I think that this bot should remove {{Move to commons}} - example Bulwersator (talk) 18:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes it should. In fact there is a lot of things there would be nice to change. I have been thinking that perhaps I should just retire the bot but Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Images_and_Media/Commons/Drives#Files_in_Category:Move_to_Commons_Priority_Candidates_that_are_already_on_Commons made me start it up again to help the current mtc-drive.

User:Fbot should remove the {{Move to commons}} shortly after my bot adds {{NowCommons}} untill the bot is fixed or a new is made. --MGA73 (talk) 15:07, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems that Fbot is not removing the template. I can do it if you want me to. See [1] as an example. --MGA73 (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

User:Taxobot 2 appears to be running as a bot without the bot flag enabled. Could someone taks a look & see if anything needs sorting out. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:27, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

This bot was indef blocked back in Oct and unblock was denied. Since then, the owner of the bot, User:Lightmouse, has not edited. I've marked the bot page accordingly as indefblocked and changed status from approved to inactive, although given that the block was for allegedly unauthorized tasks, "retains the approval of the community", which is what the bot template produces for inactive bots, is a bit iffy in this case. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:12, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it retains the approval of community on the approved tasks (which are BRFAs). I guess that line doesn't specify that it's only approved for the tasks outlined in the bot's BRFAs or sometimes otherwise. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Just wondering but are the tasks performed by the bot being done by another bot? Or did we just lose the ability when the bot was blocked? --Kumioko (talk) 19:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The main problem appears to be that the tasks approved are as clear as mud. Perhaps they should be compacted into a clearly stated, single approval page? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

As near as I can tell, the original intention was basically "add {{convert}} everywhere possible", with some extra MOS 'enforcement' (primarily Lightmouse's interpretation of WP:OVERLINK) thrown in for good measure. Which tended to cause conflict with other editors, and in combination with the date delinking mess led to sanctions, and then we ended up with these CYA BRFAs that go into great detail in idiosyncratic writing style while being as wide-reaching as possible within their scope. Anomie⚔ 19:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what to say given that it was blocked after those CYA BRFAs. Not CYA enough maybe? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 20:19, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Update: the blocking adimn has provided a link to the discussion prior to blocking [2] Besides the issue with overriding the manual conversions (and arbitrarily picking the 1st value as correct), another problem was spotted by User:Smalljim (at 21:59, 10 October 2011 in the discussion) where the bot was ungrammatically rewording sentences. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 04:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I recently blocked User:Yobot for repeatedly making inconsequential changes using AWB (e.g. [3], [4]), despite requests not to. The bot owner now claims that the list he was working on is now empty, and the problem should be resolved. Could someone more knowledgable about bots than me have a look at the issues, and decide whether this should be unblocked, or requires re approval, or what? If they think it should be unblocked, feel free to do so without my permission (or let me know if you're not an admin). Thanks.  An optimist on the run! 21:39, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem of Yobot making 1-2% of edits that change nothing on the rendered page when working on given lists is a known problem. This is not always the case. When Yobot runs frequently the lists are always up-to-date. Sometimes it takes me a lot of time to load a list due to software restrictions. (toolserver gives max 500 entries per page. Error 61 has 110k entries. I had to load 2200 pages manually.) I have already asked for a solution to this problem. [[User:Reedy] an other AWB developer who has toolsercver access has been informed on the problem and (I hope) they will help solve it. More significant code changes are scheduled for the next months to solve this problem once and for all by changing my method after a lot of suggestions done by many editors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:57, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a full list can be downloaded from [5]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This list is TWO years old. Jan 2010 and not Jan 2012. I asked for an updated version of this file. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

There are several issues pertaining to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 16.

• The task request is somewhat open ended, covering a large number of different WP:CHECKWIKI fixes.
• The edit summaries used for this task are completely insufficeient; they all say "WP:CHECKWIKI error fixes + general fixes using AWB" regardless of the purpose of the edit. This makes it impossible to tell why the bot edited any particular page.
• The bot request stated "AWB will run with "Skip if no changes", "Skip if only whitespace", "Skip if only casing is changed", etc. activated.". However, the bot has had problems with making insignificant edits even during the testing phase.
• Just before the recent block of Yobot, the blocking admin pointed out "I ran AWB manually last night on all items in my watchlist ... Yet since I ran that, Yobot has made insignificant changes to four of those articles. [6]

I think that one reasonable solution here is for Yobot to do the following:

• Disable all general fixes during these CHECKWIKI runs, so that the only changes specifically related to CHECKWIKI are made
• Use a different edit summary for each CHECKWIKI task, so that it is clear what each edit is supposed to fix.

I think those changes would resolve all the concerns behind the block. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:16, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems like the old addage "if we make the edits more difficult to do then no one will do them" catch-22 situation again. Or the even more popular "We must increase the bureaucracy to keep pace with the expanding bureaucracy". As I stated before I personally think that the edit summaries are as clear as they need to be. CBM, as is fairly usual, over simplifies the problem and over complicates the solution. The edit summaries in question include a link to the Checkwiki page as well as the AWB general edits page. To address the first issue, there are quite a few different checkwiki fixes and somem of them affect more than one edit. Although there is no doubt that all of us, Magio included with Yobot, would like to have a clear and concise edit summary that accounts for every edit. But this leaves us with 2 problems. We either allow for a more generic edit summary so that more edits can be allowed to the article at one time or we make the edit summaries more specific and it often requires us to make several concurrent edits to the article in order to make the summary the "clearest possible". Both scenerios pose problems and both scenarios attract complaints. Additionally, by forcing every edit to maximize the edit summary what we end up with is an extremely long edit summary that sometimes scrolls off the end of the summary due to edit summary size limitations. --Kumioko (talk) 23:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The bot is just running a list of CHECKWIKI tasks. There is no reason not to run task 1, then task 2, then task 3, ... This is what most bots do, in fact, and it makes for more accountability and for more granularity in the edits. Users can undo just one change if they need to. And this makes it easier for the bot editor: just write a loop that does each task in sequence. It's pretty trivial to write loops. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Your partly right and I believe that is what Magio plans to do based on conversations but has been doing the best he can with the limited time he currently has available. Of course I don't want to speak for him but that is my perception based on discussions I have seen. I am sure that if you were willing to help him out with it he would most likely be willing to accept help in rewriting the code so that Yobot could more work more efficiently. Even with writing in loops yous still frequently end up with overly long and complicated edit summarys because it has to attach each summary in seq as it completes its work. Thats even excluding the general edits of AWB, which I do not agree should be excluded from the task. It just causes the bot to have to edit the article multiple times. --Kumioko (talk) 23:08, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This is what I mean in pseudocode:

foreach $task ( @list_of_tasks ) { 
 $edit_summary = "Making edit for task " . $task;
 do_task ($task, $edit_summary);
} 

That way there is no need get long edit summaries. As for general fixes, the purpose of the bot job is just to do the CHECKWIKI part, so if the general fixes are causing problems then there's no reason to leave them enabled. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:14, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thats interesting thanks I think I can use that too. I also still don't think its the general edits causing the problem. The "problem', if its even a problem is that the bot was doing a couple of template renames because of the Rename template redirects logic. At worst I suspect he could add a line or 2 to skip this specific task but there are a lot of good edits in the general edits of AWB that I think we should try and take advantage of. --Kumioko (talk) 23:21, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Bypassing template redirects is listed at WP:GENFIXES, so the bot should already be skipping these if it is skipping general fixes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Right but what I'm saying is there are a lot of useful tasks in the Gen fixes logic that we should allow the bot to do such as citation, punctuation and date fixes. The reality is the number of inconsequential edits the bot performs to # of significant edits is pretty low and we are really making a much bigger deal out of it than needs to be made. The process of getting bot approval is a long and painful one and we are getting less and less bots doing fewer and fewer edits. We really shouldn't be stopping a useful bot for such a small problem. --Kumioko (talk) 23:34, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely, if there are 1% GFs only, we are throwing away 99% GFs that come with a checkwiki when we turn them off. That is the difference between the pragmatists and the bureaucrats. The pragmatists have seen that massive clean-up can be achieved by bundling as many fixes as possible into each edit. The bureaucrats want each change to be a separate edit, while there is elegance in that solution, it is (to put it bluntly) dumb in the real world. It's like paying for every item separately at the supermarket, so that if you return one item you can use a dedicated receipt. Rich Farmbrough, 03:10, 30 January 2012 (UTC).

I agree with Rich. I spent a lot of time to do as much as possible in one edit. we gain a lot of resources doing that, we don't have to revisit pages each time and watchlists are less disturbed which it's supposed to be the reason most of other editors complain. If a bot could make all the cleaning stuff alltogether the page would appear only once in the watchlist and this single time would be a minor fix by a bot. -- 16:07, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

If I may summarize: AWB doesn't have a "skip if no rendering change" option, which template renaming would trip. As AWB stands, if genfixes was off, the problematic edits would not have been made. Because the list of affected articles is cached, YoBot was changing some articles that had already had the problems identified in Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 16 fixed. Right? Josh Parris 03:22, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

AWB does have such an option, and the blocking admin said he even checked that AWB should have skipped over certain pages [7], but Yobot still made these edits to them. There is probably some reason why this happened, which Magioladitis may know. However, if general fixes were turned off, so that the bot simply did the things that the bot request was intended to cover, it does seems like that would eliminate these problems. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:27, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

In fact the last suggestion is very good. We could separate "minor fixes" (awb's definition) to those which change rendered version and those which don't. The reason I need to have all genfixes turned on is that awb throws almost all GF under "minor". -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

CBM it doesn't and in fact it can't without solving the halting problem. Rich Farmbrough, 11:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC).

That sounds like a good solution; I approved the bot under the provision it wouldn't make non-meaningful, non-rendered changes. MBisanz ^talk 23:15, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll try to add an option to the code which diactivates redirect bypassing. I think this is a big step forward on the direction described above. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:38, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Can we unblock and proceed, please? Current list is now obsolete and a new one will arrive to my email soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm confident with you unblocking it unless someone objects. MBisanz ^talk 12:00, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll unblock it. I think it's better to avoid developing a pattern of bot operators unblocking their own bots unless they placed the original block. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:36, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I would concur, I just knew I was going to be busy hosting a dinner party, wouldn't have time to attend to this request, and knew very few other people follow this page. MBisanz ^talk 15:50, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

As a heads up, I thought I'd go ahead and update the form so that "automatic or manual" became "automatic-unsupervised, automatic-supervised, and manual." It seemed like most people were just sticking "automatic" or "manual" there, which led to the inevitable question of just how automatic a given run or series of runs was going to be. *shrug* Cheers =) --slakr^\ talk / 00:07, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! MBisanz ^talk 00:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Makes sense to me too, good initiative. --Kumioko (talk) 00:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Seems a bit long to me, now the label goes more than half way across the page on my screen. Anomie⚔ 01:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, I thought the comment above was good enough so operators knew they could specify automatic supervised. But I don't feel strongly enough about this change to revert it. — madman 18:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

One issue I have is that I never quite believe people when they say "automatic supervised": or at least, I get the impression that what I think of as "supervised" (watching every edit, e.g. watching AWB more or less the whole time while it runs in bot mode) and what they think of as "supervised" are two completely different processes. Do people agree with my interpretation or a different one (I have a flick through every evening of the edits made that day, perhaps). - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 18:45, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

"supervised" implies every single error will be corrected within reasonable time, because the botop is checking every edit eventually. But the bot itself doesn't stop to ask user permission to edit. That's how I interpret it and that's what the comment says. But yes, I also never believe people on that :) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I have the same interpretation (instead of my bot framework printing diffs and confirming before edits as it does in semi-automated mode, it saves them for later review in supervised mode). — madman 18:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

In which case, I'm not convinced that its useful to have a supervised vs. unsupervised comparison, since the scope is so broad, and in any case it encourages a little creative accounting with regard to promises to check bot logs and how often (especially as it will be recalled that every bot operator must be responsive when concerns are raised). Might as well trim it back to manual vs. automatic only IMHO. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 21:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, instead, to talk about the level of supervision: all edits reviewed before being made (manual), all edits reviewed, editing audited using a formal process, some edits reviewed, no edit review except on complaint (automatic unsupervised). Josh Parris 02:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I should say that for most cases, we don't really care: post-error responsiveness is far more expected. In some cases, we would, but I think we could ask specifically in those cases rather than polluting the main form. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 09:55, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

May be to simplify then:

• Manual: all edits are reviewed before being made
• Supervised: all edits are reviewed soon after being made
• Automatic: edits are not reviewed, except when issues arise

—  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

By the way, seeing some confusion here, above closure (at the time) does not mean revocation of the BRFAs. They are still approved. What it means is that WT:BRFA is not the right place to discuss/build consensus for individual project tagging tasks. What madman summarizes is basically BOTPOL excerpt "BAG has no authority on operator behavior, or on the operators themselves." BAG approved the task assuming taggings themselves will follow consensus (as with every task) and the approval of the task remains. That doesn't mean approval for any particular tagging batches. Exercising discretion and seeking individual task consensus is then operator's responsibility. Addressed issues would not cause BAG to revoke the BRFA. Repeated unaddressed issues will. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification but it makes no difference to me at this point. I admitted to the problem and was working to fix it but then got sucked into a multi forum pissing contest so I have no desire to run a bot or even edit at this point. --Kumioko (talk) 22:45, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not happy with the name but I've unblocked it and told it to come here. Secretlondon (talk) 20:45, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

So I've recently started fixing up some old code that had stopped working for various reasons, and I completely re-wrote the code for Legobot II, task 3 (same end function though). However I would prefer to run all my bots through one account, User:Legobot. Do I need to re-request approval for the task if I want to switch accounts? Thanks, LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 21:45, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Small changes in bot requests, such as edit rate, have traditionally not required a full BRFA, but individual members could simply do a sanity check that it was reasonable and approve it. Switching seems to me completely un-controversial. I would say we'll leave this request up for other BAG members to comment on, but I definitively would say it's not a problem and no BRFA is required. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 21:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, swapping accounts in a transparent and not "I'm trying to bury these edits" way is totally fine, no need for a BRFA. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 22:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is entirely uncontroversial. MBisanz ^talk 22:46, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

In most cases, including this one, it's uncontroversial. If the original approval were somehow based on using a particular bot account then it might be an issue. And to be clear for future reference, changing operators does normally want a new BRFA, even if it is speedily approved. Anomie⚔ 23:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

As long as the relevant user pages are updated accordingly (i.e. which bot does what, where to report issues, etc...), there's no need for a BRFA or anything like that. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:29, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the response everyone. I've moved the task over and updated the list on Legobot. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 03:41, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

im waiting for here. thx/Mahdi.hajiha (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

You did not properly list the page on WP:BRFA, so no one knew you made it. It's listed now. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:35, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

In Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BattyBot 8, I wrote "use AWB's Tagger to change {{Unreferenced}} to {{BLP sources}} if article is in Category:Living people." What I should have written is "use AWB's Tagger to change {{Unreferenced}} to {{BLP unsourced}} if article is in Category:Living people." Having this typo has already caused some concern: see User talk:GoingBatty#Recent BRFA. Since the request for approval has now been archived, it states that it should not be modified. Is there an appropriate way to correctly document the bot's task in the request so it won't cause any further confusion? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 13:30, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it can be modified; ignore all rules. It seems fairly self-evident to me that what you meant was BLP unsourced; the semantic content of BLP sources is not the same. — madman 13:41, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I concur. Josh Parris 13:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

As the closing BAGger I've fixed the typo in the BRfA and, more publicly, in The Signpost. Josh Parris 13:48, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much! GoingBatty (talk) 16:26, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

This task was approved, but as far as I can see, only part of it was tested in the trial. The last part of the function details, "If there is no such interwiki link a suitable annotation will be made to mark the article as inspected.", did not occur in the trial, and went seriously wrong in the actual implementation, with HPBot adding the same tag 16 times in a row, e.g. here, on 20 pages in total. Can an effort be made to test all functionalities of a bot before approval, not only the basic one but also the exceptions?

On other pages, despite the removal of the incorrect interwiki some 20 hours earlier, the bot still added the incorrect one[8].

Furthermore, the bot added incorrect links, e.g. here and here, where it used the same interwiki for both Belarussian and Old Belarussian. Fram (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, my bad. I really didn't think this kind of minor change (tagging missing interwiki as defined in {{expand language}} documentation) would be an issue for Rich, given he works with this kind of stuff all the time. The Belorussian template is only used 4 times on Wikipedia though, so I don't know if even a much larger trial would have caught that. I assumed all Category:Expand by language Wikipedia templates would be included. Even though me giving too large trials has been brought up before (1), I guess I'll do larger ones anyway. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:30, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

No, things like the Old Belorussian thing aren't the responsability of the BAG tester, you can hardly test any and every possible problem from someone else's bot. I just gave it as illustration of other problems in the same task. Fram (talk) 08:33, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed only a full trial will catch everything, so no problems. We work on the basis of kaizen after all.

The first case was a bug in the template code, which is now defensively programmed against.

The second case, indeed the bot did re-add the incorrect link, but only because I failed to remove the incorrect interwiki manually. the bot did exactly what it was supposed to.

The third case, Belarousian and Old Belarousian is just a case of loosening some code to match a wider range of interwikis.

Rich Farmbrough, 10:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC).

Found User:Dexbot not approved and not yet run. Owner seems to be from Farsi Wikipedia. Told them to come here. Secretlondon (talk) 14:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Has global bot flag and is only doing interwikis. Was approved here. Not listed here but is here. Secretlondon (talk) 15:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Note it is listed at Special:GlobalUsers if you clear out the "Display users starting at" box. Not sure why your link fills in both that and the "Group" dropdown with the same value. Anomie⚔ 20:21, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - no idea. I found the link on one of the bot related pages I think. Secretlondon (talk) 21:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Does semi automated repetitive editign using TWINKLW or AWB now need a Bot Flag?

It came up in an IRC chat, when I asked someone to review my attempts to clear the backlog of images without NFUR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sfan00_IMG.

If such high speed editing DOES need a bot-flag, I'd appreciate someone fast-tracked an approval on my behalf. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:10, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Bot policy#Assisted editing guidelines, editing that is high-speed, high-volume, or almost entirely automated may need to be done using a bot account, mainly so consensus can be determined in the request for approval and so recent changes/watchlists aren't flooded with the editing. Thanks, — madman 18:44, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, this isn't exactly a BRFA but more of a question about a specific bot action.

I want to mass message 1000 specific editors with User:EdwardsBot (to which I have access), asking those editors the below message. Would it be canvassing or otherwise problematic?

"I'm contacting you because you have participated in the WP:HighBeam, WP:Credo, or WP:JSTOR partnerships where those research databases donated free accounts. I think you should know about a current Community Fellowship proposal to create a Wikipedia Library--a single point of access for approved Wikipedia editors to gain free entry to all participating resource providers. Your feedback on the proposal would be appreciated. I should note that the feedback is for the proposal, not the proposer, and even if the Fellowship goes forward it might be undertaken by presently not-mentioned editors. Thanks for your consideration."

Proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Project_Ideas/The_Wikipedia_Library

Thanks for your guidance! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 12:52, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe those editors could all be described as concerned editors. It's a lot of editors, but not unprecedented. — madman 20:35, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

"Please remember that all editors are encouraged to participate in the requests listed below. Just chip in—your comments are appreciated more than you may think!"

I tried to discuss a bot and its functionality, when it was suddenly approved to do a trial task for a BAG editor, by the BAG editor who wanted the task done; my comments were ignored and it became clear the conversation was about programming a bot to do BAG tasks. Tom's tagging bot is designed to do Headbomb's tasks, and Headbomb can approve the bot for trial and iron out all the wrinkles for the type of tasks he wants the bot to do; but input that does not fit Headbomb's agenda is ignored.

I suggest your banner clear this up, all BAG editors seems to be what you mean. Eau (talk) 03:14, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I have just reviewed that BRFA and I disagree with your characterization of the discussion. I see no evidence of "collusion" between Tom Morris and Headbomb to operate only on the latter's behalf, and such a suggestion would seem to be made in very bad faith. I think you completely misunderstand the purpose of the discussion in a BRFA; outside input is needed in order to gauge consensus and evaluate the details of the request. No comments you made were ignored, and while your request wasn't addressed as part of the trial, when and if the bot is approved, it would be for requests exactly like yours. At the moment, however, the BAG members are indeed the ones setting the trial parameters; that's what they're supposed to do. There's no need to overreact because you didn't get to dictate how the trial would be executed. — madman 03:28, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

My motivation is rather simple, I'm part of the BAG, and I decided to handle that bot's trial. Since I'll be reviewing the edits it makes, so during its trial period, I would much rather have the bot edit in an area I'm familiar with, where I know what it should or should not be doing, and in a Wikiproject where I know it won't be doing something controversial (for example, the Math project does not want its article tagged by bots). This is not "agenda pushing", this is simply me making the bot trial process as efficient as possible. Sure, one could have in theory make an RFC at WP:ALGAE, wait for a few days before thing can proceed, but that's an unnecessary delay for this bot's trial, and the BAG oversight wouldn't be as rigourous as it now is.

This makes things go much faster, which means that your request for tagging with WP:ALGAE will be processed much faster. Note that you could also ask several other already-approved bots such as User:AnomieBOT or User:Legobot to do the tagging if the task is urgent. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:30, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about the other bots. Why is this bot approved for a duplicate task, then? I do not see anywhere that it says only BAG editors review a bot's trial run. While you may make a decision based upon the trial, it seems that members of the community can review edits and catch things like did the bot deal with non biographies in the category.

I can't mindread that my comments were not ignored. Another conversation took place in response to my comments, and no discussion about a trial with algae ever took place. Organism articles and projects are a large part of Wikipedia, and the projects generally want project banners on talk pages. Collusion! Wish I had used that word first! Strong, biased, designed to inflame already heated situations. I will try to get it in first next time. Eau (talk) 03:44, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

1) There's no reason that we can't have many bots doing the similar tasks. It's much better for Wikipedia to have several bots and several operators for tagging, because each task has to be customized to the WikiProject. Having many people around means that you can get work done even if someone falls sick, leaves Wikipedia, or is just not available to do it on that day.

2) Everyone can review bot edits, and everyone is welcomed to do so. However, I (or some other BAG member) will be giving the final approval/denial, and whoever is giving the thumbs up or down is expected to review the edits of the trial for themselves. For example, concerning non-biographies articles in WP:PHYS, that's not an issue, because it's the biography taskforce, and things that aren't biographies, but very much related to them, such as the List of scientific publications by Albert Einstein are still tagged as being of interest to he Physics biographies taskforce. This is a prime example of why I asked Tom to run on physics articles rather than something else. I know how Category:Physicists and subcategories should be handled. I don't know how Category:Algae and it's subcategories should be handled.

3) Sorry you did not know about the other bots. Now you do. As for not being able to read minds, this is why we have WP:AGF. If you don't know, it is better to ask than to accuse.

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:34, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

If you would like my bot (already approved for this) to tag the articles for WP:ALGAE, all I need a list of categories to go through (no recursion) and I can get to it in the next few days. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 03:48, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that would be useful. The categories are tricky, so no recursion is fine.

You know, as no one has bothered to comment in any way to indicate the algae task could be done by another bot or faster by approving a completely different type of articles first, and that my suggestion would he dealt withlater, and, as Ido not mind read, I cannot know that completely ignoring me, steamrolling over me, will lead to faster service, youknow, not really fathomable. Eau (talk) 03:52, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I didn't say only BAG editors review a bot's trial run; I said only BAG editors can approve a task for trial (and in doing so, set the trial parameters). I wasn't part of the discussion on this task, but if I were, I would have interpreted your request as a request for the operator to do something for you post-approval, which doesn't really merit a response from anyone but the operator. I suspect that's how others interpreted your request as well. It was a misunderstanding, clearly. Bringing it up in another venue helped resolve the misunderstanding, but my point was that the way you brought it up was unnecessarily inflammatory. — madman 04:07, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Tagging bots are generic bots that have to be able to handle several types of requests for several WikiProjects, and we try to make these bots as efficient as possible the first time around. There is nothing specific to WP:ALGAE about this bot, so your comments were simply not all that relevant for the bot's trial. They were not ignored, if WP:ALGAE had some unique considerations I surely would have asked Tom to consider handling them. But there is nothing specific to WP:ALGAE in Tom's Tagging bot's BRFA. Tagging bots are a dime a dozen, and there's basically no community input needed for them, in that BAG knows very well what it is the community wants out of these bots, and what they should or should not be allowed to do. While the community is certainly welcomed to take part of tagging bot trials, community feedback on them will rarely bring something to the table we don't already know. You simply happened to give feedback on a bot task that's very boring and uncontroversial.

This is very different from bot a concept that has never been implemented on Wikipedia, or something that is specific to a particular Wikiproject. For example, updating {{Taxobox}} parameters based on data from a external database would need a lot of vetting from WP:ALGAE people, and editors in general. Community feedback on that task would be much much more valuable to BAG and bot coders, because a) it's never been done before, b) BAG members are neither well versed into algae biology, nor familiar with the hypothetical algae database, and c) while BAG members are familiar with infoboxes in general, each infobox has special consideration that we rarely are familiar with.

For example, of the current BRFAs, those where the community input would be the most useful are ...

• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/HostBot_2 (from pretty much everyone, but especially WP:TEAHOUSE people)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/RMCD bot (from pretty much everyone)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/VIAFbot (from pretty much everyone, but this is mainly of interest to those who participated in the RFC and who are familiar with authority control)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BG19bot_4 (from everyone, but mostly WP:CHECKWIKI people)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Commons_fair_use_upload_bot_2 (from people familiar with Commons and files in general)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_II (from twinklers and other vandal fighters)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_I_2 (from people dealing with admin/crat stats on a regular basis)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/NoomBot_8 (from AfC reviewers)

and those where it's the least needed are ...

• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/SteenthIWbot (yet another interwiki bot)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/StubSyncBot (tagging bot)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Tom's Tagging Bot (tagging bot)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/AnomieBOT 67 (a transfer of an already-approved task from one bot to another)

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:22, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be contradicting yourself, that BAG editors are unfamiliar with algae, but the task does not require input from anyone who is.

It seems you need to explicitly uninvite the community from participating rather than ignoring and arguing me down that the proof that people actually considered my comments was that they were ignored or some such. But don't post that community input is welcome, when it is clearly not. Eau (talk) 19:47, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Tom's Tagging Bot is a general tagging bot, which will need handle the needs of many other projects than WikiProject Algae, and there is no benefits to make the bot specifically run on WP:ALGAE articles during it's trial, while there are several advantages to make it run on WP:PHYS articles (which I listed above). Comments are welcomed, but not all comments are of equal value. BAG members have the discretion to dictate the terms of the trial, and in my opinion, Tom's bot will have a better trial if it runs on a set of articles I'm familiar with, and one that can be handled much fast as running the bot on WP:PHYS like we usually run tagging bots on WP:PHYS articles saves us the trouble of going establishing consensus (it's already been established). I don't quite know what else it is you want. I already pointed you to other already-approved bots that can do WP:ALGAE-tagging, Tom's been willing to do WP:ALGAE-tagging once his bot is approved. Other bot operators came forward and offered their help for your task. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:06, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I want the banner to be accurate; as you have stated and as nastily said by others, there should be no generic welcome banner to all editors to contribute, as all editors are not equally welcome to contribute, and these editors could simply ignore RFBA, saving everyone the time and space of their bothering to edit. See how much cleaner the conversation would have been and how much easier for everyone to follow without all those dangling ignored and unwanted comments I posted. That is pretty simple, you know, when there is no welcome, throw out the welcome mat. Much more straight forward. Eau (talk) 23:51, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I think I made my point, there are hidden rules to exclude outsiders, and BAG made theirs, there are hidden rules to exclude.outsiders and BAG is the boss. Enough. Eau (talk) 23:58, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The banner is accurate, and there is no hidden rules to exclude anyone. BAG members however, do have the discretion to dictate the terms of bot trials as they best see fit. That is one of our many responsibilities to the community. If you want to request work to be done by a bot, try Wikipedia:Bot Requests. If you want to comment on whether a bot should be approved or not, then that is what Wikipedia:Bot Requests for Approval is for. Requesting for work to be done in a BRFA is fine, but it does not by any stretch of the imagination forces BAG members to use your request for work to be used for trial, especially when better alternatives for trial are available. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:34, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I should note that while I know Headbomb from IRC and having met at Wikimania, I am working on the bot specifically because I want to tag a wide range of articles from a wide range of WikiProjects. I'm very happy to help WikiProject Algae if and when the bot is approved. The BRFA process, as far as I can tell, is a process where BAG members get the final say, but wider community input is welcome in as much as that community input helps the bot operator/programmer build more effective bots and for the BAG to come to better decisions. When community input doesn't help in the running of a bot trial, it isn't necessary for BAG to follow. On the basis of EauOo's feedback, the development version of my bot code has the ability to instruct the bot to search some categories recursively and others not, with the default to not do so. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:54, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I assume you mean community input does* help in the running of a bot trial. — madman 21:52, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Upon re-reading, I'm not sure what I mean. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:56, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I've been asked to look into whether it would be possible to have a bot traverse the 2012 Summer Olympics athlete categories, looking for and eventually correcting in some way or another those that are unreferenced (or those that are unreferenced except with a link to the olympic2012 home page, which won't contain info about the athlete being referenced.) Clearly, that would need a BRFA. However, I could do some investigation with automated code that which only traversed the relevant categories, grabbed the text, and locally spewed some results -- e.g., "Count and list the unreferenced articles involved". That be a read-only (and I"m not trying to rules lawyer and count "purge" as read-only, I really just mean "read") task. Is using an automated API acceptable for that read-only task while I investigate, or should I BRFA first? I'll be happy to explain more if desired. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Read-only tasks don't need approval, however if you want apihighlimits then you need a bot flag, which may need approval. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 21:01, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Got it. I'm in zero hurry, I think, so that will do fine for my investigation, and I'll be sure to run it on a different account than my one approved bot so as to not take advantage (intentionally or no) of apihighlimits. Thanks! --j⚛e decker^talk 21:15, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

As to the approval in [[9]]. There should be an exception for Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard, that should stay on userpages, since the whole purpose of the Article Wizard is that articles should be moved into article namespace after a short development stage in user namspace. Debresser (talk) 13:55, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Well really the editor should re-add the categories when they move the page, although I appreciate that the editors using the wizard aren't necessarily experienced enough to realise that. You may be interested in this ongoing request for approval, though. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:21, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

It is indeed unlikely that such a beginning editor, for which the Article Wizard was created, can add this category himself. Thanks for the link to that discussion. Debresser (talk) 22:39, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Debresser! If there's consensus for how the category should be used, could you please update the text on Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard so everyone understands? Since user pages are not articles, this is not intuitive. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:44, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

GoingBatty, I do not understand. There has always been consensus about this tracking category, as far as I know. Debresser (talk) 22:38, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't clear on my comment. Since the category is called "Articles created via the Article Wizard", it's not clear that this category is appropriate to be used inside and outside article space. A sentence or two explaining the consensus would assist in educating people about how this category is used.

I've updated BattyBot 9 so it doesn't modify Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:08, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I understand now what you meant. Still, for those who know what the Article Wizard is for, this is clear from the beginning. But I'll see how to clarify this on the category page. Thanks for updating the bot. Debresser (talk) 08:48, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Adding {{polluted category}} to the category would be helpful too. GoingBatty (talk) 00:12, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Why? I haven't got any experience with this template, and after looking at it, still don't understand it's purpose. Debresser (talk) 08:48, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Btw, Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard does have the polluted category template. Debresser (talk) 08:49, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories is a list of categories that contain pages in the article namespace and the User: namespace. Most of these categories should not contain user pages (e.g. Category:Living people). {{polluted category}} prevents categories that are supposed to be populated with articles and user pages from being included in this list. Sorry I missed that the category already had the template. GoingBatty (talk) 16:45, 3 October 2012 (UTC)