Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval: Difference between revisions

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
→‎Dead bots: Yes, deflag
→‎Dead bots: Elissonbot
Line 178: Line 178:


{{user|Fritzbot}} can be deflagged. --[[User:Fritz Saalfeld|Fritz S.]] ([[User talk:Fritz Saalfeld|Talk]]) 09:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
{{user|Fritzbot}} can be deflagged. --[[User:Fritz Saalfeld|Fritz S.]] ([[User talk:Fritz Saalfeld|Talk]]) 09:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

{{user|Elissonbot}} has been inactive since I've been quite inactive (sadly), I would probably find chances to use it in the future again but I guess I could just reactivate it then. Go with whatever you find suitable. –&nbsp;[[User:Johan Elisson|Elisson]]<small>&nbsp;•&nbsp;[[User talk:Johan Elisson|T]]&nbsp;•&nbsp;[[Special:Contributions/Johan Elisson|C]]&nbsp;•</small> 12:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


== NFCC BRFA ==
== NFCC BRFA ==

Revision as of 12:43, 13 March 2008

Shortcut

Process

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

Review of RfBA BetacommandBot Task 8

In the light of the discussion going on at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#BetacommandBot "rating" articles and leaving notes about it, it may be necessary to review at some point whether there is community consensus for this task. I don't know what the procedure is, but I thought that the people running RfBA should at least be aware of this discussion. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 20:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing the procedure (if required, although from my glance at ANI it won't be) would be to run another BRFA, and to invite broader discussion than this one received. If the community approves the task, BAG approves it. If not, no bot. Dihydrogen Monoxide 02:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh. I complained to him about that recently. Everywhere I go I see those infernal messages, and it seems to me that 1) they're not needed 2) judicious use of templates could have the same effect. Didn't know it had been raised on ANI...
SkiersBot has been doing a similar thing but his was somewhat worse, as I posted elsewhere on this page I believe. --kingboyk (talk) 17:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Per this conversation, I created this process Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/User_conduct#Use_of_bot_privileges, but in the the specific case of BCB, another user already started WP:AN/B, so that would be the correct forum for all BCB editing issues IMHO. If they reach consensus, then it should probably go to a WP:BOTS/Subpage for the BAG to review the bot situation and tell the crats whether or not this bot has community backing, etc. MBisanz talk 01:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good, though I am not convinced it would get much use. I think it would belong better at WP:BRfC like WP:BRFA. I think with the general slow pave of things around BAG it will be hard to get many opinions about this. Is there a more formal discussion of the proposal going down? -- maelgwn - talk 03:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well the shortcust can point anywhere, right now the only discussion is at Wikipedia:BN#Bot_change and its more about my motives than the proposal. I think I hit Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#-BOT_forum with no comments, so I guess here is as good a place as any. MBisanz talk 04:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Code publishing?

Just out of curiosity, why don't we publish the code of the bots for community review? What are the pros and cons of publishing vs. not? Lawrence § t/e 14:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's up to every programmer.
  • Pros : Allow others to check and add improvements, allow others to use it.
  • Cons : Allow others to use it (sigh, depends on the bot), exploits, abuses. You have to clean your code before publishing it. You can not longer claim to be the only one running this particular bot.
NicDumZ ~ 14:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would the open source requirements for WP extend to bots, and require code release if asked for? Lawrence § t/e 14:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It seems very hard to enforce as a policy. It's better to discuss it with individual bot operators, and convince them to release their bot code. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
its always been that coders are requested to make their code open source, but we dont force it. βcommand 15:10, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering though if ona going forward basis, the disclosure of source code could be made a pre-requisite to Bot flagging. For bots with sensitive code (vandal bots), the code could be sent to OTRS. I'm imagining that the efficiency of most bot swould increase, since more eyes would find more ways to improve the code. Also, when a person left the project, it would be rather easy to replace them, as opposed to waiting until someone new can re-code a new bot that looks likes its doing the same thing (as happene to either an archiver or vandal bot I beleive.) MBisanz talk 19:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Im opposed to forcing users to publish their code, Like I said feel free to request it, as for archiving bots, we have not had any issues. their is one that comes stock in pywikipedia. As for anti-vandal bots, you might ask cobi, but the AVB's that tawker and co. used to run, where rendered useless to changes in mediawiki. βcommand 20:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


This would be a good idea. Lawrence § t/e 20:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) The vandal bots aren't sensitive and ClueBot is already open source. I have two objections to releasing my code, first I would have to clean it up as mentioned above and second I don't want to be liable for fixing more that one copy of the code. If I leave and a botop that knows what their doing takes over my code that is fine but I don't want 10 clones of BJBot screwing up everywhere. BJTalk 21:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not suggesting current bots be required to release code, only that new bots, as part of the approval process should be required to release it, at least to the BAG mailing list (if that actually exists) or OTRS. And of course, approval for 1 bot to do 1 task wouldn't empower any other bots to do that task, even using the identical code, so if someone installed it and started using it, I'd say they should be blocked on sight. What about even archiving code somewhere? I seem to remember that Gurch had a bot updating the ARBCOM elections and took a lot of heat when he needed to travel during the elections. If there was a common repository, it would've been easier to fix. MBisanz talk 21:44, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm opposed to a "private release" to some local instance, because bot ops from other projects would benefit a lot from a public release.
  • Bjweeks, I think that the second point you raised is easy to avoid. You can license your code, or simply request that when you're still active, no one has the right to run another BJBot on en: (and on every project where you are) : Since BAG would request, for approval of new bots, the source, I don't see how a clone of BJBot could run here :) . Also, bot ops are responsible for their edits, whoever wrote the script : you shouldn't worry about an outdated version of your code running somewhere else, the other bot op should :þ
  • From my personal experience, I'd say that those curious to look at a source of a bot don't really care about how messy the code is : They just want to know roughly how it works, or will clean the code by themselves if they want to reuse it elsewhere. But sure, right, I do hate submitting dirty code, and that's maybe why I mentioned that point. :( NicDumZ ~ 22:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll start cleaning up my code for release, some of the code I need to bring back into working order on enwiki first. I'm nowhere near was dedicated as Betacommand and others so long absences from me are a possibility and that is why I should start publishing my code. BJTalk 23:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, documentation is almost nonexistent in my code, which makes it harder to reuse. BJTalk 23:56, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Though still under development, I have published the code for User:XLinkBot (see User:XLinkBot/Code). I don't see any harm in others to see the code, if they want to use it, feel free, any comments are also welcome (though Versageek and I will be the ones to see if it is really implemented, or there must be strong opposition to certain features). Also, be aware that the code there may not be totally up-to-date, as I am still developing the wiki-interface of the bots (something that did not exist at all in User:AntiSpamBot, that bot only listened to IRC). There is no explanation in the code, and it is far from 'clean', it works at the moment 'properly' (which does not mean that there is no improvement possible).
In a way, it would be good to see if spammers now will try to 'use' the code to circumvent the bots (they would need to see exactly where and how it uses perlwikipedia, and to understand the inner workings of wikipedia) .. that leads to a nice way of improving the code of said bots. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I suggest that we discuss whether it is appropriate to encourage bot code to be released under GFDL.

GFDL-published bot code should of course be approved before anybody is allowed to run it, and it should only be run by approved bot operators. Currently used bots may not be released under GFDL, either because some parts of the code are taken from a non-free source, or because the developer does not want to release the code. However, this can be treated similar to how we treat copyrighted/free images. For instance: A proprietary bot should not be allowed if a free (and approved) one is available that does the same task. A long-term goal may be to use only GFDL-bots. Oceanh (talk) 22:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC).[reply]

I think the GPL is better suited for programs than the GFDL, though. The ClueBots are released under the GPL. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 22:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The GFDL isn't any more suited for code than the GPL is suited for documents. --Carnildo (talk) 22:29, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The point is to publish under a suitable GNU license, and I agree that GPL probably is better suited. If the ClueBots are already released under GPL, that's a good start! We don't need to rely on proprietary bots doing tasks that GPL-bots already do. And these bots may be inspiration for other wannabe bot programmers. I can see some problems with "version explosion", which should be avoided. And also, since bots are powerful tools, certain skills and insights are required to make good bots, or good modifications of existing bots. Oceanh (talk) 22:46, 25 February 2008 (UTC).[reply]

NOEDITSECTION

I've removed it on WP:BRFA, because I found it intensely annoying. Why was it added? I can see potential ugliness from the new "first section" edit headers, but can they not be disabled in each transcluded request rather than making it far more difficult to do anything with WP:BRFA? Martinp23 02:38, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good call, that was annoying. I did not notice that magic word. βcommand 02:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm I expect the original reasoning was to stop users pressing the (+) button to make a new request. I expect we can just revert and educate in cases where that happens though. Martinp23 02:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assessmentbot

This is just to run an idea past you guys before actually doing something about it. :-)

Problem
Some of the Country Projects have huge numbers of Unassessed articles - Spain has 14030, France has 10857. France has another 11610 Stubs waiting to be assessed for Importance. Past experience has shown that noone's much interested in doing anything about that when there's 1000's to be done - I've assessed several 1000 articles myself, it's tedious, back-breaking work - but that if you can get it down to zero, then people are quite good at keeping on top of it after that. Assessing for Class greatly slows down assessment, as you have to grab the article before moving to the Talk page, whereas you can assess for Importance just based on the article name. So a way of assessing for Class automagically would help considerably. When you look at them, you find that most of these Unassessed articles are transwiki'd communes and villages.

Proposal
Two bots, to be run as a one-off per Project. The first is a read-only bot that reads in a list of the Unassessed articles in a Project, and counts article length, number of .jpg links, <ref tags, headings, stub templates and looks for a "town" infobox such as Template:Infobox_CityIT - if present, it extracts the population of the place. Then I would manually set up lists to feed into auto-mode Kingbot for assessment in the Project banner on Talk pages thus :

  • Redirects - <100 bytes, would be handled manually as they quite often represent article moves gone wrong, it's worth catching them
  • Stubs - anything <1750bytes, anything <2250 bytes without a .jpg (gathered material), anything <2750 bytes without either a .jpg, 3+ headings or 4+ inline refs.
  • Starts - between 5000 and 10000 bytes with 3+ headings and <10 inline refs, or between 3500 and 5000 with a jpg, 3+ headings and <10 inline refs.
  • Low importance - population <5000 people
  • Mid importance - population >20000 people but <100000
Based on my experience with the Italy Project, I'd guess that those rules might assess about 60% of Unassessed articles by Class and about 30% by Importance - so a useful amount of work, but still leaving large grey areas for human assessors, I think the above rules are pretty conservative and could be tweaked upwards with experience. Manual intervention should allow me to catch any articles that are obviously of >Mid importance - and I like to just eyeball things anyway. ;-/
My main interest in this is for one-off Project assessment, so it would be a non-mainspace bot, but a logical expansion would be to use similar rules to apply "Project" stub tags on the article itself, perhaps with more convervative rules (<1250 bytes?, <1000 bytes?). I know the stub sorters get a bit twitchy about that kind of thing, and it wouldn't be my main focus, but how would people feel about that? FlagSteward (talk) 12:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BRFA table...

Hey, is it just me, or, is the bot that normally maintains the table near the top of the BRFA's MIA? (You know, the one that shows when blah was last edited, and, then, when blah was last edited by BAG etc etc) SQLQuery me! 13:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Unregistered bot

User:AtidrideBot registered on Dec 10, 2007 and thus far as made a single drive-by edit of the editabuse template [1]. 2 things, one the edit itself seemed to target a bot owner, two the user's name looks like a bots, even though it isn't flagged as such. MBisanz talk 20:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Block and point to WP:BRFA βcommand 20:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I notified, but did not block since I wanted to see what would happen. They've repeated the edit to the template (and I've reverted) [2]. They've also told me "why" on my talkpage [3] and gone and moved the BC subpage to a formal noticeboard title [4]. Could the owner of the WP:SPA please stand up? Only registered users would know of BC and BCB's image work. I agree a block is called for BC, but I'd like a less involved user to confirm it for me. MBisanz talk 14:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Dead bots

For bots that are inactive for very long periods of time (year+) should they be de-flagged? Not as much of an issue as with admin accounts left laying around, but it would seem to be simple housekeeping. MBisanz talk 08:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea. We fire stewards for inactivity, why not bots.

Geoff Plourde (talk) 16:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds reasonable. I'd go with shorter... maybe 6 months? SQLQuery me! 16:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
we just cleared some of them out not too long ago. βcommand 17:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Ok these are the ones I ID' to start with as not having been active since at least 01/01/2007

  1. AFD Bot (talk · contribs)-notified March 6, 2008
  2. LinkBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 6, 2008
  3. NotificationBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 6, 2008
  4. Pending deletion script (talk · contribs) (Dev bot, requires Tim Starling's approval)-notified March 6, 2008-deflagged
  5. Portal namespace initialisation script (talk · contribs) (Dev bot, requires Tim Starling's approval)-notified March 6, 2008-deflagged
  6. StubListBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 6, 2008-Flag removed De-flagged by user request. SQLQuery me! 07:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  7. VandalCountBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 6, 2008
  8. Wikipedia Signpost (talk · contribs) (userpage notes it is still a bot)
  9. ZsinjBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008 - deflagged
  10. Zbot370 (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008 - deflagged
  11. YurikBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  12. XyBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  13. Whobot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  14. ABot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008 - I plan to start up again once I can find the time – ABCD✉ 01:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Beastie Bot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008 - I plan to start this one up again when I have time —Pengo 07:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  16. BenjBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  17. Bgbot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008 - deflagged
  18. Chris G Bot 2 (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008 - still active, just some obscure problem with staying logged in --Chris 08:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  19. CrazynasBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  20. CricketBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008-User intends to keep active
  21. Danumber1bot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  22. Dark Shikari Bot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  23. DarknessBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  24. DinoBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  25. DisambigBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  26. Elissonbot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  27. Eybot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  28. Fetofsbot (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  29. Fetofsbot2 (talk · contribs)-notified March 11, 2008
  30. Fritzbot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  31. Gdrbot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008 — I may use it again some time. Gdr 10:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  32. Geimas5Bot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  33. Grammarbot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  34. GrinBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  35. Halibott (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  36. Heikobot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  37. IW-Bot-as (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  38. Janna (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  39. JdforresterBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  40. JoeBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008 - Should be deflagged. It was a semi-automated spellcheck bot made to distract myself from finals through procrastination. 25k edits later, I still somehow managed a good grade. Funny to look back on it now. Anyways, I'll probably never run it again, there are better projects out there right now doing that job more efficiently. JoeSmack Talk 12:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  41. KevinBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  42. Kurando-san (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  43. KyluBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  44. M7bot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008 - Should be deflagged. I'll probably never run it again. --M/ (talk) 12:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  45. Mairibot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  46. MarshBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  47. MBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  48. MichaelBillingtonBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008
  49. MoriBot (talk · contribs)-notified March 13, 2008


Do I grab a crat or SQL, will you grab them as a BAGer? MBisanz talk 17:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm actually not a BAG'er, sorry... We'll need BAG to ok de-flags, before a crat does it... I'd suggest a note at WP:BOWN and/or WT:BAG, to try to grab some attn... SQLQuery me! 18:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Might I suggest that before flags are withdrawn, operators are contacted if still active. It might be worth asking them if they still need a bot account, and when they are likely to use it again. People may be offended by flags being withdrawn without it being discussed with them first, and there's no great rush to do this. WjBscribe 19:05, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Asked around, will wait a week or so for infrequent editors. And I'll start processing the entire list of flagged bots. Not a critical task, but still something I know I have the skills to do and needs to be done by someone. MBisanz talk 20:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Need any help? Geoff Plourde (talk) 20:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I think I've got it set. Just checking through contrib pages, already 1/4 done. MBisanz talk 06:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone responds that they no longer need a flag, feel free to drop me a note on my talkpage and I'll remove it. WjBscribe 20:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't intend to use Stublistbot, so go ahead. (For all I care, the whole concept of using stub templates can be abandoned, but that's a different story) Han-Kwang (t) 21:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I have removed the flag. WjBscribe 00:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I've processed all Bot flagged bots. There are 72 listed at User:MBisanz/Botlist#Inactive_bots_for_notification. I'll begin notifying them, but some have been dead since 2005, so I wouldn't hold my breath. MBisanz talk 07:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deflag Zbot370; it's blocked anyways. I blocked it since I lost the password and didn't want anyone to hijack that. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 06:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bgbot (talk · contribs) will stay inactive. You can freely take away its bot flag. — Borislav 08:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ZsinjBot (talk · contribs) has been made obsolete, hence it's inactivity. I have no problem with its flag being removed. ZsinjTalk 17:04, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Flags removed from Zbot370, Bgbot & ZsinjBot. WjBscribe 18:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notification. CricketBot (talk · contribs) has been inactive for a while but might be revived when I have more time. I'll go with whatever the consensus is in that situation. Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the notification. While ABot (talk · contribs) has been inactive, I do mean to revive it once I have some more time. – ABCD✉ 01:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you MBisanz and co for chasing this up, and yes, LinkBot (talk · contribs) is inactive, and can be deflagged. If I do find I ever need to reactivate it again, I'll request that via the normal processes. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 04:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thanks for the message. MichaelBillingtonBot (talk · contribs) is inactive because of an OS change, but will be operating again once I eventually get around to porting it. Cheers. --Michael Billington (talk) 09:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fritzbot (talk · contribs) can be deflagged. --Fritz S. (Talk) 09:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elissonbot (talk · contribs) has been inactive since I've been quite inactive (sadly), I would probably find chances to use it in the future again but I guess I could just reactivate it then. Go with whatever you find suitable. – Elisson • T • C • 12:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NFCC BRFA

I'd like to suggest reopening it. It really wasn't open for long enough at all. I'd suggest a minimum term to guage community consensus of 7 days. If the bot fails, then so be it - clearly the community doesn't want it. We should therefore, perhaps, get over it and not try to push a bot which seems to have support within BAG through the system. Thoughts? Martinp23 23:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

that is not a good idea. most of the issues have been addressed. its just a simple BCBot clone. βcommand 23:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well maybe my questions can be dealt with without reopening it. 1. Will it respect a NoImageBots tag once I create oen on the model of NoBots? 2. Will you consider adding a tagging notification feature for the phase 4 implementation. MBisanz talk 02:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking about the questions of the community at large. Whether or not it is a clone, if they don't want it we won't run it. Martinp23 07:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thats one I don't have an answer to. I guess its just not an issue we've faced that frequently. I see there is a debate on the boards about Cambridge U's computer security dept having a role account. And I think there is some BOCES-style program that operates what I can only guess is a role account. And I discovered that User:WP 1.0 bot can be run by anyuser from a web interface. MBisanz talk 07:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with re-opening it, but, I'd prefer not to have another tarpit-slugfest. Would you be OK with me (I'm not sure I have to ask -- I'm not BAG, so, in theory, I shouldn't be editing closed discussions) cleaning up the proposal a bit, to get rid of any offensive terminology? I'd also like to make it clear from the get-go. This is a discussion on if or if not the bot should run on the English Wikipedia. While feature requests are often nice, and very helpful, ofttimes, the operators are not the bot developers. We never ask people running interwiki.py, if they'd please have the bot leave a message on the talkpage of the article it's modifying, for instance. In this instance, I'd like to treat this bot in the same manner, as a feature-frozen program. Now, this is not to say, that bugs can't be addressed, by the upstream developer (Betacommand), as in any other normal software package (AWB, Pywikipedia, etc). Also, I would like to keep discussion about betacommand to a minimum, should this discussion be re-opened. While yes, he is the developer of this software, this isn't about betacommand. If we can stick to these points, I see no issues with re-openening the BRFA. SQLQuery me! 11:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, I think, at this time, any serious concerns about the bot's username, would probably be best discussed in a username RFC, as the bot is, at present an existing user, and, so far as I can tell, not a blatant violation of the username policy. SQLQuery me! 11:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This request should NOT be reopened because it will simply become another flame war which none of the bot operators are interested in dealing with. This bot is the same as BCBot. It is a clone. This is why it was speedy approved. Certain members of the community have proven that they are not capable of discussing BCBot in a reasonable way or allowing it to be discussed reasonably by others. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 12:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The request definitely needs to be reopened with a minimum amount of time for community discussion. The "approval" for this bot was simply ridiculous, the account was given bot status almost immediately and despite ongoing discussion. When someone attempted to add more discussion (something that should never be discouraged on Wikipedia), they were reverted and the page was protected. This just screams to be done again. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Re-opening it would be a minimum. Regarding the current WP:RfAr#BetacommandBot, one of the Arb's comments involves having "too many issues" for being able to make a manageable RfAr case out of it. Re-opening the BRFA would at least split off one of these issues, via normal community process. And please, BAG members take some time to give those raising concerns the impression that their concerns are heard. I'm not talking about that that didn't happen, but maybe there was a perception problem. Concerns were heard at WP:ANI, but when looking solely at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Non-Free Content Compliance Bot it gives the impression that for a hot issue, those making decisions preffered not to give too much attention to objections, and went straight for the "speedy" decision. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
this bot was approved 10 months ago. the NFCC bot is just a clone of that. there is no reason to re-open it. βcommand 15:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Re. "there is no reason to re-open it", there is: that reason is WP:RfAr#BetacommandBot, and the suggestions given there by arbitrators. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
so your saying FT2's comments about supporting the actions of BAG is a reasion to re-open? this is just a clone of an existing bot, and BAGs actions where made to avoid a flamewar. βcommand 16:24, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Bypassing community discussion is unacceptable. That alone is reason to re-open it and allow for a reasonable amount of discussion. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kddankbot

I posted this on the main talk, but could someone go ahead and approve this? Geoff Plourde (talk) 07:56, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Requests_for_approval&oldid=197948861"