WP:COSMETICBOT lists the "administration of the encyclopedia" as something that is not considered a cosmetic edit. But what about systematic mass edits (made by users, not bots) to adjust dates in hidden category templates such as {{Use American English}} and {{Use mdy dates}}? While they technically affect maintenance categories, they are not reader-facing, clog up watchlists, and are not quite the same as fixing errors like filling in a missing date. Would these be considered substantive or cosmetic? InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Those would be substantive edits. However, they, like anything bot-related, are still subject to consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The documentation at {{Use mdy dates}} is frequently misunderstood. It says that if you check an article and the dates all look fine, you should update the date in the template. I don't see that as a valuable edit unless people are systematically working their way through a backlog, but I am a committed gnome and 90+% of my edits are trivial in nature, so I tend not to complain unless people's edits are, cosmetic, not actually fixing anything, and contrary to guidelines or documentation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:20, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The specific edits I am referring to are those where users go through a bunch of draft articles and change the date in {{Use American English}} and {{Use mdy dates}} from last month to this month, without changing any of the references in the article (since drafts typically only have a few references). This achieves nothing other than clog people's watchlists. Here is an example (this behavior isn't limited to one user, but they conducted the most recent batch of mass edits). InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that those edits seem useless, but I don't think it's really a bot policy issue, i.e. those edits are useless regardless of what scale they're done at. Legoktm (talk) 07:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Agreed. Primefac (talk) 07:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I had been wondering whether this would be considered a violation of WP:COSMETICBOT so I had a policy I could point to when telling the user (and others) to stop. But if it isn't, then I guess I'll just have to ask "pretty please?" and hope they comply. InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's not technically a violation of WP:COSMETICBOT, but it is a likely violation of WP:BOTREQUIRE #2, edits must be deemed useful, 3 (not consume resources unnecessarily, i.e. not pointlessly clog watchlists and edit histories), and possibly 4 (consensus).

Citation bot, for instance, updates broken DOI categories if they're more than 6 months old, rather than every month, to reduce that clogging. But there it also serves a purpose knowing that a broken DOI has been recently checked to still be broken. I don't know what purpose there is in saying In January 2018, the article used DMY date formats, or used British English. If DMY was the format then, it should still be the format today. Likewise for British English. I don't see the purpose of having those categories dated to begin with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:11, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For {{use dmy dates}} and {{use mdy dates}}, the templates' documentation explains that the date is supposed to indicate when the article was last checked for consistency and suggests that the point of updating it is to facilitate re-checking articles periodically. OTOH, the docs for {{Use British English}} and {{Use American English}} (I haven't checked the other 20-ish country-English templates) do not indicate that the date should be updated despite similar logic potentially applying there. Anomie⚔ 12:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Based mainly on the above (and also partly because this isn't solely a bot issue) I think it might be worth clarifying at some central location (VPP?) about how we really want these templates to be used. I do agree that a template saying "this page should be written in British English" (which for the record gives no visible indication of such) probably does not need to be dated. Who or when someone last checked the page is written in the correct variant is largely irrelevant, as the very next edit could theoretically go against that. Primefac (talk) 14:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Changing the date on {{Use American English}} appears to be contrary to that template's current documentation, so the editor in question should be notified. Changing the date on {{use dmy dates}} is recommended by the documentation but is confusing and probably not necessary. Starting a discussion on that template's talk page (after reviewing the archives to see the confusion over the years) may be fruitful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this has gone quite beyond the scope of my initial comment... I should note that the effects of changing the date in those templates can be felt by users only if they have hidden categories turned on in their Preferences and can see one of the subcats of Category:Use American English, Category:Use mdy dates, etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 19:19, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is no actual consensus behind this idea: For {{use dmy dates}} and {{use mdy dates}}, the templates' documentation explains that the date is supposed to indicate when the article was last checked for consistency and suggests that the point of updating it is to facilitate re-checking articles periodically. This is against MEATBOT and COSMETICBOT principles and is annoying the hell out of lot of people for no constructive purpose. If there is an actual maintenance rationale to changing the date-stamp in the {{Use xxx dates}} template at all (I've yet to see anyone demonstrate this), then it could only be applicable when dates in the article have actually been found to be inconsistent and have been normalized to the same format again. Otherwise someone could literally set up a robotic process to check every single article on the system with such a template and update its timestamp for no reason, every single month, triggering pretty much every watchlist of every user, repeatedly, for absolutely no useful reason at all.

It's already a severe annoyance just with a handful of, uh, "devoted" users taking someone's one-off and ill-considered idea to put "when the article was last checked" in the /doc page, and running with it as license to futz around with at least thousands of timestamps for no constructive purpose. This kind of has elements of WP:NOT#GAME to it; its like those pointless farming games where you check in over and over again to harvest meaningless virtual plants, all endlessly and to no purpose other than generating more e-plants to farm, repeating it all obsessively just to pass the time.

The template /doc needs to be changed to say "when dates were last changed in the article", or simply have the entire part about changing the template timestamp removed. There was actually value to something like {{Use DMY dates|July 2013}}, since it indicated when the date format was established, but we've now mostly lost this due to all this cosmetic-meatbot fiddling.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:48, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You may very well be correct about there not being consensus behind it, but it's not at all clear enough for me to be willing to take any action to enforce this supposed consensus. If there is a discussion that finds changing these dates to be against consensus and the problem continues I would have no problem removing AWB access or if necessary issue blocks. Before that happens though I don't believe there is much to be done.

I've long considered making a category for backlogs suitable for AWB. Such a category may help users move over to similar higher value tasks. --Trialpears (talk) 06:24, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that's quite the rant complete with incorrect references to WP:MEATBOT and WP:COSMETICBOT. I don't know whether there's "consensus" behind what the doc states, but it's a clear fact that the doc does currently state it. If you want to establish whether consensus for it exists or not, a well-balanced RFC at a Village pump would be the way to go. Anomie⚔ 11:23, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This section needs to make it clear that the behaviors described in WP:COSMETICBOT also apply to human WP:MEATBOT editing, namely hitting everyone's watch lists over and over again for no good reason by making trivial, cosmetic, twiddling changes without also in the same edit doing something to improve the content in some way for the reader, or to fix something to comply with a policy or guideline, or to repair a technical problem, or to do something else otherwise substantive.

The consistent interpretation at ANI, etc., is that MEATBOT does include COSMETICBOT-style futzing around, and people have been restricted or warned repeatedly against doing things like just replacing redirects with piped links to the actual page name, adding or removing spaces that do not affect the page rendering, and so on. So MEATBOT needs to account for this consensus application, but it presently only addresses careless speed and failure to review semi-automated edits before saving them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the last sentence of WP:COSMETICBOT which makes clear that meat bots also should follow it: While this policy applies only to bots, human editors should also follow this guidance if making such changes in a bot-like manner. I do not believe there would be any backlash to you adding a reference to this consensus in the meatbot section as well. --Trialpears (talk) 01:44, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the issue is that ther is no mention of this at MEATBOT. Pretty much no one is going to look in COSMETICBOT for rules about human editing when there is a section for rules about human editing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:48, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

MEATBOT applies to all types of edits, it doesn't need to point to cosmetic bot specifically. If you're being accused of behaving like a bot, it doesn't matter if you are a bot or not, for purpose of dispute resolution knock it off until things are resolved. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly needs to be "made clear"? I haven't seen anyone having an alternative interpretation. OTOH, I have seen you in the section just above misinterpreting what both of these sections actually mean. Anomie⚔ 11:28, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've definitely seen people having an alternative interpretation; several of them hit my watchlist on a daily basis, and I've been involved in a user-talk disputation about this stuff with one of them over the last day or so. What needs to be made clear is that COSMETICBOT cross-references MEATBOT by implication, with "human editors should also follow this guidance", but MEATBOT, which is where people look for what pertains to human editors' bot-like activity, makes no mention of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:48, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you're referring to User talk:Tom.Reding#MEATBOT, you're misinterpreting WP:COSMETICBOT there too. As Tom.Reding noted, the edits you're complaining about there fall under the "administration of the encyclopedia", such as the maintenance of hidden categories used to track maintenance backlogs point. While you clearly disagree that that method of tracking that particular backlog is useful, it still falls under that bullet until a consensus discussion determines otherwise. This is not the place for that discussion.

As for WP:MEATBOT, there's a huge grey area where it comes to whether semi-automated edits need a BRFA or not as noted at WP:SEMIAUTOMATED. The point of WP:MEATBOT is more a special case of WP:DUCK, to cut off the "it's not a bot, I made each edit manually!" argument that was at one point derailing discussions about disruptive mass editing at ANI. Anomie⚔ 20:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[sigh] This doesn't have anything of any kind to do with any discussion with Tom.Reding (which I don't even recall) or anyone else in particular. It has to do with having to say "See WP:MEATBOT and see also the human-editor provision in WP:COSMETICBOT". The only reason both policy sections have to be cited individually (when applicable) is lack of two-way cross-referencing. Anyone reading MEATBOT has no idea there is also pertinent material in COSMETICBOT and would never guess that, because the title of MEATBOT is "Bot-like editing", strongly implying that the only thing in the page about editing by humans is in that section, which of course is not true. This would be fixed by simply adding something like "Purely cosmetic changes performed by a human editor in a bot-like fashion may also be considered disruptive.", at the bottom of MEATBOT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done here, since no one objected to that simple cross-reference.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just curious, do you need permission to use an algorithm to comb through information on Wikipedia (like to find out how many times a word appears on Wikipedia, finding the pages that get edited the least, ect.) Assuming that it's code isn't on Wikipedia. I currently don't have the knowledge or skills to program something like that, but I'm still curious, and I might eventually have the ability to program that. Not a kitsune (talk) 15:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Not a kitsune in general you don't even need an account to just read pages. However, if you generate some sort of exceptionally high number of requests that cause disruption to the systems the system administrators may block your connection. If you want to do some very heavy mining you are likely going to be better of using a WP:DUMP that you can download and mine off-line - especially as your use case seems to be for looking at the "current version" of pages and not being particular if the page is slightly out of date. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:12, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also WP:EXEMPTBOT Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:37, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for answering my question. Not a kitsune (talk) 21:14, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The policy currently does not mandate tracking the maxlag parameter. Wouldn't it make sense to have this tracking be a explicit requirement considering that most bots will already have to follow it to be compliant with the API Etiquette ? Sohom (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesty ping Novem Linguae :) Sohom (talk) 22:28, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I didn't know this was in API etiquette. Interesting. I'm still mildly opposed, but let's let others weigh in. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:33, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will preface by saying that I don't know exactly how the backend of AWB works, but if it doesn't track maxlag then we should not mandate its tracking because any AWB bot would automatically be violating it. Primefac (talk) 12:23, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that Pywikibot and AWB both already track maxlag (I might be wrong though). WP:JWB appears to not track the parameter though, maybe we can the ask the maintainer to add support for it. Sohom (talk) 12:46, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I note the reverted edit to this policy had changed "may" to "should", not "must" as implied by the paragraph here. The API Etiquette page also says "should". That stops short of a requirement, particularly if we're using plain English meanings rather than RFC 2119. Since we seldom directly review the code, and have no way to verify that the code posted is actually the code running or to check the parameters on API queries made, any actual requirement would be nearly unenforceable by us anyway.

As for "may" versus "should", again particularly since we're using plain English meanings rather than RFC 2119, I find myself without a strong opinion on the matter. "Should" seems fine to me, as long as people aren't going to try to misinterpret it as a requirement and start "attacking" bots they don't like over it. Anomie⚔ 06:44, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is my view that if you put "should" in a Wikipedia policy, that folks will interpret it as a requirement. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]