Wikipedia:BRFA
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wikipedia:BRFA".

Bot policy · Requests for bot approval · How to create a bot · Bot Approvals Group
Requests for work to be done by a bot · Bot owners' noticeboard · Bot status page · BAG tools

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!

If you want to run a bot on the English Wikipedia, you must first get it approved. To do so, add a request below. Rather than running your own bot, it may be a good idea to ask someone else to run one for you at Bot requests.

See also: Current policy on bots and Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots, to make sure your idea is not listed.

Organization

New bots

Please list new requests for bot approval in this section. Be sure to document the name of the bot, your user name, and exactly what the bot will do, in detail. Community members are invited to comment on requests; an approvals group member will approve or reject the bot approval request after a reasonable amount of time has passed for community input.

New tasks for existing bots

Please list requests for approval for new tasks for your existing bot in this section. Be sure to explain the new task in detail. An approvals group member will approve or reject the new task request after a reasonable amount of time has passed for community input.

Need assistance?

If you've waited a reasonable amount of time for a reply, or if you have an urgent issue, you can place {{BAGAssistanceNeeded}} onto your bot request. This is intended for use if urgent attention is needed or if a request is being neglected; please do not use it after every comment.

Active trial runs

(Approvals group members only)

If a bot is placed on a trial run, please document it in this section. Further comments should take place there, as will the decision to approve or deny the full run.

Approved bots

(Approvals group members only)

When a user has completed a trial run (if needed), and their bot has been approved, please:

1. Add a clear statement indicating approval of the bot on the bot's subpage.
2. List the bot here.

Archiving When a reasonable time has passed for the operator to know about the approval (a few days in most cases), and the bot already has the flag (if needed): Tag the discussion top and bottom of the discussion with {{subst:Bot Top}} and {{subst:Bot Bottom}} respectively (See this example). Updating the categories is also recommended as in this example. After more than 7 days have passed on the list of recently Approved Requests, archive the discussion in the current archive.

Archives Old Format Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3, Archive 4 New Format Approved - Rejected     all subpages of this page

Current requests for approval

AnomieBOT

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: Anomie⚔

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic, unsupervised

Programming Language(s): Perl

Function Summary: Correct reference syntax errors and attempt to recover orphaned refs from page history

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Continuous

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: The bot will process mainspace pages in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to correct some common errors, as described on the bot's user page. The most interesting correction is that the bot will detect orphaned refs (i.e. named references without content) and attempt to find content for them in the page history. The bot will process each mainspace page in the category only once per revision, and once it has scanned the page history for a particular orphaned reference and not found a replacement it will not bother searching for that reference again.

Discussion

I am open to suggestions as to how often to check the category for additions once the bot has cleaned up all of the errors it knows how to handle. Anomie⚔ 03:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I copied this list of tasks from the bot userpage. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

• <ref …></ref> → <ref …/>
• <references …></references> → <references …/>
• Remove <ref …/> without name
• Strip parameters other than name and group from <ref> and <references>
• Rename refs with numeric names
• Copy content for orphaned named refs from past page revisions

That last one looks pretty tricky. Is the code ready? The others look pretty easy to understand. – Quadell ^(talk) 14:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Ready and uploaded at User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/OrphanReferenceFixer.pm. I've even run the task in "testing" mode (where it writes proposed edits to the local filesystem for me to manually verify) and it seems to work well. The "find references" function pulls out <ref> tags with a regular expression and {{#tag:ref}}s with a simple parser. The task uses this to check the current version for orphans, and then (at 10 revisions/minute, currently) iterates back through the page history until it either runs out of orphans or runs out of history.

There's also some logic in the iteration to allow the bot to stop processing any particular page, save any edits to that point, and later continue looking where it left off. Otherwise a page with an unfindable orphan and 5000 revisions would monopolize the bot for 8+ hours at the current rate limit. Anomie⚔ 16:14, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Jeremybot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: jeremyb (talk · contribs)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: automatic (each run manually started)

Programming Language(s): pywikipedia

Function Summary: Talk Page message delivery

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): one time run(s) (depending on approval scope)

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): new bot

Function Details: Talk page message delivery. Will take editsummary, message, and a list of different types of sources for user lists including templates to check for transclusion by user pages, pages to check for links to user pages, and categories to check for user page members. Based in part on bjweeks (talk · contribs) "GPL 3 or later" code. Planning to release the code after some cleanup.

Discussion

Note: there are 2 users named "Jeremy" in the discussion below, Jeremyb is the bot master and Jeremy (User:Jerem43) is the person who made the BOTREQ. Jeremyb (talk) 06:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I know there are other bots approved generally for message delivery but if this scope is too broad I can limit it. Almost ready for trial and have a WP:BOTREQ to run this on: Wikipedia:Bot requests#Community forum for WP:FOOD. --Jeremyb (talk) 16:58, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

• It looks to me like these people haven't explicitly signed up to receive this newsletter -- it's just assumed that they want it since they're a part of one of the projects. Would it be better to ask them to list their names if they want to receive the newsletter? – Quadell ^(talk) 18:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that this BOTREQ is a request for a one time only delivery in which case asking people to sign up would be rather pointless. (once they've signed up they already know about what we're going to tell them. no need to tell them again) Will double check with the user that submitted the request. Jeremyb (talk) 06:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

It is a one time message notifying participants of a new inter-WikiProject message board and standards drive for Food and Drink related projects and task forces. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 06:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

AilurophobiaBot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): AWB (possibly assisted by a C# app)

Function Summary: Escaping categories in user space pages

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Sporadically

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: AilurophobiaBot escapes article categories in userspace pages, it does this by replacing [[Category: with [[:Category:. At the moment the list of pages to edit will be generated manually through Special:Export and then filtered through AWB, although I am toying with the idea of using an app to automate this (unless someone can think of a better way to generate the list?)

It will not escape any category starting with "Wikipedia" (which includes "Wikipedian/s") or "User".

Discussion

• I don't think there's consensus to remove all non-Wikipedia categories from userspace. Most, yes, but all? Category:Exclusion compliant bots comes to mind. Are we sure that Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded and Category:Possible copyright violations are never appropriate in userspace? I don't think we can have a bot blindly remove these. Besides, categories like Category:Jewish Wikipedian seminary students, Category:Third opinion Wikipedians, and Category:Anonymous Wikipedians don't start with "Wikipedia". Even if you allowed all /.*Wikipedia.*/ categories, you would occasionally be removing legitimate categories from userspace, and trust me: people get pissed when bots alter their userspace. – Quadell ^(talk) 12:35, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

You are right about that, so a change of scope; how about if it included categories rather than excluding them. So instead of escaping everything except X, it ignores everything except categories that are definitely article-only. It will just take a bit of time to set up the right categories. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 19:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. In theory all categories appropriate for userspace should be tagged with {{wikipedia category}} and friends, but in practice we've still got some way to go there. Just remember to be careful not to make any mistakes, use friendly and informative edit summaries (something simple like "adding colons to category links" would be a good start), make it easy for users to find your talk page and try to stay calm when, inevitably, someone doesn't understand what your bot did to their user page and comes angrily complaining to you. In my experience (see e.g. here and here) most people won't mind helpful edits to their user page at all, but if you edit enough of them, eventually someone will complain. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:58, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The edit summary I had in mind was: escaping category link to prevent this page appearing in main article categories more info ... - question? (if this is approved the bot's userpage will be redone to explain in-depth what it does). I realise people are often quite possessive of their userspace but I am confident I can deal with any hostilities that arise. ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 22:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Scratch that, using defined categories is not feasible. Therefore, I propose to use Special:Recentchangeslinked to produce lists. For example, Changes related to "Category:Living people" (filtered to userspace). I will then readopt my original plan to replace [[Category: with [[:Category: along with some filtering to ignore certain categories, this is 'safer' because if a userspace page has been caught by the RecentChangesLinked result of an article-only category then it should be safe to bulk remove the categories (ignoring the incontestably userspace-only cats.) ~ AmeIiorate _{U T C} @ 11:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

You say "along with some filtering to ignore certain categories"... How will this filtering work? Details needed. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

FA Template Protection Bot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: Chris

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Auto

Programming Language(s): PHP using Cobi's classes

Function Summary: Adds all the templates on today's and tommorow's fa to Wikipedia:Main Page/Protection which is cascade protected

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): on the hour

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: The bot works like so:

1. Parses the name of today's fa from here (with some error checking)
2. Get's all the templates on the fa and removes those listed here
3. Formats the templates into a nice list
4. Places the formated text on Wikipedia:Main Page/Protection

The bot will only run if User:Chris G/FABot Run is set to "Run" (cases insenstive)

Discussion

Since this is a request for an admin bot I have transcluded this brfa onto WP:AN so we can have wider community input. Per disscusion at WP:BN and the Adminbot rfc I am testing to see if this brfa alone can gather enough consensus for a 'crat to be willing to +sysop the bot. Also I would like to make it clear that I am and have been for some time running this bot on my main account. The bot's source code can been seen here --Chris 04:42, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

From an management side of things it's editing a protected page, big stinking deal, it's almost an instaapprove. It's the community acceptance of a +sysop flagged bot which will raise hell.

Can't exactly trial it without the flag... its a community acceptance thing, on a personal note, I have no problems with it -- Tawker (talk) 05:01, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

We could do something like have it mark it's edits with a unique flag (or link to this BRFA) in the edit summary, and, have Chris run it under his account, I can easily filter those edits via an SQL query, and, list them on a subpage of here for review. SQL^{Query me!} 05:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

On a sidenote, why not put the images used in it on the protection page as well? SQL^{Query me!} 05:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Because then we'd have to rename the bot :P. If there aren't any objections to protecting images as well it should be a fairly trivial change to the code to get it done --Chris 05:34, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Would the bot remove the templates from the protected page the following day? WODUP 06:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it removes the old templates and adds the new ones --Chris 06:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I figured as much, so far, to me, this sounds good. SQL^{Query me!} 06:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. :) WODUP 06:25, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I've updated the source so that it adds images as well --Chris 06:42, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• It sounds pretty non-controversial to me. How difficult would it be to monitor new templates that get added to the main page subjects as the day goes on? This is another popular vandal vector; add a template that makes sense, and then vandalize it. –xeno (talk) 07:18, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I could make the bot run every 1/2 hour or even every 10 minutes, that way the edits won't be caught up in the history making it easy to revert --Chris 09:04, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
    • If it runs but doesn't find anything is there any cost? (server, bandwidth - i dunno) Viridae^Talk 13:26, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
      • Every action has a cost, but it's minimal... it's basically loading a page or two (the same way you and I would) a few times, which isn't really a big deal. —Giggy 13:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
        • I like the idea - I like the idea more when it is run more often. Viridae^Talk 14:18, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• If it really is going to do images, it may be best to rename it, just to avoid any confusion. Other than that, sounds like a great idea, IMO. - Rjd0060 (talk) 14:59, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't know if I'm allowed to comment, but it sounds like a good idea. I'd be willing to support in the RfA. A rename does seem in order though...... Dendodge .. Talk^Contribs 15:58, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
• I'd support it, based on RedirectCleanupBot, adminbots run on admin accounts, and the fact that this bot could be very useful. And the fact that the worst that could happen is that we have to clean up several templates and/or articles. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 16:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Question: Will this have to go through RfA like User:RedirectCleanupBot did? I can't seem to find any consensus on WP:BN. NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 19:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Copying Iridescent's post from WT:RFA to this BRFA. WODUP 22:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Support, but a beansy thought that someone will need to watch for; presumably if it's run every 10 minutes, a vandal can vandalize a template, add it to the article after vandalizing, and the bot would then lock the template into the vandalized state. Not a major problem but it will happen. Also, will it unprotect all the templates once the article's delisted, or only those that were unprotected to start with?

—iridescent 16:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#Heads Up

Well I thought of that too -= but presumably they can do that already, and while the vandalism will show either way, it is easier to track which edit caused it (as against adding a useful template and then vandalising - which is a bit more difficult) Viridae^Talk 22:58, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

To really deal with Xenocidic's concern it would have to constantly monitor recentchanges via IRC, even checking 5 minutes is more than enough time for someone to add a template and vandalize it. I don't think that feature will really be helpful, though that is a concern that should be dealt with, not sure how though. Mr.Z-man 23:17, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The sort of timed attack Iridescent describes is a major concern, and it's not just in the realm of WP:BEANS, but one that's already been attempted at least twice to defeat my own FA protection adminbot. The number of possible attack vectors are increased here since we're dealing an almost unlimited number of templates that could be vandalized, or even new ones created for the purposes of mischief. Chris, you might be able to pick up the solution here. :) east718 // talk // email // 23:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

That method isnt going to go away - it can happen already and it isnt going to be made worse by this bot. As it stands, vandalism to the FAOTD by this method (adding a template that is already vandalised) is easiyer to deal with than adding an innocuous template then vandalising it. Having the runs more often pretty much gets rid of the latter problem and nothing will top the former except protection/eyes on the page. Viridae^Talk 06:41, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, we're not thinking on the same plane here. I don't care if somebody adds a template to the article later and vandalizes it; that is expected. The real problem is that the robot might lock a template in a vandalized state if a vandal throws it onto the article just before a check cycle. The optimal solution (that's obvious to me at least) is to just not protect a template if it's been recently edited and to report it for human review somewhere. I happen to prefer throwing up the !admin flag in #wikipedia-en-admins, Chris may opt for something else. east718 // talk // email // 01:44, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the timing problem can be solved. No matter what time it is set to run, unless it is set to run continuously, there will be a break where mischief can occur. Since we started this in July, vandalism during the break has only happened once. In that case someone added a template that should have been in the article already and then vandalized it. In response we lowered the duration been protections. Since then I don't recall anymore problems. As for images, we had a discussion about them when we first created the page and decided not to add them unless they became a target. So far they have not. We were primarily concerned with fair use images, but we also asked what protection of an image would really do, and decided not much. Having worked on the protection page and tweaking with Chris, the bot has my support. KnightLago (talk) 15:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

• On the timing problem: Featured articles should be fairly stable. They shouldn't receive major template overhauls right before they go on the main page. If this attack vector is an issue, only lock down templates which existed in the article when scheduled, or some days before it goes on the main page, and make the period vary between checks so the lockdown schedule isn't predictable. Gimmetrow 04:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I recommend this bot goes to RFA, I say this as the programmer of the original redirect cleanup bot. (check the rename logs for my old username). As far as operation, the idea that east said above is a worthwhile one. If you are doing checks every 10 minutes, then check to see if the template has recently been edited (in last 10 minutes), and if it has, bring the template up for human review somewhere. Have it say something in #wikipedia-en or the like, or post somewhere where people don't mind watching. The only real way out of this is to monitor on IRC. —— nixeagle 03:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm way out of date, strike the RFA suggestion per adminbots RFC. However rest of advice still holds. —— nixeagle 05:18, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The proposed policy is to not go to RfA per the adminbots RFC. BJ^Talk 03:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, sorry about the lateness of my reply but I've been having a few computer problems. A few points have been raised that I would like to answer:

1. RFA - at this point in time I have no plans to run this bot through an rfa
2. Images - KnightLago has made some vaild points so unless image vandalsim picks up the bot will not protect images
3. Templates - I think Nixeagle has made a good sugestion about checking when the template was last edited and will work on implmenting it. Gimmetrow also made a nice suggestion about varing the running time but unfortunately the bot runs on a crontab which is hard to randomise --Chris 08:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course, the real solution to the problem is a better way of monitoring changes to an article's templates. — Werdna • talk 08:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Huggle now watches templates too, so any sneaky vandals should be reverted quickly (if someone is using Huggle at that time...). Maybe we should make ClueBot watch the templatespace too...Soxπed93^(blag) 05:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I've updated the code so that the bot checks if the template was edited in the last 10 minutes if it was the bot will not protect the template and it will send off an alert in #wikipedia-en-alerts. Now I have two questions:

1. How often should the bot run (every 5 minutes...)?
2. What should it be renamed to (I was thinking along the lines of "FA Protection Bot" or something like that) --Chris 10:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Just thought I'd chime in here, guys, and say that I'm not a big fan of bots having admin rights, as they don't have the ability to make judgement calls. There aren't really any calls to make in this particular case, but I'm still not a fan of the idea. Useight (talk) 14:51, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Requests to add a task to an already-approved bot

User:Erwin85Bot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: Erwin85 (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Unsupervised

Programming Language(s): Python

Function Summary: Keeping Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people up-to-date.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Fixed intervals, probably daily

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: It gets a list of articles in both Category:Living people and Category:Articles for deletion from the Toolserver's database. It checks each page to get the corresponding AfD page. It checks those pages to see if the AfD is still active. (I might use a query for that in the future.) For active AfD's it leaves a comment that it will be listed on the deletion sorting page if that hasn't been done yet. Finally, it updates the list.

Source code: tools:~erwin85/deletionsorting.py (temporarily available, didn't want to add it to SVN)

Discussion

This is in response to a bot request: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Deletion_sorting. --Erwin85 (talk) 13:10, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

User:Erwin85Bot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: Erwin85 (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Unsupervised from Toolserver

Programming Language(s): Python

Function Summary: Change {{KeepLocal}} to {{NoCommons}} and remove {{NowCommons}} for images tagged with both KeepLocal and NowCommons. Possibly remove NowCommons if the target image doesn't exist.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Continuous

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: See summary.

Source code: None yet

Discussion

This only adds a task to the current script used for Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Erwin85Bot 4. However, if this new task will be approved it will also edit the image pages. I therefore guessed a new BRFA could be necessary. The reason for this new task is a comment on my talk page about the KeepLocal tag. If this task would be added I could also add a task to remove {{NowCommons}} if the target image doesn't exist. Note that I haven't coded anything yet. I just want input to see if this new task is indeed an improvement or that it should just ignore those tags. --Erwin85 (talk) 13:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Bots in a trial period

• SamuraiBot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Trial approved)

• Legobot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 3) (Trial approved)

• SelketBot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 5) (Trial approved)

• CheMoBot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Trial approved)

• Mr.Z-bot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 4) (Trial approved)

• anybot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Trial approved)

• NNBot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Trial approved)

• SoxBot IX (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Trial approved)

Bots that have completed the trial period

Approved requests

Bots that have been approved for operations after a successful BRFA will be listed here for informational purposes. No other approval action is required for these bots. More approved requests can be found here (), and old requests can be found in the archives.

• MelonBot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 10) Approved 18:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC) (bot has flag [1])
• Alexbot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 3) Approved 18:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC) (bot has flag [2])
• Lightbot (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 2) Approved 18:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC) (bot has flag [3])
• NVS(bot) (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) Approved 04:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC) Bureaucrat note: On hold =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC) (bot has flag [4])
• DinoBot2 (tasks • contribs • actions log • block log • flag log • user rights) (Task: 7) Approved 10:33, 17 August 2008 (UTC) (bot has flag [5])
• Erwin85Bot (tasks • contribs •