Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 14

message: Hi!  I have a question about the difference between using a bot and the very useful User:Lupin's Popups tool.  I've tried working with solve_disambiguation.py in manual mode in conjunction with the popup-tool and met with great success.  Based on the information contained within the WP:BOT article page, any use of pywikipedia should be done under a bot account.  Though, I don't see much difference in running the bot in a manual mode (where each edit is scrutinized and responded to on screen) and using the Popups tool to do the same thing.  Would one also need a bot account to use the automated editing available in Popups?  Just wondering before I consider continuing with pywikipedia or stick with Popups.  Thanks :-). >: Roby Wayne Talk 07:30, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You will require a bot account because your edits would still be coming in fast enough to clog up Recent Changes. In order to avoid that, you need a bot flag, hence; we need to see a separate account. Rob Church Talk 21:31, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See!  I knew there was a logical reason :-).  Thanks, RobChurch.  >: Roby Wayne Talk 19:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  When to use a Bot user account 

message: We are Luigi30. You will be assimil... wrong bot.
I (Luigi30) am looking for approval on a bot to clean out WP:RA's created articles. Obviously it'd require approval to delete each link so I don't clean out legitimate blue links (redirects, sources). It'd run using pywikipedia. I don't think I'd need to run it more than once a week seeing as how infrequently Requested Articles is used. It takes me 3 hours to do it by hand, I'd say it'd take a couple hours to put together the bot and it'd be a whole lot quicker to delete each one. I've got the username LuigiBot as you can tell. LuigiBot 22:32, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Approved for a week's trial run. Please list it on Wikipedia:Bots under the section for bots without a flag and keep us posted here. Throttle your edits to one every 60 seconds max. and if all goes well, you'll have no problems getting consent to apply for the bot flag. Rob Church Talk 21:29, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:LuigiBot|LuigiBot]] 

message: I hereby request approval for running bot MalafayaBot. This bot will exchange interwikis between the English and Georgian Wikipedia using the pywikipedia software. Malafaya 18:01, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Approved for a week's trial run. You can apply for a bot flag afterwards if there are no objections, but check back here first. Please list it on the WP:BOTS page, under the section for bots without a flag, and throttle edits to one every 60 seconds max. Rob Church Talk 21:41, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot status for [[User:MalafayaBot]] 

message: I am looking for approval to run my WikiBot: User:Aweebot . I will start the bot nightly or every other night at 8 PM PST. It will run on wikipedia en and it is running pywikipedia. This bot will do Solve Disambiguation, Categories, Redirects, interWiki. Why do I need the bot? Well I want to help out in the Wikicommunity to make wikipedia even better. Is it important enough for Wikipedia to allow my bot? I think another bot helping out would make wikipedia better, as there is a growing ammount of articles, we want to keep growing and not have mistakes that never get fixed on articles. Thanks --Actown 02:55, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You'll have to be a bit more specific on what you want to do with disambiguation, categories, etc. --AllyUnion (talk) 01:10, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Better? If not can you explain what you mean? I changed this: This bot will do Solve Disambiguation, Categories, Redirects, interWiki. Thanks, --Actown 01:24, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How will it perform those tasks if it is unattended? Martin 10:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh Then I will watch over it. --Actown 15:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The scripts cited require user intervention by default. You will need to monitor the thing running. Exactly what will be it be doing with "categories, redirects and interwiki", however? We have a policy whereby users running bots modifying interwiki links must understand the languages being changed. Rob Church Talk 20:01, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

text: When talking about disambiguation, what you will have to do is not just 'watching over it'. The disambiguation bot is highly interactive; it is actually the user who decides for each separate page being changed. - Andre Engels 09:19, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

text:  What will you be disambiguating?  Everything?  You'll have to be a bit specific on what you plan to disambiguate.  What will you be doing with categories?  Merging them?  Editing them?  Moving or changing the categories?  What would you be doing with redirects?  Correcting the redirects?  Changing the redirects? --AllyUnion (talk) 12:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would focous on Video game disamb and redirects. --Actown e 20:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot Status Aweebot 

message: Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#A cut and paste bot. Who was running this? jni 08:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Likely to be a vandal bot.  --AllyUnion (talk) 21:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Correction, apparently run by Infohazard who has not registered for a bot. --AllyUnion (talk) 22:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A cut and paste bot 

message: User:DHN-bot - an Interwiki bot to exchange interwiki with the Vietnamese Wikipedia. DHN 22:18, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please be more descriptive with your bot's user page. --AllyUnion (talk) 09:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've updated the bot's user page accordingly. DHN 06:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot status request 

message: What computer language do one uses to create Wikipedia bots? CG 22:35, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Any language may be used to create a Wikipedia bot, but most typically people rely on the Python pywikipedia framework. --AllyUnion (talk) 01:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. CG 12:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: This is a request from my talk page: --AllyUnion (talk) 01:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not use a more obscure article title to keep red. If the more obscure article title keeps getting created (which would probably be vandalism to mess around with Wikipedia:How to edit a page) could we protect the page from creation? Using a bot to regularly delete a page is an abuse of Wikipedia resources.--Commander Keane 09:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  The page we link to must be intended as a redlink, and must remain as a redlink.  Protecting the page from creation would cause the red link to show up blue. --AllyUnion (talk) 13:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Deleted pages can be placed on watchlists... although, the matter being discussed here is having my user account check the page's existence every so often and go off to delete the page. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:34, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of page 

message: This is a new user who appears to be using some sort of automated or semi-automated spellchecker script, which appears to be systematically violating spelling conventions by switching to the British style. If someone could politely handle this matter, it would be appreciated, as I have little technical knowledge in this area. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 09:25, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We do not allow automated spellchecker bots.  We do permit semi-automated spellchecker scripts/bots so long as they include US and internationalized versions of spelling. --AllyUnion (talk) 13:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Spellchecker]] 

message: Users using bots should be aware that they should make every effort to run their bots off a server, on a separate IP address.  Due to changes in dealing with sockpuppets in the MediaWiki software, a block of a user with a bot that runs off the same computer that the user edits, will cause the user unable to edit. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ..."changes"?  I thought autoblocking always worked like this.  (Or at least, as long as I can remember.)  In any case, this is more motivation to make bots halt if their talk page is edited, as mentioned at Wikipedia:Bots#Good form. —Cryptic (talk) 00:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Does the pywikipedia bot stop when the talk page is edited?--Commander Keane 05:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  No.  At the current moment, it does not.  Although it does check whether you have new messages... --AllyUnion (talk) 09:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notice! 

message: First, I want to apologise for running a semi-automated edit tool from my own account without even realising that there was a procedure for seeking approval. Someone soon put me right on that one, so I've stopped using it and come here.
I want to run a program that helps me correct common errors in cricket articles by identifying candidate errors for me to consider. I'm not even sure whether this counts as a bot. One proposal earlier on this page suggests to me that some people might not consider it to be a true bot, although I would tend to think of it as one; but let me give you more details.
So far, I've been running it to correct "test" to "Test" (in the sense of Test match, an international cricket match). The bot is written in Perl and it works as follows:
# User (me) launches the program
# It reads List of international cricketers, and downloads the first few that it hasn't read before
# It finds ones with "test" in, changes "test" to "Test", and pops them up in a browser for me to read
# When it's found 20 candidate articles, it stops
# Then I go through the suggested changes and commit the correct ones
So it doesn't make any edits itself. I run it occasionally, it downloads maybe fifty pages, I make twenty edits myself in the space of a minute or two, and then I wait a few minutes or a few hours before running it again. Have a look at my last 500 contributions for the typical impact.
My ideas for future tasks that this could do
# Link "Test" and "Test match" to Test cricket, not to Test match or Test.
# Make sure all short biographies have 
# Add country-bio-stub to all cricketbio-stubs (ask on country page first, because this could generate a lot of new stubs in their lists).
# Find articles entitled "N (cricketer)" but not linked from "N".
# Find very short (sub-stub) articles, because an anonymous user has recently been making a lot of these.
We currently have something over 1500 cricket biographies, and a few hundred other cricket articles, so a program like this is a natural solution to improve conformance to WikiProject Cricket agreed house style.
So my questions are
# Is this a bot that requires approval?
# If so, may I have approval?
# Even if not, should I run it as a separate user instead of as me, and should that user have the bot flag?
Thanks very much. I hope that's enough information, but please ask if you need to know anything more.
Stephen Turner 12:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We also need a bot to change everying in categories such as :Category:English test cricketers to :Category:English Test cricketers :) jguk 13:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That should go on WP:CFD as a speedy request, I can sort that out with my bot. Martin 13:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

text:  jguk: Agreed, although I think that would be a job for a bot that committed its own edits (there are too many of them, and no risk of false positives), and I'm not sure I want to get into that yet. My program is deliberately ignoring those at the moment. Stephen Turner 13:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

text: This script looks pretty safe, as you are manually checking all the edits I don't think anyone can complain. Martin 13:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Approved for test run for one week. --AllyUnion (talk) 21:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks very much, but I'm still unclear about one thing. Should I make the edits from a bot account or from my own account? Given that the bot is not making the edits itself but just suggesting edits to me. Sorry to be slow, but I want to be sure what the correct practice is. Stephen Turner 08:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Bot account. --AllyUnion (talk) 21:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed cricket bot 

message: I am requesting that AFD Bot to purge the page cache of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion at 00:01 UTC every day. --AllyUnion (talk) 21:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purging modification 

message: I have listed a series of redirects that start with "2005 English cricket season/" here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket#Redirects_that_need_fixing.  Do you want a bot to go and remove the pages linking to them, then mark them for speedy deletion? --AllyUnion (talk) 18:18, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes please, much appreciated. If you could turn Yorkshire v Worcestershire 7-10 September 2005 and similar pages  to redirects as well, that'd be lovely - the list is here. Sam Vimes 18:43, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Redirects to... where? --AllyUnion (talk) 07:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Either the home team's page, or the period pages (1-14 June and so on). Whichever is easiest to program Sam Vimes 08:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  2005 English cricket season redirects 

message: I had an idea this evening - what about a bot or similar program (perhaps running on a local copy of wikipedia).  It would cross reference between articles in different languages, looking for images that are in one, but not another.
Images frequently break the language barrier, and who knows what hidden gems might be found using this methodology?  I propose that the results of this program would be put in a Wikipedia namespace page, so that individuals could work on cross-dissemination of images in a decentralized fashion (in the spirit of wikipedia).
A much more aggressive approach (I'm not sure what I think about this) would be to have a bot take this output and tag the bottom of every page for which an image was available in another language.
What do people think?  I wouldn't mind providing some of the programming talent for this, but this kind of wikiwide action would need some pretty hefty official support.  - JustinWick 01:33, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean the images that reside on WikiCommons or just images that are missing in general?  Please remember, there are fair use images on the English Wikipedia that can not be transferred to other projects.  Also, we have Commons images, which are used across several projects. --AllyUnion (talk) 03:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, Fair Use is a very gray area (at least in the united states) but...  I am only talking about taking images from, say, the English version of wikipedia, say for an article on robotics (how apropos) and suggesting its inclusion in articles about robots in other languages of wikipedia (if they don't have it already).  This way if any language gets a nice image for an article, there's a good chance that it can be reused in other languages.  It seems unlikely to me that this transfer would be considered illegal (wikipedias of all languages have the same legal status, right?) but I admit I am no legal expert! - JustinWick 16:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a similar thought to this as well, it would be best done off-line on the database dumps rather than by bot. I imagine it would look at the inter language links on an en article, then see if any of the linked to foreign articles (or a maybe just the fr and de articles) have more images than the english one, and generating a list of these articles, and the missing images. Generating a list off-line would not need any community support, and would make a nice community project. Hope that makes sense. Martin 16:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that that's the most computationally efficient way to do it, that's actually, in my mind, the easy part.  To me the hard part is - people in other languages are trying to improve their articles, how do they know someone has compiled this great list?  Moreso, how do they know the particular article they are looking at has some alternate images? - JustinWick 17:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

text:  Such suggested images are okay for suggestions, compiled as a report from an offline database dump and should rather be placed on meta or something, and so long as the suggested image has a free license.  However, it be more beneficial for suggestion images to be moved to the Commons and placed on a gallery on the subject. --AllyUnion (talk) 16:54, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I can see it being put in the Commons, however the big thing I'm worried about is, how do people editing articles know this resource is available for a particular article?  Maybe if there was some way of getting a Wikipedia Project started for media cross-distribution, such that people in different languages would just take articles off the list and put whatever images are appropriate into each article for which they are available.  (marking them off when they are done). - JustinWick 17:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Perhaps you can link to the commons page on the talk page of the article which the two subject matters relate to?  Or use one of those boxes that says, "The Commons has more images on <subject>" --AllyUnion (talk) 09:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inter-wiki image harvesting/diffusion?