Eisspeedway

User:HBC NameWatcherBot

Deactivated
This bot is no longer active on Wikipedia.
Emergency bot shutoff button


Administrators read before pushing the red button: If this bot is malfunctioning go to the Control panel and simply set the Status to Off, this will turn off the bot. If you only need to stop it from posting to one page simply remove the "<!-- HBC NameWatcherBot allowed -->" from that page. Only use the big red button if these do not work, and they really should work. (H)

Non-administrators can report misbehaving bots to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

I am currently operated by Chillum (talk). HBC NameWatcherBot 11:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Purpose

The purpose of this bot is to monitor the creation of new usernames based off of a set a rules establish in its configuration pages and report as configured:

See also

This bot is approved: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HBC NameWatcherBot

Technical info

This script is written in perl and uses a repaired version of the MediaWiki perl module. The monitors an IRC channel that lists all new users as they are created. It will examine each new user one time by first removing any string from the name that are found in the white list, then comparing the remaining string to the blacklist.

Each pattern that is compared can contain several flags that are associated with this pattern. These flags alter what happens when the pattern is matched. Some of the flags are WAIT_TILL_EDIT which means it will not match the pattern unless the user has edited, or ALTERNATE_TARGET(page name) that allows you to direct reports to another location, and flags like NOTE(message), LOW_CONFIDENCE, and SOCKPUPPET(sock puppet name) which add extended information to the report.

The reports will be added to the bottom of the page defined as the Default target or as defined by the ALTERNATE_TARGET flag. The bot will only write to pages that contain "<!-- HBC NameWatcherBot allowed -->" at a rate defined by Write rate in the control panel.

Nagios

I have recently had a Nagios monitoring system installed on my server. It will keep an eye on my actions and make sure I am doing my job. If for any reason I fail to accomplish my task then nagios will report me to a human for repair. The following functions of mine are monitored by nagios:

  • Is my server running? A second nagios server on another system watches my server to make sure it is running, if not a human is notified.
  • Am I running? If for any reason I am not running nagios will notice this and report it to a human.
  • Am I still getting information from the IRC channel? I update the last modified date on a file every time I read a line from the recent changes IRC feed. If nagios sees this file's last modified date fall more than 5 minute behind the current time it will notify a human.
  • How long since I last reported a username? If it has been more than 6 hours since I reported a username then something might be wrong with me, a human will be notified.
  • Am I blocked? If I am ever blocked for some reason then a human will immediately be notified.