you want deleted, one title per line. From skimming the pywikibot files, it looks like you could then run this command:

python delete.py -file:delete.txt -summary:"test"

where "delete.txt" is the name of the file that contains the titles to be deleted. Johnuniq (talk) 08:39, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I tried that way also. After that I tried -cat parameter too. But I couldn't get successed with anyone. I want to know whether there is any problem related to changes in api.php for hiwiki. Or can you please guide me where can I get help. I did google search last month and tried all the changes which I could do but got unsucess only.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 09:04, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

See mw:Manual:Pywikibot/Communication where it mentions the pywikipedia-l mailing list and IRC. One problem is that you are using the "compat" version. That is the old code. I have seen claims that it is needed for some operations, but certainly it is not needed for what you have mentioned. You should be using a new version of the "core" code (which is not fully compatible with compat). I have a copy of core on a local computer, and I tried to find words from your error message to see the cause. However, I could not find anything like the text above. You might report back here if you get a result.

For investigation, can you create a page with a simple English name like "test" and try deleting it. To avoid messing around in main space, the page could be, for example, one of my user subpages—preferably a new one that you create first! The title would be like hi:User:Johnuniq/translate (that link works because "User:" is recognized at all wikis). Johnuniq (talk) 11:18, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I did this test also. I have created a page hi:user:sanjeev bot/test and tried to delete it but the error message is same as above.

python delete.py -page:"user:sanjeev bot/test" -summary:"test"
Processing page सदस्य:Sanjeev bot/test
Error downloading data: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 14: ordinal not in range(128)
Request hi:/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&meta=userinfo&uiprop=blockinfo|groups|rights|hasmsg|ratelimits|preferencestoken
Retrying in 1 minutes...

I found my old files in another directory but that is also not working now, which used to work in August 2014. Details of that version is as:

python version.py 
Pywikibot: [https] r-pywikibot-compat.git (2bebc61, g11037, 2014/08/06, 18:47:05, OUTDATED)
Release version: 1.0b1
Python: 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 22:59:56) 
[GCC 4.8.2]
config-settings:
use_api = True
use_api_login = True
unicode test: ok

So, it looks like (in my understanding) there is problem because of some api.php change. But I don't know how to correct it.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 17:36, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

No, nothing changed in the API. Your Python code is trying to handle the API response as ASCII rather than as UTF-8, which breaks as soon as you try it with your username that has non-ASCII characters in it. Anomie⚔ 20:29, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I think the best step would be get the current core version of pywikibot and use that. However, I found some old compat files I have and scanning for the error message suggests the problem is that your "family" file has a problem with its code2encoding function. Something like this is needed:

def code2encoding(self, code):
    return 'utf-8'

I don't know the details of how that works, but there is a families/wikipedia_family.py file, and family.py. Possibly removing the function from the former would make the script use the latter, which should be as above. Johnuniq (talk) 22:25, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

It is same as your suggestion. I am using latest version and which is same as families/wikipedia_family.py and family.py.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 07:21, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Can you please tell me, where can I get help?☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 19:09, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think there is anything other than what I mentioned: mw:Manual:Pywikibot/Communication. My guess is that there is some glitch in your setup (something is messing around with the family settings). Assuming you don't have a lot of scripts based on the compat version, the best approach would be to remove it and install the core version—sorry, I don't know how that is done. Johnuniq (talk) 23:08, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. It is working, but it is not putting these edits in bot log. So, it is all showing in recentchages. Other edits are coming in bot edits. Can you please help me in this matter also?☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 19:21, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

At hiwiki you are an administrator but your account does not have the bot flag. I assume that having the bot flag would hide page deletions from recent changes, although I'm not sure. However a bot flag would hide all your edits from watchlists for users who are choosing to not show bot edits. Authoritative answers on the technical issues would be available at WP:VPT, but whether the bot flag should be used is a policy question for hiwiki. Johnuniq (talk) 07:29, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I am running a bot on hiwiki with username "sanjeev bot" but that is not able to delete these pages with core version. If I am adding the command sysopnames['wikipedia']['hi'] = 'संजीव कुमार' to this line then instead of bot, my user account is taking actions.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 08:51, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I saw that it was your account that was deleting the pages that appeared in hi:Special:RecentChanges. Pywikibot uses the username configured for the specified family/language when running general scripts, but it uses the sysopname when performing an operation that needs admin privilege, such as deleting a page. I'm not sure if that is automatic, or if you have to specify it in an option, but the purpose of sysopnames is to provide the user name that will be used for admin tasks. For enwiki, WP:ADMINBOT outlines what is needed for a bot that does something like deleting pages. Johnuniq (talk) 10:48, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

SineBot dead

@Slakr: - SineBot (talk · contribs) has not run since 11 April - can somebody kick the server? Also, it would be nice if essential bots like this could be open sourced and hosted by the WMF, just sayin'. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:20, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

SineBot is very much active now. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Suspected malfunctioning bot

It appears thatCorenSearchBot appears to be malfunctioning since when I browsed through Category:Possible copyright violations, mainly in the draft namespace, it tagged various pages as a suspected copyvios even though most were mainly weren't (only very few copyvios in which I've tagged for deletion per G12), giving me a clue that the bot is malfunctioning. Here are some examples of false positives:

• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft:Native_American_Zodiac&url=http://nativewarriors.net/native-american-animal-symbols-native-american-zodiac-meanings.html
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft:The_Swaen&url=http://pastebin.com/pNCQFgyN
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft:Niccole_Trzaska_Cocktail_Creator&url=http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/+/Trzaska%EF%BF%BD%C3%AF%C2%BF%C2%BD%EF%BF%BD/us-70-Greater-New-York-City-Area
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft:Sunrise_yachts&url=https://www.linkedin.com/company/moran-yachts
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft:Lil'_Mo_and_the_Dynaflos&url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bugGwKqrKY

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Snowager (talk • contribs) 01:15, 3 May 2015

With respect Snowager Do the due dilligence and look what the articles were when they were tagged:

• Draft:Native American Zodiac
• Draft:Sunrise yachts
• Draft:Lil' Mo and the Dynaflos

Also part of the issue is using that grey matter to determine how much cross over there is and if it's the nature of the content that's being talked about versus copyright violation. I suggest that you sit down and try to come up with better examples as 3 of the 5 examples you present were copyvios when they were tagged, but have been improved since the tagging (but the tag hasn't been removed) Hasteur (talk) 02:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, some of the articles (or drafts) were copyvios for a certain amount of time, but the tag hasn't been removed, with the second article's former revision turned out to be advertising. I'll come up with some more examples below:
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=RIPS&oldid=&action=compare&url=http://rips-scanner.sourceforge.net/
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Draft:Philip_DeFina&url=http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philip_DeFina
• https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Iron-Carbon_Phase_Diagram&url=http://economypoint.org/i/iron-carbide-diagram.html
• All in all, It's either that CSB is (slightly at the least) malfunctioning, or just tagging articles normally and came out with some false positives. The Snowager-is awake 02:52, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Question

There was a discussion on my talk page about potentially changing the output from the Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/DRN clerk bot task. Keeping in mind that there's a few editors who would like nothing better to brand me a bot operator out of control, I'm asking if making a change to the output from the bot task like this would invoke the requirement for a new BRFA. Thank you in advance. Hasteur (talk) 13:59, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Bot editing whilst logged out

Whichever bot operates from 10.68.17.88 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) is currently editing whilst logged out (one of the bots that clerks AIV and UAA). I think it is HBC AIV helperbot, which hasn't edited since 5:44 this morning, but I'm not certain. @Chillum: as the owner of that bot. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 18:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

It was User:HBC AIV helperbot11. I restarted it for the first time in a while since Chillum's instance seems to be temporarily dead, but on the first try it both failed to log in and failed to realize the bot assert was false. I updated the code and the issue appears to be resolved. —Darkwind (talk) 21:29, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I am currently in between reliable internet connections. I hope to have my bot running in the next day or two. Chillum 19:28, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

API BREAKING CHANGE: Default continuation mode for action=query will change at the end of this month

(Note: I'm copying this in full, because it looks important. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:40, 2 June 2015 (UTC) )

---

Post from https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-June/081931.html

---

As has been announced several times (most recently at https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-April/081559.html), the default continuation mode for action=query requests to api.php will be changing to be easier for new coders to use correctly.

The date is now set: we intend to merge the change to ride the deployment train at the end of June. That should be 1.26wmf12, to be deployed to test wikis on June 30, non-Wikipedias on July 1, and Wikipedias on July 2.

If your bot or script is receiving the warning about this upcoming change (as seen here https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages, for example), it's time to fix your code!

• The simple solution is to simply include the "rawcontinue" parameter with your request to continue receiving the raw continuation data (example https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&rawcontinue=1). No other code changes should be necessary.
• Or you could update your code to use the simplified continuation documented at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query#Continuing_queries (example https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&continue=), which is much easier for clients to implement correctly.

Either of the above solutions may be tested immediately, you'll know it works because you stop seeing the warning.

I've compiled a list of bots that have hit the deprecation warning more than 10000 times over the course of the week May 23–29. If you are responsible for any of these bots, please fix them. If you know who is, please make sure they've seen this notification. Thanks.

AAlertBot
AboHeidiBot
AbshirBot
Acebot
Ameenbot
ArnauBot
Beau.bot
Begemot-Bot
BeneBot*
BeriBot
BOT-Superzerocool
CalakBot
CamelBot
CandalBot
CategorizationBot
CatWatchBot
ClueBot_III
ClueBot_NG
CobainBot
CorenSearchBot
Cyberbot_I
Cyberbot_II
DanmicholoBot
DeltaQuadBot
Dexbot
Dibot
EdinBot
ElphiBot
ErfgoedBot
Faebot
Fatemibot
FawikiPatroller
HAL
HasteurBot
HerculeBot
Hexabot
HRoestBot
IluvatarBot
Invadibot
Irclogbot
Irfan-bot
Jimmy-abot
JYBot
Krdbot
Legobot
Lowercase_sigmabot_III
MahdiBot
MalarzBOT
MastiBot
Merge_bot
NaggoBot
NasirkhanBot
NirvanaBot
Obaid-bot
PatruBOT
PBot
Phe-bot
Rezabot
RMCD_bot
Shuaib-bot
SineBot
SteinsplitterBot
SvickBOT
TaxonBot
Theo's_Little_Bot
W2Bot
WLE-SpainBot
Xqbot
YaCBot
ZedlikBot
ZkBot

-- 
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation

---

(End of copy)

Thanks for that @Quiddity (WMF):, in order to prevent editors being notified numerous times, I thought I should post here and say that I've notified the owners of ClueBot NG and ClueBot III. One of them has acknowledged it.--5 albert square (talk) 17:06, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

SineBot's done. --slakr^\ talk / 23:16, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

ClueBot III not archiving correctly

ClueBot III doesn't seem to be archiving correctly for some reason.

If you look at User talk: Jimbo Wales it is supposed to archive this page whenever a thread doesn't have a response for 24 hours, but it hasn't archived this page since 4 May. The only reason the page isn't 10 miles long by now is because myself and other editors have been manually archiving it. It's also not archiving @K6ka:'s talk page. There have been no response to the pings for the message left about this on ClueBot's talk page, I also tried emailing @Rich Smith: and have had no response. I'm not sure what to do next.--5 albert square (talk) 23:58, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I've just heard back from Rich regarding this, apparently the WP:API changed leading to a ton of PHP errors. Hopefully be resolved soon!--5 albert square (talk) 00:19, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Breaking API changes are (supposed to be) announced to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list, which is reasonably low traffic. If something (in MediaWiki core particularly) broke that wasn't announced, I'd appreciate being told about it so I can either fix it or at least make sure it gets announced. I'd also be happy to talk about improvements to the API to make ClueBot better. See User:BJorsch (WMF) for contact info. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 10:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

BTW, this change is coming up soon, and ClueBot III will probably be affected. The easy solution is to just add rawcontinue=1 to all action=query requests. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 10:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

ClueBot III is not archiving properly again, it's missing out some user talk pages such as User talk: Jimbo Wales. Does anyone know why?--5 albert square (talk) 22:20, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Possibly related: failing to update count

This may be an unrelated recent issue, but for whatever reason, the bot also appears to be failing to update the page counts. This diff here is ClueBot III archiving a thread to archive222, but if you look at the code of the noticeboard in that revision, the current count is still at 187. This seems to be causing problems for the OneClickArchiver script. I believe Technical 13 recently forked the script to correct a similar problem, so I'm pinging him as well. ― Padenton|✉   23:16, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

• I know it's confusing, but I don't believe Cluebot has ever updated counters. I believe it has an internal database or it recalculates what the page should be every time. This is why Technical 13's (Original by Equazcion) OneClickArchiver (Original) script has never directly supported archiving cluebot archived pages. It's on my to do list to make it compatible at some point. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:25, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Quick query

Hi all,

If anyone runs a bot, or knows which bot, runs with the useragent "Reverter/2.0", can you get in contact with me via email ASAP please? Not that you are in any trouble, I'm just looking into something, and knowing this will make the job so much easier :) Thanks, Mdann52 (talk) 21:07, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Help with getting a response from a bot operator

I have been leaving messages for User:Legoktm since January, and no response [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] ... I have also tries sending emails, and no response. Any suggestions on what to do next? the thread in question is User talk:Legoktm#Duplicate parameter args (ping Magioladitis). Frietjes (talk) 19:00, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Frietjes I left them a message in IRC too. Let's wait. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:03, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Frietjes as far as I understand and after the small discussion I had with Legoktm on IRC, the bot should not be working at all. Its code was written for Toolserver and now it works by some miracle. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:56, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Magioladitis, this doesn't explain why he cannot respond to comments on his talk page. Frietjes (talk) 13:30, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: Could you ask him about User talk:Legoktm/May 2015#Legobot not marking CHU/S requests as done, maybe someone else could update the code or take the task over if he has not time? –xeno^talk 13:36, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

If someone wants to take over the bot or submit patches, that would be totally fine. At this point I really only have time for making sure it's still somewhat alive, which it is...

Frietjes, xeno. I was online in IRC the entire day. No replies. I also copied the questions posed above on the channel. If there is anything else I can do, please tell me. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:09, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I turned off on-wiki notifications a while back. The indexer bot is pretty much running on magic smoke at this point, I actually thought I had turned it off. If you want to submit a patch or something, that would be great. Legoktm (talk) 18:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Legoktm, how do I submit a patch? I don't use IRC, and you don't read your email or talk page. Frietjes (talk) 19:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

on line 160 of [23] change

elif param.startswith('mask='):

to

elif re.search('^mask[0-9]*=',param):

which will make mask1=, mask2=, work as well as mask=. of course, I haven't tested this, so any python experts are more than welcome to correct this if I am wrong. Frietjes (talk) 19:18, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

@Frietjes: pull request done Mdann52 (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone who speaks this language: https://github.com/legoktm/harej-bots/blob/master/chu.php and can figure out why auto-marking is not being done at CHU/S and prepare a patch? Thanks! –xeno^talk 19:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Fetching pages with cURL

My bot (user:Rick Bot) has been successfully fetching pages for years with cURL. As of about yesterday it apparently can't anymore. I'm not sure, but I suspect the issue might be the requirement that a custom user agent string be provided. Has this just recently started being enforced? Adding "Rick_Bot/1.0 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rick_Bot)" as the user agent string doesn't seem to fix it. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:55, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Maybe the HTTPS-only change? What OS are you using? If it's an older version, you might not have the proper root certificate installed. Legoktm (talk) 17:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

It was the HTTPS-only change. Thanks! -- Rick Block (talk) 18:20, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

ClueBot NG

Since 21:45, 19 June 2015 this bot always set revert ID to 0, which makes false positives impossible to report. See [24]. What's up?--GZWDer (talk) 17:44, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Related thread: User talk:ClueBot Commons/Archives/2015/June#CB NG not reporting revert IDs. I'm sure there were others, but I can't find them - the archiving of User talk:ClueBot Commons has gone screwy. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:36, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Svenbot

Resolved

Should we indef block Svenbot until Sven Manguard becomes active again? Bot has not edited for 1.5 years and he left a message in January 2015 that he is leaving Wikipedia permanently. If he returns we can unblock the bot immediately. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Are bots of retired users routinely blocked? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:57, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, for security reasons. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus see for instance: Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard/Archive_9#Bot_that_are_inactive_for_the_last_2-4_years_and_may_lose_bot_flag -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:51, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Addshore if we follow the same routine we did last year, Svenbot should certainly be deflagged. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:54, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I have removed the bot flag. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 11:56, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

OK. I think deflagging is enough. No reason to block. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:58, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Got it. I'd recommend to notify Sven on their talkpage once done, so they know why/that it happened when they get back. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:00, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

This message is linked to in the rights log. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 12:05, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I left Sven a message in his talk page too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Lovely teamwork! :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 12:11, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Request for comment: Bot flags and bureaucrats

{{rfc|tech|prop|rfcid=C6D0379}}

Should we remove the bot flagging ability from bureaucrats and add it to a newly created a BAG user group? →Σσς. (Sigma) 07:21, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

This is a noticeboard for bot owners. Please move your RfC to WP:VPR or such. Legoktm (talk) 08:01, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

- or to the Bureaucrats' noticeboard. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: If we were to do that the only thing left for the bureaucrats would be closing RfAs. As it stands, the bureaucrats are a dying breed, but we need them. Although there are 30 or so of them it's difficult to get more than a handful together for a 'crat chat in a reasonable time. What we need are more truly active bureaucrats. The only way we'll do this is to give them more to do, not less. By increasing their tasks, it would attract new candidates for 'cratship and prevent the group's ultimate extinction. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:05, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

The contents of this discussion have been copied to WP:VPR#Request for comment: Bot flags and bureaucrats. →Σσς. (Sigma) 08:46, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Reminder: Everything's scheduled to break this week

You know that I exaggerate, but the long-awaited "rawcontinue" change (see /Archive 9#API BREAKING CHANGE: Default continuation mode for action=query will change at the end of this month) starts tomorrow (Tuesday) with test wikis and there's a leap second tomorrow at 23:59:60 UTC, and that's all in addition to the normal development train and any remaining fallout about HTTPS. If you run into problems during the next couple of days, then knowing exactly when the problem started may be especially useful for debugging. I'll be watching VPT, but you may get more useful responses on IRC if anything goes wrong. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

All AWB bots should upgrade to version 5.7.0.0 or later. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:53, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

ZscoutBot

@Xeno:: User:ZscoutBot was approved in 2012. The bot never edited, its creator, Zscout370 never replied and they are retired two years now. I suggest that we remove the bot flag. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:23, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Done –xeno^talk 17:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

ChrisSalij Bot

@Addshore and Xeno: User:ChrisSalij Bot was approved back in 2010 and it was agreed the bot will be deflagged "6 months later". -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:14, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 17:00, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

User:Citation bot

I've just blocked this bot for blanking numerous articles. The owner Smith609 does not seem to be around much. Next step? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:54, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The owner sometimes responds to e-mail messages. It would be great if there were someone active who could take over this bot. I think Smith609 is too busy with real life. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:01, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The code resides on Google Code, so the first task will be moving it, presumably to GitHub? I asked here for a relief operator years ago, to no avail. Given the importance of this bot to wp:V, perhaps it is something to which the WMF should dedicate some resources. LeadSongDog come howl! 01:30, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

I can have a look at this. I can't make any guarantees though. I'm suggesting this because I am working on a bot the works on archiving citations and rescuing dead links.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberpower678 (talk • contribs) 05:59, 22 June 2015‎ (UTC)

Thank you for looking into it. It's a high value activity, directly supporting wp:V, but has been in need of attention for a while now. The bot's talk page can be a busy place.LeadSongDog come howl! 13:19, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I've copied the repo over to my GitHub account located here.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 03:35, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

This code is going to take some time to study.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 02:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

T13bot

@Addshore, Xaosflux, and Xeno: please remove flag from User:T13bot. Bot and bot owner were blocked for sockpuppeting. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Done –xeno^talk 09:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Simplebot

@Xeno: please deflag User:Simplebot. Editor and bot inactive since 2009. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Done –xeno^talk 09:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

DustaBot

@Xeno, Addshore, and Chillum: I noticed that User:DustaBot does not have a bot flag while its redirect User:DusterBot has a bot flag. We should deflag DusterBot and flag DustaBot. @Chillum: Is your bot still operating? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure what happened with the flag. Regardless the bot is defunct, I have not ran it in years. Chillum 22:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@Chillum: Probably under the move the flag did not move. Anyway, I think it's for the best that we remove the bot flags entirely and when you need the flag back you fill out a request. Thanks for the quick reply! Magioladitis (talk) 22:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:27, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Jietse's bot

Jitse's bot (talk · contribs) has stopped working. It’s actually not been working reliably for a number of months; see its talk page for previous incidents. but it has now stopped altogether, as of two weeks ago. I did not notice sooner as I missed its daily updates dropping off my watchlist.

Unfortunately its owner Jitse Niesen (talk · contribs) seems inactive. Despite pings and at least one e-mail he has not responded to queries about previous problems and has not noticed the current hiatus which I would think he would spot if at all active. Absent being able to contact him to restart it I don't know if anyone else is able to; it is hopefully something simple.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:53, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

I have now ascertained that Jitse Niesen is aware of the situation and will probably look at it within a couple of days. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:56, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

It's over a week now and nothing has been done. Can you say anything more about what he said or wrote about looking at it?--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:26, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

JohnBlackburne as far as I can see, this account has no bot flag. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:43, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I do not know the importance of that, nor if it is important why it is has none. I imagine it was just overlooked as Jitse Niesen is an admin who could have added it himself, and it certainly is a bot.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 13:17, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Sysops don't have the ability to add bot flags. Only Bureaucrats can do that. As for the importance of bot flags, it grants the bot account the ability to run faster on Wikipedia and not flood recent changes with bot edits, or watch lists for that matter.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 13:24, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I did not realise admins could not set the bot flag. And now you mention it I know of and occasionally use the watchlist filtering function, and can see to how it would allow bots to run faster/automated edits without them being flagged or objected to. But neither use would be much use for this bot. It makes normally three edits a day, to three pages that only it edits. Editors who don’t want to see its edits can not watch those three pages; almost certainly anyone seeing its edits on their watchlist has manually added one or more of those pages.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:18, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

DASHBot

DASHBot operated by Tim1357 is a toolserver bot and has ben blocked for more than 2 years. I think we should remove the bot flag. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:47, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@Addshore and Xeno:. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Done –xeno^talk 10:28, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@Xeno and Magioladitis: I noticed that DASHBot and three other bots are now appearing on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000. Could this be due to the work you're doing with inactive bots? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

GoingBatty Since they do not have a bot flag anymore, they are not considered as bots anymore. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: There's an exclusion list at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Unflagged bots, and WereSpielChequers (talk · contribs) has added DASHBot, and I have added the other three to that list. What I did was look for usernames with "bot" (case-insensitive) in the latest version that weren't listed in that of 1 July 2015, so there may be others of two types: those that do not have "bot" in their names, and those that didn't make it onto the 1–1000 list (because they have fewer than 51,191 edits). --Redrose64 (talk) 09:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

thanks Redrose, I'm currently editing by iPad, so each edit is a bit of an undertaking. I usually check accounts containing bot on the list of active wikipedians, the user pages make it clear whether they are bots or not. I did one of the new bot entries but thought it better to get to a PC for subsequent edits. ϢereSpielChequers 09:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64 and WereSpielChequers: Thanks for reminding me about the list and adding the four former bots to the list. I looked at the remainder of the list and added 14 more. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:38, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

JYBot

@Addshore, Xaosflux, and Xeno: JYBot operated by javadyou is a interwiki bot that I missed in the above list. We should remove the flag too. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:56, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 10:17, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Interwiki Bot that are inactive

Resolved

@Xeno and Addshore:

The following bots have been inactive since February 2013 or earlier, they are interwiki bots (they survived the big bots cleanup because they were not listed as such!) and most probably have been broken after latest API changes. They match all the criteria for removing their flag.

• MahdiBot
• AkhtaBot
• Albambot
• Adlerbot
• AndersBot
• AstaBOTh15
• BepBot
• Bersibot
• Bocianski.bot
• Bota47
• User:BotdeSki
• User:Caypartisbot
• User:Dpkbot
• User:DragonBot
• User:Wybot
• User:YekratsBot~enwiki
• User:XZeroBot
• User:Ver-bot
• User:Vini 17bot5
• User:ViskonBot
• User:VP-bot
• User:Tsca.bot
• User:ToePeu.bot
• User:Sahimrobot
• User:SharafBot
• User:Slobot
• User:SebrevBOT
• User:Rtz-bot
• User:RoboServien
• User:RebelRobot
• User:PCbot
• User:Obersachsebot
• User:Nallimbot
• User:MastiBot
• User:Le Pied-bot~enwiki
• User:Kgsbot
• User:KocjoBot~enwiki
• User:AEBot
• User:AZatBot~enwiki
• User:MCBot
• User:Rezabot
• User:Heikobot
• User:HerculeBot
• User:Mihas-bot
• User:SpeedyBot
• User:TARBOT
• User:DarafshBot
• User:TaBOT-zerem
• User:Z-BOT
• User:H2Bot
• User:LatitudeBot
• User:Lt-wiki-bot

Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 10:55, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: too. This is a list of interwiki bots. I l create another list of other "weird" cases of inactive bots. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:46, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I left messages to all bot owners, exactly as we did last year. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:38, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Magioladitis, especially for leaving the notes. If there is no response in a few days we will withdraw the flags. –xeno^talk 17:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

MahdiBot was buggy in any case. I kept coming across errors. All moot now - unless WikiData was mispopulated as a result --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Magioladitis, we gave this a 10 day wait period for anyone to object last time. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:35, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done I went ahead and shortened the 10 days notice to, well, I guess 4.. All bots double checked and flags removed! If anyone suddely appears from the darkness requesting their flag back send them my way! (but I say this in the rights log anyway!) Thanks for the list again Magioladitis! ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 20:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@Addshore: Thanks. Since all these bots are interwiki bots can you please change their status from inactive to unapproved? You only have to change |status=. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I marked all deflagged interwiki bots as unapproved. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:09, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I would have been happy to but it would seem you have beaten me! :) ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 10:18, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

CrimsonBot

@Addshore: CrimsonBot, was operated by retired Wikipedian CrimsonBlue. Both accounts are marked as retired since January 2013. Can you please remove the bot flag? -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:07, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

 Done ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 13:18, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

SporkBot malfunctioning on reference lists

I just spent two minutes scratching my head because SporkBot (talk · contribs) removed this reference that had a formatting error I was about to fix, meaning I was looking at the wikitext wondering "where's it gone"? Since the bot's owner, Plastikspork (talk · contribs) has retired, perhaps the bot should be shut down until this can be reviewed? A bot shouldn't revert good faith, even if badly formatted, edits like that. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:54, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

That's odd. The bot was apparently running when I turned on my desktop computer. I will disable this feature, and I will not run it again until the error is fixed. Thank you, and thanks to Alakzi for alerting me to this thread. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 22:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Contacting Legoktm

per this thread, I am unable to contact Legoktm. Thanks to Mdann52, we now have this pull request. can Magioladitis or someone who Legoktm responds to get Legoktm to apply this pull request? this will allow us to remove the duplicate args introduced in this edit. Frietjes (talk) 14:02, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

That's odd. I recently spoke to him on IRC. I can see if I can grab his attention.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 15:31, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

per this thread, I am unable to contact Legoktm. Thanks to Mdann52, we now have this pull request. can Magioladitis or someone who Legoktm responds to get Legoktm to apply this pull request? this will allow us to remove the duplicate args introduced in this edit. Frietjes (talk) 16:30, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Frietjes Maybe it's time that we start taking over the various Legobot tasks? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:07, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Magioladitis, that's possible, but you would probably want to block Legobot to make sure there isn't a conflict between the two bots, especially if Legobot only uses old code. Frietjes (talk) 17:10, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Frietjes Yes. I have this in mind. I only need Legogoktm's attention for 10 minutes before I take any action. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:12, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Please do. I haven't been able to give them much love or really any attention at all. There's no need to block Legobot since it runs like 20 things, just ping me on IRC and I can turn off individual tasks. Legoktm (talk) 06:25, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

@Frietjes:: Mdann52's change was against the wrong repo. Legoktm will have a look tomorrow. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:32, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

ArmbrustBot overriding bot policy

Already being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#ArmbrustBot 4. Anomie⚔ 21:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

See User talk:Armbrust#Problem at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 25#1st to 5th century BC births, and explanation of problem after the closed discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 May 25#1st to 5th century BC births. Ambrust seems to be unwilling to take responsability for the bot's actions. --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:48, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

→ see Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#ArmbrustBot 4 --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:49, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Where is VeblenBot's code?

I'm quite active in the peer review community and I'd like to propose some changes to the bot. I've been given permission from Ruhrfisch, who currently manages the bot in behalf of CBM (currently inactive). However I'm having some trouble finding where the code actually is. Any of the links provided on the user page or toolserver turn up dead ends. Where is the actual page with the code contained? I would be very grateful for a response, as when I have access to the code I can then propose specific changes for discussion. Cheers, --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:30, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Copied from village pump, as this may be a more appropriate forum. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Only the bot maintainer can answer that question, since it's not required to be public in any particular place. I found this archive of the Toolserver SVN: http://sourceforge.net/p/toolserver/code/HEAD/tree/cbm/VeblenBot. However, since it's just an archive, I don't know where the bot's current code lies. — Earwig ^talk 02:22, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your reply. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:14, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

ENewsBot

ENewsBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights)

ENewsBot owned by JamesR stopped working since its functionality became obsolete. @Xeno, Addshore, and Xaosflux: et al. I suggest that the bot flag is removed unless JamesR wants to keep the flag for other tasks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:40, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The bot flag can be removed, the use of the bot has been superseded by the MediaWiki message delivery system. — JamesR (talk) 21:50, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

•  Done, thanks both –xeno^talk 23:15, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

SmackBot

@Xeno, Addshore, and Xaosflux: et al. SmackBot has not edited for 4 years and it is now a redirect of Helpful Pixie Bot which has no bot flag and it is blocked. I think the bot flag has to be removed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 05:49, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

 Done ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 09:08, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

@Addshore and Magioladitis: Just added SmackBot to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Unflagged bots as well. GoingBatty (talk) 02:44, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, cool. I didn't know that was still maintained. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 03:15, 21 August 2015 (UTC).

I need experienced editors to comment

Hi guys. Sorry for spamming this, but it's for a good cause. I would like to encourage editors to comment on my idea lab request here. Input would be greatly appreciated.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 20:15, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

ChzzBots

• ChzzBot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) - last edit 6 June 2011
• ChzzBot II (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) - last edit 24 April 2012
• ChzzBot III (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) - last edit 26 April 2011
• ChzzBot IV (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) - last edit 23 April 2012

All maintained by Chzz (talk · contribs), who has been missing since March 2013. In two cases, they were marked as not having flags anymore, but near as I can tell, they all still have a flag. As it seems unlikely that Chzz is coming back anytime soon, I'd suggest we de-flag them.  Avic  ►  06:37, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

@Xeno and Addshore: -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:28, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

•  Done –xeno^talk 22:32, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Abotzi

I'm requesting the removal of the bot flag from my bot. Alakzi (talk) 17:59, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Alakzi why? I hope it is not due to me. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, I've finished the bot run. Is it standard practice to keep the flag thereafter? If so, never mind. Alakzi (talk) 18:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Alakzi Ah OK! If you finished the borr run, I'll remove the AWB access and we can ask @Addshore: to remove the bot flag. This is for security reasons. You can take thee bot flag as soon as you have a new task. Thanks! Magioladitis (talk) 18:55, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Can I keep regular AWB access on my bot for other semi-automated tasks? Alakzi (talk) 19:01, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Alakzi I am not sure. I think some people use to have an alternative account for AWB editing in the past. I 'll check it for you. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:05, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

IMO, you shouldn't use an account used for bot edits for other edits runs without a flag/approval - this just mixes up the edit history. While some users do have an alternative account for AWB, again they usually seek permission for largish runs on there (from what I've seen anyway - I may be wrong!) Mdann52 (talk) 20:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

@Xeno: What do you think? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:53, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Probably not; the bot flag is typically reserved for tasks that have had BAG approval, people need to be comfortable hiding those edits from various watchlists/recent changes - semi-automated tasks taken on an operators' own initiative should probably be done from an alternate account, like Mdann suggested above; a bot should only be doing edits in service of an approved task. –xeno^talk 22:59, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Issues with Cydebot need to be addressed.

Cydebot has been making edits not supported by the CFD discussions it links to in the edit discription. There has also been other issues mentioned on Cyde's talk page that haven't been addressed as well, namely:

1. Regularly removing only one line from a Speedy CFD template [25]
2. Occasionally blanking a category page instead of just removing the CFD template [26]

This bot should be stopped or blocked from editing until these issues are resolved. Suppafly (talk) 15:47, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Contacting Legoktm

@Magioladitis: per this thread and this thread, User:Legoktm will not respond to email or requests on his/her talk page. Can someone assist? In particular, I am still waiting to hear about progress on merging a change to eliminate the need for duplicate |mask= in Talk:World War II and several other talk pages. the change submitted by Mdann52 allows for duplicate |mask= to be replaced by |mask1=, |mask2=, |mask3=, ... and remove these pages from the duplicate parameter tracking category. Frietjes (talk) 16:44, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Addshore: -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:32, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I just went ahead and grabbed legoktm's attention on IRC and pointed him here. So it's his choice to respond or not at this point.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 17:34, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It's running with the patch now. Legoktm (talk) 17:40, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Frietjes: -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:54, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Magioladitis, C678, and Legoktm: thank you, now testing with this change. hopefully it works. if not, let me know so I can suggest a modification. Frietjes (talk) 19:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:BRFA#Adding a form for BRFA

You are invited to join the discussion at WT:BRFA#Adding a form for BRFA. Thanks. APerson (talk!) 13:45, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Questions about web scraping

Hello!

I'm a totally new user and how no idea if this is the right place to post this. Anyway, I created a very small web scraper in Java. It takes the headlines of the day, and opens them, with a 3000 ms delay, in new tabs. It cannot edit or change Wikipedia in any way or form. I have not found any information regarding the topic of web scraping here on Wikipedia, so I hope that I could get an answer here. What is Wikipedias policy on this? What am I allowed to do/not do?

--TheYoungOak (talk) 13:52, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Are you trying to webscrape Wikipedia. Why not just use the API instead?—^cyberpower_Chat:Offline 04:03, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't even know that existed. I thought I checked everything I could. Oh well, thank you! I'll have a look at that :)

TheYoungOak (talk) 07:31, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

In general read only bots can act without approval. You can probably read faster than every 3 seconds if you like, just slow down when you get 503 errors. Specifically if you get a 503 error look for the "Retry-After:" header and wait that long, though this is unlikely to pop use given the small scale of what you asking of the API. HighInBC ^{(was Chillum)} 15:40, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

That and use the maxlag parameter (e.g. append &maxlag=5 to the URL) to get those 503 errors in the first place. Anomie⚔ 11:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@Anomie: You have a typo in that code.... (Maximum 5 languages???) jcgoble3 (talk) 03:37, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, of course. Writing a bot in more than five languages is just confusing. — Earwig ^talk 09:17, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Oops, thanks. Anomie⚔ 12:03, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

A long time ago, there used to be a rule (set by the Wikimedia server admins) that read-only bots could run without authorization, but were limited to one page read per second (communicated via robots.txt). The limit was experimentally removed in 2006 to see if it caused any problems, and given that it hasn't been replaced yet, I'm assuming it was concluded that the limit was unnecessary (there's now a text warning there instead). However, "1 read per second" is probably a sensible rate limit to use anyway, given that it worked just fine throughout Wikipedia's early history and we have more powerful servers nowadays. Using maxlag (as Anomie suggests) is a good idea, because that allows the site to let you know when it's under particular stress (and thus could do with bots holding off for a while). I'd also recommend using the API, both because it's easier on the servers, and because it's likely to be easier from your end too (scrapers have a tendency to break as a result of site changes). --ais523 12:45, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Wow, such a response! I am very grateful for your input, and I will take all of this into consideration. I might not be able to actually make anything out of this, but now I know where I can start :) "1 read per second" seems sensible too, I just wanted to play it safe. TheYoungOak (talk) 17:07, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Sandbox cleaning bots not running

Lowercase sigmabot II and Hazard-Bot, bots that clean Wikipedia sandbox pages, are not running, the former making its last edit in August 2015, and the latter just four days ago. Sandbox pages are starting to pile up and human editors are now tasked with having to clean the pages regularly. Can this be investigated? Thanks, --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 13:21, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I can activate Cyberbot I's sandbox cleaning task if that helps?—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 13:32, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: Yes please, that would be greatly appreciated! --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 14:38, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

3 things. What pages do you need cleaning, how often, and what should the bot leave there when it goes?—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 15:24, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: I don't know if I have all the sandbox pages (As there seems to be no "Sandbox page" category), but I'll do my best to list all of them. As follows:

Page	Default text
Wikipedia:Sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}}<!-- * Welcome to the sandbox! * * Please leave this part alone * * The page is cleared regularly * * Feel free to try your editing skills below * ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
Wikipedia talk:Sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}}<!-- * Welcome to the sandbox! * * Please leave this part alone * * The page is cleared regularly * * Feel free to try your editing skills below * ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
User:Sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}}<!-- * Welcome to the sandbox! * * Please leave this part alone * * The page is cleared regularly * * Feel free to try your editing skills below * ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
User talk:Sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}}<!-- * Welcome to the sandbox! * * Please leave this part alone * * The page is cleared regularly * * Feel free to try your editing skills below * ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
Wikipedia:Tutorial/Editing/sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}}<!-- * Welcome to the sandbox! * * Please leave this part alone * * The page is cleared regularly * * Feel free to try your editing skills below * ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-->
Wikipedia talk:Tutorial/Editing/sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}} <!-- Hello! Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills below this line. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. -->
Template:X1 - Template:X12 (It's listed at {{Please leave this line alone (template sandbox heading)}}	Extended content <noinclude> This sandbox is itself a template. This sandbox is for experimenting with templates. {{Please leave this line alone (template sandbox heading)}} If you defined parameters such as <tt>{{Template sandbox|First|Second|name="Named"}}</tt>: ;First:{{{1}}} ;Second:{{{2}}} ;Name:{{{name}}} ----</noinclude>
Template talk:X1 - Template talk:X12	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}} <!-- Hello! Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills below this line. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. -->
Template:Template sandbox	Extended content <noinclude> This sandbox is itself a template. This sandbox is for experimenting with templates. {{Please leave this line alone (template sandbox heading)}} If you defined parameters such as <tt>{{Template sandbox|First|Second|name="Named"}}</tt>: ;First:{{{1}}} ;Second:{{{2}}} ;Name:{{{name}}} ----</noinclude>
Template talk:Template sandbox	Extended content {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}} <!-- Hello! Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills below this line. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. -->

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I apologize in advance if I missed anything. I think the bots clean the pages out every hour, but will immediately reinsert the template if it gets removed. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 17:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

BRFA filed—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 18:13, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

 Done—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 19:47, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

@C678: Would it be possible to relax the schedule for cleaning the template sandboxes, which aren't used nearly as frequently as the main Wikipedia sandbox? The "Extended content" section of Template talk:... says, ...this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. That is probably what it used to be. Otherwise, the time of the clean-up should be stated in the sandbox documentation, which I have tried to change but haven't found the way to do that. Although you quickly recover, it is initially disheartening to painstakingly set up for a template test, only to have it wiped clean within a few minutes on a page that is so infrequently used. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:34, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused, the talks are archived every 12 hours, but AKAIK the main template pages were done every hour? Which pages did you want relaxed?—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 23:48, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

I would like the main template sandbox pages' cleaning schedule relaxed. I thought that the 12-hour mention on the Talk page might have applied to the main sandboxes. I remember that there used to be a notice on the main page that it would be cleaned every 12-hours. That got changed, it seemed, to one hour, possibly because I made an unacknowledged request on Hazard-Bot's talk page (or perhaps I'm mis-remembering). In any case, there is much less reason for 1-hour cleaning of the template sandboxes. There's also the point about giving notification in the instruction section as to the schedule, which I don't know how to do. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:26, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Clash of the sandbox cleaning bots

Per the thread "Sandbox cleaning bots not running", "Cyberbot 1" is now cleaning the template sandbox Template:X9, as well as the others, I presume, on the more relaxed 12-hour schedule (at the top of the hour), as suggested. But now "Hazard-Bot" is also cleaning, apparently at one-hour intervals, ~35 minutes after. H-B reads the extra space that C-1 leaves behind as change and removes that space. C-1's message could be brought into line easily enough, but we only need one bot. So, because Cyberbot 1's owner has been responsive to the suggestion for a relaxed cleaning schedule, I'm looking to have Hazard-Bot cede its duties, especially as H-B is likely still on an hourly schedule. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:16, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

I let Hazard-SJ know so he can come here and respond. This should definitely be fixed, but as long as the bots (both of them, ideally) are taught how to properly recognize when the sandbox has been cleaned by another bot (Perhaps simply by normalizing multiple spaces in the message? Although it would be sufficient to have Cyberbot adopt the non-double-spaced form.) and Hazard-Bot adopts the new cleaning schedule, I don't see a reason why we can't have both running for redundancy. — Earwig ^talk 00:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I should notify cyberpower678, Cyberbot 1's owner, as well, especially since the messages on the template talk page are radically different and C-1's message neglects to mention the frequency of cleaning, as was done before. I think that the scheduled times, not just the frequency, need to be mentioned up front. Even under the relaxed schedule, someone starting to edit a few moments before noon or midnight is apt to be dismayed by suddenly seeing their work erased. I would change the template page instructions, but knowledge of how to do that is beyond me at the moment, as it seems to be more indirectly done than usual.

The problem of having more than one bot working is being displayed now, that the slightest difference in how the bots leave the page can cause problems. I think it's another thing to make sure that there are other bots able to do this chore, to be on standby. There's also the fact that Hazard-Bot is still most likely still on its aggressive schedule. What if Cyberbot 1's owner had not relaxed the schedule? The unnecessary cleanup would be taking place every hour. There's also the fact that Hazard-Bot's owner has been very unresponsive to complaints or requests regarding sandbox cleanup left on his talk page, as seen here, here, and here. Dhtwiki (talk) 07:40, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Unless they are busy in RL and can't respond, the botop is responsible for addressing bot concerns. It looks like in this case the concerns are simply getting ignored with the exception of the one that requests a faster interval, which was soundly denied. With this in mind, this usually means the bot should be blocked or shutdown until the issues have been addressed. Since this seem to be a recurring issue here, I would suggest HazardBot be disable until Hazard can find time to address these concerns. As for what my bot is doing and what it should do differently, I would appreciate some diffs to compare to.—^cyberpower_{Trick or Treat:Online} 14:18, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Nothing was explicitly denied, just ignored, and it's close to two years since the first talk page notice I referenced above, which is making plenty of allowance for real life intervening. Here is the diff for the last cleaning, by Hazard-Bot, of Template:X9. One space has been removed (the second one after "template." That second space is unnecessary, and Cyberbot I (not "1", it seems) could be programmed to conform. Here is the last cleaning of Template talk:X9. In this case it's Cyberbot I's message I want to keep, as its message indicates the cleaning frequency (although not the time, which would be helpful). I got message authorship wrong in my previous post, and it's C-I's message that is preferable here. Dhtwiki (talk) 19:55, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

We have {{Template sandbox reset}} for the main template page; I think if Cyberbot substitutes that instead of whatever it's currently doing, that would fix the problem. For the template talk page, I can't find a corresponding template and Hazard-Bot seems to use {{Sandbox reset}}. Perhaps one should be created? — Earwig ^talk 20:18, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't have any time to make the modifications until the exam I have tomorrow is over.—^cyberpower_{Trick or Treat:Online} 20:26, 18 October 2015 (UTC)