Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 10

message: I've now been running my interwiki bot ZwoBot since July now, and there have been no serious problems so far. AllyUnion has asked me to request a bot flag for the bot's account, so that it doesn't appear on recentchanges. Does anyone disagree on this issue? --Head 09:41, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
: You've already requested above.  --AllyUnion (talk) 00:49, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot flag for ZwoBot 

message: Please add User:HasharBot on Wikipedia:Bots. Been around for a year. It uses the python wikipedia framework and I use it for interwiki update as well as for solving disambiguations sometime.
Hashar 14:06, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Approved to run, if no objections are made within a week, continue on. --AllyUnion (talk) 00:51, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  HasharBot 

message: The purpose of this bot is to notify users on their talk page of an event or reminder, based on whatever they schedule the bot to do so and whatever message they set up with the bot.  More details found at User:NotificationBot. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: NotificationBot has been granted bot status. If there'll be any problems with him, please notify the Stewards at m:Requests for bot status. Datrio 09:46, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  NotificationBot 

message: I'd like to modify Pearle to select articles from categories and add those selections to wiki pages.  The first application will be Template:Opentask.  As discussed on Template talk:Opentask, I'd like to throw up a selection of articles from four different categories, once every 24 hours or so.  (I'm tired of doing it myself.)  I will have to embed some HTML comments which the bot will look for so it will know where to insert article lists.  -- Beland 09:37, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm rather technical, do you mind highlighting how Pearle will do this? --AllyUnion (talk) 23:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote a description at User:Pearle#Opentask_demo. The last Pearle edit of User:Beland/workspace shows the finished demo code in action.  I've also uploaded the source code for this new feature to User:Pearle/pearle.pl.  The new functions are near the bottom; starting at "sub  opentaskUpdate". Enjoy, Beland 02:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pearle to auto-select articles from categories 

message: Hi, I'm es:Usuario:Armin76 from spanish wikipedia and I want to get a bot flag for this user to create interwiki links from spanish wikipedia to english wikipedia.
#Autonomous bot and sometimes manual
#Forever i can
#pywikipedia framework
#interwiki from es to en
--KnightRider 16:19, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm skeptical that it's a good idea to have a bot automatically make any interwiki links.  Shouldn't they all be checked by a human to make sure the target actually covers the same topic as the source?  It's perfectly find to have an automated process suggest interwiki links and/or help a human make links faster, though.  Out of curiousity, how will your bot be deciding which links to suggest? -- Beland 03:31, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, it depends on how much you will be checking those interwiki links. --AllyUnion (talk) 04:21, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

text:  The idea is put the interwiki link from es in the en wikipedia. I mean, in the es wikipedia there are the en interwiki links, but in the en wikipedia there aren't the es interwiki links. The bot i want is for insert the es interwiki link into the en article that is referred in the es wikipedia. --KnightRider 11:32, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  So long as your bot is not removing any other languaqge interwiki links, I would say your bot is okay.  Approved for a test run for one week. --AllyUnion (talk) 19:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  <S>This bot (KnightRider) does appear to be removing other interwiki links during some edits. See   . I request that it be turned off or blocked until fixed. -- DrBob 19:33, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text:  Now seems to be fixed. -- DrBob 17:57, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Trial period resetted.  Test run for 1 week.  User has indicated that interwiki removal is done when the bot is running manually.  --AllyUnion (talk) 19:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Finally what? --Armin76 | Talk 16:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot for interwiki es -> en 

message: In addition to this request, I wish to use a bot to automatically correct and add the taxobox to all plant articles. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:46, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taxobox modification for plant articles 

message: What is the current status of this proposal?  -- Beland 05:11, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Inactive at the moment.  It's filed away until I run into a database with this information. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:43, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Status?

message: Could it be a good idea for someone to create a bot that looks for new users that don't have a userpage set up that edits the userpage by setting up some helpful links that the new user could use to start his/her carrer in Wikipedia?  --Admiral Roo 11:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean like a bot that does welcoming committee duties?  And I assume you meant User talk page, right?  If it was a manual tool assisting users, run manualled by hand by several users, I would have no problems with it.  If it was an automated bot... rather a cold welcome, don't you think? --AllyUnion (talk) 19:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I don't mean a bot that does welcoming duties, I mean a bot that puts up helpful links on the users page, links that would help a new user to be familer with wikipedia.  --Admiral Roo 11:21, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Why don't you just modify the welcoming template? --AllyUnion (talk) 17:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Helpful links bot 

message: I finally have cable again, after almost a month after the hurricane.  Whobot is running again, until final approval.  See original request here.  ∞Who?¿? 21:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wahey, welcome back! --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 21:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thankies.. life is good now :)  ∞Who?¿? 23:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Whobot|Whobot]] 

message: Interwiki bots should take extra care when doing interwiki links involving Unicode characters larger then U+FFFF.  These don't fit into 16-bits, and must be represented by a surrogate pair, see UTF-16.
For example, this edit by FlaBot wrecked the zh: interwiki link for Bohrium.  The Chinese character in question is U+28A0F (or &166415;) and looks like 金+波. -- Curps 09:45, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Mediawiki does NOT use UTF-16 so surrogate pairs have no relavence to mediawiki itself. What it looks like is happening is the bot is using UTF-16 as an internal format without realising that it contains surrogates. Plugwash 15:19, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Curps, please take up the issue with Flacus.  I have already blocked his bot once for not properly taking care of his bot, but JRM let him run the bot again. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have already left a message at User talk:FlaBot. -- Curps 16:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Curps in your initial post you said "for example" does this mean you have noticed other bots doing it and if so do you remember which ones? Plugwash 17:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I just phrased it that way because I wanted to avoid singling out FlaBot.  The only articles I know of that have such Unicode characters in interwiki links are Bohrium, Hassium, Dubnium, Seaborgium, in the zh: interwiki link.  Yurikbot handles these correctly, and I haven't seen other bots alter these. Also Gothic language has such characters in the intro paragraph, as someone pointed out, but I don't think any bots have touched that. -- Curps 17:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

text: This can't happen with UTF8 wikies MvR 10:35, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interwiki bots and Unicode characters above U+FFFF 

message: Open proxies have been getting more of a problem again lately, and the blacklisting incorporated into mediawiki isn't making much of a dent in it. Since Wikipedia has been upgraded a while back and the block list now finally scales nicely, I was thinking of resurrecting the preemptive proxy blocker bot. Any comments? --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 15:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a really good idea provided that MediaWiki can handle it now. I'm just interested in the specifics of how the open proxies are detected. Is a scan of IP ranges performed or do we import some sort of blacklist?  Carbonite | Talk 15:30, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Check the archives for the long version, but basicly I grab all the open proxy lists off the web I can and try to edit wikipedia through them. If it works, I block em. --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 15:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Go for it.  I remember your bot and my disappointment when the list it had carefully generated had to be removed from the block-list for performance reasons. If the block list scaling is good now, then we should all welcome the bot back with open arms. Shanes 15:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, provided everyone agrees here I'll go bug someone who knows to check exactly which code is running on the wikimedia servers. --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 15:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have no problems with it, it was working great. --AllyUnion (talk) 17:00, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Definitely go for it. -- Curps 17:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

text: If it stops the spammers, please... Shimgray | talk | 01:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

text: The spammers are back at WP:HD today. Of the four IPs so far, two were on the RBLs I checked. Even if it only serves to slow them down, I think its worth trying. Provided of course, that it doesn't hit the servers too hard. Off to look at the archives for more details. --GraemeL (talk) 15:04, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's one discussion on the open proxy blocker bot. There may be more. Carbonite | Talk 15:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Wahey! I just had a long and initially rather confused chat with Tim Starling, and it turns out the inefficient code (which is a mysql3 workaround (and mediawiki is mysql4 only now)) is still there but no longer getting hit. Since I've just discovered I have no class tomorrow I'm going to start hacking on this right away. Thanks for your support everyone! --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 00:22, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Up and  running for HTTP proxies, now I have to go learn how to talk to SOCKS proxies. --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 12:44, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Ok, on the first run (which took rather long because it involved writing the necessary tools along the way) it's blocked 1016 open proxies, and even managed to unblock a few that weren't open proxies any more. In future runs I'll try and gather up a larger starting set and see how that influences the number of blocks (if the number of blockable proxies doesn't increase  much that would be a sign we're nearing saturation of the well-known open proxies, which is sort of what I'm hoping for). Let me know if you encounter any more open proxies or if open-proxy-related problems have ceased or diminished. --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 04:46, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Open proxy blocker 

message: I would like to request a permission to use KocjoBot on :en. Primary mission will be updating link between :en, :sl, :bs and :hr. So far the bot was running on other 3 WP (with bot-flag) and without problems. Regards, --KocjoBot 22:12, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I see you understand English, Slovene, and German.  I'm uncertain on what languages bs: and hr: run on, can you elaborate? --AllyUnion (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

text: We have a policy on the English Wikipedia, which is to ask Interwiki linking bot operators to understand the language that they plan to interwiki with.  If you do understand the languages written on bs, en, hr, sl, & sr, then you are permitted to run a trial period of one week.  If no complaints are made within that week, you can continue to run your bot.  This is provided that you will be checking the interwiki links that your bot posts. --AllyUnion (talk) 18:38, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

text: It is still general English Wikipedia policy for bots to run a trial run of one week, even if you have been running it elsewhere.  Sorry, we deal with a lot of stupid vandals around the English Wikipedia.  It is not to say you are one, but it needs to be proven that you aren't one.  A trial run of one week will assert whether your bot is: harmless, useful, and not a server hog. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:30, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

text: The bot appears to be adding and removing interwiki links for languages beyond what it's approved for.  For example, removing ast:, which appears to be an incorrect removal.  I've blocked the bot until this is sorted out. --Carnildo 18:23, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Are there any further objections to this being flagged as a bot now? Please leave a note on m:requests for permissions to clarify this. Thanks. Angela. 10:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Responded to Angela's request on Meta. Stated that, at present, we want to resolve exactly what the bot will be doing, as it's still not clear - the user now claims to want to update all interwiki links across five Wikipedias, not the aforementioned five languages' worth of interwiki links on our Wikipedia; since this is confusing (and violates our general "must understand language" requirement) I've asked them to hold fire. Rob Church Talk | FAHD 03:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:KocjoBot|KocjoBot]] 

message: I wish to run a bot which will automatically update the dates and prune unsuccessful nominations on Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week. The bot would likely run daily, using the pywikipediabot framework. I've registered the name CollabBot for this. Talrias (t | e | c) 12:40, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you restricting your bot to only Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week or will your bot maintain all collaborations of the week?  Furthermore, how do you determine which nominations are successful and which nominations are not?  (The latter question is to just find out how you are making your bot tick, which for all intensive purposes, just helps to assert that your premise of getting your bot to function is valid.) --AllyUnion (talk) 18:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  At this time it will be restricted to the main collaboration of the week, and possibly the UK collaboration of the fortnight (as I am semi-involved in this). The bot would update the "number of votes by X" by counting the number of votes made (the number of lines starting with #, without a : (which would indicate a reply to a support vote) and with a signature in the line in the support section), discarding any votes from IP addresses, and changing the date and number of votes required appropriately. If a nomination failed to get the correct number of votes, as calculated above, it would remove it from the page and add it to the archive page. For both stages I would run trials where the bot would suggest a change to make before enabling the bot to do it automatically. Talrias (t | e | c) 19:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  What about sockpuppets? I'm thinking here of cases like the collaboration drive nomination for Seduction community, where all the support votes were by sockpuppets try to avert the closure of the AfD on that article. Not a huge problem, but it might suggest some human intervention would be useful. --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 19:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  A fair point. This is something which would be a minor problem with the automatic removal of unsuccessful nominations rather than updating the no. of votes required and date for ones which get the required number of votes (as someone could remove the sockpuppet votes when they were detected, and the bot would correct the no. of votes required and date). It would only be a problem with removal because the article would stay nominated even though it may have been unsuccessful (and only kept due to the sockpuppets). However, I think that having an article stay by mistake is better than having an article removed by mistake, which is more likely if the bot attempted to do sockpuppet detection. I don't see this bot as being a substitute for people looking over the nominations, just a substitute for updating the no. of votes required and date, which is menial. Talrias (t | e | c) 21:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

text:  How will you deal with unsigned nominations? --AllyUnion (talk) 21:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nominations are not signed (the first vote is that of the nominator); I'm assuming you mean unsigned votes, and the answer is that typically the signature is the only text left by the voter and a vote without a signature I believe it is a non-issue. In the event it occured, the bot would not count it as a vote (but would if the person later added their signature or someone used the  template). Talrias (t | e | c) 21:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I wouldn't so much mind if it intervened in cleanup, or pushing the updated dates... but I'm not so certain I'd be the one having it actually select the winner. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It would not do this - updating the actual collaboration of the week is non-trivial. Talrias (t | e | c) 13:34, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Approved support for trial run of one week. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:38, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collaboration of the week update bot. 

message: As for automated image moving to Commons, I would say that any such bot would need to:
:* Detect naming conflicts (e.g. if there was already an image with the same name on Commons)
:* Preserve all image description information
:* Note that the image was originally uploaded to Wikipedia, and who uploaded it
:* Preserve template information (especially licensing info).  Remember that just because a template is defined on Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean it's defined on Commons, or that it has the same definition there.
Images that have more than one version are somewhat problematic, because several people may have copyright on the image, or maybe the image has been wholly replaced, and only the latest uploader (or maybe only the 2nd and the 4th) have copyright on it.  I guess these would have to be done manually. -- Beland 02:22, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm moving images manually. If images are required when writing articles in ko:, I first look at commons. If I cannot find any suitable one, I look around images in other wikipedias, en/de/ja/..., and transfer it to commons if the license is suitable for commons; PD/GFDL/SA/... (Note that these templates are almos same to commons and other wikipedias, as I know.) I'm using imagetrasfer.py in pywikipedia frameworks. It automatically leaves  macro on the original one. If you are complaining to moving images in hidden (bot account), I can change it. -- ChongDae 08:09, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wouldn't the history for the file upload need to be copied? --AllyUnion (talk) 00:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Chobot wanting to move images to Commons