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. |
With the introduction of AbuseFilter, pretty much all of the things the current batch of AntiVandal bots can be implemented as AF rules. This also provides better fine grained control of actions/responses. I propose we put a moratorium on considering any more Anti-Vandal bots. Q T C 23:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
The GRU page needs updated. It says we allow per the Meta policy, but the Meta policy has expanded to include double redirects as well as interwiki links. Do we want to readdress our stance with the Global Policy, or should we update the Global rights page to indicate that it's allowed only for interwiki links as that is all that was agreed upon? Q T C 03:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Interwiki bot approval practice does not seem to follow the current policy, for good reason. I propose several clarifications to the bot policy and one extra requirement. First, understanding of target languages is not required to add reciprocal links. Second, the operator must be able to prevent an incorrect reciprocal link from being added again. This would result in fewer cases like the one described in this thread, where an article maintainer is annoyed by multiple bots. Third, I copied the policy on global bots into this section, where it is most relevant. I also removed some redundant phrases from the existing language. This is the proposed policy:
Operators of bots which create non-reciprocal interwiki links must be familiar with the languages to which they are linking. Bot operators running standard tools such as the pywikipedia framework should update to the latest version daily. If a bot adds an incorrect reciprocal link, its operator must be able to prevent other bots from restoring the link. Globally-approved interwiki bots are permitted to operate on English Wikipedia, subject to local requirements.
This paragraph would replace the two currently in the "Interwiki links" section of Wikipedia:Bot policy#Restrictions_on_specific_tasks. I don't know if any non-reciprocal interwiki bots exist or will ever exist, so that sentence may not be necessary. I also recognize that the extra requirement on bot operators to disable certain interwiki links is a controversial change that affects many current operators and could also be removed. Wronkiew ( talk) 00:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
There are certain kinds of tool that aren't clearly defined under the present policy wording. At present, bots are basically automated tools, and tools whose edits require some element of interaction come under "assisted editing".
There are some tools that are presumably assisted editing but not clearly defined as such, where the user doesn't "interact" for each edit, because the task is very well defined for each run, requires no element of machine judgement, and all interactional data is specified in advance of the run.
What these have in common is the use of an automated tool, to perform at high speed a repetitious and non-controversial "housekeeping" task on multiple "targets". They don't really come under "fully automated bots" since there is user interaction - it's just front loaded at the point the run is executed, by the user individually checking each action will be okay.
I'd like to see under assisted editing, something to the effect: "It also covers tools that perform well-defined non-controversial actions requiring no further judgement, on a previously checked list of targets."
The fact the user has checked the proposed targets individually beforehand, is the key. Can the wording be made more watertight to prevent its abuse for mass actions though?
Hopefully this aim is sensible and not controversial. FT2 ( Talk | email) 02:50, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
I used to use a tool I wrote called TINA (admins can view the page
User:Ameliorate!/TINA). It worked by displaying a list of each changes it was going to make, as an example:
- Somepage: {{sometemplate|someparam=foo}} --> {{sometemplate|someparam=bar}}
- Anotherpage: {{sometemplate|someparam=foo}} --> {{sometemplate|someparam=bar}}
Someotherpage: {{sometemplate|someparam=foo}} --> {{sometemplate|someparam=bar}}
So in a list of 1000+ edits it was easy to see any corner-cases and exclude them. As far as I was concerned this was acceptable under "... but do not alter Wikipedia's content without some human interaction" as there was human interaction, just it was done en-mass at the beginning. I never received any complaints about it, so I would support any change to explicitly allow this. ~ Ameliorate ! 04:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Please see the discussion here. Wronkiew ( talk) 06:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
This is a ' mandatory' notification to all interested parties that I have accepted a nomination to join the Bot Approvals Group - the above link should take you to the discussion. Best wishes, -- Tinu Cherian - 10:58, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Per the required "spamming" of venues, I would like to bring attention to my nomination for the Bot Approval Group, which may be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Nakon. Thanks, Nakon 01:23, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
I think it would be good to clarify long-standing practice that if source code has been released by an author and the author is able and willing to run it on a specific project, they have the right of first refusal. Any objections to clarifying this? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 22:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Discussion about policy subcategories for several pages, including this one. As far as I know, this doesn't make any difference, except as a help to people trying to browse policy. - Dank ( push to talk) 03:14, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. Just to let you know that I (Kingpin13) have been nominated for BAG membership. Per the requirements, I'm "spamming" a number of noticeboards, to request input at my nomination, which can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Kingpin13. Thanks - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 08:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
WP:BOTPOL is and has been in the "behavioral" policy template. I don't think it makes any practical difference whether the page is in the conduct cat or the enforcement cat ... I had guessed "enforcement" since all of the conduct policy pages seem to be primarily about user conduct. If there's no response here, I guess I'll update the behavioral template in a week or so. - Dank ( push to talk) 18:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
The election, using SecurePoll, for Audit Subcommittee appointments has now started. You may:
The election closes at 23:59 (UTC) on 8 November 2009.
For the Arbitration Committee, Roger Davies talk 07:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
There's only one day to go! The Audit Subcommittee election, using SecurePoll, closes at 23:59 (UTC) 8 November. Three community members will be appointed to supervise use of the CheckUser and OverSight tools. If you wish to vote you must do so urgently. Here's how:
here.
For the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 17:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I see that
User:PseudoBot deleted a redlink here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=February_17&diff=322604317&oldid=322604294 - with the edit summary "page linked does not exist".
This would seem to be a straightforward contradiction with the editing guideline
WP:REDLINK.
Is it desirable for Pseudobot (or other bots) to do this, or am I missing something here?
(I'm definitely not discussing the desirability or otherwise of the specific article
Christopher Colella.)
Thanks. --
Writtenonsand (
talk) 16:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Dear colleagues
This is a reminder that voting is open until 23:59 UTC next Monday 14 December to elect new members of the Arbitration Committee. It is an opportunity for all editors with at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2009 to shape the composition of the peak judicial body on the English Wikipedia.
On behalf of the election coordinators. Tony (talk) 09:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
This is due notification that I have been nominated to become a member of the Bot Approvals Group. My nomination is here. @ harej 05:46, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I've proposed a small change to the {{ bot}} template which I think makes it more consistent: see here. Olaf Davis ( talk) 10:12, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Is the a list of bots with administrative rights? -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 15:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
User:AntiAbuseBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 8 January 2009 at 07:43) User:Cydebot (bot, administrator) (Created on 7 April 2006 at 01:24) User:DYKadminBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 26 October 2008 at 04:04) User:MPUploadBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 11 October 2008 at 21:06) User:Orphaned image deletion bot (bot, administrator) (Created on 26 September 2009 at 08:30) User:Orphaned talkpage deletion bot (bot, administrator) (Created on 15 May 2009 at 11:26) User:ProcseeBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 19 January 2009 at 01:32) User:Yet Another Redirect Cleanup Bot (bot, administrator) (Created on 3 May 2009 at 01:55)
Thanks. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 23:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Wikipedians, I am here to advertise my nomination to be on the Bot Approvals Group. Take a look if you have some time. Tim1357 ( talk) 02:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I am currently standing for BAG membership. Your input is appreciated. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 02:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I have been nominated for Bot Approvals Group membership by MBisanz, and I am posting a notification here as encouraged by the bot policy. If you have time, please comment at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/The Earwig. Thanks, — The Earwig @ 03:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I have accepted MBisanz's nomination of myself for membership of the Bot Approvals Group, and invite interested parties to participate in the discussion and voting. Josh Parris 03:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Looking at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Reporting a bot and Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#New interwiki bots behaviour: problems seems to exist consensus on discuraging the contemporary use of -auto and -force parameters with interwiki bots. What do you think? Shoud we add it to "Restrictions on specific tasks"? -- Basilicofresco ( msg) 11:03, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Recently the AIV helper bots have been logging out and editing via IP accounts. This has been causing quite a bit of confusion (repeated posts to noticeboards etc.), and runs the risk of the IP addresses being blocked as unapproved bots. I'm not aware that any bots running on the toolserver have edited logged out, but I think it's against toolserver policy (and would be much more serious, since we don't want toolserver addresses blocked). I propose we make it explicitly clear in the bot policy that bots may not edit while logged out, and any that are know to should have an assert function added. Best, - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 14:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Done No opposition, and is in line with current policies. - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 13:24, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
For the sake of clarity, in the following sentence:
"Note that higher speed or semi-automated processes may effectively be considered bots in some cases. If in doubt, check."
I recommend adding something such as "even if performed by a human editor". CopaceticThought ( talk) 19:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, if a bot is not adhering to the requirements and the owner says they don't care (the owner is using it to add a request to lots of talk pages quickly, just as a time saver, not related to the bots usual activity), I'm unclear what the next step is? 018 ( talk) 16:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
I have accepted Kingpin13's nomination for membership in the Bot Approvals Group, and per the instructions invite interested parties to participate in the discussion and voting. Thank you, – xeno talk 19:24, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
For some reason, we keep having bots editing while logged out. See the current ANI discussions, for example. One of the toolserver IPs was blocked for a day because of this. Given the large number of admins, most of whom aren't digging bots much, it would be simpler to deal with this type of issue if every bot prefixed its edits with its Wikipedia account name. With this approach, if a bot is editing while logged out, at least it's trivial to find the misbehaving bot and notify its owner. I see above that the toolserver policy forbids bots from edditing while logged out, but nevertheless that happens often enough, and the toolserver itself is not governed by en.wp policies, and enforcement of their own policies seems rather lax. Pcap ping 07:30, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
In light of this discussion, I propose that we implement the above text (or some variant thereof) into the configuration tips section. — C M B J 23:13, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I support this as well. The big issue that keeps recurring is with the AIV helperbots - but a fix has been available for those for some time now, and the logged-out edits keep happening. It obviously won't really get fixed unless we force the issue. I also support the two-week timeframe, even though this is existing policy - we haven't been enforcing it, so there would be complaints if we just sprung it on botops. — Gavia immer ( talk) 04:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Note: As this proposal seems to be gaining steam, I went ahead and advertised this discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:91.198.174.202 (toolserver IP / AIV bot blocked), Wikipedia talk:Blocking IP addresses#Toolserver IPs, and MediaWiki talk:Blockiptext#Toolserver IPs. Anomie ⚔ 04:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Probably a dumb question, but is there any reason why a non-bot user would be editing from these addresses? Jafeluv ( talk) 13:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that bot owners who cba to fix the code for the new login should fix it or get soft-blocked. It's not like it's a huge code change. This, however, will affect tool assisted edits from non-logged in users. BUT, as per above question — why would anyone (bot or tool-assisted) edit from the toolserver while logged out? The good faith IP contributors don't use toolservers. So I see no reason why these shouldn't get blocked just to enforce logging in. — Hellknowz ▎ talk 13:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
So far, this seems to be well-supported above. I've just advertised it at WP:VPR and WP:VPP, just in case people who don't watch ANI or IP-blocking-related pages want to comment. Anomie ⚔ 15:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Some probably dumb questions:
I think it's a good idea; if I were a bot operator, I would want this in place just to avoid embarrassment if I made a coding mistake that caused the bot to fail to login. Tisane ( talk) 17:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Could we simply limit it to the login servers? Bots aren't suppose to be run on any other servers, and blocking the web servers screws up some of my web tools. Requiring login for web tools requires an extra 2 requests per run and increase the attack area on the tool. — Dispenser 20:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I spoke to Dab on #wikimedia-toolserver connect, who said he would send the announcement in about 2 hours. Anomie ⚔ 16:15, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Just a little poke here - it appears to me that this block hasn't been carried out yet, and it's been sufficient time, so can someone with the proper bits implement the block? — Gavia immer ( talk) 17:55, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
The policy uses the word "should" quite a lot (47 times in the current version). I interpreted the majority of these (39; the others seem to be figures of speech using the word in other ways) along the lines of RFC 2119: basically a requirement, but if you have a really good reason not to (or your bot predates the requirement) then the rule can be bent. However, I've seen others wanting to treat these as suggestions to be ignored on a whim. Opinions? Anomie ⚔ 03:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia Talk:What Wikipedia is not#How is Wikipedia a gazetteer? How is Wikipedia not a gazetteer?. patsw ( talk) 12:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC) (Using {{ Please see}})
My understanding of the policy on this page, specifically this sentence:
is that I do not need any specific approval for what I want to do: A simple Ruby script to pull some information off certain pages and compile it for my own use. However, because I wanted wiki markup, I did try to access the "action=edit" page (but not post back to it) and got a warning about not having my User-Agent set. I'll fix the issue about the User-Agent, but I want to make sure I'm not violating any policy. - Regards, PhilipR ( talk) 02:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I have been nominated for the bot approval group and would like to invite you all to participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/EdoDodo. Thanks. - EdoDodo talk 02:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Manual high-speed mass article creation/modification using a single manual technique (such as, pasting boilerplate templates) should be treated as semi-automated edits.
Given the heated issue, I suggest a simple and direct proposal. If we have not fully established what "semi-automated" stands for, then perhaps we can decide if high speed use of templates falls under semi-automation. Alternate solutions and proposed rewording are welcome.
Human editors are expected to pay attention to the edits they make, and ensure that they don't sacrifice quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity. Bot-like edits (i.e. high-speed or large-scale edits that make errors an attentive human would not) are liable to be judged on the same terms as an automated or semi-automated bot, even if the methods actually used are ostensibly manual.
We could use the shortcut
WP:Turing test ;)
The dilemma above is that it is not clear whether the restriction on semi-automated article creation applies to the "manual" bot-like template substitution this user was doing. The first proposal tries to cut the knot by expanding the restriction to manual large-scale article creation. This comes at it from the other direction, and basically says we can apply WP:DUCK instead of having to argue over the method used to make apparently automated edits.
I don't have specific examples, but I do recall seeing a few cases in the past at WP:ANI and elsewhere that effectively did this, with the resolution that the offender must be more careful to not make stupid mistakes. Anomie ⚔ 19:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
This is nothing but Wikilawyering. Bad policy drive contributors away from project by taking away freedoms to edit. Starzynka ( talk) 17:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I see. Starzynka ( talk) 18:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
This is a really bad proposal. Firstly, good-faith improvement of the encyclopedia is not and should not be prohibited, although disruption can be prohibited. Secondly, using the bot policy to prohibit normal human editing is in error regardless. — Gavia immer ( talk) 20:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
"large-scale edits that make errors". False. My stubs don't have errors. I just need to remove the bracket for some dabbed article names from the intro and infoboxes after creation that is all and if possible add some initial data. This is not a problem. Starzynka ( talk) 10:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
For the purpose of dispute resolution when there is uncertainty whether a series of edits is a done by an automated process, or a user editing manually at a bot-like speed, they may be treated as automated edits.
Should the policy include directions on notifying anyone besides the blocked user if an account is blocked for operating as an unapproved bot, or an approved bot operating in unapporved ways? BAG, perhaps? Are there such procedures? -- Bsherr ( talk) 17:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
I was looking back at this discussion last night, and decided to sleep on it without knowing that the bot would archive it before I woke up. I propose the following compromise wording to be added to WP:BOTPOL#Dealing with issues:
Anomie ⚔ 17:59, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
Do we have a policy on adminbots whose operators aren't around anymore? I ran across User:Orphaned image deletion bot tonight; it's operated by Chris G: he hasn't edited for a month, and he's had fewer than fifty edits in the last four months. I'm uncomfortable with adminbots that do anything (except for very specialised tasks, such as updating the fully-protected Template:Did you know) without the oversight of an active human editor; would it be reasonable to block this bot and leave Chris a message of "feel free to unblock whenever you want; we just didn't want it to run when you weren't around to look after it"? Nyttend ( talk) 01:06, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at WT:N#What is the consensus on City articles?. patsw ( talk) 01:21, 29 October 2010 (UTC) (Using {{ Please see}})
I have a feeling that because anybody can make a (unathorised) bot, I believe that at some point there will be user(s) that will program a bot to spread true shit all over the project, and messing up all over and possibly spreading a virus. I think that the bots have a too low security level, and if a bot account ends up in the hands of a clever vandal, we may be faced with a major problem. I think we should take more care about the safety of our bots, to prevent possible abuse. MikeNicho231 ( talk) 21:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Question: does "Mass article creation" also apply to mass category creation? Rd232 talk 14:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Proposal— Wikipedia:Bot policy#Bot Approvals Group should be amended so that when applying for BAG membership, editors are not required to post to WP:AN, WT:RFA and WP:VPM. ╟─ Treasury Tag► Regent─╢ 20:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I was genuinely astonished to discover that editors nominating themselves for BAG membership are required to "spam" various major fora. What is the purpose of this? Surely anyone interested in the bot process will be watching this page, the nomination page, WP:BON, whatever. It cannot be necessary to clog up already congested noticeboards with this sort of very niche announcement? ╟─ Treasury Tag► Regent─╢ 20:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
(short statement in response to TT, because I'm about to head off). It mainly was a result of anger with BAG members adding themselves, and people didn't like that. So they kind of went over the top to please everybody. I don't think that requirement is needed anymore. ( X! · talk) · @897 · 20:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Support removing the requirement to post to WT:RFA and WP:VPM. I think it's fine to make an optional post to WP:AN as the nominations seem to be sparse enough to not be considered spam. Nakon 20:34, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Keep WP:VPM, as that's what a Village pump is for. And maybe WP:AN, as admins may know relevant history of a candidate but not be watching WT:BAG. No real need for WT:RFA, IMO. Anomie ⚔ 20:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I remember when this was added. Although my memory on the details is fuzzy, essentially a bot got approved that shouldn't have, there was a kerfluffle which resulted in demands for the heads of all the BAG members, and what eventually resulted was a consensus that BAG had gotten to be too much of an insular group that promoted members into itself without community review or discussion, and was completely out of touch with the needs/wants/desires of the community at large. Of course, the reason for that happening in the first place (as it so often is when it comes to these things) is that that vast majority of people don't care about the bot approval group or bots in general until there's a rogue bot or some approved yet horribly ill-conceived bot, so the only people who watch bot-related pages are bot owners/members of BAG/random people who are interested, which hardly makes up a decent cross-section of the community. The easiest way to solve this was mass forum spam.
Of course, it doesn't work. The nomination which alerted you to this requirement has received all of 6 !votes, 3 of which are by current BAG members, and the other three were by editors who have run or currently run bots. All the !votes on all the BAG nominations that have taken place in the last year combined do not add to the number of !votes in a single average RFA. The community doesn't care, and all the spamming in the world won't make them care. The only thing the spam might accomplish is if someone who is utterly unacceptable runs someone might notice the spam posts and bring it to the usual voters' attention, assuming they didn't notice themselves. This might warrant keeping it at WP:VP and WP:AN, but I've personally never understood the part about posting at WT:RFA. It has nothing to do with that. This whole discussion might warrant greater community input, given that it was the community at large who implemented this, and such things generally shouldn't be undone by 5 editors on a talkpage no one reads. Of course, if you did bring it up somewhere else to gain more attention here, no one would care anyway...-- Dycedarg ж 07:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Everyone supports removing WT:RFA. Opinions are split on WP:VPM (3 to 2 in favor of removing) and WP:AN (3 to 2 in favor of keeping), although no reasoning for removal was given while reasons for keeping both were presented. I've gone ahead and removed WT:RFA, but I've left the other two for now pending further discussion. Anomie ⚔ 15:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Comment. I suppose later then never. WP:RFA is unnecessary, there is little relevance between the two. WP:AN should be kept, as BAG is "administrative" section and if anything sysops should weigh in, especially if they are aware of some relevant history. I am borderline on WP:VPM. After all the other sections, those interested should have seen the nomination. Perhaps if we need to trim, then VPM is the next in line. Rest are bot-related pages, and are fine. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
This is crazy. If we are to do that then we need to unify editing requirements for humans and bots. Having a two-tier system is bad enough, non-human prejudice is to be expected. But when we then say, "Oh and by the way if we wish it, you will be classed as bot, and subject to non-human editing restrictions" the thing becomes Kafkaesque. (Or perhaps I should say more Kafkaesque.)
Rich
Farmbrough, 11:20, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
For me it's less about what the user's doing, than how responsive they are to suggestions that they should desist. Anyone might make a lot of bad edits quickly; they need to be treated as a bot rather than a human if they've responded to criticism like a bot does (i.e. not) rather than like a human does (i.e. stop what they're doing and/or demonstrate that there's consensus for doing it).-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:37, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Is there a policy about whether bots may convert HTML name codes, such as "Ν", to Unicode characters such as "Ν"? Some of the Unicode characters are hard for a human editor to identify in editing software, while the HTML name code is easy to identify. Thus, such conversions make articles hard to edit. Jc3s5h ( talk) 02:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
rfctag|policy}}
Current version: Spell-checking
Proposed version: Context-sensitive changes
The proposal is to clarify that bots cannot make "human-like" decisions in context-sensitive content. Currently, the passage mostly addresses spelling. However, same principle applies to tasks that are not necessarily spell checking. Since there is no BOTPOL point that addresses this, BAG is left to come up with all kinds of possible false positives, whereas it should be the operator that demonstrates that the bot is "harmless", i.e. does not do false positives.
It has been voiced and hinted that BOTPOL needs an overhaul. So let's start here and hopefully write a better page. I put some thought into the wording, so if there are specific issues, please do bring them up. I will leave this for comments first before advertising broader. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 14:25, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I boldly added the wording to the policy. As the previous version was done by a single user without prior discussion (afaik), I believe this RfC + several responses + what BAG usually does anyway is at least more suitable. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The Bot Policy currently contains an injunction against mass article creation ( Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Mass_article_creation); it is proposed that this injunction be extended to cover all namespaces. Mass creation of pages in any namespace may be (unintentionally) disruptive, and should be discussed with the community first. It may be argued that certain namespaces (eg userspace) should be exempted, but the starting point for debate should be that it be applicable to all namespaces, and a case made for any exemptions. Rd232 talk 19:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I have several times suggested, and continue to support a restriction on category creation. This applies to categories that are visible to the readers on articles. Ill-conceived categories are an old, ongoing bugbear to the few who try to maintain the category system. The creation of categories by people how don't appreciate the issues involved means greater amount of work for those who fix it up afterwards. Large-scale creation of ill-conceived categories is disruptive.
I take User:Δelta's point. Some editors, like User:Δelta, know what they are doing, and we don't want to hinder good work. I therefore suggest that rapid creation of mainspace visible categories be restricted to specifically approved bots, OR to specifically approved individuals. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 21:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Overall, this sounds CREEPy to me, as a solution in search of a problem. Additionally, I don't think that enough examples have been considered. Should special, advance approval for "mass creation of talk pages" be required by bots that leave messages for users or at articles? What about uploading images? Is that "mass creation of file pages"? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
As an alternative to the possibility of expanding the policy to all namespaces (which perhaps raises more complexity with the need for exceptions than I'd anticipated), here's an alternative proposal:
The two parts of the proposal are independent, and we come up with a better name than "pre-approval".
Rd232 talk 21:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
This RFC was archived without closure. I was asked to have a look at it & perhaps close; as there seems to be something still worth discussing here I resurrected the thread for further comment :) -- Errant ( chat!) 10:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Anti-archive timestamp. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
OK, that may be enough, but to follow up point 2, how about this:
Any individual wanting to be exempt from clearing each specific mass creation task with the community would have to ask for "pre-approval" to do whatever they see fit, which the community may or may not grant. Such requests should be made at BRFA, and must be advertised at WP:AN. A pre-approval may subsequently be challenged in the same way, and is considered immediately suspended unless or until there is consensus for it to be renewed.
I'm not sure it's worth the complication, but that's what I was thinking of. Rd232 talk 10:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm required by BAG policy to notify this noticeboard of my nomination for BAG member. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
The Bot Policy currently contains an injunction against mass article creation ( Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Mass_article_creation); it is proposed that this injunction be extended to cover all namespaces. Mass creation of pages in any namespace may be (unintentionally) disruptive, and should be discussed with the community first. It may be argued that certain namespaces (eg userspace) should be exempted, but the starting point for debate should be that it be applicable to all namespaces, and a case made for any exemptions. Rd232 talk 19:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I have several times suggested, and continue to support a restriction on category creation. This applies to categories that are visible to the readers on articles. Ill-conceived categories are an old, ongoing bugbear to the few who try to maintain the category system. The creation of categories by people how don't appreciate the issues involved means greater amount of work for those who fix it up afterwards. Large-scale creation of ill-conceived categories is disruptive.
I take User:Δelta's point. Some editors, like User:Δelta, know what they are doing, and we don't want to hinder good work. I therefore suggest that rapid creation of mainspace visible categories be restricted to specifically approved bots, OR to specifically approved individuals. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 21:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Overall, this sounds CREEPy to me, as a solution in search of a problem. Additionally, I don't think that enough examples have been considered. Should special, advance approval for "mass creation of talk pages" be required by bots that leave messages for users or at articles? What about uploading images? Is that "mass creation of file pages"? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
As an alternative to the possibility of expanding the policy to all namespaces (which perhaps raises more complexity with the need for exceptions than I'd anticipated), here's an alternative proposal:
The two parts of the proposal are independent, and we come up with a better name than "pre-approval".
Rd232 talk 21:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
This RFC was archived without closure. I was asked to have a look at it & perhaps close; as there seems to be something still worth discussing here I resurrected the thread for further comment :) -- Errant ( chat!) 10:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Anti-archive timestamp. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
OK, that may be enough, but to follow up point 2, how about this:
Any individual wanting to be exempt from clearing each specific mass creation task with the community would have to ask for "pre-approval" to do whatever they see fit, which the community may or may not grant. Such requests should be made at BRFA, and must be advertised at WP:AN. A pre-approval may subsequently be challenged in the same way, and is considered immediately suspended unless or until there is consensus for it to be renewed.
I'm not sure it's worth the complication, but that's what I was thinking of. Rd232 talk 10:57, 7 April 2011 (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. |
With the introduction of AbuseFilter, pretty much all of the things the current batch of AntiVandal bots can be implemented as AF rules. This also provides better fine grained control of actions/responses. I propose we put a moratorium on considering any more Anti-Vandal bots. Q T C 23:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
The GRU page needs updated. It says we allow per the Meta policy, but the Meta policy has expanded to include double redirects as well as interwiki links. Do we want to readdress our stance with the Global Policy, or should we update the Global rights page to indicate that it's allowed only for interwiki links as that is all that was agreed upon? Q T C 03:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Interwiki bot approval practice does not seem to follow the current policy, for good reason. I propose several clarifications to the bot policy and one extra requirement. First, understanding of target languages is not required to add reciprocal links. Second, the operator must be able to prevent an incorrect reciprocal link from being added again. This would result in fewer cases like the one described in this thread, where an article maintainer is annoyed by multiple bots. Third, I copied the policy on global bots into this section, where it is most relevant. I also removed some redundant phrases from the existing language. This is the proposed policy:
Operators of bots which create non-reciprocal interwiki links must be familiar with the languages to which they are linking. Bot operators running standard tools such as the pywikipedia framework should update to the latest version daily. If a bot adds an incorrect reciprocal link, its operator must be able to prevent other bots from restoring the link. Globally-approved interwiki bots are permitted to operate on English Wikipedia, subject to local requirements.
This paragraph would replace the two currently in the "Interwiki links" section of Wikipedia:Bot policy#Restrictions_on_specific_tasks. I don't know if any non-reciprocal interwiki bots exist or will ever exist, so that sentence may not be necessary. I also recognize that the extra requirement on bot operators to disable certain interwiki links is a controversial change that affects many current operators and could also be removed. Wronkiew ( talk) 00:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
There are certain kinds of tool that aren't clearly defined under the present policy wording. At present, bots are basically automated tools, and tools whose edits require some element of interaction come under "assisted editing".
There are some tools that are presumably assisted editing but not clearly defined as such, where the user doesn't "interact" for each edit, because the task is very well defined for each run, requires no element of machine judgement, and all interactional data is specified in advance of the run.
What these have in common is the use of an automated tool, to perform at high speed a repetitious and non-controversial "housekeeping" task on multiple "targets". They don't really come under "fully automated bots" since there is user interaction - it's just front loaded at the point the run is executed, by the user individually checking each action will be okay.
I'd like to see under assisted editing, something to the effect: "It also covers tools that perform well-defined non-controversial actions requiring no further judgement, on a previously checked list of targets."
The fact the user has checked the proposed targets individually beforehand, is the key. Can the wording be made more watertight to prevent its abuse for mass actions though?
Hopefully this aim is sensible and not controversial. FT2 ( Talk | email) 02:50, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
I used to use a tool I wrote called TINA (admins can view the page
User:Ameliorate!/TINA). It worked by displaying a list of each changes it was going to make, as an example:
- Somepage: {{sometemplate|someparam=foo}} --> {{sometemplate|someparam=bar}}
- Anotherpage: {{sometemplate|someparam=foo}} --> {{sometemplate|someparam=bar}}
Someotherpage: {{sometemplate|someparam=foo}} --> {{sometemplate|someparam=bar}}
So in a list of 1000+ edits it was easy to see any corner-cases and exclude them. As far as I was concerned this was acceptable under "... but do not alter Wikipedia's content without some human interaction" as there was human interaction, just it was done en-mass at the beginning. I never received any complaints about it, so I would support any change to explicitly allow this. ~ Ameliorate ! 04:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
Please see the discussion here. Wronkiew ( talk) 06:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
This is a ' mandatory' notification to all interested parties that I have accepted a nomination to join the Bot Approvals Group - the above link should take you to the discussion. Best wishes, -- Tinu Cherian - 10:58, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Per the required "spamming" of venues, I would like to bring attention to my nomination for the Bot Approval Group, which may be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Nakon. Thanks, Nakon 01:23, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
I think it would be good to clarify long-standing practice that if source code has been released by an author and the author is able and willing to run it on a specific project, they have the right of first refusal. Any objections to clarifying this? -- MZMcBride ( talk) 22:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Discussion about policy subcategories for several pages, including this one. As far as I know, this doesn't make any difference, except as a help to people trying to browse policy. - Dank ( push to talk) 03:14, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Hello there. Just to let you know that I (Kingpin13) have been nominated for BAG membership. Per the requirements, I'm "spamming" a number of noticeboards, to request input at my nomination, which can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Kingpin13. Thanks - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 08:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
WP:BOTPOL is and has been in the "behavioral" policy template. I don't think it makes any practical difference whether the page is in the conduct cat or the enforcement cat ... I had guessed "enforcement" since all of the conduct policy pages seem to be primarily about user conduct. If there's no response here, I guess I'll update the behavioral template in a week or so. - Dank ( push to talk) 18:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
The election, using SecurePoll, for Audit Subcommittee appointments has now started. You may:
The election closes at 23:59 (UTC) on 8 November 2009.
For the Arbitration Committee, Roger Davies talk 07:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
There's only one day to go! The Audit Subcommittee election, using SecurePoll, closes at 23:59 (UTC) 8 November. Three community members will be appointed to supervise use of the CheckUser and OverSight tools. If you wish to vote you must do so urgently. Here's how:
here.
For the Arbitration Committee, — Rlevse • Talk • 17:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I see that
User:PseudoBot deleted a redlink here -
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=February_17&diff=322604317&oldid=322604294 - with the edit summary "page linked does not exist".
This would seem to be a straightforward contradiction with the editing guideline
WP:REDLINK.
Is it desirable for Pseudobot (or other bots) to do this, or am I missing something here?
(I'm definitely not discussing the desirability or otherwise of the specific article
Christopher Colella.)
Thanks. --
Writtenonsand (
talk) 16:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Dear colleagues
This is a reminder that voting is open until 23:59 UTC next Monday 14 December to elect new members of the Arbitration Committee. It is an opportunity for all editors with at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2009 to shape the composition of the peak judicial body on the English Wikipedia.
On behalf of the election coordinators. Tony (talk) 09:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
This is due notification that I have been nominated to become a member of the Bot Approvals Group. My nomination is here. @ harej 05:46, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I've proposed a small change to the {{ bot}} template which I think makes it more consistent: see here. Olaf Davis ( talk) 10:12, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
Is the a list of bots with administrative rights? -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 15:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
User:AntiAbuseBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 8 January 2009 at 07:43) User:Cydebot (bot, administrator) (Created on 7 April 2006 at 01:24) User:DYKadminBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 26 October 2008 at 04:04) User:MPUploadBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 11 October 2008 at 21:06) User:Orphaned image deletion bot (bot, administrator) (Created on 26 September 2009 at 08:30) User:Orphaned talkpage deletion bot (bot, administrator) (Created on 15 May 2009 at 11:26) User:ProcseeBot (bot, administrator) (Created on 19 January 2009 at 01:32) User:Yet Another Redirect Cleanup Bot (bot, administrator) (Created on 3 May 2009 at 01:55)
Thanks. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 23:45, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Wikipedians, I am here to advertise my nomination to be on the Bot Approvals Group. Take a look if you have some time. Tim1357 ( talk) 02:24, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
I am currently standing for BAG membership. Your input is appreciated. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 02:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I have been nominated for Bot Approvals Group membership by MBisanz, and I am posting a notification here as encouraged by the bot policy. If you have time, please comment at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/The Earwig. Thanks, — The Earwig @ 03:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I have accepted MBisanz's nomination of myself for membership of the Bot Approvals Group, and invite interested parties to participate in the discussion and voting. Josh Parris 03:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Looking at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Reporting a bot and Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#New interwiki bots behaviour: problems seems to exist consensus on discuraging the contemporary use of -auto and -force parameters with interwiki bots. What do you think? Shoud we add it to "Restrictions on specific tasks"? -- Basilicofresco ( msg) 11:03, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Recently the AIV helper bots have been logging out and editing via IP accounts. This has been causing quite a bit of confusion (repeated posts to noticeboards etc.), and runs the risk of the IP addresses being blocked as unapproved bots. I'm not aware that any bots running on the toolserver have edited logged out, but I think it's against toolserver policy (and would be much more serious, since we don't want toolserver addresses blocked). I propose we make it explicitly clear in the bot policy that bots may not edit while logged out, and any that are know to should have an assert function added. Best, - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 14:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Done No opposition, and is in line with current policies. - Kingpin 13 ( talk) 13:24, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
For the sake of clarity, in the following sentence:
"Note that higher speed or semi-automated processes may effectively be considered bots in some cases. If in doubt, check."
I recommend adding something such as "even if performed by a human editor". CopaceticThought ( talk) 19:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi, if a bot is not adhering to the requirements and the owner says they don't care (the owner is using it to add a request to lots of talk pages quickly, just as a time saver, not related to the bots usual activity), I'm unclear what the next step is? 018 ( talk) 16:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
I have accepted Kingpin13's nomination for membership in the Bot Approvals Group, and per the instructions invite interested parties to participate in the discussion and voting. Thank you, – xeno talk 19:24, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
For some reason, we keep having bots editing while logged out. See the current ANI discussions, for example. One of the toolserver IPs was blocked for a day because of this. Given the large number of admins, most of whom aren't digging bots much, it would be simpler to deal with this type of issue if every bot prefixed its edits with its Wikipedia account name. With this approach, if a bot is editing while logged out, at least it's trivial to find the misbehaving bot and notify its owner. I see above that the toolserver policy forbids bots from edditing while logged out, but nevertheless that happens often enough, and the toolserver itself is not governed by en.wp policies, and enforcement of their own policies seems rather lax. Pcap ping 07:30, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
In light of this discussion, I propose that we implement the above text (or some variant thereof) into the configuration tips section. — C M B J 23:13, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
I support this as well. The big issue that keeps recurring is with the AIV helperbots - but a fix has been available for those for some time now, and the logged-out edits keep happening. It obviously won't really get fixed unless we force the issue. I also support the two-week timeframe, even though this is existing policy - we haven't been enforcing it, so there would be complaints if we just sprung it on botops. — Gavia immer ( talk) 04:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Note: As this proposal seems to be gaining steam, I went ahead and advertised this discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:91.198.174.202 (toolserver IP / AIV bot blocked), Wikipedia talk:Blocking IP addresses#Toolserver IPs, and MediaWiki talk:Blockiptext#Toolserver IPs. Anomie ⚔ 04:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Probably a dumb question, but is there any reason why a non-bot user would be editing from these addresses? Jafeluv ( talk) 13:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that bot owners who cba to fix the code for the new login should fix it or get soft-blocked. It's not like it's a huge code change. This, however, will affect tool assisted edits from non-logged in users. BUT, as per above question — why would anyone (bot or tool-assisted) edit from the toolserver while logged out? The good faith IP contributors don't use toolservers. So I see no reason why these shouldn't get blocked just to enforce logging in. — Hellknowz ▎ talk 13:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
So far, this seems to be well-supported above. I've just advertised it at WP:VPR and WP:VPP, just in case people who don't watch ANI or IP-blocking-related pages want to comment. Anomie ⚔ 15:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Some probably dumb questions:
I think it's a good idea; if I were a bot operator, I would want this in place just to avoid embarrassment if I made a coding mistake that caused the bot to fail to login. Tisane ( talk) 17:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Could we simply limit it to the login servers? Bots aren't suppose to be run on any other servers, and blocking the web servers screws up some of my web tools. Requiring login for web tools requires an extra 2 requests per run and increase the attack area on the tool. — Dispenser 20:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
I spoke to Dab on #wikimedia-toolserver connect, who said he would send the announcement in about 2 hours. Anomie ⚔ 16:15, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Just a little poke here - it appears to me that this block hasn't been carried out yet, and it's been sufficient time, so can someone with the proper bits implement the block? — Gavia immer ( talk) 17:55, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
The policy uses the word "should" quite a lot (47 times in the current version). I interpreted the majority of these (39; the others seem to be figures of speech using the word in other ways) along the lines of RFC 2119: basically a requirement, but if you have a really good reason not to (or your bot predates the requirement) then the rule can be bent. However, I've seen others wanting to treat these as suggestions to be ignored on a whim. Opinions? Anomie ⚔ 03:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia Talk:What Wikipedia is not#How is Wikipedia a gazetteer? How is Wikipedia not a gazetteer?. patsw ( talk) 12:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC) (Using {{ Please see}})
My understanding of the policy on this page, specifically this sentence:
is that I do not need any specific approval for what I want to do: A simple Ruby script to pull some information off certain pages and compile it for my own use. However, because I wanted wiki markup, I did try to access the "action=edit" page (but not post back to it) and got a warning about not having my User-Agent set. I'll fix the issue about the User-Agent, but I want to make sure I'm not violating any policy. - Regards, PhilipR ( talk) 02:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello everyone! I have been nominated for the bot approval group and would like to invite you all to participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/EdoDodo. Thanks. - EdoDodo talk 02:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
Manual high-speed mass article creation/modification using a single manual technique (such as, pasting boilerplate templates) should be treated as semi-automated edits.
Given the heated issue, I suggest a simple and direct proposal. If we have not fully established what "semi-automated" stands for, then perhaps we can decide if high speed use of templates falls under semi-automation. Alternate solutions and proposed rewording are welcome.
Human editors are expected to pay attention to the edits they make, and ensure that they don't sacrifice quality in the pursuit of speed or quantity. Bot-like edits (i.e. high-speed or large-scale edits that make errors an attentive human would not) are liable to be judged on the same terms as an automated or semi-automated bot, even if the methods actually used are ostensibly manual.
We could use the shortcut
WP:Turing test ;)
The dilemma above is that it is not clear whether the restriction on semi-automated article creation applies to the "manual" bot-like template substitution this user was doing. The first proposal tries to cut the knot by expanding the restriction to manual large-scale article creation. This comes at it from the other direction, and basically says we can apply WP:DUCK instead of having to argue over the method used to make apparently automated edits.
I don't have specific examples, but I do recall seeing a few cases in the past at WP:ANI and elsewhere that effectively did this, with the resolution that the offender must be more careful to not make stupid mistakes. Anomie ⚔ 19:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
This is nothing but Wikilawyering. Bad policy drive contributors away from project by taking away freedoms to edit. Starzynka ( talk) 17:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
I see. Starzynka ( talk) 18:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
This is a really bad proposal. Firstly, good-faith improvement of the encyclopedia is not and should not be prohibited, although disruption can be prohibited. Secondly, using the bot policy to prohibit normal human editing is in error regardless. — Gavia immer ( talk) 20:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
"large-scale edits that make errors". False. My stubs don't have errors. I just need to remove the bracket for some dabbed article names from the intro and infoboxes after creation that is all and if possible add some initial data. This is not a problem. Starzynka ( talk) 10:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
For the purpose of dispute resolution when there is uncertainty whether a series of edits is a done by an automated process, or a user editing manually at a bot-like speed, they may be treated as automated edits.
Should the policy include directions on notifying anyone besides the blocked user if an account is blocked for operating as an unapproved bot, or an approved bot operating in unapporved ways? BAG, perhaps? Are there such procedures? -- Bsherr ( talk) 17:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
I was looking back at this discussion last night, and decided to sleep on it without knowing that the bot would archive it before I woke up. I propose the following compromise wording to be added to WP:BOTPOL#Dealing with issues:
Anomie ⚔ 17:59, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
Do we have a policy on adminbots whose operators aren't around anymore? I ran across User:Orphaned image deletion bot tonight; it's operated by Chris G: he hasn't edited for a month, and he's had fewer than fifty edits in the last four months. I'm uncomfortable with adminbots that do anything (except for very specialised tasks, such as updating the fully-protected Template:Did you know) without the oversight of an active human editor; would it be reasonable to block this bot and leave Chris a message of "feel free to unblock whenever you want; we just didn't want it to run when you weren't around to look after it"? Nyttend ( talk) 01:06, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at WT:N#What is the consensus on City articles?. patsw ( talk) 01:21, 29 October 2010 (UTC) (Using {{ Please see}})
I have a feeling that because anybody can make a (unathorised) bot, I believe that at some point there will be user(s) that will program a bot to spread true shit all over the project, and messing up all over and possibly spreading a virus. I think that the bots have a too low security level, and if a bot account ends up in the hands of a clever vandal, we may be faced with a major problem. I think we should take more care about the safety of our bots, to prevent possible abuse. MikeNicho231 ( talk) 21:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Question: does "Mass article creation" also apply to mass category creation? Rd232 talk 14:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Proposal— Wikipedia:Bot policy#Bot Approvals Group should be amended so that when applying for BAG membership, editors are not required to post to WP:AN, WT:RFA and WP:VPM. ╟─ Treasury Tag► Regent─╢ 20:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I was genuinely astonished to discover that editors nominating themselves for BAG membership are required to "spam" various major fora. What is the purpose of this? Surely anyone interested in the bot process will be watching this page, the nomination page, WP:BON, whatever. It cannot be necessary to clog up already congested noticeboards with this sort of very niche announcement? ╟─ Treasury Tag► Regent─╢ 20:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
(short statement in response to TT, because I'm about to head off). It mainly was a result of anger with BAG members adding themselves, and people didn't like that. So they kind of went over the top to please everybody. I don't think that requirement is needed anymore. ( X! · talk) · @897 · 20:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Support removing the requirement to post to WT:RFA and WP:VPM. I think it's fine to make an optional post to WP:AN as the nominations seem to be sparse enough to not be considered spam. Nakon 20:34, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Keep WP:VPM, as that's what a Village pump is for. And maybe WP:AN, as admins may know relevant history of a candidate but not be watching WT:BAG. No real need for WT:RFA, IMO. Anomie ⚔ 20:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
I remember when this was added. Although my memory on the details is fuzzy, essentially a bot got approved that shouldn't have, there was a kerfluffle which resulted in demands for the heads of all the BAG members, and what eventually resulted was a consensus that BAG had gotten to be too much of an insular group that promoted members into itself without community review or discussion, and was completely out of touch with the needs/wants/desires of the community at large. Of course, the reason for that happening in the first place (as it so often is when it comes to these things) is that that vast majority of people don't care about the bot approval group or bots in general until there's a rogue bot or some approved yet horribly ill-conceived bot, so the only people who watch bot-related pages are bot owners/members of BAG/random people who are interested, which hardly makes up a decent cross-section of the community. The easiest way to solve this was mass forum spam.
Of course, it doesn't work. The nomination which alerted you to this requirement has received all of 6 !votes, 3 of which are by current BAG members, and the other three were by editors who have run or currently run bots. All the !votes on all the BAG nominations that have taken place in the last year combined do not add to the number of !votes in a single average RFA. The community doesn't care, and all the spamming in the world won't make them care. The only thing the spam might accomplish is if someone who is utterly unacceptable runs someone might notice the spam posts and bring it to the usual voters' attention, assuming they didn't notice themselves. This might warrant keeping it at WP:VP and WP:AN, but I've personally never understood the part about posting at WT:RFA. It has nothing to do with that. This whole discussion might warrant greater community input, given that it was the community at large who implemented this, and such things generally shouldn't be undone by 5 editors on a talkpage no one reads. Of course, if you did bring it up somewhere else to gain more attention here, no one would care anyway...-- Dycedarg ж 07:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
Everyone supports removing WT:RFA. Opinions are split on WP:VPM (3 to 2 in favor of removing) and WP:AN (3 to 2 in favor of keeping), although no reasoning for removal was given while reasons for keeping both were presented. I've gone ahead and removed WT:RFA, but I've left the other two for now pending further discussion. Anomie ⚔ 15:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
Comment. I suppose later then never. WP:RFA is unnecessary, there is little relevance between the two. WP:AN should be kept, as BAG is "administrative" section and if anything sysops should weigh in, especially if they are aware of some relevant history. I am borderline on WP:VPM. After all the other sections, those interested should have seen the nomination. Perhaps if we need to trim, then VPM is the next in line. Rest are bot-related pages, and are fine. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
This is crazy. If we are to do that then we need to unify editing requirements for humans and bots. Having a two-tier system is bad enough, non-human prejudice is to be expected. But when we then say, "Oh and by the way if we wish it, you will be classed as bot, and subject to non-human editing restrictions" the thing becomes Kafkaesque. (Or perhaps I should say more Kafkaesque.)
Rich
Farmbrough, 11:20, 17 December 2010 (UTC).
For me it's less about what the user's doing, than how responsive they are to suggestions that they should desist. Anyone might make a lot of bad edits quickly; they need to be treated as a bot rather than a human if they've responded to criticism like a bot does (i.e. not) rather than like a human does (i.e. stop what they're doing and/or demonstrate that there's consensus for doing it).-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:37, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Is there a policy about whether bots may convert HTML name codes, such as "Ν", to Unicode characters such as "Ν"? Some of the Unicode characters are hard for a human editor to identify in editing software, while the HTML name code is easy to identify. Thus, such conversions make articles hard to edit. Jc3s5h ( talk) 02:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
{{
rfctag|policy}}
Current version: Spell-checking
Proposed version: Context-sensitive changes
The proposal is to clarify that bots cannot make "human-like" decisions in context-sensitive content. Currently, the passage mostly addresses spelling. However, same principle applies to tasks that are not necessarily spell checking. Since there is no BOTPOL point that addresses this, BAG is left to come up with all kinds of possible false positives, whereas it should be the operator that demonstrates that the bot is "harmless", i.e. does not do false positives.
It has been voiced and hinted that BOTPOL needs an overhaul. So let's start here and hopefully write a better page. I put some thought into the wording, so if there are specific issues, please do bring them up. I will leave this for comments first before advertising broader. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 14:25, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
I boldly added the wording to the policy. As the previous version was done by a single user without prior discussion (afaik), I believe this RfC + several responses + what BAG usually does anyway is at least more suitable. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The Bot Policy currently contains an injunction against mass article creation ( Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Mass_article_creation); it is proposed that this injunction be extended to cover all namespaces. Mass creation of pages in any namespace may be (unintentionally) disruptive, and should be discussed with the community first. It may be argued that certain namespaces (eg userspace) should be exempted, but the starting point for debate should be that it be applicable to all namespaces, and a case made for any exemptions. Rd232 talk 19:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I have several times suggested, and continue to support a restriction on category creation. This applies to categories that are visible to the readers on articles. Ill-conceived categories are an old, ongoing bugbear to the few who try to maintain the category system. The creation of categories by people how don't appreciate the issues involved means greater amount of work for those who fix it up afterwards. Large-scale creation of ill-conceived categories is disruptive.
I take User:Δelta's point. Some editors, like User:Δelta, know what they are doing, and we don't want to hinder good work. I therefore suggest that rapid creation of mainspace visible categories be restricted to specifically approved bots, OR to specifically approved individuals. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 21:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Overall, this sounds CREEPy to me, as a solution in search of a problem. Additionally, I don't think that enough examples have been considered. Should special, advance approval for "mass creation of talk pages" be required by bots that leave messages for users or at articles? What about uploading images? Is that "mass creation of file pages"? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
As an alternative to the possibility of expanding the policy to all namespaces (which perhaps raises more complexity with the need for exceptions than I'd anticipated), here's an alternative proposal:
The two parts of the proposal are independent, and we come up with a better name than "pre-approval".
Rd232 talk 21:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
This RFC was archived without closure. I was asked to have a look at it & perhaps close; as there seems to be something still worth discussing here I resurrected the thread for further comment :) -- Errant ( chat!) 10:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Anti-archive timestamp. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
OK, that may be enough, but to follow up point 2, how about this:
Any individual wanting to be exempt from clearing each specific mass creation task with the community would have to ask for "pre-approval" to do whatever they see fit, which the community may or may not grant. Such requests should be made at BRFA, and must be advertised at WP:AN. A pre-approval may subsequently be challenged in the same way, and is considered immediately suspended unless or until there is consensus for it to be renewed.
I'm not sure it's worth the complication, but that's what I was thinking of. Rd232 talk 10:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm required by BAG policy to notify this noticeboard of my nomination for BAG member. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
The Bot Policy currently contains an injunction against mass article creation ( Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Mass_article_creation); it is proposed that this injunction be extended to cover all namespaces. Mass creation of pages in any namespace may be (unintentionally) disruptive, and should be discussed with the community first. It may be argued that certain namespaces (eg userspace) should be exempted, but the starting point for debate should be that it be applicable to all namespaces, and a case made for any exemptions. Rd232 talk 19:07, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I have several times suggested, and continue to support a restriction on category creation. This applies to categories that are visible to the readers on articles. Ill-conceived categories are an old, ongoing bugbear to the few who try to maintain the category system. The creation of categories by people how don't appreciate the issues involved means greater amount of work for those who fix it up afterwards. Large-scale creation of ill-conceived categories is disruptive.
I take User:Δelta's point. Some editors, like User:Δelta, know what they are doing, and we don't want to hinder good work. I therefore suggest that rapid creation of mainspace visible categories be restricted to specifically approved bots, OR to specifically approved individuals. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 21:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Overall, this sounds CREEPy to me, as a solution in search of a problem. Additionally, I don't think that enough examples have been considered. Should special, advance approval for "mass creation of talk pages" be required by bots that leave messages for users or at articles? What about uploading images? Is that "mass creation of file pages"? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
As an alternative to the possibility of expanding the policy to all namespaces (which perhaps raises more complexity with the need for exceptions than I'd anticipated), here's an alternative proposal:
The two parts of the proposal are independent, and we come up with a better name than "pre-approval".
Rd232 talk 21:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
This RFC was archived without closure. I was asked to have a look at it & perhaps close; as there seems to be something still worth discussing here I resurrected the thread for further comment :) -- Errant ( chat!) 10:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Anti-archive timestamp. — HELLKNOWZ ▎ TALK 10:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
OK, that may be enough, but to follow up point 2, how about this:
Any individual wanting to be exempt from clearing each specific mass creation task with the community would have to ask for "pre-approval" to do whatever they see fit, which the community may or may not grant. Such requests should be made at BRFA, and must be advertised at WP:AN. A pre-approval may subsequently be challenged in the same way, and is considered immediately suspended unless or until there is consensus for it to be renewed.
I'm not sure it's worth the complication, but that's what I was thinking of. Rd232 talk 10:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)