User talk:Tawkerbot2

For information about Tawkerbot2, please read Tawkerbot2's Frequently Asked Questions

Any non civil messages may be sent straight to /dev/null/ (aka deleted) so please be nice :)

Archives @ User talk:Tawkerbot2/archives

A note re reply times on this page

I am currently undergoing what has turned onto one of the longest sets of questions ever on an Request for adminship - possibly some of your bot questions are there so it might be a good place to check as a lot of Tawkerbot2 related stuff has come up (and I have 6 more days of this, I wonder if I can get 100 questions!) -- Tawker 08:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update, maybe not 100 questions but I'm 4 votes short of WP:100. No nominating the bots unless its April 1st, ok (someone was IM'ing me about it :) -- Tawker 21:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help

Is there any way I can make a bot of my own? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by EKN (talk • contribs) 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Tawker, I hope this was a joke

I hope this was an April Fools' joke, or you have some explaining to do, my friend... NSL E _(T+C) at 00:13 UTC (2006-04-1)

What was reverted?

I got the reversion notice on my talk page. It doesn't tell me what I did or what it reverted. Please clue me in here. Yahnatan 00:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Joshbuddy replied on your talk page, it was a bug dealing with redirects, he's fixed it I think so it shouldn't happen again. Sorry about that -- Tawker 05:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Back to the drawing board!

In concept this bot is a great idea, but it still needs more work and should be turned off or at least tuned down until more bugs are worked out. Here is an example of an anonymous editor spending the better part of an hour making legitimate edits to an article, and along comes a bot that throws it all out the window, leaving a note, "thanks for experimenting, now frig off." To a human it is obvious that those were all good-faith edits.

I do a lot of vandalism reverts, and I take a lot more care than this to not alienate editors who are honestly trying to improve articles. --Kbh3^rd talk 01:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bad revert: Fall Out Boy

[1] Your bot needs a tuneup. —This unsigned comment was added by 75.0.170.76 (talk • contribs) .

Uh, "Fall Out Boy is a gay band from the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois that formed in 2001. While sucking each other off, the band asked the audience at a show what their band should be called?" It just didn't revert far enough. --Rory096 06:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot2 error on Marriage

I'll provide the diffs to try and make it easy to sort out. Vandal edit, followed by my revert, followed by Tawkerbot2's revert of me. Thankfully when I reverted back it wasn't a problem again. Bot just confused, but I'll let you decide if it's random or systematic. E WS23 | (Leave me a message!) 01:55, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Must be a bug, tracking it down now, thanks for bringing it to my attention -- Tawker 06:07, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Austin I

This was definitely a false positive. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 08:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PetPets

So was this. Listen, good sir. I praise you for running a bot that fights vandals, but PetPets needs to merge to Petpet, already a longer and more well-established article. Therefore, this was not vandalism. Some editors create articles before being made aware of another article of a different spelling, but essentially the same content. --Shultz IV 08:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bit prudish?

[2] --pgk^(talk) 16:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked

I've blocked the bot because it likes to warn editors when they make articles into redirects. It's warned a few people already, including me, so please fix it and I'll unblock. Thanks Naconkantari e|t||c|m 17:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You know you can just go on IRC and say "ctawkbot norevert," right? It's a lot easier that way... --Rory096 17:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@ Tawker -- Maybe you should modify the bot template in the user page to give info about the norevert mode from IRC instead of the current "Administrators: if this bot is malfunctioning or causing harm, please block it." Good work btw. _└^VodkaJazz/_talk^┐ 22:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "redirects" issue

The bot was using a slight code modification, it was using a regex to checking for all possibilities of #REDIRECT and apparently it screwed up in that attempt. The bot is stopped until I can figure out why its screwed up and fix it. Sorry about any problems caused by this bug, I think I've gone though and fixed them all / they were already fixed before I saw these messages. -- Tawker 18:42, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I got a revert when turning Egypt at the 1896 Summer Olympics to a redirect on 4 April. Revert syntax used was:

#REDIRECT: [[Greece at the 1896 Summer Olympics]]

which does create a valid redirect. -- Jonel | Speak 13:16, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I bet it's the colon after the word redirect. I've never seen that syntax, and would have bet it was invalid. Obviously it's valid syntax, and if that's not in the bot's lists of valid redirect syntax, it should be. - TexasAndroid 14:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of that one either, to the list it shall go. Do we have a list of other correct redirect syntax so we can get em all with one shot? -- Tawker 14:38, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, that's pretty much the only one I've ever used (for slightly more than 2 years now, actually). Hadn't realized it was so unusual. -- Jonel | Speak 14:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:Dcandeto

Thanks for experimenting with the page User talk:Dcandeto on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. dcandeto 20:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See reply on your talk page. The edit in question was deleted so I really have no idea what happened as the bot doesn't store the edits (I only have so much hard drive space :) -- Tawker 21:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consider changing name to "Blankerbot2"

See this edit. dbtfz ^talk 20:53, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One bug, besides, the bot has too many edits for a username change now, I've taken a look and hopefully fixed it :) -- Tawker 21:11, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Understandable. I'm sure the bot does far more good than harm. dbtfz ^talk 21:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot warning

Huh? What vandalism? --84.249.252.211 21:21, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See reply on your talk page -- Tawker 02:11, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aiee

I suppose this isn't a unique problem, but I got hit with a {{test}} today for no known reason. It might be helpful if you had the bot include the name of the "vandalized" page... just a thought. Anyways, it is a great bot, so... happy editing! Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 01:44, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, as we can see here (scroll down to about 20:36), tb2 apparently reverted someone else, but warned you. This sometimes happens when the database is lagged, because it shows the wrong person in the diff (or history, wherever it gets it from). Sorry about that. --Rory096 06:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Feature Request

Please stop the bot from issuing warnings if:

either the vandal's talk page has been edited since the vandalism took place
and/or if Tawkerbot2 is actually beaten to revert the vandalism by someone else.

We're getting loads of double warnings on IPs, and it's not good. — FireFox • T [09:48, 2 April 2006]

Buffyverse tracklist

I recently made two edits to this article Buffyverse tracklist

Before I started recent edits: [3]

After I completed recent edits: [4]

Unless I'm going mad this is not vandalism, in fact it makes the long article far easier to browse, so I will revert the anti-revisions your bot has made.

If your bot has done this to that article what other beneficial work could it be removing?

-- Paxomen 18:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted to edit by same user

Can't give you the diff as the article has been speedied by the summary was "BOT - Reverted edit by User talk:Piratejesus (46649306) - reverted to User talk:Piratejesus (46649230)" It probably shouldn't do that. --pgk^(talk) 21:57, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion

It'll be a good idea, if possible, to wiki-link the message that is automatically posted to talkpages by the bot, such as the sandbox. - Best regards, Mailer Diablo 13:12, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, its on the todo list, Tawkerbot2 v xx should be fairly major and include a bunch of new features -- Tawker 14:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not fair

I want to be an admin now, just so as to be able to press that big red button... Palmiro | Talk 15:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot2 Audit

An audit of Tawkerbot2's reverts was conducted on April 3, 2006. The results were (129/3) for a result of 97.7% accuracy. --lightdarkness^(talk) 00:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What were the three it screwed up on? joshbuddy^talk 00:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I blocked the bot for bad talk messges

I saw the message left at User talk:69.216.240.76. While I agree that the edit(s) reverted were indeed vandalism, I'm concerned that the message left on the user's talk page is really rather daunting. Most new users won't even know what a "bot" is. It should also identify what article was reverted (for everyone's convenience). References to things like the sandbox should be wikilinks, etc. I've blocked the bot for 24 hours to give you a chance to fix these things. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bot can run while the message can be fixed by Tawker. Due to this, I let the bot be unblocked. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 02:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the messages are fixed. If there is something more you want from there messages, please let me know. joshbuddy^talk 02:37, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could have a link in the warning message to a page like: User:Tawkerbot2/FAQ aimed at new users with answers to many basic questions like "What is a bot?" and how this one operates. The page could be protected and have a prominent link to this talk page to ensure that any messages they want to post (after they have read the FAQ) are posted here. The Tawkerbot2 user page does some of this, but because it also tries to handle issues that admins and experienced users may have, it is too complex of a page for the newbie user. NoSeptember ^talk 02:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Which edit?

I got a note about a bot, but I have no idea which edit the note was referrring to. I don't do vandalism. Maurreen 02:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See reply on your talk page, it was the redirect issue which I've fixed -- Tawker 02:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

False positive

here. Reverted one anon user blanking vandalism from another anon. Not sure how you'd ever detect that this was a good edit... (ESkog)^(Talk)

FAQ

That page came along quite nicely :). I revised the warning a bit to encourage clicking the FAQ link instead of the bot's signature. If possible, I would think signing with a link to this talk page would be better than linking to the user page. NoSeptember ^talk 17:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requset to look into automatic deletion

Your bot deleted a perfectly legitimate relocation of information (moving a list of books burned in Fahrenheit 451 (film) from Fahrenheit 451), it then left me a rather condescending note on my talk page. Please leash it. Ionesco 21:20, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Sorry

Sorry, my sister was doing research on Italy. And I wanted to tell her how Wikipedia worker and how you can edit the entries and all that. So I showed her that, what I did was, I copied all of the article;quickly showed her that you can edit the article and reverted back the changes. Sorry for any disobedience. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.28.250.124 (talk • contribs)

false positive on Chapelle's Show

[5]

Totally understandable. I fixed the Chapelle's Show article so it doesn't use uppercase. Cool bot! Pfalstad 02:06, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can we make it better, stronger, faster?

This is some vandalism the bot missed. Maybe you can improve the bot with this info? [6] (near full blanking), [7] (more than one exlamation point), [8] (I'm guessing most uses of fuck in all caps can be reverted). Again thanks for the great bot! -Ravedave 02:54, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

list of CW Network Affiliates

For WBDC, the link really should point to WBDC-TV, not to the disambiguation page at WBDC. That was the edit I made which was reverted.

See reply on your talk page, I've fixed it (the page) -- Tawker 08:45, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Harper Lee

You may want to look at what happened on Harper Lee. Maybe you have encountered this before: vandalism, real update, vandalism by same user, tawkerbot. Missed the earlier vandalism. A tough one to catch, I would imagine. John (Jwy) 17:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oh, its vandal 1, vandal 2, vandal 1, tawkerbot2. John (Jwy) 17:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

cough

Erm... Tawkerbot2 has a strong opinion. [9] — FireFox • T [17:51, 5 April 2006]

Hmmmm, I wonder if its the 2 vandal issue though it should have caught that. I'll take a look when im back in front of a desktop (sry about replying as tb2, my bberrys ip is blocked. Tawkerbot2 19:11, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

edit summary/.

a revert shows this summary..

Tawkerbot2 m (BOT - Reverted edit by User talk:216.56.27.115 (47089798) - reverted to User talk:SYSS Mouse (47089765))

I'm truly sorry.

CONGRATULATION!!111

--Shanel 02:47, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot reverted an important edit to In the darkness

In the darkness is 3/4 of a sentence + many lines of copyvio lyrics. My attempt to remove the copyvio was reverted by your bot. 24.177.122.249 02:48, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think a copyvio tag would be appropriate for the edit I made. Unless instructions have changed, copyvio tags are only used if the entire article is a copyvio. Smaller copyvios can be handled by deleting the inappropriate material. There was 3/4 of a sentence that wasn't a copyvio, so potentially that stub could have been left. Deleting the thing is probably better in this case, however, so we're where we want to be. 24.177.122.249 02:54, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's cool. I find vandalism maddening, and this is the first time I've ever been crossed up by a bot, so I'm not complaining. This situation is a bit unusual, although I have found a few articles like this: a song article that is a tiny stub followed by several paragraphs of copyvio lyrics that should be removed. 24.177.122.249 03:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nice one.

I thought this was particularily funny.

See this --Spook ^{(my talk | my contribs)} 02:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sarah Chandler site

Hi,

I recently tried to delete the entry i created for Sarah Chandler, who is a friend of mine. The entry is 100% correct but Sarah Chandler herself has asked me to remove the entry for reasons of privacy. My removal was reversed by Tawkerbot2. Is there any way to get the entry removed? Thanks, Michael Cameron. —This unsigned comment was added by 210.55.201.197 (talk • contribs) .

Yes, but you have to tag it with a speedy tag, such as {{db-author}} or {{db-bio}} to get it actually deleted, rather than just blanked. --Rory096 05:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Rory, but I am not sure how to do that. Can someone please explain? —This unsigned comment was added by 210.55.201.197 (talk • contribs) .

You just need to hit edit and type in {{db-author}} on the top of that article. --Rory096 07:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot messed up page

I am now struggling to put right a problem with Fletcher-Munson curves. I was trying to get the template I put up to turn black, and identified the problem as the use of an en-dash somewhere. I tried to delete the redirect but it caused a delete template to appear on Fletcher-Munson curves and now I just don't know how to fix things and get there at all. Can you sort it out for me? I want the nav template to work without going through the em-dash redirect. --Lindosland 11:45, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't see the bot make any changes to the page, (unless I haven't had enough espresso this morning) so I don't think its a bot problem. I'm a little confused, what exactly are you trying to do, fix a redirect or is there something in the template -- Tawker 14:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He blanked a redirect, and the bot reverted him, restoring the redirect (Clicking on the links he gave invoke the redirect, so you have to then go back to the redirect to find the bot's actions). I'm not really sure either what his actual goal was. - TexasAndroid 15:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit by User talk?

It's not a big deal, but it seems odd to me that Tawkerbot2 attributes edits to User talk pages rather than the User ("BOT - Reverted edit by User talk:209.226.36.10 (47250996) - reverted to User talk:Mwanner (46971754)"). Is there a reason for that? Just curious. -- Mwanner | Talk 14:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mostly because the links point to the talk pages as its where I (and most users IFIAK) go to check out a user's history. Its open for debate, if enough people want a new format, it can fairly easily be changed (though I'm a little hesitant because it will break syntax on a few bot dependent scripts) -- Tawker 14:54, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawker, stick with the talk pages. User pages of IP address are almost always empty. Talk is where I usually go to. It's a nice feature. - Ganeshk (talk) 14:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot2 (what else?)

Hi, I am just curious if it is essential for Tawkerbot to provide revision numbers in the edit summaries. Seems like an entirely redundant piece of information, not really useful to human editors. Am I missing something important? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 15:42, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really necessary, mostly it was for debug purposes. The only major reason for not changing it is people have matched its patterns in various other bots and changing it would break the other programs -- Tawker 21:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your Bot is running Amok

I put up an article entitled American Revolutionary War Campaigns, which someone else moved to American Revolutionary War Campaign Streamers, which was vandalism. the only justification for the change could have been the fact that I illustrated the article ith a picture of a Revolutionary War Campaign Streamer, but the intent of the article was to present the synopsis of the Revolutionary War Campaigns in a single article. I moved the article back to its rightful place, and your bot interfered. My manual move was NOT vandalism (I would be vandalizing my own article). FIX YOUR BOT!!! SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 20:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Responded on the user's talk page. - TexasAndroid 20:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ajith

Vandals have using this bot to sustain their nonsense in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajith

Kindly remove the bot monitor from the article or ban the vandals who have removed links and whole paragraphs without any discussion whatsoever. Anwar saadat 21:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone explain what triggered Tawkerbot2's reversions ([10],[11]) of the Ajith article? Thanks. --Tantalum T e lluride 22:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I won't explain it due to WP:BEANS fears. Suffice it to say, something was a little bit too sensitive, I've made some pretty decent modifications that should make this more precise. Sorry about those reverts. joshbuddy^talk 23:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. It almost seemed as though the bot was taking sides in a revert war. Thanks. --Tantalum T e lluride 01:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Extraterrestrial life

A wildly prolific and successful bot--but often wrong, as I again noticed today. It reverted a vandal blanking back to an already vandalized version AFTER I'd successfully corrected things on extraterrestrial life (see hist round about 23:00 UTC). I'm clueless with bots, but the fact that it would revert to a wrong version after my correction tells me there's something wrong with this one... Marskell 23:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is just one of those unlucky things that can happen. There is no easy way to prevent this. Well, actually, I can think of one way. I'm going to go away and think about this.... perhaps it is easily possible. joshbuddy^talk 23:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bill Maas

I deleted the entry "Bill Maas" because the entire entry appears to be made up on a whim and none of the information is factual. Your bot has reverted my deletion. Please fix this. Thanks.

If you feel this article is nonsense, why don't you use a {{db-nonsense}}. Even then, I don't see anything delete worthy about the article itself. joshbuddy^talk 01:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Framework?

Which framework is tawkerbot run on? I am thinking of writing my own RC patrolling bot, that would log some common article mistakes. I cant find anything in the python wikipedia framework for parsing RC. -Ravedave 02:41, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

pgk's pgkbot is the RC interface -- Tawker 02:47, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Missed re-vandal

This was missed by the bot. Included some standard vandal stuff; and was caught the first time, but not the second time though. - Roy Boy ⁸⁰⁰ 07:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Last warning" vandals

Because of how thorough Tawkerbot2 is in reverting vandalism, I've noticed several cases where a vandal has been given a {{test4}} "last warning" before Tawkerbot2 leaves a "your edit has been reverted" message. My suggestion is that Tawkerbot2 should check for a test4 (subst'd or otherwise) that is recent, and if one exists, should post a message to the appropriate place to request an admin block the user instead of adding the boilerplate warning.

My reasoning is that any user (or perhaps just IP users?) who have already garnered a test4 are highly likely to have triggered Tawkerbot2 with something other than a legitimate edit. Even in those rare cases, the message requesting an admin block the user can ask the admin to double-check. — Saxifrage ✎ 15:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree with this idea, for what it's worth. Tawkerbot2 has been doing good work whacking moles on Thomas Pynchon today, so I'm quite pleased overall. Anville 16:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

reverts of anons

Hi, bot driver. Please be careful when reverting vandals and ALWAYS check the previous history. In some articles there are swarms of vandals, whole stacks of them in the history. Your last revert of Sam was a bit careless. `'mikka (t) 22:25, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is a problem that I haven't come up with a simple solution to. As it stands, if there are multiple vandals coming from different usernames/IPs, it will require human intervention to clean up. As it would have required human intervention to clean up in any event, I don't personally see this as a great loss. It would be nice though, to have Tawkerbot2 understand this sort of attack and thwart it. I hope to do this later. joshbuddy^talk 23:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've got an impression that Tawkerbot2 is semi-auto. For all true bots I sent the following kind of message:

It would be very good if any bot reports the username of the previous edit. I track vandals in my watch list by seeking for anon and re-linked user names. Edits by bots "mask" this visual aid, thus hindering the eyeball search and, what is even worse, urge me to double check edits made by not-so-smart bots. Thus saving your time you are wasting my time. `'mikka (t) 15:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It seems you are getting complaints both by people who want edit summaries to link to talk pages of the last editor (which makes sense because the user page will often just be a redlink, especially for IPs) and others would actually like to see whether the user page is just a redlink. Might I suggest using a format like User:75.0.170.76 (talk) instead? Hopefully that would satisfy both parties... TheGrappler 17:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will do this right now, its done. joshbuddy^talk 17:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I didn't read carefully what Tawkerbot2 does. My comment was directed mainly to bots that fix typos, modify categories, etc. A bot that reverts vandals is a different story. Since it is already known that it handles a vandal, knowing the previous edit is not really informative. It this case a message useful for me would be kind of "rv from User:75.0.170.76 to User:I am a lucky vandal". But wouldn't it be a too much burden for the database? `'mikka (t) 17:52, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New message format: Thanks. That's what I wanted. May I suggest to abbreviate "reverted" to "rv"? Less reading, less writing. Edit summary is of limited max length, some trolls use very long names. But this is less important. `'mikka (t) 18:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've made some changed to the format. Made it considerably shorter. Thanks. joshbuddy^talk 19:29, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

An example [12] joshbuddy^talk 19:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's bad enough that editors want to delete Garcia Marquez, but now bots too !?

[13] Monicasdude 01:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]