Wikipedia talk:Bot policy

RfC on COSMETICBOT

Please see RFC: Clarifications to WP:COSMETICBOT for fixing deprecated HTML tags. Legoktm (talk) 08:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

A mop for DYK-Tools-Bot?

I've been talking with @Theleekycauldron about adding a task to DYK-Tools-Bot which would require admin rights (move-protecting pages that are currently on the main page DYK section). I'm a firm believer in running with the minimum privileges required in case something goes haywire. So I'm thinking I should spin up a new DYK-Tools-Admin-Bot account and use that to run just the tasks that require admin rights.

Before I go down that path, is that a reasonable approach to take? Yeah, I know, lots of other steps in the approval process, but for now I'm just looking for a sanity check on the two accounts approach. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Yep, TFA Protector Bot is a separate account for that reason. AnomieBOT has multiple accounts with different permission levels as well. Legoktm (talk) 03:16, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that option is fine, you could put 2FA on it as well and use a limited access grant (which you won't use on the API, but just to lock it down more). — xaosflux ^Talk 12:11, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. I tried to create DYKToolsAdminBot and got an error that the account name was blacklisted! ACC #330190 pending. It'll be interesting to see what the process looks like from the other side :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

OK, got that sorted... -- RoySmith (talk) 20:15, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

A proposal to move MASSCREATE out of this policy

See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Alternative proposal: Move MASSCREATE out of BOTPOL. Anomie⚔ 12:19, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Systematic mass edits to hidden category dates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clarifying WP:MEATBOT

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

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

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

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

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

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