Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Kungfubot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

[edit] User:Kungfubot

This will be a semi-automated account, but in full control by me. It will take yesterday's category from proposed deletion, check the articles in that category, and apend a message similar to this:

An article that you created, [[:{{{1}}}]], was proposed for deletion, probably yesterday. Please review the policy on proposed deletion and feel free to comment on the article's talk page. If no contest is made, the article will be deleted in four days from today.

I just want to make the edits under this account because they will be repetitive and I want to do them quickly. The bot should run daily starting at 00:10 UTC. User:AmiDaniel is scripting a process for me and it will probably be integrated into AWB. He told me to get a bot account for this.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 23:28, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I really like the idea. If AmiDaniel is working on it, obviously the technical end is pretty much covered. My only concern is that this is going to greatly increase the number of unexplained prod tag removals (and thus significantly increase backlog at WP:AFD. Any thoughts on that? alphaChimp ^laudare 19:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea because I am tired of getting messages, WAAA you deleted my article, why didn't you tell me? I spammed about 50 talk pages yesterday with this message and I quickly got burned out, so I want some sort of automated process.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 20:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there actually a need for this?

• Is there anything to suggest prod is deleting lots of good articles which shouldn't be deleted
• Why choose to tell the creator, WP:OWN they don't own the article, what if the creator was of a stub but the bulk has been contributed by others?
• Isn't part of the purpose of prod to remove non-speedyable stuff, which is nevertheless questionable. If no one is actually watching/interested in the article why create an artificial interest from the intial creator.
• Articles can always be undeleted if prod has failed for some reason.
• Is this actually a real problem, i.e. are there people complaining about lack of notification?

Just some thoughts --pgk^(talk) 21:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I think pgk has it right here: If they aren't watching, why tell them? I've done prods a few times, and I've had the resulting "Why?" notes; I point them at the prod policy and say "Apparently, you weren't watching." I'm not sure bot notifications will do much to help; I'm positive they will cause prod-related edit wars. Essjay (Talk) 07:29, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Alright, well, I went ahead and finished up the script tonight. Only took me about an hour and a half to do, so should the bot not gain approval, 't won't be all that much of a loss to me. I did a test run on test.wikipedia, whereby I used Category:Proposed deletion as of 2 August 2006 and posted the messages on user talk pages on test. You can see that test run at test:Special:Contributions/AmiBot. The basics of how it works entail loading up the CAT:PROD of four days one day previous using query.php and then again using query.php to fetch the last 20 edits by unique authors to each of the articles in that category. If it returns exactly 20 contributors, then, under the assumption that the original contributor had little to do with the article, that editor will not be added to the notify list. Also, as I found many of the articles in the test cat were old enough to have been created by anons, if the original creator is an anon, that user will be excluded as well. Generating the list of original contributors (thanks to Yurik's fabulous Wiki API) takes only about 30 seconds, and then editing at about 5 edits / sec (the throttle can also be adjusted faster and slower) leaves around an average of 15 minutes to notify all the contributors. I don't have it set for scheduled runs currently, so Adam will have to know to run it daily, though it won't require too much work on his behalf. Anyway, I think pgk's concerns are quite valid, some of which we may be able to address (i.e, per concerns of WP:OWN, it could notify all contributors to the article, which would naturally result in longer runs and random stub-sorters being informed, but may be a possible solution). I do, however, believe that propper notification of proposed deletions would be advantageous to everyone involved, including the poor admins who get lambasted by the malinformed and confused original creators for deleting uncontested prods (as I have been many times), and it would seem to me that PROD's purpose is not to try and slip deletions by unsuspecting editors but to see if there is any real need to discuss an article before deleting it. In any case, I would like to give it an actual trial run for a few days on enwiki to see what happens, and if it results in mass deprodding, etc., we can reconsider. Source code readily available upon request (just please let me know in advance so I can clean it up a bit =D). AmiDaniel (talk) 07:44, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I also just ran another trial on test.wikipedia using Category:Proposed deletion as of 3 August 2006, which had slighlty more articles and were slightly more recent. It went fine as well. Let me know of anything that may need to be changed. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I value all of these concerns, and believe they are valid, but if anyone wants to know if people complain or not, they do. All you have to do is look at my talk page, and look in the archives. However, the number of complaints are very small in comparison to the deletions that I do. But there are some good articles that pass by. Yesterday, when doing Prod deletion, I removed a tag because I believed it was encyclopedic. These are my thoughts.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 11:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

A further comment to this would be are we trying to patch up a problem in the prod process with this. If this is a real issue, shouldn't prod itself mandate the adding of notices to creator/whoevers talk page? --pgk^(talk) 20:15, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe that there is a problem with the current prod process, be there mention of it in WP:PROD or not. The entire purpose of proposed deletion is to see if there are objections to deleting an article--that is, if there needs to be community discussion before deleting an article. Some believe that simply adding the tag to the article is enough to see whether or not anyone objects; however, I would disagree. A few scenarios: One, I have over 3,000 articles on my watchlist. The odds that I would happen to notice someone randomly adding a prod tag to an article that I've worked on are very slim, though I may full well object to one of those 3,000 articles being deleted. If someone, bot or user, leaves a kind message on my talk page about an article I've created or worked on, it then will provide me with my formerly unavailable object to contest the article's deletion before it is actually deleted, much as notices from OrphanBot regarding nsd's and bad licenses allow uploaders the opportunity to address concerns that may lead to their file's deletion. Two: Many new users do not understand how to use watchlists, check deletion logs, etc., and they often don't check up on the articles they create and/or work on extensively. When the article then one day turns up missing with no notice or apparent reason, they feel confused and frustrated and either leave the project silently or lash out in rage at anyone they can blame for the article's deletion; thus, by notifying the contributors to these articles that are proposed for deletion, we lessen the likelihood of biting the newcomers. As such, I do believe that there are problems with how prod works currently, and I think that Adam's idea may well serve as a cure for it. I'm open to suggestions about tweaking the bot to perhaps post messages to anyone who's contributed more than one edit to the article, etc., and perhaps expanding the message to point to relevant policies and guidelines, such as WP:DEL, WP:N, etc. I think it's also worth considering that this bot (in its current form) will only run for about twenty minutes a day and make fewer than 200 edits a day with little to no apparent load on the servers and a much slimmer chance of it going haywire than many of the other bots we have running. So since the sacrifice and risk we're taking by running this bot is minimal, it would seem to me that if there is any benefit to running (which I believe there most certainly is), then it should be allowed to run. I'd also like to point out that this bot will pretty much just be doing what Adam is already doing and will likely continue doing regardless of the outcome, only faster and more efficiently. Anyway, another soliloquy from me hath come to an end =D. Please let me know where you believe my conclusions are mistaken. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, you seem to suggest there *might* be a problem, which is why I originally asked "Is there anything to suggest prod is deleting lots of good articles which shouldn't be deleted". And we still don't seem to saying there is in reality a problem. I would suggest that if there is a problem with prod it should be discussed on the PROD talk pages, or VP first. If the conclusion is that notification is a good thing then a bot is quite possibly a good solution, what I don't think we should be doing is declaring a solution when it isn't clear there is actually a problem, or if discussed a better solution might be found. There is a large difference with the tagging and warning of image, only one person can have uploaded the current version of an Image and more importantly until very recently it was terminal, with the recent changes to allow undeletion it may actually warrant a review of how we handle image deletion and may deemphasise the warning aspect. I would also somewhat disagree with your description of PROD, the idea of PROD is still fundamentally to get rid of junk, only as a more lightweight process, the admin dealing with a prod article at the end of the period should NOT be blindly deleting, that would be process idiocy. The admin should contest deletion on anything he doesn't feel should be deleted in that manner, of course noting that removal of PROD does not imply he has to AFD it. --pgk^(talk) 18:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Did the note at the bottom really mean to put new messages here? If so, I think the bot is a good idea. I did not create, but had contributed to a list that was PRODed in four days and without any notice. (Deleted 19:02, 22 July 2006 by Kungfu Adam ^(talk) Prod placed by 16:51, 18 July 2006 Recury) It was on my watchlist, but went under my radar. This was the first I had dealt with a prod. Doc ♬ talk 12:13, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The bot is designed to contact the creator, not all contributors. Contacting all contributors would be a strain on server resources, and overkill.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 16:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I realize that I would still have "lost out" on this one, but from the experience, I can identify with how frustrating it would be to have created an article and not even have received notice that a prod had been placed. Doc ♬ talk 16:39, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea, but you might consider a couple of variants. One would be to notify those who have the article on their watchlist. Another would be to notify (say) the most recent five (or whatever) contributors.

I don't agree that the measurement of the problem is only those who complain. First, there are an unknown number of editors who don't notice, but would complain (and when they do notice, it's not timely), and an unknown number who do notice but decide it's too much trouble/too little likelihood of change to bother complaining. Second, the bot improves the perception of fairness in wikipedia; that's important to building a sense of community.

And personally, I'd like to see this for AfDs too - again, either for those who have the article on a watchlist or for recent contributors. John Broughton 23:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

John, perhaps that is a good idea, but it is impossible to notify editors that have something on their watchlist, because the watchlists are not public information like almost everything else on Wikipedia is.--Kungfu Adam ^(talk) 10:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

This still seems to be to be the wrong place to be discussing this. If there are problems with process from AFD, PROD etc. It should be discussed there first, if the solution proposed there fits a bot then by all means we can propose/use a bot, but this isn't the right place to be determining new process/policies. I'll DENY this for now pending discussion within the PROD etc. processes --pgk^(talk) 11:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I won't strongly debate your denying the BRfA, simply as I do recognize there are a few things that will need to be worked out with the bot; however, I do completely disagree with your reason for denying it. It would seem this discussion has been had, and the result was in favor of notifying contributors. To quote from WP:AfD: "It is generally considered civil to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the article that you are nominating the article. To find the main contributors, look in the page history or talk page of the article and/or use TDS' Article Contribution Counter. For your convenience, you may use {{subst:AFDWarningNew|Article title}} (for creators who are totally new users), {{subst:AFDWarning|Article title}} (for creators), or {{subst:Adw|Article title}} (for contributors or established users)." To quote from WP:PROD: "Consider adding the article to your watchlist and letting the article's creator know that you have tagged it. You can use {{subst:PRODWarning|Article title}} ~~~~ for this." So anyway, I don't know what discussion you want me to have--perhaps I should discuss not changing our current policies and guidelines? Until now I've never even thought that it could conceivably be a bad idea to notify contributors that their articles may be deleted, and it would seem that consensus has quite consistently been for the idea that leaving such notices was civil, decent, and beneficial to the deletion process. As there has long been agreement that letting everyone involved know about proposed deletions would be ideal, it would seem the only question that remains is whether or not posting these notices should be automated or not. A BRfA seems to be the perfect forum to discuss whether or not to automate a generally accepted process, but apparently not. So tell me, where should we go now? In any case, Adam and others who recognize the benefits of doing so will continue, as they have been doing, notifying contributors in a highly inefficient and tedious manner, but perhaps one day we'll be able to let the bots do the monkey work and let the humans do the encyclopedia-writing. AmiDaniel (talk) 11:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I guess I'm just showing my ignorance of what is currently written in our processes.

"It would seem this discussion has been had, and the result was in favor of notifying contributors", we've had a discussion here on a request for a bot, my point is that this is a narrow audience and not the place for a general discussion on how we should implement process and policies relating to deletion. Someone interested in deletion processes probably doesn't come here looking for such debates. If that discussion has been had elsewhere please link to it. This is similar to the situation regarding tagging for deletion of empty categories, an apparently innocuous process which seemed to upset a few people.

You say it is our current process and a generally accepted process, then why isn't it being done by people when they tag articles? Our process/policy is what we actually do, not what is written down since that written expression by nature always lags reality. To say it is broadly accepted when very few actually do it (hence the need for a bot) shows clearly that either there isn't a broad acceptance of this standard, or that people find it a chore so skip it as optional, in the latter case a bot may indeed be a good idea, but unless we find out why people don't do it we simply can't tell which it is (or indeed if there are other reasons people don't do it)

Regarding why it might be a bad idea is a pretty open ended question, as suggested by other above one reason is that it might end up making PROD ineffectual in getting rid of junk and just push that back onto AFD. Another is I have suggested that WP:OWN comes into effect, the original author has no special relationship or say over the content. And I'm sure others may come up with other reasons (Off the top of my head those who regularly create pages for anons via a request for page creation maynot care to be regularly spammed)

The discussion I'm suggesting you have is in the relevant places for PROD (and if extended to AFD there too), such that a broader input can be gained into if the tagging is a good/bad idea, if a bot doing it would help etc. etc. I cannot see why there is any resistance to this, since you seem pretty convinced it is a no brainer. --pgk^(talk) 12:31, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

As a slight addendum, I should note that the list of thoughts I gave above was the result of a brief discussion with several people, this is why I feel there may actually be more disagreement on this than you appear to think (I could still well be wrong) and so a more general discussion on the basic issue might be of longer term benefit. --pgk^(talk) 12:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.