That sounds like a great idea Thank you talk 06 09 6 Jun 2005 UTC re VfD bot assistant When you get to the actual closing process I m not sure I know what could be safely automated So many of the decisions require multiple steps But I may not be the right person to ask I tend to close only the oldest and therefore the most complex discussions I suspect that I see all the exceptions and lose sight of the commonalities among the majority of simple decisions I ll give it some thought though Am I correct in assuming that the bot would have to be run for each individual discussion thread If so what parameters would have to be fed in How complex would it be to initiate the bot Would it be a different bot for keep decisions vs delete decisions The essential steps for a keep decision are Close the discussion page subst vt and subst vb I suppose the top subst could be modified to allow for a parameter like subst vt reason Remove the VfD header from the page which usually follows the naming convention of the VfD discussion page except for second nominations and related nominations discussed together Add a boilerplate comment to the article s Talk page with a link to the discussion I usually put the nomination date on the Talk page but the closure date is probably close enough If the VfD discussion has the same name as the article a simple keep decision might be automatable with a single parameter Keep as merge transwiki etc would still require extra steps The essential steps for a delete decision are Check the article s history to confirm that the deletion decision is in order Close the discussion page as above but the reason is often much more detailed Sometimes check what links here and move or delete all those links Delete the page I m not sure I see how to automate that process There are too many variables I ll keep chewing on it though Thanks again