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Should we have another section for when a trial is concluded and awaiting BAG feedback? Rich Farmbrough, 13:19 27 April 2007 (GMT).

I'd appreciate input here. Dorftrottel (talk) 09:04, March 28, 2008

Are there any bots about that I can view their coding? Just out of curiosity, to see if I can decifer (sp?) it and see how it works? ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 15:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The source code for pywikipediabot and the DotNetWikiBot are both available, and form that basis for most of the bots used here. There is other bot source code out there as well--T-rex 16:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I assume your first link is meant to be: pywikipediabot instead of this: [1] ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 09:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also: User:ClueBot/Source, User:ClueBot II/Source, User:ClueBot III/Source, User:ClueBot IV/Source, and User:ClueBot VI/Source -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 14:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you're interested in Perl, the code for my bots is available variously at User:OrphanBot/libPearle2.pl, User:OrphanBot/libBot.pl, User:OrphanBot/orphanbot.pl, User:OrphanBot/tagbot.pl, User:FairuseBot/Pearle.pm, User:FairuseBot/libBot.pm, User:FairuseBot/10c-removal.pl, and User:FairuseBot/10c-removal.pl. The code's mostly out-of-date and sometimes non-functional, but it's a good starting point for figuring things out. --Carnildo (talk) 20:20, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that too. ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 09:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And the AWB source is freely available too - https://autowikibrowser.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/autowikibrowser —Reedy 13:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could one of you BAG admin types please block this bot? The user is failing to observe approval procedure ... -- maelgwn - talk 00:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please, please, please can we have a bot that detects, flags, and ideally reverts sectional blanking of an article. It is highly disruptive and flies under the radar until someone familiar with the article happens along and/or checks their watchlist. - RoyBoy 12:46, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If its not already picked up by the anti-vandal bots, there's probably too many issues with false positives. Mr.Z-man 16:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While that may be true, it shouldn't be difficult to at least flag an anon who deletes multiple sections in a row. - RoyBoy 03:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I need to bulk download pages from Wikipedia for statistical purposes (in particular, getting a case-sensitive letter frequency count that includes digits). Do I have request approval if I automate downloading many pages at once? --74.210.110.25 (talk) 20:58, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't crawl, download a complete dump instead. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 21:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that method is much better. Although it seems the current dump is truncated. I'll try to find an older version then. --74.210.110.25 (talk) 22:45, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

this might be useful. β^_command 22:51, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Following continued running of unapproved tasks despite the given warnings and mentions to only run Approved tasks, I'd like to open an reexamination of the approval and flagging of Alexbot. Q ^{T C} 04:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbot is currently blocked, and has requested an unblock. Is there a pending request to approve the double redirect fixing that I am unaware of, or are there only the two existing requests? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:14, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I only request two times. interwiki is approved, but DR is not because I make too much edits. The double redirect fix....I think I forget let my batch file without enwiki (I use a batch file to clean DR in some flagged wikis).--Alexbot operator Alex S.H. Lin 13:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a simple mistake. Overlord, I'm not seeing any warnings on this user's talk page, would they have been posted elsewhere? Maybe his talk page at zh? UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 13:37, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It had been explicitly stated in both BRFA's to only run approved tasks. In addition this is the second block to occur from running un-approved tasks. I'd think doing it twice moves it out of the realm of accidents. Q ^{T C} 00:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, per my subsequent comments, below. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 12:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The linked to edit doesn't actually fix a double redirect --T-rex 14:29, 1 July 2008 (UTC) explained below --T-rex 19:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've also noticed that there have been some edits fixing wiki syntax, such as this and this. A minor change, to be sure - but not an approved bot task for this bot, either. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 16:34, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it did. If you look at the history of the target, U.S. Route 27 Alternate (Florida), it was redirected to Bannered routes of U.S. Route 27 at the time the bot made the change. However, the redirect was subsequently reverted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:02, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I blocked the bot for tagging dead redirects for deletion (a task never requested or approved) and only later saw the double redirect edits. Admins you can check the deleted contribs to see what I'm talking about. BJ^Talk 19:28, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And, there they are. I'm Sorry, Alex, but I'm counting three unapproved tasks, including one (Tagging for deletion) that uses an english-specific template (The Chinese Wikipedia, for example, uses a template:d with an argument for the Speedy Criteria). It sounds like more than accidentally leaving en.wiki on the list of wikis on which to run certain tasks. So, though I'm not as up-to-speed on bots as I should be, I'm a little concerned. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 12:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The TinucherianBot Special:Contributions/TinucherianBot is behaving rather destructively catagorising many, many articles incorrectly. See User_talk:TinucherianBot for some recent complaints. This bot should be switched off immediately but I don't know how to do this. I think the number of false positives this bot is producing is not acceptable but I don't know how to go about getting it shut down, most bots have those big red emergency shut down buttons, this bot appears not to have one so I am posting here in the hope that someone can sort this bot out. Jdrewitt (talk) 08:03, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 08:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh come on, Dont block the bot for a bot request given to me... Please see this for the discussion ... I have been asked by the WP:FOOD WikiProject Food and drink members for the tagging of articles for the project . I gave them the entire category tree and I got it 'cleaned' by them (See this ). I have also tried my level best to remove any unwanted categories. What should I do further ??? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 08:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Glass production was tagged because it was wrongly categorized under Category:Wine packaging and storage and Potassium bisulfite was categorized under Category:Food additives . This is no fault of the bot... I request you to kindly unblock the bot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 09:04, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say Glass production was wrongly categorised as Category:Wine packaging and storage. I think the presumption that anything that is in the wine packaging category belongs in the Food and Drink category is what is wrong. There are many, many issues with the bot which have been brought up by users on your talk page and despite your efforts these false positives are still getting through. The bot should not categorise every single page that might be remotely related to food and drink. Jdrewitt (talk) 09:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, I am not sure how bots are usually policed, but to allow a bot to carry on its merry way expecting users to flag the false positives doesn't seem right to me. What about the articles which slip through the net. Jdrewitt (talk) 09:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The bot was ONLY servicing a bot request and was done in good faith... Project banner Tagging and Assessing articles are an important part of the workload of most, if not all WikiProjects. Howover it is tedious to keep track of newer articles that come under the scope of the the project regularly and add the project banner manually. Hence TinucherianBot was employed to run over the relavent categories of Category:Foods and Category:Beverages etc. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. Maximum caution and careful attention was done to avoid any wrongly tagging any categories , but mistakes may happen...These are mostly due to somebody miscategoried the page. It is obvious to have say 1-2% of error when you are tagging thousands of pages. A WikiProject is a collection of pages devoted to the management of a specific topic or family of topics within Wikipedia; and, simultaneously, a group of editors that use said pages to collaborate on encyclopedic work.The idea of Wikiprojects is to identify the articles that falls under its scope and help to improve them and not to disrupt them. Nothing happens more than collaborative efforts from more interested and experienced people by adding an additional project banner on its talk page. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 09:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tinucherian: See my response to this at your talk page. Let's try to keep this discussion in one place.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:27, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The reason, I commented here is the requested of the block have made a public announcement here and it is my duty to reply here also -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 11:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A block is ok to stop the bot from making further edits, but at this point I think it is safe to assume that any problems have been fixed, and that the bot should be unblocked, and allowed to continue the task. There is no need for an indef block --T-rex 15:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am not so sure if TinucherianBot should be allowed to operate in the future. The WP:FOOD request was obviously flawed and a responsible bot owner would have noticed this immediately. (See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Food_and_drink#Poorly_thought_out_tagging). Cacycle (talk) 17:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We seems to run into trouble often with WikiProject tagging bots. I believe we already have an informal rule that going through categories recursively is bad. Perhaps we need to codify some rules to avoid problems like this. As for resuming the task, I would agree that it should not resume. If it does, it should use a list of pages, not categories. The comments by the operator I've seen do not give me any confidence. If lists really are hand-checked, error should be far less than 2%. Many of the pages were not incorrectly categorized - the bot was running on categories where not all the pages were directly food related such as Category:Chicken and Category:Wine regions of Canada. Mr.Z-man 20:08, 4 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This conversation is happening all over... The dangerous thing wasn't just the poor choice of categories, it was also the indiscriminate tagging of all articles in sub-cats. Category:Restaurants => Category:Dining clubs => Category:Traditional gentlemen's clubs => Athletic Club of Columbus. These are not miscategorized. If the bot operator does not know how subcategories work then they should not operate a bot. JohnnyMrNinja 00:14, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I personally think that somthing should be in place to stop this sort of thing from happening again. I think that before each bot run that tags talk pages with WikiProject banners a specific task approval should be submited to BRFA with a full list of articles and catagories. Currently bot operators may request for approval to tag on request and then can just go ahead with tagging on request, with no one really looking over what is being taged and no apparent community concensus. I think by allowing people to go through lists and being able to comment will avoid disasters like this. Any comments? Printer222 (talk) 02:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please check the new rule that I have just added to Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Restrictions_on_specific_tasks. Running a tagging bot on a list of categories (and even worse, recursively on sub-categories) makes no sense whatsoever. A bot based on this scheme should have never been approved and its rights should be revoked immediately. User:Tinucherian lacks a basic understanding of the categorization system and was not willing to learn from previous fiaskos as can be seen on User_talk:TinucherianBot. Cacycle (talk) 04:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Better double check that woody. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 04:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It should also be noted you really can't just "Add rules" whenever you feel like. These things need to be discussed beofre going on a policy page. §hep • ¡Talk to me!

Sorry, I will add it to the discussion page. Cacycle (talk) 04:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment under Wikipedia_talk:Bot_policy#Category_traversing_for_tagging. Cacycle (talk) 05:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't touch my comments. CWii_{(Talk|Contribs)} 05:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Explanation by the Bot Operator

• Comment - I concur with this summary and believe an unblock is certainly warranted, for one of our best and most faithful Wikipedians, keeping in mind the following: when I first asked for a bot request, the brakes were put on my very wide-ranging request, and after listening to what I was told by several experienced bot operators, I moderated my request, carefully checking and asking for just a few cats at a time. In the future, could we agree to do this when we get such overly large requests from editors who don't know about things like the WWII / WPTHAI example given above, and the fact that these things *will* happen unless we do proceed with utmost care? Badagnani (talk) 08:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unblocked, with a hope that next time much more attention will be payed to category selection, and that Tinucherian realises now that bot should be stopped first, fixed next. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 08:49, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The bot should not have been unblocked. It is still under heavy discussion. I checked, and now it was tagging counties and films! Pretty much every populated area in the world is producing food, I don't think we should food tag all the counties in the world? And most movies contain some scene with foods.

So, I have blocked the bot again.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Whow ! Why was the bot blocked again now by User:Davidgothberg :( ??. The bot was not even running since yesterday when it was blocked( I had stopped it more than 24 hours ago) . See Special:Contributions/TinucherianBot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 10:09, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I just noticed that myself. I had mixed up the dates. Right, you are not running the bot now. But just because it doesn't run doesn't mean it shouldn't be blocked. The bot is still under heavy discussion. And as I have stated earlier: You should contact all the affected WikiProjects and give them a week to check the list. And as far as I understand neither you nor any one else have checked the list of article names that your category list results in. It seems you are still planning to blindly tag all articles in any food related categories. Thus, I will leave your bot blocked until these concerns have been handled.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:20, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sir, This is totally unfair. We discussed all the issues here and everywhere about previous issues of running this bot and decided on future course of action on running any bot on categories. I was not even thinking of running the bot for any project for some time now ( I am demoralized enough for now) , let alone WP:FOOD. Then how could you blindly accuse me of "still planning to blindly tag all articles in any food related categories ". -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 10:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as I have told you before: I can not know what you think, I am not a mind reader. And if you are not going to run the bot, then why are you so upset that it is blocked?

From the comments I have seen on this page and your talk page and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink it seemed you were going to run the bot again, after only removing some more categories from the bot's category list. That is far from enough and not even close to the fixes we were asking you to do. One of the things I am asking for is that you let the discussions and checks take their time. That is, that you wait a week. No matter what fixes you do, I can not accept that the bot runs sooner than that. You have to get people a chance to look into the matter. You can not cheat time. So I will at a minimum leave your bot blocked for 5 more days, since that means about 7 days since you first announced the list. But you also have to do the other fixes.

Your new statement that you are not going to run the bot for the time being doesn't change my decision. Since you still show no sign of understanding how these kinds of bot runs should be handled, I have to leave your bot blocked. Since from what I have seen, the next time you do a run for some other project you are likely to repeat your mistakes.

So I suggest you re-read what people have written about your bot runs and then sit back for some days thinking about it. You might learn something. Then decide on how you want to run your bot in the future, then describe that in detail and let other people look at your description. Then we might unblock your bot. But as I said, I see no reason to unblock the bot within 5 days, no matter what you do, since these things must be allowed to take their time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, the mistakenly tagged articles have been actively sought out and fixed, by several editors including User:Tinucherian. Badagnani (talk) 11:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Davidgothberg , I had enough ! Thanq ! With all respect to you , I should say either you fail to read my words I say or you cant read dates and time from Wikipedia. Where from this page and my talk page and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink it seems that I am going to run the bot again, after only removing some more categories from the bot's category list ? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 11:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment/query - I am also leaning in favor unblocking the bot immediately. I think all parties have learned that they were a bit overzealous and that to tag more than a few hundred articles at once is inviting disaster. Tinucherian, what's the next task that would be assigned to the bot? – ClockworkSoul 13:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing much as of now, probably delivery of newsletters of this month of WP:Christianity and WP:INDIA which is in progress -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 13:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I seriously doubt that the chance of any repeats after this much negative attention for one (huge) task. JohnnyMrNinja 14:09, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree that reblocking was unnecessary, I'm still concerned by the summary above. From a quick read of the article, Potassium bisulfite is not miscategorized into Category:Food additives. It appears that it is simply a category where the bot should not have been run over all the pages. Mr.Z-man 15:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

May be it is misjudgment from me for that particular category, I leave it to the requester and the members of the WP:FOOD to analyse whether the category falls under their project.Anyone would normally think that Category:Food additives is under WP:FOOD project . A bot operator can always go an extra mile to help and remove any wrong cats from the list he was given, but primarily he has to take in faith the analysis of the requester or the project members. A bot operator is knowledgeable on how to run bots only but not necessarily a subject expert on the scope of a project. All he should ( and could ) is to ask them to carefully analyze the cats before the bot run , which I had done, as evident from the WP:FOOD Talk page. Having said this, I am not claiming any irresponsibility of his bot action by the bot operator but we should believe him for things done in good faith.-- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 05:17, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re-Block by Davidgothberg

The re-block by User:Davidgothberg was inappropriate. It is uncalled for and contrary to our blocking policy. Blocks are to be preventive and not punitive. This one definitely seems punitive by an involved administrator. Tinucherian appears to be listening to the feedback given him and should be granted AGF. The suggestion that the bot has to blocked a specific time ("That is, that you wait a week. No matter what fixes you do, I can not accept that the bot runs sooner than that.") is unreasonable. I would also note that the Davidgothberg did not block for a week, he blocked indefinitely. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Does anyone really think that TinuCherian is going to run the bot again without fixing it first? Yes, a few mistakes were made, but nothing that isn't easy to fix. I fully trust that the next time this bot runs, that these issues will have been addressed --T-rex 15:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes i think that some people need to go and read WP:FAITH again. A mistake was made, and im sure the user has learned from the mistake. You shouldn't assume that the user intends on running the bot before fixing mistakes. I personally see the bot being blocked further as a form of punishment, theres no need for the bot to be blocked any longer. People learn from their mistakes and now we need to get over it. Printer222 (talk) 15:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, the block is not punitive, it is preventive. I first ran into Tinucherian and TinucherianBot some week ago when he was masstagging articles with for Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing. Pretty much the same thing happened then. We unblocked him then since he claimed he would not masstag articles like that again, and be more careful next time he uses his bot. But as you can see his claim was empty.

Here is the things I think TinuCherian needs to do if he intends to continue tagging talk pages again:

• Create a description of what he intends to do and a list of articles that he intends to tag. So others can help out and check the list. (Not done, he only listed categories not articles.)
• Manually look through the article titles in that list and remove any false positives. (Not done.)
• Contact related WikiProjects and tell them what he plans to do. (He only contacted 1-2 WikiProjects.)
• Wait 7 days after he announced what he intends to do. (Not done, the 7 days have not yet passed.)
• Only do the bot run if he gets consensus for it. (Not done.)
• When he restarts the bot, run it slowly to minimize the damage if something goes wrong. (The last two times he kept the bot running in spite massive protests on his talk pages.)
• Change the message that the bot leaves on tagged talk pages. That is, not use links in the heading title and not claim things that are incorrect in the message.

TinuCherian has not stated if he is going to do any of these things or not. So I can not see that he is "listening to the feedback". This is what I have seen him claim so far:

"I promise to handle and 'tame' my bot more diligently and carefully in future."

That's pretty much the same thing he said the last time, and it doesn't tell if he is going to do any of the things we ask him to do. Thus I can not unblock his bot.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are trying to dictate personal preferences via a block. That is not the purpose of a block. If you want to see changes in bot tagging policy, than you should suggest those changes and get agreement. There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy. You should join it instead of misapplying the block button. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:20, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

David, I understand your concerns. But asking for the individual articles to be listed at somepage and manually checked is not the norm. If this is the case, the human might as well go ahead and tag those pages. A bot is not needed. Project tagging was always done on selected categories. There are going to be a few articles that may be false positives that will need to be fixed. If you follow all the requests at the WP:BOTREQ, they are based on category tagging. Please check User:WatchlistBot which used a similar method. I hope you could re-consider your request to manually check individual articles instead of categories. The bot problems here were due to tagging using recursive sub-categories, but this example should not used to further complicate the process. Please let me know if I need to further explain. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 12:10, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with Ganeshk: we shouldn't require humans to do bot's work. Careful examination of all categories yielded by recursive search has proven be more than enough. And since the bot hasn't edited after my unblock, David's block was definitely not needed. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 13:57, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with David, the approach that TinucherianBot currently uses is fundamentally flawed. It simply cannot work on Wikipedia. Moreover, Tinucherian has not realized this yet and obviously lacks an understanding of how the categorization system on Wikipedia works. The current category-based bot should stay blocked indefinitely to prevent otherwise inevitable future chaos. Cacycle (talk) 16:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As has already been explained to you at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy, category based tagging is the normal mode and works well in most cases. TinucherianBot problem was not category-based tagging, but recursive subcategory-based tagging. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:20, 5 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

JLaTondre, As I had said earlier, I didn't run the Bot blindly and recursively on the Category:Food (upon request by the WP:FOOD member) , but created a list of categories from main list, removed the possible wrong categories from them ( with my limited knowledge on the subject matter ) ,gave the list to the project members and got it further cleaned . It was then I created the article list by manually supplying only the 'approved' categories....and finally running the bot over the talk page of the articles ...The only problem ( _NOT_ a small one ) , attention given by me or the requester to eliminate the wrong categories was not enough. I have admitted that.

David , May I point you to WP:POINT . Upon my explanation, MaxSem , another admin, unblocked the bot...Just after that you blocked the bot again twice . Sadly, You didnt even care to see whether the bot is still running. I am sorry to say this.. but from the reasons you have given, it is evident that the purpose of blocking again and again is not the reason but your own personal thinking . With all respect to you , I appeal to you to kindly don't abuse the powers and trust we have on Admins..Even when others say to keep the bot unblocked, I must say you are unwilling to listen to others or accept any consensus. With huge regret , I give up.You may do what ever you feel is right. Neither me nor others can convince you -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 04:57, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]