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I find that several hundred or maybe a few thousand stub articles were built by
Ganeshbot without a reference section and the only source being {{
GR|India}}
is listed wrong (see
WP:ASR} it should have been a proper footnote to the Indian Census (but some like
Ghorawal did get a reference section). Many of them like
Ghorabandha have not matured past stubs. Some like
Kangeyam have matured into large unreferenced articles. Some like
Mandi Gobindgarh have grown and captured a few references that could use {{
citation style}}. I got in a fairly long discussion with the bot builder at
User_talk:Jeepday#Re:_Kangeyam after posting a {{
uw-unsor1}} to his talk page, suggesting he figure out how to add a reference section and list the reference instead of the wikilink on all those unreferenced articles. He responded that it was beyond his ability and that I make a request at
WP:BOTREQ . Before posting here I did a reality check at
User_talk:DGG#Bot_articles and did a review of
Wikipedia:Bot policy. Thoughts?
Jeepday (
talk) 12:59, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Despite being approved for only 12 epm, I've noticed periods where the bot has exceeded 45. Q T C 07:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any bots which can replace my former usernames User:Canderous and User:Canderous0 with my current User:Raffaello9? The same should go for the respective talk pages — Raffaello9 | Talk 15:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC).
In response to the significant edits to this policy by a recent anon, I've restore the section on edit rates (though left in the added info on using maxlag). We've seen that the edits rates were not only implemented to "SAVE TEH SERVERS!" but to allow for edit review. — xaosflux Talk 16:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Is there any way that I can flag my username as a bot account only so that my AWB edits don't flood the New pages log? Is this possible? I don't know how to use "bots" however Is it possible that my name be flagged so that my edits don't show up on the new page log and flood it? I want to be able to edit the same way I do now except my AWB creation edits don't flood the creation log page. Thanks. Wikidudeman (talk) 20:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm tired of having my uploads and edits destroyed by mindless, faceless, unaccountable and plain aggravating bots run by uncaring editors who don't even bother to respond to queries or challenges to their bots actions.
It's time we implemented a system whereby a users edits can be opted out of bot-driven assaults, reversions and deletions. Only other human users should have the right to modify my contributions.
I don't mind working with and compromising with real living people, but why should these autocratic automatons have the right to overule my judgement?
Wikipedia is written by people, for people - not as a playground for trigger happy programs on a power trip. Exxolon 18:34, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
OrphanBot's currently running two unrelated tasks under the same account, and I'd like to split them into separate accounts. OrphanBot would continue its work with unsourced images under the OrphanBot username, but the upload-tagging work would be done under the username ImageTaggingBot. How would I go about getting a bot flag for the second account? -- Carnildo ( talk) 02:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
As the previous post shows, there exists quite some frustration with bots. The reason seems to me that we're forgetting one obvious fact: Bots are software, and they need testing. User:Exxolon is right, it's time for a change! You can't just run software that affects many people's work without testing. I mean real, professional testing, not just the bit of trial and error every coder does.
This policy needs to include a section on testing laying out that all bots need to adhere to certain testing steps.
Testing needs to be done by dedicated testers. Before bots are released in the wild, let them run in a limited area where they are watched by people who are in the picture and well prepared for surprises. I would volunteer for that sometimes. — Sebastian 16:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to create a userpage creator bot. The description can be found here. The problem is, I'm not a programmer. Could someone tell me where to propose this? Thanks, -- Gp75motorsports ( talk) 15:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Never mind. Apparently I wasn't paying attention to the top of the page. -- Gp75motorsports ( talk) 22:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
As I have been watching the function of some bots lately, I have noticed than some bot owners have decided they have the right to expand the function of their bots without comment or request, without posting any notice on the bot's users page as far as exactly what the added functions of the bot are. This appears to me violate Wikipedia policy. Has this become an unofficial or accepted policy?
Examples:
That run seems to have gone OK with the exception of the unexpained huge jump in the number of articles listed in Category:Uncategorized from December 2007
Now this is a bot that I personally have seen countless complaints about. Is allowing this kind of freedom a good idea? Dbiel ( Talk) 03:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I have re-structured and rewritten this policy. I have changed wording to make things clearer, split the policy into logical sections rather than just a section marked "policy", moved things around to fit in (it was showing signs of becoming a collection of individual sentences added over time, rather than a contiguous document) and added a couple of useful links. Very little has actually changed in terms of the actual meaning behind the document, however, I have added a few things that were not there before; while they were not actually present in the page I believe them to be long-established common practise. For example, I have clarified the role and organization of the bot approval group, which was not made clear before, in part using information drawn from the approval group page. I have also tried to arrange things so that the concepts of "bot" and "assisted editing" complement each other, which includes making the definition of the two things a little more precise. I realize that there has been a lot of debate about such things in the past, the two concepts have conflicted somewhat and there is of course still a significant gray area, but I believe the policy as now worded makes things reasonably clear. It advises contributors who think they may need a bot account but are not sure to ask at the approval request page and allow the approvals group to decide, which I believe to be the recommended practise. I have also defined the approval process and a set of requirements for bot approval, using information that was present on this page before, but was in rather a jumbled form. I have also added a nutshell – Gurch 18:58, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Processes which do not modify content but require a read-only copy of Wikipedia's content may be run on the toolserver; such processes are outside the scope of this policy.
Could something be done about some of the pointless edits that some bot do? I just can across User:VeblenBot which updates User:VeblenBot/PERtable and a good chunk of its edits are to simply update the timestamp. Isn't the "does not consume unnecessary resources" suppose to cover this? This isn't the only one that operates in this fashion either. — Dispenser ( talk) 01:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
It seems to be that we have two classes of bots; those to which this policy applies and those that have been given the power to ignore the policy.
Specificly I am speaking about BetacommandBot that continues to ignore these policies. It adds functionally without comment (see previous section above) It refuses to maintain a user page that clearly identifies what it is doing. But rather only provides a link to a list of approval pages (some of which are denied requests) that have to be looked at individually to see what fuctions they cover, some of which are no longer active. And now its owner is in the approval group making the situation even worse. These members who basicly enforce policy should be held to a higher standard, not given free reign to ignore the policy for their own bots and try to apply it to other bots. Dbiel ( Talk) 02:03, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
<blockquote>
The bot account's user page should identify the bot as such using the {{ bot}} tag. The following information should be provided both on the bot account's userpage (or in another suitable and accessible location) and on the approval request:
- Details of the bot's task, or tasks
- Whether the bot is manually assisted, or runs automatically
- When it operates (continuously, intermittently, or at specified intervals), and at what rate
- The language and/or program that it is running
</blockquote>
The difference between what Quadell and BC did is that Polbot was performing a controversial, error prone task when BC's was a simple task, that had previously been performed by other bots. But yes, we should all take this as a warning that we should be careful with what we do with our bots. -- maelgwn - talk 06:23, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Changing this after looking at talk page comments. The policy was muddled on this issue before, so I thought I was just clarifying, but linking to a description from the userpage should be fine -- the important point is that there is one.
Drawing attention to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#AWB_edits. One issue is whether using AWB to perform one edit, while also performing "general fixes" which include something disputed, is an abuse of bot editing. Gimmetrow 05:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Have any of you thought of a framework/policy where non-trivial bots could be written for Wikipedia? At first glance, most of the bots I have seen around are still quite simple and pretty effort intensive in terms of precious human hours that is required to babysit them. If I am wrong, please accept my apologies and point me to a non-trivial bot. Else, could you please post your ideas here? My first thought is to use the lexicon of Wordnet to automate a few things that still need much human effort. For instance, I saw that User:RussBot still requires its owner to make disambiguation decisions. But I think about 90% of the decisions on linking French to France vs French people could be automated with a simple expert system that would decide if the page is about a person (easy to decide if there is a category anyway, but there can be other rules) and then look up word frequecy co-occurances via Wordnet and make a decision. In general, this type fo expert system framework can then be offered to users at a much later stage, say 2 years, after testing. In a nutsell (pun intended) it would be a simple expert system shell that could be used to write useful bots. My driving thought is that "Wikepdia seems ever so effort intensive" and could use some more automation. Afterall, this is/was the computer age until a few years ago. The key item that would help, of course, would also be an API to a suitable high level language way above Perl or Python. But to begin with one may have to just use those. I had a few Perl-based routines that did reasoning a few years ago, and could try and find them. But before that it would be useful to hear what the group here thinks. And from a practical standpoint, it would be of tremendous algorithmic help if one had access to a page visit affinity table of some type. Of course at the page granularity level, this would be expensive, but one could use multi-categories for this, just as most supermarkets do for thier semi-item-level affinity tables. Do any of you know if such a table exists within Wikipedia, and if so, if it can be accessed? Anyway, your suggestions will be appreciated. History2007 ( talk) 03:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
That is a social impact issue, and has been addressed in many settings. You may be interested to know that many financial portfolios are arranged automatically, yet they give the results to customers a few days later, so it does not look like a computer did it. And these are bigtime firms - whose names shall not be mentioned. The way those problems are overcome is that for a somewhat lengthy trial period, the system is supervised, and once it is as good as a human it is allowed to make small changes. In any case, to begin with these nontrivial bots could find things that people could not. I think computers are here (for better or worse) so we might as well use them. As is, anyone with knowhow could actually write a program right now that modifies content, and do not need permission to do it. All they need to do is log in, let it screen scape the content and feed the http tokens back in for edits. It does not need to be decalred as a bot. A few years ago, my company did a few programs like that and they worked fine in finding errors in forms that people had filled. It would have taken huumans MUCH longer to check all those forms. . And for cleaning up multi-redirects, it would work as well as a human. As for adding "See also" items, that could also be done very nicely. If there is a "See also", it will add as the last item, else will try to place it afrer references If there is no references section, it will do nothing. Then more complicated tasks may come in. One would need a Turing test to know who did those edits.... But before any of this is even attempted, I would like to get feedback and suggestions and agreements from whoever sets these policies. In any case, my current thought is to start the design of a little language called "WikiScript" that allows nonprogrammer users to write better bots. It would include "Wikipedia specific" elements so you do not have to rely on general purpose languages, and would avoid iterative constructs. But it would be made available only to users who are careful with it. If you like, I will let you know as we go along. Anyway, do you know if Wikipedia keeps a category based visit affinity table? That would be useful to know. It would probably say a lot about users anyway. Regards History2007 ( talk) 04:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry, I should have defined that better. I should probably also go and edit the Wiki-pages on those concepts for under Market basket there is a mention on it, but not that clearly. In data analysis the term refers to how items are viewed or purchased together. E.g. Suppose you have 26 pages {A, B, C, D... Z} then you get a 26 by 26 table where each entry such as DM tells you the number of times that pages D and M are viewed by the same user. Retailers love to do that for cross selling on products, e.g. they love to know that people who buy ski-hats also tend to buy ski-gloves. Web-site visit affinitiy tables tell websites about their visitors, etc. So the table would have categories as rows and columns and numbers as entries. It would be too expensive to keep that table at the page level I guess, but for key pages something may be done. There are standard computing approaches for dealing with these things. This type of affinity information may help determine if a link "may" be useful between categories, and then suggest a link between some pages. But I am getting ahead of the game here. In the next few days I will edit the relevant Wikepedia pages to add these things. I was surprised that the page on Market basket did not have it, except for a mention of the forever repeated beer and diapers story. The page Market basket analysis was empty and needs to be filled in. I will try to clean those pages up in a few days, but will probably take at least a week to do it right. The page on Association rule learning actually has errors in it and also needs help, but that is another story. Anyway, is there a page that describes the kind of statistics that Wikepedia keeps? Thanks History2007 ( talk) 07:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I specifically said that a page level table would be "too expensive". And the resulting table would be very, very sparse. In practice these things are done by sampling, so one will not keep track of every visitor, so the table is not updated all the time. It does not have to be exact, it is intended as a rough guide. The method is to sample first, know which top categories deserve attention and then only store those that are relevant. My guess is that given 2 million articles, one can get away with an initial table of 200,000 entries for the top categories, then refine from there. And the table gets updated once in a while. It does not need to be exact. Given all the words that get typed into all these "talk pages" the disk resurces would be a fraction of what users are talking with each other about. I noticed that Alexa does analysis for Wikipedia, so they will give you a quote for doing it if you ask them! But the Special:Statistics page had too little info. History2007 ( talk) 08:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Wow! That was a lot of data. So you do keep these things around. But given that these are at the page level, it may be more than I am ready to take on at the moment without a 10 processor SUN server on my desk! By the way, I do not know how I forgot to mention this fact, but the MOST widely known example of an affinity table is Amazon.com's use of "customers who bought book A also bought book B". I guess Amazon has close to a million books or so (I am not sure) but they probably keep a very sparse table, and it does not need to be exact. So at some future point a similar feature for Wikipedia may be useful anyway. History2007 ( talk) 11:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
By the way, that would be a good example of how an online encyclopedia can do things that a printed one can never do. For it is almost impossible to know the affinity of topics within a printed encyclopedia, but with Wikipedia the computer can do that. And it will probably be interesting. History2007 ( talk) 11:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that is true. On the other hand, at times the heart of novelty and being interesting is "an unusual thought". Even if Amazon's suggestion is off once in a while, there is no major harm done except for an extra mouse click. That is how interesting ideas come about in many cases - an odd idea that leads to A that leads to B that leads to C .... What Amazon does not do (I think) is to ask users for feedback on the useflness of that link. Given that Wikipedia users are much more "responsive" let us say, the suggestions can over time be scored on a 1-10 scale and those that are rejected will just be given such a low weight in the affinity table that they no longer show up. In fact, at the beginning you probably thought my idea of affinity table for Wikipedia was odd, but maybe it will be useful. Personally, as a start, I would love a feature that would do a "semi-random link" from a page. A random link is usually a watse of time, but if I am looking at a page about Portugal, since you mentioned it, it would be nice to click on "random portugal" and get a link that for instance tells me about wine bottle cork production in Portugal - someone once told me that was a big industry there somehow. Anyway, I just did a 1st cut of the page on Market basket analysis but did not write about algorithms, computational costs, etc. yet History2007 ( talk) 03:54, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm requesting clarification on the Bot policy
Does the Bot policy apply to read-only bots?
Does the Bot policy only apply to editing bots?
Does the Bot policy only apply to automatic editing bots?
I have a question about whether I need an RFA, so I can't really ask it on the RFA page. I am one of the maintainers of Metacity. It is released using a release script. Wikipedia contains Template:Latest stable release/Metacity and Template:Latest preview release/Metacity. I could add a section to the script which updated these templates. It would make, on average, one edit per week. Would that need to operate using a bot account? If I gave copies of the script to other projects, would they need their own bot accounts? Marnanel ( talk) 15:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I believe the policy should be amended to require all bots to honor {{ nobots}} (with exceptions made on a case by case basis, but user talk pages pretty much never being given an exception). Are there any objections? — Locke Cole • t • c 02:26, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
At a minimum, this is (after discussion above) what I believe is needed:
Note that I'm excluding {{ nobots}} because I think it might be better if users were forced to explicitly deny bots which leave notifications (ensuring that newer bots which may leave notifications the user is interested in aren't accidentally silenced). Thoughts? — Locke Cole • t • c 06:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I support this proposal, though I would also support a slight alternative: make {{ bots}}-compliancy required by default, but allow exceptions to be requested as needed. There's no reason why that shouldn't work, and is far more than reasonable. Humans can't complete and monitor everything bots can do, that's the whole point of being cautious about bots on Wikipedia. This is not an unreasonable request. -- Ned Scott 08:01, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I cannot and will not support such a poor system as the nobots. I dont care if you call 10 editors in a vote consenus, I dont. I have a very effetive method that is abuse proof, it has been in operation for many months without issue. As I have said before, bots and templates dont mix well. I have written one bot that actually attemps to parse a template, RFC bot. I had to re-write that bot no less than three times due to template related issues. (no offense is meant) I am not sure what drugs the devs where on when they wrote the processor, but their syntax is a basterdized language. βcommand 16:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I have to say that I don't see forcing compliance with what is being described (by several bot operators) as a broken/poorly implemented system is the way to go here. I can completely see the reasoning behind not wanting talk page notifications, but I don't see forcing {{ bots}} on people as the answer. I could perhaps support a proposal to add a question to the BRFA template prompting the user to enter an opt-out method (or N/A, as the case may be). Then leave it up to the community (or BAG, if they deem appropriate) to question the creator on their proposed method, or lack thereof. That would mean that everything was upfront and their is a reference somewhere for people looking to opt-out for a specific bot. I simply haven't been convinced that changing bot policy is the way to go here. - AWeenieMan ( talk) 18:23, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Off topic: I have started a thread on the bot owners' noticeboard about the possibility of reworking nobots so that parsing page text is no longer necessary. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be the nobots system, but I think the community is asking for something that makes less work for everyone. Bot ops, as great and intelligent as you are, and as well discussed as bot tasks are before hand, there will be unanticipated situations, or things in the project or user namespace that shouldn't be touched at all (unless related to policy, etc).
My own proposal in the above thread (which has gone off topic to a more general rant by local bot ops) was more of a state of mind, rather than the exact technical approach or some bureaucracy. When someone proposes a bot task then it should follow such request, unless the task itself would need to edit any and all pages regardless of a user's personal preferences. We don't even need to force this from a technical standpoint, but from a community standpoint. Encourage this as a default setting for bots, but allow bot ops to use desecration. Wouldn't that be simple and fix a lot of problems in itself? Unless your bot has to edit every page, give it a way to ignore a page, because we can't be expected to watch/clean up after something as powerful (for a lack of better words) as a bot.
So don't get hung up on the technical details. The community is making a request, and one that makes all of our lives easier. This is not black and white, this is not "this specific standard doesn't work, so I'll oppose the idea altogether", this is a community discussion. -- Ned Scott 04:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
So now we have three different debates. 1) What system to use. 2) When to follow said system. 3) Who gets to choose when to use said system. So first you have to create a system that all the bot ops have no objections with ({{ nobots}} can't be followed by bots using the future API). Then you have to get every bots that touches the effected pages (see #2) to use the new system, including hostile bot ops (have fun with Betacommand). On top of it all, then you have a power struggle between the bot ops and those who want to control when the bots follow the new system. All this is to a response to a problem that doesn't exist ("BAWWWWWW Betacommand" doesn't count). So you just keep on ahead pushing for proposals that the people who do the actual coding oppose, I'm going to do something more useful with my time. BJ Talk 08:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Despite the fact that some folks are disturbed when bot operators ignore {{ nobots}}, I don't think there is enough of a problem or a significant enough justification for making adherence to the nobots template policy. My suggestion is that BAG members request nobots or similar compliance when it makes sense, and also that they see to it that bot operators are involved in the creation of anything nobots-like if/when nobots is deprecated. Avruch T 17:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea if this is a reasonable approach, so I'm just throwing it out. What if bots should, when they are looking to drop a message to a user, look for a specific subpage "User talk:ExampleUser/notices", and if the page exists, drops the message there instead of on the talk page, still going to the regular user talk page if not present? The advantages: users can opt-in for this method if they don't want messages: they can create the page, then take it off their watch list; alternatively, a user may want to simply keep those all there, watching the page as they would their talk page (though they won't get the new messages announcement box). It could be extended to be bot specific ("/BCB notices") for BCB, etc. From the bot standpoint, it would seem to be easy to implement, and less a hassle of programming hassle towards nobots/bots template (since it would have to seek that first, parse, interpret, and operate) than to determine if a page exists and write to that instead of a different page. -- MASEM 18:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Instead of focusing on nobots or any other centralized system, why not simply ask that all bot ops have some form of opt-out or ignore process? Again, this obviously wouldn't be an option offered when the edits have to be done, such as when related to policy and images, etc. This is mostly what we do now, but the problem comes up when some bot ops don't offer this, and refuse to do so even when the edit is not a have to edit. -- Ned Scott 23:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I would like to bring up here an idea for dealing with mass/automated messages delivered to users by bots or tools (basic idea was posted by Obuibo Mbstpo on WT:CANVASS):
Bots which post non-critical messages to users should for each user X on their list look for a page "user:X/automated_messages". If that page exists, the bot can post its message to that page. If that page doesn't exist, the bot should assume that user X doesn't want to receive automated notifications by bots or other tools.
If a user X prefers to receive automated messages on his/her talk page, he/she can create a redirect at "user:X/automated_messages", pointing to "User talk:X". Notification bots would then post their messages to that user's talk page.
Users are not required nor expected to "archive" their "automated_messages" page. They can simply delete messages they no longer need, as they like. Of course they can add that page to their watchlist but there is no obligation to do so.
Using a separate page for automated messages has the advantage, that the "you have a message" bar does not pop-up when a new notification is delivered (feature still available by creating a redirect as described above).
Using a standard location per user does have the advantage that the existence or non-existence of that page can be interpreted by bots/tools as described above.
Implementing this scheme for bot programmers would be easy and efficient, as it would not be needed to load and scan a page looking for markers like {{ nobots}} to decide if a user wants a notification.
The "automated_messages" page would be for non-critical notifications. Bots depositing critical information could still use the talk page of a user, ignoring the automated_messages page. The question whether a bot is depositing critical notifications that warrant posting on users talk pages and ignoring the automated_messages page should be decided on a per bot basis during the BRFA.
-- Ligulem ( talk) 00:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps, it might help if I give some specific examples I have in mind.
Critical notifications are, for example, if a user uploads an image that violates copyright policy. A bot delivering a notice caused by that should post to the user's talk page, not to the automated_messages page. That's a critical notification and there should be for example no general opt-out lists editable by everyone.
Non-critical notifications are for example messages about new AfD's, PROD's, TfD's, delivered by bots. Such messages do clutter up a user's official talk page and users should not archive these notifications.
The main motivation is, that a user's talk page should really be reserved for important communication, which actually deserves flashing the "you have a new message" bar. Other stuff should be treated separately. My proposal is to put that on a user's "automated_messages" page as explained above.
-- Ligulem ( talk) 10:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
This page has been protected for 5 days, community policy pages are not the place for reversion cycles, this discussion of the WP:BAG section should continue either here or at one of the other active venues (with a link to it from here). — xaosflux Talk 02:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I will steadfastly oppose protection of this page in response to edit warring from now on. If you're part of the same group of actors that is being disruptive, the entire community doesn't lose the right to edit the bot policy, you lose the right to edit. It is quite unfair to leave the page in a mess due to back-and-forth revert-warring while leaving editors who are already refusing communication unblocked. east.718 at 01:24, May 16, 2008
Why discuss an obvious issue with the BAG member selection method when you can just continue to prove that it's woefully broken. Do you have no idea how bad it looks for members of BAG to be "nominating" people who share their views on BAG member selection (I'm specifically talking about krimpet's nomination: the person who called for a moratorium because of some unforeseen "chaos"). Is there any chance BAG will actually give a little here and stop the cabal activities, or are we heading back towards MFD since reform seems to be impossible? — Locke Cole • t • c 07:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I have accepted a nomination to be considered for membership in the Bot Approvals Group. Please express comments and views here. MBisanz talk 08:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Regardless of which way we go, the bot policy should include a section indicating that individuals standing for BAG membership may include a notice on their userpage indicating such. I have created {{ BAG-notice}} and {{ RBAG-nom}} to that end. MBisanz talk 00:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Ugh. It is not "My way or the highway". Please stop trying to confuse the issues, by now claiming that the previous version does not have consensus. I would suggest that it be reverted back, to the way it was before the "new (experiment) (trial version) (policy) proposal". Please address the old version seperately.
SQL
Query me! 03:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Apparently since the propensity toward edit warring is irresistible for some, for the final time: let's settle this. Apparently people are disagreeing over whether or not consensus is or was not established, as well as whether it is still present or not. Thus, in order to help this along, I've made an outline of the key points and what people believe is or is not reflective of consensus. And, in this particular instance, a vote to determine just what, exactly, they think consensus is, I feel that it's entirely appropriate due to the points being relatively straightforward— it's a simple "yeah, there was consensus" or "no, there wasn't consensus." The details can be sorted out later.
I've added several points. Sign on any that you support, and feel free to add your own re-wordings in a new section at the end, but please do not modify the existing headers of others. This is not a policy vote— this is merely trying to establish points of reference to so that actual policy decisions as well as the current policy can be reflected accurately; for, if we can't agree on just what consensus is, then how, exactly, are we supposed to edit the policy page to state it? :P -- slakr\ talk / 05:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
This is not consensus. Monobi ( talk) 00:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
It is very noticeable how quickly this page lapses from frantic and heated debate back into quiet obscurity. It seems clear that the sweeping changes to the RfBAG process suggested by Coren have not thus far gained consensus as a complete package. But it would be a great shame to lose all the valuable talking points that the experiment has raised to the habitual apathy that surrounds WP:BOT. So while there's clearly currently no consensus to implement the RfA-style RfBAG in its entirety, I don't think it's fair to say that the proposal is completley dead, and I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on indivdual issues like the ones below. Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I for one think that it is: The four RfBAG nominations we have closed have more contributions than all the nominations that have occured at WT:BAG, past and present, successful and not. I was genuinely shocked to see that Coren had been first appointed to BAG based on a discussion with only two comments in it. Levels of insularity like that (contributions from existing BAG members made up an average of almost 70% of comments at the WT:BAG nominations for Werdna, Soxred93, Cobi and Coren) are (IMO) the root cause of the community's legitimate accusations of cabalism and isolation. There are some more interesting statistics at User:Happy-melon/RfBAG statistics if you're interested in that kind of thing. But I'm interested to hear what other bot operators think (it's unlikely we'll see anyone else at this page, but if you do happen to wander in I'd be particularly interested in non-bot-operator opinions). Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I have to say I wasn't very impressed with the process-protest votes on Coren's RfA-style RfBAG, but it didn't affect the result, so no harm done. I do think the RfA-based process has some legitimate concerns, which of course mirror the criticims of RfA itself. But in terms of increasing community involvement in the BAG and BRFA processes, I would personally consider it a success: an average of only 29% contributions from bot operators, and less than 10% from BAG (the four corresponding WT:BAG nominations, by contrast, didn't have a single non-bot-operator contribution between them). We've all heard the arguments and opinions for and against the RfA-based process, so no need to rehash them here; but what conclusions can be drawn from this experiment that are relevant to the question of how to appoint BAG members? Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that, wherever RfBAGs are held and whoever is involved, that the discussion should be closed by a bureaucrat as a point of principle. This strikes me as good common sense: evaluating consensus and being impartial arbitrators is what 'crats are for, and it's the simplest and easiest way to increase the transparency of the process and mitigate claims of cabalism. Having the final decision whether to admit a member to a group, rest with the existing members of that group, is what happens in English gentlemen's clubs, not in a modern community like Wikipedia. Asking the 'crats to close half a dozen discussions a year (most of which are unanimous anyway and need little more than a passing glance) is no extra work for them in the greater scheme of things, and has a significant psychological benefit. Thoughts? Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It's been suggested before: should BAG members be made into a usergroup which can use Special:Userrights to grant and revoke the bot flag? Personally, I would support such a move: it is already the case that BAG have complete authority over who gets the flag and when; having to have a 'crat rubber stamp it is a thoroughly ineffective check-and-balance when most of our bureaucrats don't know beans about bots - how are they supposed to know when a BAG member is making a mistake? I think that a compelling argument is that it will give BAG another tool with which to control wayward bots: currently having the bot flag withdrawn is an unnecessarily laborious process which is rarely used: bots are simply blocked instead, which is at best a blunt instrument. Of the over 100 bot-related rights changes this year, only one was a deflagging without the consent of the operator. What does everyone else think? A useful tool in the armoury of the people who are supposed to protect us against wayward bots? A natural extension of BAG's role? Or more trouble than it's worth? Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think this has certainly been an interesting experiment. If there's one thing that has been shown very clearly, it's the level of inertia and apathy that surrounds bot policies and processes on wikipedia. I don't think I've yet met anyone who is entirely happy with the way BRFA and BAG work on en.wiki (if you are, do speak up!), and I hope we can avoid getting into the same rut that has caught so many of our processes: where everyone agrees that it doesn't really work, but goes along with it anyway. There's no reason (other than apathy) why we can't change one little thing at a time and make gradual improvements; conversely, there's no reason not to try big changes as long as we're sensible with them. I'm very interested to hear other users' thoughts on the whole issue. Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (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 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | Archive 21 | Archive 22 |
I find that several hundred or maybe a few thousand stub articles were built by
Ganeshbot without a reference section and the only source being {{
GR|India}}
is listed wrong (see
WP:ASR} it should have been a proper footnote to the Indian Census (but some like
Ghorawal did get a reference section). Many of them like
Ghorabandha have not matured past stubs. Some like
Kangeyam have matured into large unreferenced articles. Some like
Mandi Gobindgarh have grown and captured a few references that could use {{
citation style}}. I got in a fairly long discussion with the bot builder at
User_talk:Jeepday#Re:_Kangeyam after posting a {{
uw-unsor1}} to his talk page, suggesting he figure out how to add a reference section and list the reference instead of the wikilink on all those unreferenced articles. He responded that it was beyond his ability and that I make a request at
WP:BOTREQ . Before posting here I did a reality check at
User_talk:DGG#Bot_articles and did a review of
Wikipedia:Bot policy. Thoughts?
Jeepday (
talk) 12:59, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Despite being approved for only 12 epm, I've noticed periods where the bot has exceeded 45. Q T C 07:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any bots which can replace my former usernames User:Canderous and User:Canderous0 with my current User:Raffaello9? The same should go for the respective talk pages — Raffaello9 | Talk 15:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC).
In response to the significant edits to this policy by a recent anon, I've restore the section on edit rates (though left in the added info on using maxlag). We've seen that the edits rates were not only implemented to "SAVE TEH SERVERS!" but to allow for edit review. — xaosflux Talk 16:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Is there any way that I can flag my username as a bot account only so that my AWB edits don't flood the New pages log? Is this possible? I don't know how to use "bots" however Is it possible that my name be flagged so that my edits don't show up on the new page log and flood it? I want to be able to edit the same way I do now except my AWB creation edits don't flood the creation log page. Thanks. Wikidudeman (talk) 20:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm tired of having my uploads and edits destroyed by mindless, faceless, unaccountable and plain aggravating bots run by uncaring editors who don't even bother to respond to queries or challenges to their bots actions.
It's time we implemented a system whereby a users edits can be opted out of bot-driven assaults, reversions and deletions. Only other human users should have the right to modify my contributions.
I don't mind working with and compromising with real living people, but why should these autocratic automatons have the right to overule my judgement?
Wikipedia is written by people, for people - not as a playground for trigger happy programs on a power trip. Exxolon 18:34, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
OrphanBot's currently running two unrelated tasks under the same account, and I'd like to split them into separate accounts. OrphanBot would continue its work with unsourced images under the OrphanBot username, but the upload-tagging work would be done under the username ImageTaggingBot. How would I go about getting a bot flag for the second account? -- Carnildo ( talk) 02:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
As the previous post shows, there exists quite some frustration with bots. The reason seems to me that we're forgetting one obvious fact: Bots are software, and they need testing. User:Exxolon is right, it's time for a change! You can't just run software that affects many people's work without testing. I mean real, professional testing, not just the bit of trial and error every coder does.
This policy needs to include a section on testing laying out that all bots need to adhere to certain testing steps.
Testing needs to be done by dedicated testers. Before bots are released in the wild, let them run in a limited area where they are watched by people who are in the picture and well prepared for surprises. I would volunteer for that sometimes. — Sebastian 16:44, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to create a userpage creator bot. The description can be found here. The problem is, I'm not a programmer. Could someone tell me where to propose this? Thanks, -- Gp75motorsports ( talk) 15:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Never mind. Apparently I wasn't paying attention to the top of the page. -- Gp75motorsports ( talk) 22:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
As I have been watching the function of some bots lately, I have noticed than some bot owners have decided they have the right to expand the function of their bots without comment or request, without posting any notice on the bot's users page as far as exactly what the added functions of the bot are. This appears to me violate Wikipedia policy. Has this become an unofficial or accepted policy?
Examples:
That run seems to have gone OK with the exception of the unexpained huge jump in the number of articles listed in Category:Uncategorized from December 2007
Now this is a bot that I personally have seen countless complaints about. Is allowing this kind of freedom a good idea? Dbiel ( Talk) 03:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
I have re-structured and rewritten this policy. I have changed wording to make things clearer, split the policy into logical sections rather than just a section marked "policy", moved things around to fit in (it was showing signs of becoming a collection of individual sentences added over time, rather than a contiguous document) and added a couple of useful links. Very little has actually changed in terms of the actual meaning behind the document, however, I have added a few things that were not there before; while they were not actually present in the page I believe them to be long-established common practise. For example, I have clarified the role and organization of the bot approval group, which was not made clear before, in part using information drawn from the approval group page. I have also tried to arrange things so that the concepts of "bot" and "assisted editing" complement each other, which includes making the definition of the two things a little more precise. I realize that there has been a lot of debate about such things in the past, the two concepts have conflicted somewhat and there is of course still a significant gray area, but I believe the policy as now worded makes things reasonably clear. It advises contributors who think they may need a bot account but are not sure to ask at the approval request page and allow the approvals group to decide, which I believe to be the recommended practise. I have also defined the approval process and a set of requirements for bot approval, using information that was present on this page before, but was in rather a jumbled form. I have also added a nutshell – Gurch 18:58, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Processes which do not modify content but require a read-only copy of Wikipedia's content may be run on the toolserver; such processes are outside the scope of this policy.
Could something be done about some of the pointless edits that some bot do? I just can across User:VeblenBot which updates User:VeblenBot/PERtable and a good chunk of its edits are to simply update the timestamp. Isn't the "does not consume unnecessary resources" suppose to cover this? This isn't the only one that operates in this fashion either. — Dispenser ( talk) 01:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
It seems to be that we have two classes of bots; those to which this policy applies and those that have been given the power to ignore the policy.
Specificly I am speaking about BetacommandBot that continues to ignore these policies. It adds functionally without comment (see previous section above) It refuses to maintain a user page that clearly identifies what it is doing. But rather only provides a link to a list of approval pages (some of which are denied requests) that have to be looked at individually to see what fuctions they cover, some of which are no longer active. And now its owner is in the approval group making the situation even worse. These members who basicly enforce policy should be held to a higher standard, not given free reign to ignore the policy for their own bots and try to apply it to other bots. Dbiel ( Talk) 02:03, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
<blockquote>
The bot account's user page should identify the bot as such using the {{ bot}} tag. The following information should be provided both on the bot account's userpage (or in another suitable and accessible location) and on the approval request:
- Details of the bot's task, or tasks
- Whether the bot is manually assisted, or runs automatically
- When it operates (continuously, intermittently, or at specified intervals), and at what rate
- The language and/or program that it is running
</blockquote>
The difference between what Quadell and BC did is that Polbot was performing a controversial, error prone task when BC's was a simple task, that had previously been performed by other bots. But yes, we should all take this as a warning that we should be careful with what we do with our bots. -- maelgwn - talk 06:23, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Changing this after looking at talk page comments. The policy was muddled on this issue before, so I thought I was just clarifying, but linking to a description from the userpage should be fine -- the important point is that there is one.
Drawing attention to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#AWB_edits. One issue is whether using AWB to perform one edit, while also performing "general fixes" which include something disputed, is an abuse of bot editing. Gimmetrow 05:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Have any of you thought of a framework/policy where non-trivial bots could be written for Wikipedia? At first glance, most of the bots I have seen around are still quite simple and pretty effort intensive in terms of precious human hours that is required to babysit them. If I am wrong, please accept my apologies and point me to a non-trivial bot. Else, could you please post your ideas here? My first thought is to use the lexicon of Wordnet to automate a few things that still need much human effort. For instance, I saw that User:RussBot still requires its owner to make disambiguation decisions. But I think about 90% of the decisions on linking French to France vs French people could be automated with a simple expert system that would decide if the page is about a person (easy to decide if there is a category anyway, but there can be other rules) and then look up word frequecy co-occurances via Wordnet and make a decision. In general, this type fo expert system framework can then be offered to users at a much later stage, say 2 years, after testing. In a nutsell (pun intended) it would be a simple expert system shell that could be used to write useful bots. My driving thought is that "Wikepdia seems ever so effort intensive" and could use some more automation. Afterall, this is/was the computer age until a few years ago. The key item that would help, of course, would also be an API to a suitable high level language way above Perl or Python. But to begin with one may have to just use those. I had a few Perl-based routines that did reasoning a few years ago, and could try and find them. But before that it would be useful to hear what the group here thinks. And from a practical standpoint, it would be of tremendous algorithmic help if one had access to a page visit affinity table of some type. Of course at the page granularity level, this would be expensive, but one could use multi-categories for this, just as most supermarkets do for thier semi-item-level affinity tables. Do any of you know if such a table exists within Wikipedia, and if so, if it can be accessed? Anyway, your suggestions will be appreciated. History2007 ( talk) 03:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
That is a social impact issue, and has been addressed in many settings. You may be interested to know that many financial portfolios are arranged automatically, yet they give the results to customers a few days later, so it does not look like a computer did it. And these are bigtime firms - whose names shall not be mentioned. The way those problems are overcome is that for a somewhat lengthy trial period, the system is supervised, and once it is as good as a human it is allowed to make small changes. In any case, to begin with these nontrivial bots could find things that people could not. I think computers are here (for better or worse) so we might as well use them. As is, anyone with knowhow could actually write a program right now that modifies content, and do not need permission to do it. All they need to do is log in, let it screen scape the content and feed the http tokens back in for edits. It does not need to be decalred as a bot. A few years ago, my company did a few programs like that and they worked fine in finding errors in forms that people had filled. It would have taken huumans MUCH longer to check all those forms. . And for cleaning up multi-redirects, it would work as well as a human. As for adding "See also" items, that could also be done very nicely. If there is a "See also", it will add as the last item, else will try to place it afrer references If there is no references section, it will do nothing. Then more complicated tasks may come in. One would need a Turing test to know who did those edits.... But before any of this is even attempted, I would like to get feedback and suggestions and agreements from whoever sets these policies. In any case, my current thought is to start the design of a little language called "WikiScript" that allows nonprogrammer users to write better bots. It would include "Wikipedia specific" elements so you do not have to rely on general purpose languages, and would avoid iterative constructs. But it would be made available only to users who are careful with it. If you like, I will let you know as we go along. Anyway, do you know if Wikipedia keeps a category based visit affinity table? That would be useful to know. It would probably say a lot about users anyway. Regards History2007 ( talk) 04:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry, I should have defined that better. I should probably also go and edit the Wiki-pages on those concepts for under Market basket there is a mention on it, but not that clearly. In data analysis the term refers to how items are viewed or purchased together. E.g. Suppose you have 26 pages {A, B, C, D... Z} then you get a 26 by 26 table where each entry such as DM tells you the number of times that pages D and M are viewed by the same user. Retailers love to do that for cross selling on products, e.g. they love to know that people who buy ski-hats also tend to buy ski-gloves. Web-site visit affinitiy tables tell websites about their visitors, etc. So the table would have categories as rows and columns and numbers as entries. It would be too expensive to keep that table at the page level I guess, but for key pages something may be done. There are standard computing approaches for dealing with these things. This type of affinity information may help determine if a link "may" be useful between categories, and then suggest a link between some pages. But I am getting ahead of the game here. In the next few days I will edit the relevant Wikepedia pages to add these things. I was surprised that the page on Market basket did not have it, except for a mention of the forever repeated beer and diapers story. The page Market basket analysis was empty and needs to be filled in. I will try to clean those pages up in a few days, but will probably take at least a week to do it right. The page on Association rule learning actually has errors in it and also needs help, but that is another story. Anyway, is there a page that describes the kind of statistics that Wikepedia keeps? Thanks History2007 ( talk) 07:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I specifically said that a page level table would be "too expensive". And the resulting table would be very, very sparse. In practice these things are done by sampling, so one will not keep track of every visitor, so the table is not updated all the time. It does not have to be exact, it is intended as a rough guide. The method is to sample first, know which top categories deserve attention and then only store those that are relevant. My guess is that given 2 million articles, one can get away with an initial table of 200,000 entries for the top categories, then refine from there. And the table gets updated once in a while. It does not need to be exact. Given all the words that get typed into all these "talk pages" the disk resurces would be a fraction of what users are talking with each other about. I noticed that Alexa does analysis for Wikipedia, so they will give you a quote for doing it if you ask them! But the Special:Statistics page had too little info. History2007 ( talk) 08:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Wow! That was a lot of data. So you do keep these things around. But given that these are at the page level, it may be more than I am ready to take on at the moment without a 10 processor SUN server on my desk! By the way, I do not know how I forgot to mention this fact, but the MOST widely known example of an affinity table is Amazon.com's use of "customers who bought book A also bought book B". I guess Amazon has close to a million books or so (I am not sure) but they probably keep a very sparse table, and it does not need to be exact. So at some future point a similar feature for Wikipedia may be useful anyway. History2007 ( talk) 11:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
By the way, that would be a good example of how an online encyclopedia can do things that a printed one can never do. For it is almost impossible to know the affinity of topics within a printed encyclopedia, but with Wikipedia the computer can do that. And it will probably be interesting. History2007 ( talk) 11:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that is true. On the other hand, at times the heart of novelty and being interesting is "an unusual thought". Even if Amazon's suggestion is off once in a while, there is no major harm done except for an extra mouse click. That is how interesting ideas come about in many cases - an odd idea that leads to A that leads to B that leads to C .... What Amazon does not do (I think) is to ask users for feedback on the useflness of that link. Given that Wikipedia users are much more "responsive" let us say, the suggestions can over time be scored on a 1-10 scale and those that are rejected will just be given such a low weight in the affinity table that they no longer show up. In fact, at the beginning you probably thought my idea of affinity table for Wikipedia was odd, but maybe it will be useful. Personally, as a start, I would love a feature that would do a "semi-random link" from a page. A random link is usually a watse of time, but if I am looking at a page about Portugal, since you mentioned it, it would be nice to click on "random portugal" and get a link that for instance tells me about wine bottle cork production in Portugal - someone once told me that was a big industry there somehow. Anyway, I just did a 1st cut of the page on Market basket analysis but did not write about algorithms, computational costs, etc. yet History2007 ( talk) 03:54, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm requesting clarification on the Bot policy
Does the Bot policy apply to read-only bots?
Does the Bot policy only apply to editing bots?
Does the Bot policy only apply to automatic editing bots?
I have a question about whether I need an RFA, so I can't really ask it on the RFA page. I am one of the maintainers of Metacity. It is released using a release script. Wikipedia contains Template:Latest stable release/Metacity and Template:Latest preview release/Metacity. I could add a section to the script which updated these templates. It would make, on average, one edit per week. Would that need to operate using a bot account? If I gave copies of the script to other projects, would they need their own bot accounts? Marnanel ( talk) 15:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I believe the policy should be amended to require all bots to honor {{ nobots}} (with exceptions made on a case by case basis, but user talk pages pretty much never being given an exception). Are there any objections? — Locke Cole • t • c 02:26, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
At a minimum, this is (after discussion above) what I believe is needed:
Note that I'm excluding {{ nobots}} because I think it might be better if users were forced to explicitly deny bots which leave notifications (ensuring that newer bots which may leave notifications the user is interested in aren't accidentally silenced). Thoughts? — Locke Cole • t • c 06:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I support this proposal, though I would also support a slight alternative: make {{ bots}}-compliancy required by default, but allow exceptions to be requested as needed. There's no reason why that shouldn't work, and is far more than reasonable. Humans can't complete and monitor everything bots can do, that's the whole point of being cautious about bots on Wikipedia. This is not an unreasonable request. -- Ned Scott 08:01, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I cannot and will not support such a poor system as the nobots. I dont care if you call 10 editors in a vote consenus, I dont. I have a very effetive method that is abuse proof, it has been in operation for many months without issue. As I have said before, bots and templates dont mix well. I have written one bot that actually attemps to parse a template, RFC bot. I had to re-write that bot no less than three times due to template related issues. (no offense is meant) I am not sure what drugs the devs where on when they wrote the processor, but their syntax is a basterdized language. βcommand 16:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I have to say that I don't see forcing compliance with what is being described (by several bot operators) as a broken/poorly implemented system is the way to go here. I can completely see the reasoning behind not wanting talk page notifications, but I don't see forcing {{ bots}} on people as the answer. I could perhaps support a proposal to add a question to the BRFA template prompting the user to enter an opt-out method (or N/A, as the case may be). Then leave it up to the community (or BAG, if they deem appropriate) to question the creator on their proposed method, or lack thereof. That would mean that everything was upfront and their is a reference somewhere for people looking to opt-out for a specific bot. I simply haven't been convinced that changing bot policy is the way to go here. - AWeenieMan ( talk) 18:23, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Off topic: I have started a thread on the bot owners' noticeboard about the possibility of reworking nobots so that parsing page text is no longer necessary. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 18:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't have to be the nobots system, but I think the community is asking for something that makes less work for everyone. Bot ops, as great and intelligent as you are, and as well discussed as bot tasks are before hand, there will be unanticipated situations, or things in the project or user namespace that shouldn't be touched at all (unless related to policy, etc).
My own proposal in the above thread (which has gone off topic to a more general rant by local bot ops) was more of a state of mind, rather than the exact technical approach or some bureaucracy. When someone proposes a bot task then it should follow such request, unless the task itself would need to edit any and all pages regardless of a user's personal preferences. We don't even need to force this from a technical standpoint, but from a community standpoint. Encourage this as a default setting for bots, but allow bot ops to use desecration. Wouldn't that be simple and fix a lot of problems in itself? Unless your bot has to edit every page, give it a way to ignore a page, because we can't be expected to watch/clean up after something as powerful (for a lack of better words) as a bot.
So don't get hung up on the technical details. The community is making a request, and one that makes all of our lives easier. This is not black and white, this is not "this specific standard doesn't work, so I'll oppose the idea altogether", this is a community discussion. -- Ned Scott 04:17, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
So now we have three different debates. 1) What system to use. 2) When to follow said system. 3) Who gets to choose when to use said system. So first you have to create a system that all the bot ops have no objections with ({{ nobots}} can't be followed by bots using the future API). Then you have to get every bots that touches the effected pages (see #2) to use the new system, including hostile bot ops (have fun with Betacommand). On top of it all, then you have a power struggle between the bot ops and those who want to control when the bots follow the new system. All this is to a response to a problem that doesn't exist ("BAWWWWWW Betacommand" doesn't count). So you just keep on ahead pushing for proposals that the people who do the actual coding oppose, I'm going to do something more useful with my time. BJ Talk 08:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Despite the fact that some folks are disturbed when bot operators ignore {{ nobots}}, I don't think there is enough of a problem or a significant enough justification for making adherence to the nobots template policy. My suggestion is that BAG members request nobots or similar compliance when it makes sense, and also that they see to it that bot operators are involved in the creation of anything nobots-like if/when nobots is deprecated. Avruch T 17:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea if this is a reasonable approach, so I'm just throwing it out. What if bots should, when they are looking to drop a message to a user, look for a specific subpage "User talk:ExampleUser/notices", and if the page exists, drops the message there instead of on the talk page, still going to the regular user talk page if not present? The advantages: users can opt-in for this method if they don't want messages: they can create the page, then take it off their watch list; alternatively, a user may want to simply keep those all there, watching the page as they would their talk page (though they won't get the new messages announcement box). It could be extended to be bot specific ("/BCB notices") for BCB, etc. From the bot standpoint, it would seem to be easy to implement, and less a hassle of programming hassle towards nobots/bots template (since it would have to seek that first, parse, interpret, and operate) than to determine if a page exists and write to that instead of a different page. -- MASEM 18:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Instead of focusing on nobots or any other centralized system, why not simply ask that all bot ops have some form of opt-out or ignore process? Again, this obviously wouldn't be an option offered when the edits have to be done, such as when related to policy and images, etc. This is mostly what we do now, but the problem comes up when some bot ops don't offer this, and refuse to do so even when the edit is not a have to edit. -- Ned Scott 23:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I would like to bring up here an idea for dealing with mass/automated messages delivered to users by bots or tools (basic idea was posted by Obuibo Mbstpo on WT:CANVASS):
Bots which post non-critical messages to users should for each user X on their list look for a page "user:X/automated_messages". If that page exists, the bot can post its message to that page. If that page doesn't exist, the bot should assume that user X doesn't want to receive automated notifications by bots or other tools.
If a user X prefers to receive automated messages on his/her talk page, he/she can create a redirect at "user:X/automated_messages", pointing to "User talk:X". Notification bots would then post their messages to that user's talk page.
Users are not required nor expected to "archive" their "automated_messages" page. They can simply delete messages they no longer need, as they like. Of course they can add that page to their watchlist but there is no obligation to do so.
Using a separate page for automated messages has the advantage, that the "you have a message" bar does not pop-up when a new notification is delivered (feature still available by creating a redirect as described above).
Using a standard location per user does have the advantage that the existence or non-existence of that page can be interpreted by bots/tools as described above.
Implementing this scheme for bot programmers would be easy and efficient, as it would not be needed to load and scan a page looking for markers like {{ nobots}} to decide if a user wants a notification.
The "automated_messages" page would be for non-critical notifications. Bots depositing critical information could still use the talk page of a user, ignoring the automated_messages page. The question whether a bot is depositing critical notifications that warrant posting on users talk pages and ignoring the automated_messages page should be decided on a per bot basis during the BRFA.
-- Ligulem ( talk) 00:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps, it might help if I give some specific examples I have in mind.
Critical notifications are, for example, if a user uploads an image that violates copyright policy. A bot delivering a notice caused by that should post to the user's talk page, not to the automated_messages page. That's a critical notification and there should be for example no general opt-out lists editable by everyone.
Non-critical notifications are for example messages about new AfD's, PROD's, TfD's, delivered by bots. Such messages do clutter up a user's official talk page and users should not archive these notifications.
The main motivation is, that a user's talk page should really be reserved for important communication, which actually deserves flashing the "you have a new message" bar. Other stuff should be treated separately. My proposal is to put that on a user's "automated_messages" page as explained above.
-- Ligulem ( talk) 10:38, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
This page has been protected for 5 days, community policy pages are not the place for reversion cycles, this discussion of the WP:BAG section should continue either here or at one of the other active venues (with a link to it from here). — xaosflux Talk 02:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I will steadfastly oppose protection of this page in response to edit warring from now on. If you're part of the same group of actors that is being disruptive, the entire community doesn't lose the right to edit the bot policy, you lose the right to edit. It is quite unfair to leave the page in a mess due to back-and-forth revert-warring while leaving editors who are already refusing communication unblocked. east.718 at 01:24, May 16, 2008
Why discuss an obvious issue with the BAG member selection method when you can just continue to prove that it's woefully broken. Do you have no idea how bad it looks for members of BAG to be "nominating" people who share their views on BAG member selection (I'm specifically talking about krimpet's nomination: the person who called for a moratorium because of some unforeseen "chaos"). Is there any chance BAG will actually give a little here and stop the cabal activities, or are we heading back towards MFD since reform seems to be impossible? — Locke Cole • t • c 07:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I have accepted a nomination to be considered for membership in the Bot Approvals Group. Please express comments and views here. MBisanz talk 08:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Regardless of which way we go, the bot policy should include a section indicating that individuals standing for BAG membership may include a notice on their userpage indicating such. I have created {{ BAG-notice}} and {{ RBAG-nom}} to that end. MBisanz talk 00:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Ugh. It is not "My way or the highway". Please stop trying to confuse the issues, by now claiming that the previous version does not have consensus. I would suggest that it be reverted back, to the way it was before the "new (experiment) (trial version) (policy) proposal". Please address the old version seperately.
SQL
Query me! 03:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Apparently since the propensity toward edit warring is irresistible for some, for the final time: let's settle this. Apparently people are disagreeing over whether or not consensus is or was not established, as well as whether it is still present or not. Thus, in order to help this along, I've made an outline of the key points and what people believe is or is not reflective of consensus. And, in this particular instance, a vote to determine just what, exactly, they think consensus is, I feel that it's entirely appropriate due to the points being relatively straightforward— it's a simple "yeah, there was consensus" or "no, there wasn't consensus." The details can be sorted out later.
I've added several points. Sign on any that you support, and feel free to add your own re-wordings in a new section at the end, but please do not modify the existing headers of others. This is not a policy vote— this is merely trying to establish points of reference to so that actual policy decisions as well as the current policy can be reflected accurately; for, if we can't agree on just what consensus is, then how, exactly, are we supposed to edit the policy page to state it? :P -- slakr\ talk / 05:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
This is not consensus. Monobi ( talk) 00:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
It is very noticeable how quickly this page lapses from frantic and heated debate back into quiet obscurity. It seems clear that the sweeping changes to the RfBAG process suggested by Coren have not thus far gained consensus as a complete package. But it would be a great shame to lose all the valuable talking points that the experiment has raised to the habitual apathy that surrounds WP:BOT. So while there's clearly currently no consensus to implement the RfA-style RfBAG in its entirety, I don't think it's fair to say that the proposal is completley dead, and I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on indivdual issues like the ones below. Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I for one think that it is: The four RfBAG nominations we have closed have more contributions than all the nominations that have occured at WT:BAG, past and present, successful and not. I was genuinely shocked to see that Coren had been first appointed to BAG based on a discussion with only two comments in it. Levels of insularity like that (contributions from existing BAG members made up an average of almost 70% of comments at the WT:BAG nominations for Werdna, Soxred93, Cobi and Coren) are (IMO) the root cause of the community's legitimate accusations of cabalism and isolation. There are some more interesting statistics at User:Happy-melon/RfBAG statistics if you're interested in that kind of thing. But I'm interested to hear what other bot operators think (it's unlikely we'll see anyone else at this page, but if you do happen to wander in I'd be particularly interested in non-bot-operator opinions). Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I have to say I wasn't very impressed with the process-protest votes on Coren's RfA-style RfBAG, but it didn't affect the result, so no harm done. I do think the RfA-based process has some legitimate concerns, which of course mirror the criticims of RfA itself. But in terms of increasing community involvement in the BAG and BRFA processes, I would personally consider it a success: an average of only 29% contributions from bot operators, and less than 10% from BAG (the four corresponding WT:BAG nominations, by contrast, didn't have a single non-bot-operator contribution between them). We've all heard the arguments and opinions for and against the RfA-based process, so no need to rehash them here; but what conclusions can be drawn from this experiment that are relevant to the question of how to appoint BAG members? Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It has been suggested that, wherever RfBAGs are held and whoever is involved, that the discussion should be closed by a bureaucrat as a point of principle. This strikes me as good common sense: evaluating consensus and being impartial arbitrators is what 'crats are for, and it's the simplest and easiest way to increase the transparency of the process and mitigate claims of cabalism. Having the final decision whether to admit a member to a group, rest with the existing members of that group, is what happens in English gentlemen's clubs, not in a modern community like Wikipedia. Asking the 'crats to close half a dozen discussions a year (most of which are unanimous anyway and need little more than a passing glance) is no extra work for them in the greater scheme of things, and has a significant psychological benefit. Thoughts? Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It's been suggested before: should BAG members be made into a usergroup which can use Special:Userrights to grant and revoke the bot flag? Personally, I would support such a move: it is already the case that BAG have complete authority over who gets the flag and when; having to have a 'crat rubber stamp it is a thoroughly ineffective check-and-balance when most of our bureaucrats don't know beans about bots - how are they supposed to know when a BAG member is making a mistake? I think that a compelling argument is that it will give BAG another tool with which to control wayward bots: currently having the bot flag withdrawn is an unnecessarily laborious process which is rarely used: bots are simply blocked instead, which is at best a blunt instrument. Of the over 100 bot-related rights changes this year, only one was a deflagging without the consent of the operator. What does everyone else think? A useful tool in the armoury of the people who are supposed to protect us against wayward bots? A natural extension of BAG's role? Or more trouble than it's worth? Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think this has certainly been an interesting experiment. If there's one thing that has been shown very clearly, it's the level of inertia and apathy that surrounds bot policies and processes on wikipedia. I don't think I've yet met anyone who is entirely happy with the way BRFA and BAG work on en.wiki (if you are, do speak up!), and I hope we can avoid getting into the same rut that has caught so many of our processes: where everyone agrees that it doesn't really work, but goes along with it anyway. There's no reason (other than apathy) why we can't change one little thing at a time and make gradual improvements; conversely, there's no reason not to try big changes as long as we're sensible with them. I'm very interested to hear other users' thoughts on the whole issue. Happy‑ melon 15:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)