Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 01:27, 24 September 2009

This project page was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination: Speedy keep (reform on talk page), 5 June 2008, see discussion. Withdrawn, 8 May 2008, see discussion. Keep (reform), 1 May 2007, see discussion.

• WT:BAG

Archives
Archive 1 August, 2006 and earlier
Archive 2 September, 2006—March, 2007
Archive 3 March, 2007—May, 2007
Archive 4 May, 2007—October, 2007
Archive 5 October, 2007—June, 2008
Archive 6 June, 2008—January, 2025

Information

This is the talk page for the Bot Approvals Group. Specific bot requests should be placed on the Requests for approval page. See the Bot policy page for more information on bot policy. This page is specifically for issues related to the approvals group. At the moment there is no formal policy for adding and removing members of the approvals group, but one will likely be formulated in the future. This is, however, the correct page to discuss member changes.

Requests for BAG membership

Requests to join the Bot Approvals Group are currently made here, although other methods have been proposed. Users wishing to join BAG, or to nominate another user to become a member, should start a section here (directly below this heading), where informal discussion and comments on the candidate's suitability may be made. After a suitable length of time (usually one week unless the nomination has not received a reasonable level of support), the discussion will be closed by a bureaucrat.

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful request for BAG membership. Please do not modify it.

Didn't even need any grilling questions it seems. Now a BAG member. - Taxman 14:25, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

BAG Nomination: Kingpin13

• Kingpin13 (talk · contribs)

I've recently seen Kingpin13 around BAG making some well informed comments on a wide variety of requests. Looking at his record he seems to have a good deal of experience on enwiki and the proper temperament to be a BAG member. Also, he seems to know how to work in a group/team setting and ask appropriate questions at appropriate times. Therefore I am putting him forward for membership.

Candidate acceptance: Thank you very much for the nomination. After some more reviewing of our bot policies, I believe I would be able to do the job of a BAG member, and so gladly accept this nomination - Kingpin (talk) 07:56, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

• Support As nom. MBisanz 22:20, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support Has shown skill with bot coding and has proved to be clueful in this area. I see no reason for concerns. Regards SoWhy 08:18, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support Good Bots. Good Knowledge. Good Editor. Good BAG. AHRtbA== 14:22, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support The BAG could always use new members, and Kingpin seems like the perfect user for the job. The Earwig (Talk | Contribs) 14:36, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support improved mop clearance licence billinghurst (talk) 14:43, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support — Aitias // discussion 15:19, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Great bot operator, good temperment, fully agree with MBisanz that he is a capable user. (X! · talk)  · @162  ·  02:52, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support, though I must admit that I haven't really had time to check all of the secret files. Hopefully no skeletons :) - Jarry1250  11:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Demonstrates adequate skeleton-hiding experience. :D Happy‑melon 22:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support can't see any issues. --Chris 12:24, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support Great bot operator and owner. Can't see any issues... Until It Sleeps 13:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The above BAG membership discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Anybot

Anybot has screwed up in the grandest possible fashion; see Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Plants#Algae articles AnyBot writing nonsense. This is not the forum to discuss that. However I am of the firm opinion that this situation must be taken into account should the BAG be asked to approve other bots operated by the bot owner. How does one inject such information into the BAG's corporate memory? Should I leave a brief note at the bottom of Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/anybot? Hesperian 23:25, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Among other things, the manner in which "this situation must be taken into account" depends on whether the bad edits are solely due to the unauthorized operation since April, how the unauthorized operation was able to occur, and whether any April-or-earlier errors are due to errors in the bot or errors in the source data (which was apparently approved by WP:PLANTS). The bot is currently blocked until that is determined and the operator is busy until October (and thus is unlikely to be requesting more bot approvals), so there seems to be no rush. Anomie⚔ 01:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I'm not telling you guys what any future decision must be. I'm telling you guys that you need to take this into account in making any future decision.

My question is where and how to add a note that you guys would find when the time comes.

I'm trying to help you guys out, unless you actually prefer to deliberate in ignorance. So how about winding back the defensiveness a wee bit?

Hesperian 01:49, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the bot info and feedback, Hesp, though to be honest I'm hearing more defensiveness from your end of the court at the moment. It's bizarre that this bot was running, and the bot-op did the right thing to block it. He's also recommended rolling back the bot's operations since April, though I'm not sure whether that's warranted or not. Any thoughts? – Quadell 02:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome, Quadell.

Bizarre indeed. Someone compromises an account in order to keep an erroneous bot running? What is the motive?

I think discussion on how to clean up the mess should be centralised elsewhere. I came here to ask a different question. Any chance I might get an answer to it any time soon? Hesperian 03:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

If I can speak frankly, I think the issue here is that bots are a back-corner of the Wiki that get very little traffic outside of coders creating things and people bring tasks from Wikiprojects here for approval. In this case the bot request was open 6 months with lots of input from projects, more than most actually. Out of the 995 approved bots reqs on record, about 5-10 have been as problematic after the fact as this one. I'm really not sure how BAG can improve this batting average since it is checking for technical soundness and community consensus, not actual content soundness. MBisanz 04:18, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not criticising the BAG for approving this bot. Hesperian 04:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why we need to go out of our way to record this somewhere. We don't do that for normal editing issues. Mr.Z-man 05:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I think leaving a note at Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval/anybot would be a good idea, Hesp. – Quadell 12:09, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose I have a question. If the bot op is a admin and a continuing bot op, is there an actual fear they will fail to reference this situation in seeking future approvals? I am sort of hoping that a user already in positions of trust would do that. MBisanz 13:03, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Has this bot been approved for running again? I thought it was stopped until writers decided what they want to do, but it's editing 100s maybe thousands of articles. And it's getting them wrong, again! --69.226.103.13 (talk) 22:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Martin unblocked the bot and set it running "correcting" errors. Given the context (discussion proceeding on the understanding that the bot was blocked; concerns about unauthorised access; the BAG notified that the bot was blocked, but not notified of the unblocking; recommendations that the bot be blocked and/or deapproved; expressed opposition to the bot being deployed to fix its own errors; no BAG approval for the new task; apparently no test run) I think the unilateral unblock was highly inappropriate. And then there is the problem that it is introducing errors again. I have reblocked and asked Martin to talk a BAG member into unblocking. Hesperian 23:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Following on from the bot's latest run, during which it replaced hundreds of error-filled, bot generated articles with hundreds of bot-generated articles filled with different errors (see Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Anybot's_algae_articles#New_and_different_errors) and considering Martin's decision to run the 'fixed' version of the bot without making any test edits and apparently failing to address the majority of the concerns raised in the AfD discussion, I feel that it has now become time to seriously start considering whether it has become time to revoke Anybot's approval and bot flag. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 10:48, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Most disturbing is that this last run performed novel edits, not reverts, on hundreds of articles, in which many new errors were introduced; yet every edit was flagged as minor, and given the edit summary "Restore article to last good version." That is seriously fucked up shit. Hesperian 11:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Martin also asked me to verify that it was impossible to run the bot without authorization (which is one of the factors that contributed to this fiasco in the first place), then set the bot in motion seven minutes later *without* waiting for my response to confirm that the 'hole' had been closed. To be frank, I've lost all confidence in this bot to perform its designated task as intended. As I've previously mentioned elsewhere, I'm sure that Martin is trying his best here - but this just isn't working out. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 11:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

RFC results: date unlinking bot

Dear colleagues,

The Full-date unlinking bot RFC has closed, with strong endorsement of the proposal to develop and run a narrow-task bot to remove the syntax from triple-component dates (74.3% to 23.8% to 1.9%).

Remedy 1.3 of the Date Delinking judgment by ArbCom, specifies a community-approved process for mass delinking, and Remedy 2.1 that "Date delinking bots will perform in a manner approved by the Bot Approvals Group".

The bot is currently being developed by User:harej at User:Full-date unlinking bot. Given that this point has been reached after a long debate in the community and involves a degree of technicality, I request that BAG participates in producing and running the bot, with a view to its approval. Some comments in the RFC stated that this should involve a careful testing process and, at least initially when it is up and running, regular stops to ensure the bot is running as intended.

I have notified ArbCom of the RFC results and of this request. I look forward to your response. --Apoc2400 (talk) 16:47, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

What stops malicious bots

I was referred from general help desk to here. So I will copy paste what I put there in hope I will get a better response then some generic "do not worry about it". This got me curious :)

I am interested in bots. I have read a bit on them and the ways to make them. This got me curious. What is stopping people from creating malicious bots to just randomly run and destroy parts of wikipedia? Has this ever been attempted before? I know that there is a process to get bots approved but in theory couldnt a user just create a bot for malicious activity and let it run until it gets caught then rince and repeat? Obvious bot would be obvious. But, what about a bot that would change how links directed on articles containing words x,y,z for example? Thanks Ivtv (talk) 05:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages has Captchas which stop a lot of the spam bots. A most of these bots also run via open proxies which are now blocked by ProcseeBot. Since most vandal bots follow a specific MO they can also be stopped with the Abuse filter and block bots (a recent (well in the last year or so) example I can think of was the 'Hi, Good Site' spambot and the 'anontalk' bot). meta:vandalbot has a bit of info on them as well (although it focuses on cleaning up after them) --Chris 08:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

BAG mentor?

Can a member of BAG volunteer to mentor me with some bot creation and approval tasks? I have two bots in development- one is very minor, the other is small in scope but a little more detailed. I just want someone who doesn't mind me bothering them, can review the technical concepts, tell me when I'm ready, point me in the right direction, etc. tedder (talk) 06:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

My talk page is always open. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:24, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval

It is over two weeks, according to the stats, since a BAG member has edited at Bots request for approval. --69.225.3.119 (talk) 00:11, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

28 seconds and no reading: problem solved, everything possible approved, all lingering issues ignored. --69.225.3.119 (talk) 01:27, 24 September 2009 (UTC)