This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 15 | ← | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 |
Kanashimi has had a procession of editors turn up to his talk page to complain that his bot's edits are flooding their watchlists. They have all chosen to override the default setting that hides bot edits. Do people think these complaints are reasonable or unreasonable? Is there any guidance on what speed bots should edit at? Is there anything useful we can say to these people? Thanks — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 15:15, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
unreasonablecomplaints about watchlist flooding just because Cewbot is operating within the rate limits specified by WP:BOTPERF, which doesn't seem like it was written with the idea in mind of a single bot task making edits to n million different pages, with the activation on any given page due merely to BRFA approval, where even a conservative estimate for n would seem to place it as greater than 2.I said at a recent ANI that I'm not having a problem ignoring Cewbot, but for people with watchlists in the thousands or tens of thousands, I could see it being a serious issue, and I sympathise with their concerns.For clarity, I have no particular opposition to this task, although I do think that our model of content assessment is not useful enough to necessitate making so many edits. Does anyone have a good idea of the total number of pages affected? There's none listed at the BRFA, nor the PIQA RFC, nor the initial implementation discussion, and {{PAGESINNAMESPACE:1}} is disabled for performance reasons. Folly Mox ( talk) 20:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
/* hide edits by Cewbot */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
display: none;
}
/* hide edits by Cewbot */
table.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
display: none;
}
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"])
) or column 31 (for table.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"])
). Saved the edit anyway and the rule hides these bot edits.table
instead of li
is because at
Preferences →
Recent changes, you have "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" enabled, whereas I don't. The problem with that is that if there have been multiple edits to the page within the same day, and you expand the row to show the individual edits, the Cewbot edits are not hidden. Try this rule, which has a more comprehensive selector list: /* hide edits by Cewbot */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]),
table.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]),
tr.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
display: none;
}
minor bug...shouldn't be a problem any more. If it is still a problem, I'll change my css to use your selector list.
Here now after Cewbot has once again ramped up these unimportant edits to unacceptable levels, filling my watchlist with hundreds of them to the point where nothing else is visible.
I have repeatedly asked on Cewbot's talk for a slowdown, only to be met with either a very temporary slowdown that is ramped up again as soon as I seem to have stopped paying attention, or demands that I stop watching Cewbot's edits. I do not want to stop watching Cewbot's edits. I do not trust bots to be so perfect that their edits can escape scrutiny. I want the edits to be at a level where I can watch them and spot-check that they remain ok.
Please shut down this antisocial bot behavior. — David Eppstein ( talk) 01:11, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
/* make edits by Cewbot smaller */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
font-size: 75%;
}
/* make edits by Cewbot grey background */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
background-color: #eeeeee;
}
The above is a concern that arises periodically, often because of mass edits by a useful but very noisy bot. Changes to Wikimedia code, HTML standards, guidelines, or policies will occasionally mean that millions of pages need to be modified. That's just a fact of life on Wikipedia. I was wondering how we might thread this Watchlist needle, allowing editors to monitor bot edits but avoid excessive noise, or hide bot edits but follow the edits of one or two bots that concern them. It occurred to me that it would be useful for editors to be able to explicitly include or exclude the edits of specific bots in their Watchlist. For example, I want to hide all bot edits, but I want to see all edits by FooBOT, or I want to see all bot edits, but exclude all edits by BarBOT and BazBOT.
Has this option been explored in any of the discussions where WMF developers solicit ideas for technical feature requests? I used to participate in those, but my niche ideas never got any traction, so I burned out on them. (Aside: I'm still hoping for a Watchlist that groups all edits by page without regard to calendar days, but that doesn't seem to bother enough people.) – Jonesey95 ( talk) 23:31, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
:has()
', you can hide the entire list entry (row) using CSS. Let's assume that you want to hide edits by Legobot and Qwerfjkl (bot), but leave all other bot edits visible: the CSS rule would be /* hide edits by Legobot and Qwerfjkl (bot) */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Legobot"]),
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Qwerfjkl_(bot)"]) {
display: none;
}
.mw-changeslist-bot
class selector makes sure that only bot edits are selected. The equivalent for non-bot edits would be .mw-changeslist-human
. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 17:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
WP becomes more complex daily on a linear curve with no end in sight. This is due to 1. more articles 2. longer articles 3. more template varieties. Meanwhile, the number of experienced editors remains static. As such, we need to lean more on bots. These two factors - increased complexity, more bots - means watchlists will see increasing levels of bot activity, and increasing irritation at bots. This later phenomenon will discourage bot authors, resulting in fewer bots. Meanwhile, WP becomes more complex daily.. (repeat this cycle). -- Green C 03:48, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
incorrect and/or directly contrary to human editors' preferencesthen it should be brought here for review. What you view as unnecessary, however, does not necessarily fall into that category. Primefac ( talk) 09:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
That problem exists even if the filtering is server-side ( phab:T11790). – SD0001 ( talk) 06:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC)the problem of the bot will be the most recent edit and "obscure" an edit before it -- as this is being done client side
User:Qwerfjkl and I worked together on this task, but it was only my robot that was causing the problem. Qwerfjkl's strategy was to edit the articles in alphabetical order. I observed user:Qwerfjkl (bot)'s editing, and realized that this method doesn't seem to be a problem for users, even when only maxlag is observed. I think the reason for this is the method of distributing the topics. When a specific topic is dealt with intensively, it is easy to cause disturbance to users who are concerned about the specific area. Qwerfjkl's strategy is better than mine, so I'm going to use alphabetical order for the rest of my work. I suspect that if I just follow maxlag, I might be able to complete the job in less than six months. At 12 edits per minute, it might take more than a year. So my question is, since he has demonstrated that following only maxlag doesn't seem to be a problem for users when using alphabetical order, can this strategy be continued, or do we all have to limit ourselves to 12 edits per minute? -- Kanashimi ( talk) 04:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
If the bot would form a list of all the pages it wants to get to eventually (all article talk pages, potentially?) and then randomized that list, so that it wasn't hitting all of one Wikiproject -- or all of one topic area, or all of one anything -- in a given hour or day, I doubt anyone would notice this at all. Problem solved. E Eng 15:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
<genus> <species>
articles exist for a particular <genus>
. ~
Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 16:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
What about having a centralized page where editors can opt-in to a "watchlist greylist", and put whatever pages they want in, say, User:Tom.Reding/Watchlist greylist (maybe a name without a grey/gray variant), in some uniform, machine-readable format that's clearly stated on the centralized page? Bot ops would then be required, for very big jobs only, to add all pages listed at each opted-in users' subpage, and only edit those pages at a very slow rate. A large, but reasonable, limit could be set on the # of pages listed to prevent abuse.
The piggyback method is very interesting and superior though, since it requires no user input. ~ Tom.Reding ( talk ⋅ dgaf) 16:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Edits like this are real watchlist-cloggers. I'm calling WP:COSMETICBOT on that. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 21:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Done (to some degree): I coded up an extremely rough query at
quarry:query/79969 that looked for the 500 most recent edits by Qwerfjkl (bot) that had a size change of between 0 and -5, and then skimmed through the diffs manually. While I can't promise I didn't miss anything (or that the -5 ≤ diff_size ≤ 0
heuristic I used caught everything), I came across the following edits (made between 2024-01-23T21:16 & 2024-01-26T22:23) that could be considered purely cosmetic:
All the best, — a smart kitten[ meow 02:22, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
classes =
—
Qwerfjkl
talk 18:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)if len(page_wpbs) == 1 and page_wpbs[0].has('class', ignore_empty=True)
...page_wpbs.get('class').value = capitalised_unified_class # will only be non-cosmetic if class= nothing
Here. [4]. Doug Weller talk 15:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
<ref>
tag?) The next two posts from Macrakis and you also did not have ~~~~ converted into signatures, and SineBot added {{
Unsigned}} to your last post. I tried reverting the bot's edit, but then it changed the signatures to me! Oops! So I edited again to remove the tildes and add {{
Unsigned}} instead.
GoingBatty (
talk) 16:40, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Hello!
This is a notification to let you know that a new request for the global bot flag for CommonsDelinker has been started.
Please note that the request will remain open for 14 days starting today. You can leave a comment or opinion on the relevant page!
Best regards -- Superpes15 ( talk)
Hello, I had an User:Dušan_Kreheľ (bot) bot, it was banned for some activity. I am not interested in performing any tasks with a bot for which I do not have approval. That is the past for me (unless it is approved). Is it possible to cancel the ban? Dušan Kreheľ ( talk) 16:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
It's that time again:
Bot account | Operator(s) | Last activity (UTC) | Last operator activity (UTC) |
---|---|---|---|
Cerabot~enwiki | Ceradon | 03 Jul 2015 | 21 Jan 2022 |
CeraBot | Ceradon | 07 Jul 2012 | 21 Jan 2022 |
JBradley Bot | Jamo2008 | 07 Jul 2013 | 01 Feb 2022 |
BotPuppet | Master of Puppets | 01 Feb 2013 | 04 Feb 2022 |
Plus TohaomgBot who was indeffed in 2018 and missed in the previous sweep of indeffed bots. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
I only learned that Yapperbot had been down since December yesterday - are there any other bots that are also down as a result of the Toolforge change? Legoktm ( talk) 00:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Kku § Overlinking/bot-like editing. Sdkb talk 18:22, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 15 | ← | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 |
Kanashimi has had a procession of editors turn up to his talk page to complain that his bot's edits are flooding their watchlists. They have all chosen to override the default setting that hides bot edits. Do people think these complaints are reasonable or unreasonable? Is there any guidance on what speed bots should edit at? Is there anything useful we can say to these people? Thanks — Martin ( MSGJ · talk) 15:15, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
unreasonablecomplaints about watchlist flooding just because Cewbot is operating within the rate limits specified by WP:BOTPERF, which doesn't seem like it was written with the idea in mind of a single bot task making edits to n million different pages, with the activation on any given page due merely to BRFA approval, where even a conservative estimate for n would seem to place it as greater than 2.I said at a recent ANI that I'm not having a problem ignoring Cewbot, but for people with watchlists in the thousands or tens of thousands, I could see it being a serious issue, and I sympathise with their concerns.For clarity, I have no particular opposition to this task, although I do think that our model of content assessment is not useful enough to necessitate making so many edits. Does anyone have a good idea of the total number of pages affected? There's none listed at the BRFA, nor the PIQA RFC, nor the initial implementation discussion, and {{PAGESINNAMESPACE:1}} is disabled for performance reasons. Folly Mox ( talk) 20:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
/* hide edits by Cewbot */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
display: none;
}
/* hide edits by Cewbot */
table.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
display: none;
}
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"])
) or column 31 (for table.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"])
). Saved the edit anyway and the rule hides these bot edits.table
instead of li
is because at
Preferences →
Recent changes, you have "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" enabled, whereas I don't. The problem with that is that if there have been multiple edits to the page within the same day, and you expand the row to show the individual edits, the Cewbot edits are not hidden. Try this rule, which has a more comprehensive selector list: /* hide edits by Cewbot */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]),
table.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]),
tr.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
display: none;
}
minor bug...shouldn't be a problem any more. If it is still a problem, I'll change my css to use your selector list.
Here now after Cewbot has once again ramped up these unimportant edits to unacceptable levels, filling my watchlist with hundreds of them to the point where nothing else is visible.
I have repeatedly asked on Cewbot's talk for a slowdown, only to be met with either a very temporary slowdown that is ramped up again as soon as I seem to have stopped paying attention, or demands that I stop watching Cewbot's edits. I do not want to stop watching Cewbot's edits. I do not trust bots to be so perfect that their edits can escape scrutiny. I want the edits to be at a level where I can watch them and spot-check that they remain ok.
Please shut down this antisocial bot behavior. — David Eppstein ( talk) 01:11, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
/* make edits by Cewbot smaller */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
font-size: 75%;
}
/* make edits by Cewbot grey background */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Cewbot"]) {
background-color: #eeeeee;
}
The above is a concern that arises periodically, often because of mass edits by a useful but very noisy bot. Changes to Wikimedia code, HTML standards, guidelines, or policies will occasionally mean that millions of pages need to be modified. That's just a fact of life on Wikipedia. I was wondering how we might thread this Watchlist needle, allowing editors to monitor bot edits but avoid excessive noise, or hide bot edits but follow the edits of one or two bots that concern them. It occurred to me that it would be useful for editors to be able to explicitly include or exclude the edits of specific bots in their Watchlist. For example, I want to hide all bot edits, but I want to see all edits by FooBOT, or I want to see all bot edits, but exclude all edits by BarBOT and BazBOT.
Has this option been explored in any of the discussions where WMF developers solicit ideas for technical feature requests? I used to participate in those, but my niche ideas never got any traction, so I burned out on them. (Aside: I'm still hoping for a Watchlist that groups all edits by page without regard to calendar days, but that doesn't seem to bother enough people.) – Jonesey95 ( talk) 23:31, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
:has()
', you can hide the entire list entry (row) using CSS. Let's assume that you want to hide edits by Legobot and Qwerfjkl (bot), but leave all other bot edits visible: the CSS rule would be /* hide edits by Legobot and Qwerfjkl (bot) */
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Legobot"]),
li.mw-changeslist-bot:has(ahref="/wiki/User:Qwerfjkl_(bot)"]) {
display: none;
}
.mw-changeslist-bot
class selector makes sure that only bot edits are selected. The equivalent for non-bot edits would be .mw-changeslist-human
. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 17:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
WP becomes more complex daily on a linear curve with no end in sight. This is due to 1. more articles 2. longer articles 3. more template varieties. Meanwhile, the number of experienced editors remains static. As such, we need to lean more on bots. These two factors - increased complexity, more bots - means watchlists will see increasing levels of bot activity, and increasing irritation at bots. This later phenomenon will discourage bot authors, resulting in fewer bots. Meanwhile, WP becomes more complex daily.. (repeat this cycle). -- Green C 03:48, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
incorrect and/or directly contrary to human editors' preferencesthen it should be brought here for review. What you view as unnecessary, however, does not necessarily fall into that category. Primefac ( talk) 09:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
That problem exists even if the filtering is server-side ( phab:T11790). – SD0001 ( talk) 06:21, 20 January 2024 (UTC)the problem of the bot will be the most recent edit and "obscure" an edit before it -- as this is being done client side
User:Qwerfjkl and I worked together on this task, but it was only my robot that was causing the problem. Qwerfjkl's strategy was to edit the articles in alphabetical order. I observed user:Qwerfjkl (bot)'s editing, and realized that this method doesn't seem to be a problem for users, even when only maxlag is observed. I think the reason for this is the method of distributing the topics. When a specific topic is dealt with intensively, it is easy to cause disturbance to users who are concerned about the specific area. Qwerfjkl's strategy is better than mine, so I'm going to use alphabetical order for the rest of my work. I suspect that if I just follow maxlag, I might be able to complete the job in less than six months. At 12 edits per minute, it might take more than a year. So my question is, since he has demonstrated that following only maxlag doesn't seem to be a problem for users when using alphabetical order, can this strategy be continued, or do we all have to limit ourselves to 12 edits per minute? -- Kanashimi ( talk) 04:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
If the bot would form a list of all the pages it wants to get to eventually (all article talk pages, potentially?) and then randomized that list, so that it wasn't hitting all of one Wikiproject -- or all of one topic area, or all of one anything -- in a given hour or day, I doubt anyone would notice this at all. Problem solved. E Eng 15:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
<genus> <species>
articles exist for a particular <genus>
. ~
Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf) 16:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
What about having a centralized page where editors can opt-in to a "watchlist greylist", and put whatever pages they want in, say, User:Tom.Reding/Watchlist greylist (maybe a name without a grey/gray variant), in some uniform, machine-readable format that's clearly stated on the centralized page? Bot ops would then be required, for very big jobs only, to add all pages listed at each opted-in users' subpage, and only edit those pages at a very slow rate. A large, but reasonable, limit could be set on the # of pages listed to prevent abuse.
The piggyback method is very interesting and superior though, since it requires no user input. ~ Tom.Reding ( talk ⋅ dgaf) 16:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Edits like this are real watchlist-cloggers. I'm calling WP:COSMETICBOT on that. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 21:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Done (to some degree): I coded up an extremely rough query at
quarry:query/79969 that looked for the 500 most recent edits by Qwerfjkl (bot) that had a size change of between 0 and -5, and then skimmed through the diffs manually. While I can't promise I didn't miss anything (or that the -5 ≤ diff_size ≤ 0
heuristic I used caught everything), I came across the following edits (made between 2024-01-23T21:16 & 2024-01-26T22:23) that could be considered purely cosmetic:
All the best, — a smart kitten[ meow 02:22, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
classes =
—
Qwerfjkl
talk 18:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)if len(page_wpbs) == 1 and page_wpbs[0].has('class', ignore_empty=True)
...page_wpbs.get('class').value = capitalised_unified_class # will only be non-cosmetic if class= nothing
Here. [4]. Doug Weller talk 15:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
<ref>
tag?) The next two posts from Macrakis and you also did not have ~~~~ converted into signatures, and SineBot added {{
Unsigned}} to your last post. I tried reverting the bot's edit, but then it changed the signatures to me! Oops! So I edited again to remove the tildes and add {{
Unsigned}} instead.
GoingBatty (
talk) 16:40, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Hello!
This is a notification to let you know that a new request for the global bot flag for CommonsDelinker has been started.
Please note that the request will remain open for 14 days starting today. You can leave a comment or opinion on the relevant page!
Best regards -- Superpes15 ( talk)
Hello, I had an User:Dušan_Kreheľ (bot) bot, it was banned for some activity. I am not interested in performing any tasks with a bot for which I do not have approval. That is the past for me (unless it is approved). Is it possible to cancel the ban? Dušan Kreheľ ( talk) 16:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
It's that time again:
Bot account | Operator(s) | Last activity (UTC) | Last operator activity (UTC) |
---|---|---|---|
Cerabot~enwiki | Ceradon | 03 Jul 2015 | 21 Jan 2022 |
CeraBot | Ceradon | 07 Jul 2012 | 21 Jan 2022 |
JBradley Bot | Jamo2008 | 07 Jul 2013 | 01 Feb 2022 |
BotPuppet | Master of Puppets | 01 Feb 2013 | 04 Feb 2022 |
Plus TohaomgBot who was indeffed in 2018 and missed in the previous sweep of indeffed bots. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
I only learned that Yapperbot had been down since December yesterday - are there any other bots that are also down as a result of the Toolforge change? Legoktm ( talk) 00:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at User talk:Kku § Overlinking/bot-like editing. Sdkb talk 18:22, 28 March 2024 (UTC)