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 16 | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | → | Archive 22 |
It is my opinion that Curps ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) has added anti-vandal rollback functions to the bot being run under his main account. As I see no evidence of this being documented or discussed, I have raised the issue at WP:ANI. Participation from people at this forum would be appreciated. Dragons flight 22:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
The Communications committee is working on coordinating the use of sitewide notices for Wikimedia projects. This is needed for the upcoming fundraiser, as well as other potential announcements relevant to all projects, such as Wikimania or technical issues like single login.
It's anticipated that we will use a bot to help update these messages, which due to the nature of the pages being edited will need to have universal sysop privileges. Rest assured that we won't be using it for other sysop functions.
Could someone please run a bot to replace all instances of Image:RN-White-Ensign.svg with Image:Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svg? Would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! — Nightst a llion (?) 02:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
All done, except for a few random ones, I think my bot ignored them because the image was is transcluded from a template or something. (p.s. I just added functionality to WP:AWB to get a list of articles from an image page, it will be in the release version soon). Martin 15:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
See Special:Contributions/82.245.240.2. While the edits appear to be benign, it was confusing to see a bot that is an IP. I would guess that it hasn't been approved, either. Ardric47 22:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi. Orphanbot keeps tagging IDF fair use images for deletion, even though I explained to its owner (who I want absolutely nothing to do with - this complicates things) that the IDF states: The user may make "fair use" of the protected material as set out under the law. Is there anyone who can help me to interact with the bot's owner; I wish to avoid any direct communication with him. See also: my WP:AMA request. El_C 21:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed some editors and their accounts and bots have been doing away with good edits, improvements of the page. What they are doing is not harmless to the encyclopedia. They seem to be trying to keep what they wrote as the top page, thus preventing any possible improvements.-- Chuck Marean 23:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
[1] (apparently a bug with the Google toolbar for Firefox) resulted in [2]. -- SPUI ( T - C) 01:31, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I am thinking about setting up a bot to work on archived pages. Not a bot to do the actual archival of the pages themselves, but one for archival maintenance, such as adding archive header templates (for example, see Talk:Main Page/Archive 1).
This bot would be human assisted. Basically, I think I would feed it a list of pages and it would make sure they all had the proper headings. Although there are quite a few archival pages, I don't think this would be a server hog, as it could be run at set intervals.
Would a bot like this be approved? I could write a basic javascript for my monobook.js that would let me basically do the exact same thing, but I'd have to sit there and click through the pages instead of letting the bot click them for me. ~ MDD 46 96 17:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
How are bots given bot status? Please reply on talk page. General Eisenhower • ( at war or at peace) 01:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
A bot (or perhaps a script, or some other tool) would be very useful to the growing amount of people (myself included) who are interested in studying Wikipedia. I'd very much like to see and use a tool that would look at the history of any article (including a talk page!) and:
Even one or a few of those if implemented would be much, much appreciated! If we already have tools that can answer some of these questions, please let me know.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Would this work better with sub pages like AfD? It would bmake archiving eaier. Rich Farmbrough 15:13 20 June 2006 (GMT).
I am (being bold and) making this page live per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive_17#Flagging. Rich Farmbrough 22:09 22 June 2006 (GMT).
Please delete this account, the bot spams user pages, doesn't identify correctly tagged images (apparently looking at templates instead of categories), and it doesn't wait to let users fix their errors. The owner is unresponsive to complaints on the bot's talk page. -- Omniplex 13:03, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
If you hate OrphanBot, you might want to look at
this
Micoolio101 00:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)Micoolio101
It seems that Crypticbot is now rather orphaned, as its master User:Cryptic( User talk:Cryptic) hasn't edited for several months. It continues plodding on its way, doing useful things it appears, and hasn't particularly misbehaved AFAIK. However, without a master it can't be adapted to changing situations.
In particular, it is the force behind archiving of the Wikipedia:Reference desk group of pages, and is failing there. It has partially failed in archiving the /Science page for several months, and just in the last day or two looks like it may be failing to archive for the whole group. So I suppose one thing needed is another botmaster to step up and take over the archiving. See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Failure of automated archiving, and also the good idea of using Daily transclusion. - R. S. Shaw 05:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
For those inclined to use meta icons on userpages, feel free to use {{ User:Fluxbot/Bot}}> to add the gear icon to your bot pages. — xaosflux Talk 03:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I think the list of bots is becoming too big, and should not be maintained on this page. I propose we split it up and move the list to another page. -- Yurik 22:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I am writing a bot to run on Hindi Wikipedia. I am using python wikimedia framework. I am getting an error, "UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: unexpected code byte" when executing the following code,
f = codecs.open('hi-towns.csv', 'r', config.textfile_encoding) x = f.read().decode('utf8')
Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ganeshk ( talk) 03:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Point number 5 and 6 below "When naming your bot" seem to not really belong to that section. The information they contain seems unrelated to naming ones bot and seems to be nothing one would expect under this headline. Also, if there exists something laid out as a policy in its own right on these subjects, there might be a good point in pointing to that policy, and doing that early on the project page instead of hiding it in the place it is now. -- 62.134.227.14 01:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I want to make a lot of AWB spellchecking edits, and so as not to crowd my contrib list and make more than the 1-2 edits per minute, I want to make a bot account. As always it will be human-assisted, and I'll monitor each and every change (AWB shows me the diff preview) but since I'll be making a lot of edits, a bot account makes sense. Is this the place to apply for approval for such a venture, or is there some policy that easily defines what I should and shouldn't do with AWB? -- Draicone (talk) 06:55, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
The external link to WikiLink has been down for some time now. Anyone who has it, I'd appreciate a mirror upload. ~ Booya Bazooka 06:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I have recently gotten the approval to run and have received a bot flag for my bot
user:BetacommandBot. during this process I noticed that the procedure for getting the preamble for running a bot can a extreamly difficult and time consuming process. I would like to make a suggestion. Split the page
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals into five six pages.
which is something simialar that is uses for WP:CFD/ WP:RFA and the use of subpages for each bot Betacommand 07:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
To give due credit, E. seems to have sped things up enormously, so I'll file the above under the general heading of "startup costs" of new system, and "all's well that ends well". I just rather had visions of endless "churning" of requests without resolution... Alai 17:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd love to learn a programming language and run a bot... but I don't want to download programming software. Is there an alternative to downloading software? -- Gray Porpoise 15:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but it'd have to be something like Brainfuck-- 86.146.76.221 19:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
If you really want to program a bot, no. Blankly put, you need a compiler. Dylan 16:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I, and apparently, many other people are having problems with the actions of User:Cydebot (see User_talk:Cydebot, especially sections 38, 41, and 43, though there may well be additional notes on this page from dissatisfied users.) I wonder if someone could block its actions and suggest that it is changed to merely put a note on people's user pages asking them to manually edit the pages, as this seems to be the simplest option. I have had to revert my page, and have yet to work out what I must do to successfully achieve what the bot was trying to do. Thank you. DDS talk 22:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Blocked until Cyde contacts me -- Tawker 16:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Ganeshk's problem appears to have been resolved by Betacommand. It had to do with a redlinked category added to an article, and deciding which extant category a nonexistant category might have been a subcat of is usually beyond bots. I tried to solve the other thing (about the removing cabinet of norway's cat) and I cannot figure out what happened unless it was something similar (cab of norway was redlinked when cydebot was given the task and had since been created and populated). Cab of norway was only created September 6th or so. Syrthiss 18:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
There’s a not-logged-in bot working under IP address 129.125.101.164, but there is no note on the talk or user page. -- Van helsing 08:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Might be Thijs!bot ( talk · contribs) operated by Thijs! ( talk · contribs) losing login every now and then? -- Francis Schonken 14:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
...I know this may sound kind of stupid, but I always wonder what the red button on the bot page is for, it says it'll block the bot, but mabye... will it block the person who presses it? (please respond on my talk page.) Tinlv7 18:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
There's been some talk at CFD about having a bot patrol Category:Protected deleted categories to make sure the categories stay empty. Does anybody have a bot that can do that? - EurekaLott 02:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible that we could get some useful categorisation of the bots? I'd be interested in seeing them categorised by programming language (so people can find similar examples) and open sourceness (likewise looking for code to use), and also if there's some way to categorise their general wikipedia functions.
How does a Wiki Bot communicate with English Wikipedia? Does it request pages like any browser with HTTP, or does it use another protocol? Thanks in advance. - ENIAC ( Talk) ( Current Projects) 12:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we add a statement to this policy that all bot edits (and edits made with any software assistance) must abide by all existing guidelines and common practices. The reason is that I occasionally notice bots/javascript etc. edits that change articles in a manner - that while not necessarily wrong - is not consistent with the normal wiki-style. Normally this is limited to minor formatting things, but it is still needlessly annoying. Martin 21:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Greetings; There is an apparent job or bot that is unlinking of “common words” which seems to be running overboard in a number of instances; it is delinking items that while on their face may seem "common" may in fact be apropos to the article. Also, in general I prefer to see and abundance of linking, makes for richer exploration. I have seen some errors where it has removed the link around a year but truncated the value (1993 became 993). The bot appears to be operated by User:Colonies_Chris and the changelog url is [4]. Thank you for looking at this. Bdelisle 08:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
On another wiki where I'm a sysop under a different username, I've got a bot that looks for spamming, then reverts it with the edit summary of (Spam reverted - AUTOLINKREMOVE - Please do not mass-add external links!)
I'm wondering if I should use this bot here on Wikipedia; it's a semi-bot, not a full one. -- LiverpoolCommander 11:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
MelancholieBot ( talk · contribs) did this edit http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Mexico&curid=3966054&diff=79370151&oldid=79163821 and had the only edit summary "robot", also, the bot didn't do much. → A z a Toth 01:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Bots#"Robot-assisted disambiguation: U.S. Highway 1", in which I notified Rschen7754 that his bot Rschen7754bot ( talk · contribs) is making useless edits. He has not stopped the bot, which I assume is because he is away from the computer. -- NE2 03:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
It is time we added a new section specifically dealing with assisted bots/software ( WP:AWB etc. ). Though the spirit of this policy is obvious, I would like to express some principles clearly:
I don't think any of these points are new or remotely controversial, so I'll add them pretty soon. thanks Martin 06:34, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
My idea: Create a bot that checks the new changes and finds those with multiple exclamation marks (!!!!!!!!!11). 50% of all the vandalism I've seen has that. -- Jinxs 12:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that perhaps six out of seven anonymous users who leave comments on talk pages do not sign their posts properly. I have usually added the {{ unsigned}} message after those posts when I have encountered them. However, this could be a job for a bot: scan the Recent changes list limited to the Talk space, and if a comment is made by an IP-address, check it for a signature and add one if necessary. Of course logged in users also forget the signature sometimes, and those could be checked too, if it doesn't take too much resources. Alternatively only check those users that have not created an user page yet, they are often new to Wikipedia and do not know about signing their posts. Is anyone with the skill/equipment up to this? -- ZeroOne ( talk | @) 11:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that it is stated that no spellchecking bot could ever function without assitence. Now I understand the fundemental faults with spell checkers, lord know I have tried to depend on them in the past due to my deplorable spelliong. But it does not seem accurate to say it is not technically possible to automatically correct spelling.
What about a bot that only changed diferentiate to differentiate? To say it is not technically possible to create a spellchecking bot is just wrong. The scope simply needs to be limited.
What needs to be done for such an automated bot(which I for one am not skilled enough to create) is to provide a list of words and their mispellings where there is no possible alternate meaning to the word. Such as sofisticated turned into sophisticated, no possible error in mistaking it for another word. Not trying to change the world/wiki, just pointing out what I see, wheeeee. HighInBC 01:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Ohhhh, ya got me. I was wrong, the page is right. No automated system could account for that. I retract my contention. HighInBC 06:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I am unfamilar with bots to say the least but was curious if User talk:84.244.80.3 is an unauthorized bot, or simply one not logged in. Dark j e di requiem 02:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
See a super-human rate of edits coming from user 141.84.69.20 ( talk). Was concerned it was an unauthorized Bot, and possisbly doing damage? -- KeithB 20:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I have made a proposal to let some bots be granted the rollback feature at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Rollback to the bots!. Crossposting as this proposal is relevant to this policy (comment there). Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I've spent hours scraping around and I can't find the API? Where is the documentation that says "This is what you need to send" and "This is what you get back". I don't want wrappers or dll's or libraries, I just want to know what strings of bytes I need to send, where to send them and the format of the replies. TIA for any assitance. 87.112.20.152 08:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I can't find any way to link to a page specifically for Wiktionary. 87.112.20.152 15:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
OK. I was dealing with a vandal, as was another user, and the bot reverted an edit and provided the vandal with a generic warning.(given test1, then test2, then generic)
Is it appropriate that I replaced the bot's warning with test3, and signed it?-- Vercalos 07:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC) yeah the AVB bots are not that smart to figure that out. Betacommand ( talk • contribs • Bot) 07:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please tell me where to find this?
I gather you can call the package to log in, read and write pages, but there is no documenation with the package and I can't find any here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.112.74.253 ( talk • contribs) 16:43, 15 November 2006.
I've been trying to find out how to use it but either no one knows, or they're not letting on. 'Someone' must know how to use it from other languages. It claims on the framework page 'we will welcome you'. Quite frankly it's about as welcoming as a rabid doberman :-) 87.112.15.14 09:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I and another user have complained to User:Gwern about his "Robot-assisted disambiguation" work bleeding into user space, with no response from Gwern and (apparently) no change in his behavior. (See one of Gwern's edits to a user subpage and User:Csernica's response; Gwern's edit of my subpage and my response; and finally Gwern's second edit of my same subpage.) Could an admin please talk to him about this? The changes made by the bot may be considered minor, but some users don't want their subpages changed at all, and I believe it's reasonable to expect such desires to be respected. By the way, I don't know what bot he's using, or if it's registered/approved. - dcljr ( talk) 21:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... reminds me of someone... after all, WHO enjoyed remaking Episode IV with Nufy8 wiki-style ;) ? Canderous Ordo 22:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
The problem is simple - "refdeskbot" is archiving too soon. I have raised this point Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#refdeskbot also see User talk:87.102.21.223 - the problem is that active discussion edits are not shown in the edit history (it uses tranclusion apparently). Bot operator martin is clearly aware what the problem is but will not change it's operation without some clear mandate. Perhaps some sensible person could give him a push in the right direction. Thank you. 87.102.21.190 03:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there a bot that automatically archives Wiki-project talk pages?
perfectblue 08:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I have an idea for a bot: one that checks if fair use images are being used outside of article namespace ( WP:FUC criterion #9). I've come upon fair use images on article talk pages, image pages and image talk pages (linking to other versions), WP:BJAODN, user pages, user talk pages and even a template.
It doesn't necessarily have to remove the images, it just needs to notify a human editor of the problem. -- Oden 13:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
As someone who was a short while ago looking to start out on the path to setting up a bot on wikipedia, it struck me that the pages on bots (below) contained no help information on getting started with your bot, but rather focused solely on policy.
The main Wikipedia:Bot page should really be named Wikipedia:Bot Policy, sicne that is overwhelmingly what it covers. This is important, but when people are looking to set up a bot it seems to me we shuold be able to give them a page within the botnav tree of Wikipedia:Howto Contribute with a Bot or similar (the name probably stinks, i know). It could outline the various languages available, outline issues that everyone writing a bot is going to bump into and need to know about (edit tokens etc), have links to set code snippets for certain tasks etc, as well as being the obvious place for bot developers to post quesries (on the accompanying talk page) relating to bot development - currently such questions would be scattered between this page (which is really about bot policy and the bot requests page (which again, isn't really suitable).
It could have FAQs on "how do I know if another bot alread does this", "how do I get my bot logged in to make edits" etc etc etc
Obviously I'm open to refinement of this idea, but just as there is a Wikipedia:Contributing_to_Wikipedia I feel there shold be something for bot developers similar to the helpful "here's how you get started" page for human editors. Anyone else feel the same way? Is there any backing for this idea? PocklingtonDan 16:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
What language does one use to write bots. I am thinking about learning how to write a bot so I can write one for the purpose of trolling and cleaning up Category:Lists of ambiguous human names by converting entries without the last name first structure to take on that structure. Is that something that a bot could do? Is that likely a bit much for a first time bot maker? TonyTheTiger 22:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I have just created a null template {{ nobots}}. The idea is that it can be placed on a page to discourage bots, much in the same way that robots.txt works. Whether it is honoured will depend on the bot, the name space and potentially arguments. E.g {{nobots|except=WerdnaBot}} might be used on a user talk to allow only WerdnaBot to edit it, but AntiVandalBot might still decide to override. Possibly {{nobots|theseones=SmackBot,Rambot}} would allow any bots execpt SB and RB. Comments? Rich Farmbrough, 21:24 12 December 2006 (GMT).
This template has been changed and is now at Template:bots -- RM 17:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Bluemoose/Martin apparently left -- Francis Schonken 12:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm working on a new Java-based bot framework that I'm currently calling "jwikibot". The intention is to write a library that uses the MediaWiki API for as much as possible and fills in the gaps with legacy methods like XHTML parsing until the API supports the added functionality. I am planning for it to have functionality comparable to pywikipedia or perlwikipedia once it is more developed.
Currently, I have prototyped read-only code for using Special:Linksearch to build a report of links to lyric sites. I have an unapproved bot account called Dillonbot, but I have been running the parsing code without logging in because it is not yet doing any writing.
I'm not in a hurry to let this code start editing yet, but I was wondering what my next steps should be once I get to that point. Should I seek approval for the account for general framework testing using user subpages, or will I need to specify an actual task (probably also using user subpages)? Mike Dillon 05:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
A concern was raised regarding a new task performed by VoABot_II ( BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights), see WP:VPP#YouTube.
I couldn't find a task approval for this particular task (removing YuoTube links) for this bot, or for any other bot, in the usual places ( Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, etc). Just leaving a note here so that bot people can keep an eye on this. Barberio, who notified about it on WP:VPP, said he was trying to contact the bot operator. -- Francis Schonken 00:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
How do you command your bot? For example, as per a new agreement made at WT:NYCS I originally requested approval for my bot to replace templates such as {{NYCS 7}} with {{NYCS service|7}}. If the template is a rush template, such as {{NYCS 7 rush}}, then I want {{NYCS service|7|<7>}} to replace it. If {{NYCS time}} is followed by it, such as {{NYCS 7}} followed by {{NYCS time|1234}}, then I want {{NYCS service|7||1234}} to replace it. If {{NYCS time}} is followed by a rush template, such as {{NYCS 7 rush}} {{NYCS time|1a2a3c}} then I want {{NYCS service|7|<7>|1a2a3c}} to replace {{NYCS 7 rush}} {{NYCS time|1a2a3c}}. If they are shuttle templates, such as:
These are just examples, and my bot was approved by User:Tawker. What should I do now? -- Imdanumber1 ( Talk | contribs) 01:12, 28 December 2006 (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 16 | Archive 17 | Archive 18 | Archive 19 | Archive 20 | → | Archive 22 |
It is my opinion that Curps ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) has added anti-vandal rollback functions to the bot being run under his main account. As I see no evidence of this being documented or discussed, I have raised the issue at WP:ANI. Participation from people at this forum would be appreciated. Dragons flight 22:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
The Communications committee is working on coordinating the use of sitewide notices for Wikimedia projects. This is needed for the upcoming fundraiser, as well as other potential announcements relevant to all projects, such as Wikimania or technical issues like single login.
It's anticipated that we will use a bot to help update these messages, which due to the nature of the pages being edited will need to have universal sysop privileges. Rest assured that we won't be using it for other sysop functions.
Could someone please run a bot to replace all instances of Image:RN-White-Ensign.svg with Image:Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svg? Would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! — Nightst a llion (?) 02:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
All done, except for a few random ones, I think my bot ignored them because the image was is transcluded from a template or something. (p.s. I just added functionality to WP:AWB to get a list of articles from an image page, it will be in the release version soon). Martin 15:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
See Special:Contributions/82.245.240.2. While the edits appear to be benign, it was confusing to see a bot that is an IP. I would guess that it hasn't been approved, either. Ardric47 22:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi. Orphanbot keeps tagging IDF fair use images for deletion, even though I explained to its owner (who I want absolutely nothing to do with - this complicates things) that the IDF states: The user may make "fair use" of the protected material as set out under the law. Is there anyone who can help me to interact with the bot's owner; I wish to avoid any direct communication with him. See also: my WP:AMA request. El_C 21:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed some editors and their accounts and bots have been doing away with good edits, improvements of the page. What they are doing is not harmless to the encyclopedia. They seem to be trying to keep what they wrote as the top page, thus preventing any possible improvements.-- Chuck Marean 23:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
[1] (apparently a bug with the Google toolbar for Firefox) resulted in [2]. -- SPUI ( T - C) 01:31, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I am thinking about setting up a bot to work on archived pages. Not a bot to do the actual archival of the pages themselves, but one for archival maintenance, such as adding archive header templates (for example, see Talk:Main Page/Archive 1).
This bot would be human assisted. Basically, I think I would feed it a list of pages and it would make sure they all had the proper headings. Although there are quite a few archival pages, I don't think this would be a server hog, as it could be run at set intervals.
Would a bot like this be approved? I could write a basic javascript for my monobook.js that would let me basically do the exact same thing, but I'd have to sit there and click through the pages instead of letting the bot click them for me. ~ MDD 46 96 17:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
How are bots given bot status? Please reply on talk page. General Eisenhower • ( at war or at peace) 01:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
A bot (or perhaps a script, or some other tool) would be very useful to the growing amount of people (myself included) who are interested in studying Wikipedia. I'd very much like to see and use a tool that would look at the history of any article (including a talk page!) and:
Even one or a few of those if implemented would be much, much appreciated! If we already have tools that can answer some of these questions, please let me know.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Would this work better with sub pages like AfD? It would bmake archiving eaier. Rich Farmbrough 15:13 20 June 2006 (GMT).
I am (being bold and) making this page live per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive_17#Flagging. Rich Farmbrough 22:09 22 June 2006 (GMT).
Please delete this account, the bot spams user pages, doesn't identify correctly tagged images (apparently looking at templates instead of categories), and it doesn't wait to let users fix their errors. The owner is unresponsive to complaints on the bot's talk page. -- Omniplex 13:03, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
If you hate OrphanBot, you might want to look at
this
Micoolio101 00:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)Micoolio101
It seems that Crypticbot is now rather orphaned, as its master User:Cryptic( User talk:Cryptic) hasn't edited for several months. It continues plodding on its way, doing useful things it appears, and hasn't particularly misbehaved AFAIK. However, without a master it can't be adapted to changing situations.
In particular, it is the force behind archiving of the Wikipedia:Reference desk group of pages, and is failing there. It has partially failed in archiving the /Science page for several months, and just in the last day or two looks like it may be failing to archive for the whole group. So I suppose one thing needed is another botmaster to step up and take over the archiving. See Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Failure of automated archiving, and also the good idea of using Daily transclusion. - R. S. Shaw 05:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
For those inclined to use meta icons on userpages, feel free to use {{ User:Fluxbot/Bot}}> to add the gear icon to your bot pages. — xaosflux Talk 03:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I think the list of bots is becoming too big, and should not be maintained on this page. I propose we split it up and move the list to another page. -- Yurik 22:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I am writing a bot to run on Hindi Wikipedia. I am using python wikimedia framework. I am getting an error, "UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 0: unexpected code byte" when executing the following code,
f = codecs.open('hi-towns.csv', 'r', config.textfile_encoding) x = f.read().decode('utf8')
Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ganeshk ( talk) 03:50, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Point number 5 and 6 below "When naming your bot" seem to not really belong to that section. The information they contain seems unrelated to naming ones bot and seems to be nothing one would expect under this headline. Also, if there exists something laid out as a policy in its own right on these subjects, there might be a good point in pointing to that policy, and doing that early on the project page instead of hiding it in the place it is now. -- 62.134.227.14 01:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I want to make a lot of AWB spellchecking edits, and so as not to crowd my contrib list and make more than the 1-2 edits per minute, I want to make a bot account. As always it will be human-assisted, and I'll monitor each and every change (AWB shows me the diff preview) but since I'll be making a lot of edits, a bot account makes sense. Is this the place to apply for approval for such a venture, or is there some policy that easily defines what I should and shouldn't do with AWB? -- Draicone (talk) 06:55, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
The external link to WikiLink has been down for some time now. Anyone who has it, I'd appreciate a mirror upload. ~ Booya Bazooka 06:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I have recently gotten the approval to run and have received a bot flag for my bot
user:BetacommandBot. during this process I noticed that the procedure for getting the preamble for running a bot can a extreamly difficult and time consuming process. I would like to make a suggestion. Split the page
Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approvals into five six pages.
which is something simialar that is uses for WP:CFD/ WP:RFA and the use of subpages for each bot Betacommand 07:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
To give due credit, E. seems to have sped things up enormously, so I'll file the above under the general heading of "startup costs" of new system, and "all's well that ends well". I just rather had visions of endless "churning" of requests without resolution... Alai 17:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd love to learn a programming language and run a bot... but I don't want to download programming software. Is there an alternative to downloading software? -- Gray Porpoise 15:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but it'd have to be something like Brainfuck-- 86.146.76.221 19:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
If you really want to program a bot, no. Blankly put, you need a compiler. Dylan 16:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I, and apparently, many other people are having problems with the actions of User:Cydebot (see User_talk:Cydebot, especially sections 38, 41, and 43, though there may well be additional notes on this page from dissatisfied users.) I wonder if someone could block its actions and suggest that it is changed to merely put a note on people's user pages asking them to manually edit the pages, as this seems to be the simplest option. I have had to revert my page, and have yet to work out what I must do to successfully achieve what the bot was trying to do. Thank you. DDS talk 22:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Blocked until Cyde contacts me -- Tawker 16:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Ganeshk's problem appears to have been resolved by Betacommand. It had to do with a redlinked category added to an article, and deciding which extant category a nonexistant category might have been a subcat of is usually beyond bots. I tried to solve the other thing (about the removing cabinet of norway's cat) and I cannot figure out what happened unless it was something similar (cab of norway was redlinked when cydebot was given the task and had since been created and populated). Cab of norway was only created September 6th or so. Syrthiss 18:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
There’s a not-logged-in bot working under IP address 129.125.101.164, but there is no note on the talk or user page. -- Van helsing 08:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Might be Thijs!bot ( talk · contribs) operated by Thijs! ( talk · contribs) losing login every now and then? -- Francis Schonken 14:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
...I know this may sound kind of stupid, but I always wonder what the red button on the bot page is for, it says it'll block the bot, but mabye... will it block the person who presses it? (please respond on my talk page.) Tinlv7 18:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
There's been some talk at CFD about having a bot patrol Category:Protected deleted categories to make sure the categories stay empty. Does anybody have a bot that can do that? - EurekaLott 02:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible that we could get some useful categorisation of the bots? I'd be interested in seeing them categorised by programming language (so people can find similar examples) and open sourceness (likewise looking for code to use), and also if there's some way to categorise their general wikipedia functions.
How does a Wiki Bot communicate with English Wikipedia? Does it request pages like any browser with HTTP, or does it use another protocol? Thanks in advance. - ENIAC ( Talk) ( Current Projects) 12:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we add a statement to this policy that all bot edits (and edits made with any software assistance) must abide by all existing guidelines and common practices. The reason is that I occasionally notice bots/javascript etc. edits that change articles in a manner - that while not necessarily wrong - is not consistent with the normal wiki-style. Normally this is limited to minor formatting things, but it is still needlessly annoying. Martin 21:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Greetings; There is an apparent job or bot that is unlinking of “common words” which seems to be running overboard in a number of instances; it is delinking items that while on their face may seem "common" may in fact be apropos to the article. Also, in general I prefer to see and abundance of linking, makes for richer exploration. I have seen some errors where it has removed the link around a year but truncated the value (1993 became 993). The bot appears to be operated by User:Colonies_Chris and the changelog url is [4]. Thank you for looking at this. Bdelisle 08:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
On another wiki where I'm a sysop under a different username, I've got a bot that looks for spamming, then reverts it with the edit summary of (Spam reverted - AUTOLINKREMOVE - Please do not mass-add external links!)
I'm wondering if I should use this bot here on Wikipedia; it's a semi-bot, not a full one. -- LiverpoolCommander 11:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
MelancholieBot ( talk · contribs) did this edit http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Mexico&curid=3966054&diff=79370151&oldid=79163821 and had the only edit summary "robot", also, the bot didn't do much. → A z a Toth 01:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Bots#"Robot-assisted disambiguation: U.S. Highway 1", in which I notified Rschen7754 that his bot Rschen7754bot ( talk · contribs) is making useless edits. He has not stopped the bot, which I assume is because he is away from the computer. -- NE2 03:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
It is time we added a new section specifically dealing with assisted bots/software ( WP:AWB etc. ). Though the spirit of this policy is obvious, I would like to express some principles clearly:
I don't think any of these points are new or remotely controversial, so I'll add them pretty soon. thanks Martin 06:34, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
My idea: Create a bot that checks the new changes and finds those with multiple exclamation marks (!!!!!!!!!11). 50% of all the vandalism I've seen has that. -- Jinxs 12:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that perhaps six out of seven anonymous users who leave comments on talk pages do not sign their posts properly. I have usually added the {{ unsigned}} message after those posts when I have encountered them. However, this could be a job for a bot: scan the Recent changes list limited to the Talk space, and if a comment is made by an IP-address, check it for a signature and add one if necessary. Of course logged in users also forget the signature sometimes, and those could be checked too, if it doesn't take too much resources. Alternatively only check those users that have not created an user page yet, they are often new to Wikipedia and do not know about signing their posts. Is anyone with the skill/equipment up to this? -- ZeroOne ( talk | @) 11:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that it is stated that no spellchecking bot could ever function without assitence. Now I understand the fundemental faults with spell checkers, lord know I have tried to depend on them in the past due to my deplorable spelliong. But it does not seem accurate to say it is not technically possible to automatically correct spelling.
What about a bot that only changed diferentiate to differentiate? To say it is not technically possible to create a spellchecking bot is just wrong. The scope simply needs to be limited.
What needs to be done for such an automated bot(which I for one am not skilled enough to create) is to provide a list of words and their mispellings where there is no possible alternate meaning to the word. Such as sofisticated turned into sophisticated, no possible error in mistaking it for another word. Not trying to change the world/wiki, just pointing out what I see, wheeeee. HighInBC 01:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Ohhhh, ya got me. I was wrong, the page is right. No automated system could account for that. I retract my contention. HighInBC 06:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I am unfamilar with bots to say the least but was curious if User talk:84.244.80.3 is an unauthorized bot, or simply one not logged in. Dark j e di requiem 02:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
See a super-human rate of edits coming from user 141.84.69.20 ( talk). Was concerned it was an unauthorized Bot, and possisbly doing damage? -- KeithB 20:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I have made a proposal to let some bots be granted the rollback feature at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Rollback to the bots!. Crossposting as this proposal is relevant to this policy (comment there). Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I've spent hours scraping around and I can't find the API? Where is the documentation that says "This is what you need to send" and "This is what you get back". I don't want wrappers or dll's or libraries, I just want to know what strings of bytes I need to send, where to send them and the format of the replies. TIA for any assitance. 87.112.20.152 08:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I can't find any way to link to a page specifically for Wiktionary. 87.112.20.152 15:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
OK. I was dealing with a vandal, as was another user, and the bot reverted an edit and provided the vandal with a generic warning.(given test1, then test2, then generic)
Is it appropriate that I replaced the bot's warning with test3, and signed it?-- Vercalos 07:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC) yeah the AVB bots are not that smart to figure that out. Betacommand ( talk • contribs • Bot) 07:24, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please tell me where to find this?
I gather you can call the package to log in, read and write pages, but there is no documenation with the package and I can't find any here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.112.74.253 ( talk • contribs) 16:43, 15 November 2006.
I've been trying to find out how to use it but either no one knows, or they're not letting on. 'Someone' must know how to use it from other languages. It claims on the framework page 'we will welcome you'. Quite frankly it's about as welcoming as a rabid doberman :-) 87.112.15.14 09:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I and another user have complained to User:Gwern about his "Robot-assisted disambiguation" work bleeding into user space, with no response from Gwern and (apparently) no change in his behavior. (See one of Gwern's edits to a user subpage and User:Csernica's response; Gwern's edit of my subpage and my response; and finally Gwern's second edit of my same subpage.) Could an admin please talk to him about this? The changes made by the bot may be considered minor, but some users don't want their subpages changed at all, and I believe it's reasonable to expect such desires to be respected. By the way, I don't know what bot he's using, or if it's registered/approved. - dcljr ( talk) 21:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... reminds me of someone... after all, WHO enjoyed remaking Episode IV with Nufy8 wiki-style ;) ? Canderous Ordo 22:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
The problem is simple - "refdeskbot" is archiving too soon. I have raised this point Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#refdeskbot also see User talk:87.102.21.223 - the problem is that active discussion edits are not shown in the edit history (it uses tranclusion apparently). Bot operator martin is clearly aware what the problem is but will not change it's operation without some clear mandate. Perhaps some sensible person could give him a push in the right direction. Thank you. 87.102.21.190 03:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there a bot that automatically archives Wiki-project talk pages?
perfectblue 08:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I have an idea for a bot: one that checks if fair use images are being used outside of article namespace ( WP:FUC criterion #9). I've come upon fair use images on article talk pages, image pages and image talk pages (linking to other versions), WP:BJAODN, user pages, user talk pages and even a template.
It doesn't necessarily have to remove the images, it just needs to notify a human editor of the problem. -- Oden 13:12, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
As someone who was a short while ago looking to start out on the path to setting up a bot on wikipedia, it struck me that the pages on bots (below) contained no help information on getting started with your bot, but rather focused solely on policy.
The main Wikipedia:Bot page should really be named Wikipedia:Bot Policy, sicne that is overwhelmingly what it covers. This is important, but when people are looking to set up a bot it seems to me we shuold be able to give them a page within the botnav tree of Wikipedia:Howto Contribute with a Bot or similar (the name probably stinks, i know). It could outline the various languages available, outline issues that everyone writing a bot is going to bump into and need to know about (edit tokens etc), have links to set code snippets for certain tasks etc, as well as being the obvious place for bot developers to post quesries (on the accompanying talk page) relating to bot development - currently such questions would be scattered between this page (which is really about bot policy and the bot requests page (which again, isn't really suitable).
It could have FAQs on "how do I know if another bot alread does this", "how do I get my bot logged in to make edits" etc etc etc
Obviously I'm open to refinement of this idea, but just as there is a Wikipedia:Contributing_to_Wikipedia I feel there shold be something for bot developers similar to the helpful "here's how you get started" page for human editors. Anyone else feel the same way? Is there any backing for this idea? PocklingtonDan 16:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
What language does one use to write bots. I am thinking about learning how to write a bot so I can write one for the purpose of trolling and cleaning up Category:Lists of ambiguous human names by converting entries without the last name first structure to take on that structure. Is that something that a bot could do? Is that likely a bit much for a first time bot maker? TonyTheTiger 22:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I have just created a null template {{ nobots}}. The idea is that it can be placed on a page to discourage bots, much in the same way that robots.txt works. Whether it is honoured will depend on the bot, the name space and potentially arguments. E.g {{nobots|except=WerdnaBot}} might be used on a user talk to allow only WerdnaBot to edit it, but AntiVandalBot might still decide to override. Possibly {{nobots|theseones=SmackBot,Rambot}} would allow any bots execpt SB and RB. Comments? Rich Farmbrough, 21:24 12 December 2006 (GMT).
This template has been changed and is now at Template:bots -- RM 17:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Bluemoose/Martin apparently left -- Francis Schonken 12:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm working on a new Java-based bot framework that I'm currently calling "jwikibot". The intention is to write a library that uses the MediaWiki API for as much as possible and fills in the gaps with legacy methods like XHTML parsing until the API supports the added functionality. I am planning for it to have functionality comparable to pywikipedia or perlwikipedia once it is more developed.
Currently, I have prototyped read-only code for using Special:Linksearch to build a report of links to lyric sites. I have an unapproved bot account called Dillonbot, but I have been running the parsing code without logging in because it is not yet doing any writing.
I'm not in a hurry to let this code start editing yet, but I was wondering what my next steps should be once I get to that point. Should I seek approval for the account for general framework testing using user subpages, or will I need to specify an actual task (probably also using user subpages)? Mike Dillon 05:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
A concern was raised regarding a new task performed by VoABot_II ( BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights), see WP:VPP#YouTube.
I couldn't find a task approval for this particular task (removing YuoTube links) for this bot, or for any other bot, in the usual places ( Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, etc). Just leaving a note here so that bot people can keep an eye on this. Barberio, who notified about it on WP:VPP, said he was trying to contact the bot operator. -- Francis Schonken 00:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
How do you command your bot? For example, as per a new agreement made at WT:NYCS I originally requested approval for my bot to replace templates such as {{NYCS 7}} with {{NYCS service|7}}. If the template is a rush template, such as {{NYCS 7 rush}}, then I want {{NYCS service|7|<7>}} to replace it. If {{NYCS time}} is followed by it, such as {{NYCS 7}} followed by {{NYCS time|1234}}, then I want {{NYCS service|7||1234}} to replace it. If {{NYCS time}} is followed by a rush template, such as {{NYCS 7 rush}} {{NYCS time|1a2a3c}} then I want {{NYCS service|7|<7>|1a2a3c}} to replace {{NYCS 7 rush}} {{NYCS time|1a2a3c}}. If they are shuttle templates, such as:
These are just examples, and my bot was approved by User:Tawker. What should I do now? -- Imdanumber1 ( Talk | contribs) 01:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)