User talk:DumbBOT

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[edit] Q&A about unprotection

Q: why did you unprotect page X?

A: I didn't; the bot is not an administrator, so it cannot protect or unprotect pages;


Q: but the history says "removing a protection template etc."!

A: a protection template is a colored box or a small lock image at the top of the article; it does not imply protection in any way; protection and unprotection is done via a form like [1];


Q: who did unprotect the page, then?

A: most likely, the page had an expiring protection (see the "expire" field in the form above), and the expiration date has passed;


A: how can I have the page protected again?

Q: see Wikipedia:Request for page protection; note, however, that pages are generally not protected just because they get a pair of vandal edits; see Wikipedia:Protection policy for details;


A: I know the page is unprotected, but I want the protection template back on it!

Q: while there is no specific policy agains that, I believe this is generally considered wrong unless there is a good reason for doing that; anyway, if there is some reason for doing that, you can do it by yourself (as the page is unprotected and can therefore be edited); add <nowiki></nowiki> after the template, on the same line, and the bot won't remove the template again; some other editor, possibly me, may decide to remove it nevertheless

[edit] Bugs

Please report bugs in this section. I am interested in any possible mistake you see, e.g., the bot truncating a summary of WP:PRODSUM, reporting a wrong date, etc. Some may be unfixable, some may not be worth fixing, but I'd like to know they exist anyway. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 19:27, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

  1. DumbBOT is choking on something today; and thus failing to parse many articles with proper prod tags. Salad Days 00:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)\
    Well, it looks fine now. I was referring to this[2] edit. Salad Days 05:33, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    Thanks for reporting. The script was probably unable to completely load the pages, so it could not detect the prod tag at all for these articles. I have made some changes so that it shouldn't happen often in the future. Tizio 14:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  2. Gah! It's gone haywire and is eating the villagers again![3] Salad Days 01:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
    At least, that was a different bug :-) This one should be fixed as well (an article had "dated prod" within the "concern" argument of "dated prod", thus making the bot page marked prod). Please report again if you see other strange things the bots does. Tizio 13:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    No problem. Keep up the good work! Salad Days 19:10, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  3. Improper cross-linking of AfD entry to dated AfD log. For example [4] and [5] just have a literal View AFD link, not the includeonly/noinclude set for View AFD/View Log. DMacks 20:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    Thanks for reporting. At some point, I decided not to keep track of the changes to the afd2 template, and just go for something reasonably close to the real thing. Reading the last diff you provided, I noticed that emulating afd2 was quite straightforward after all... Let's see if the bot works (I will check the incomplete noms tomorrow). Tizio 20:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  4. In the most current revision of prodsum, all articles failed to be parsed for some reason, probably because of someone horribly mangling their prod code.[6] Salad Days 01:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    That was a bug in my software. I fixed that yesterday after reading your report. Thanks, and keep reporting problems, as I am not looking at the result page regularly these days. Tizio 12:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  5. There are many transwikied articles in the failed to parse section.[7] Salad Days 01:24, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
    Yes, the "dated transwiki" template is not parsed at all. I'm not so sure why the template exists, since transwikied articles should be speedied rather than prod'ed. Tizio 17:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
    Actually, there was a very easy way to solve this problem: I made the bot convert all "dated transwiki" into "dated prod" with a reason of "transwikied", and everything seems fine now! Tizio 11:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

Use this section for general comments. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 19:27, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing my AfD! I had a good laugh when I saw it was fixed by DUMBbot, because that's what I am. Eclectek C T 16:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DumbBOT

Hey, i think DumbBOT is really cool! How did you make it??? Please answer! It will be great to have my own bot wandering around on Wikipedia creating and correcting and editing articles! ETC.

CoolChris 10:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Some details are in WP:BOT. Essentially, your bot can either just load the various pages and parse them, or use a dedicated interface where data is returned as XML or another easy-to-parse form. Most people use the PyWikipedia framework (a link to it is in WP:BOT), but you need to know the python programming language to use it. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 12:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks DumbBOT

I messed up whilst nominating AfD but fortunately a friendly little bot was on hand to fix the problem before anybody shouted at me. Cheers!--Edchilvers 19:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes thanks for helping me out when I messed up nominating an AfD. Debaser23 19:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Importance listing gone haywire

See User:DumbBOT/TimeSortedImportance. —Centrx→talk • 22:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a time-sorted listing of Category:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance; it only lists articles in that category, not in the sub-categories. An easy solution is to create Category:All Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance and add it to all relevant templates. I'll take a look at this. Tizio 22:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for reporting, btw. Do you think there is still use of this listing? Contrary to prod, the subcategory system might be sufficient for these kind of articles. Tizio 22:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah this is not useful as it is now. —Centrx→talk • 04:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] THanks

For completing the AfD. --BozMo talk 17:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] duplication

Hi,

I added a "copyvio" statement to Warrawong Sanctuary on Dec 21, 2006 at 12:52, and in the same minute added an entry to Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2006 December 21/Articles, see this edit.

Your bot added an entry for the same copyvio at 13.44, 52 minutes later. Not quite a problem, but also not quite as it should be.

Aleph-4 11:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting: I am indeed interested in any kind of information that I can use to fix the bot. This can't be a problem with the interval between tagging and listing, because you did in less than a minute while the bot waits five minutes before loading the category and the copyvio pages. Too bad I didn't connect this morning: the bot has already had another run and overwrote the temp files. Tizio 15:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I got what the problem was, and implemented a temp fix. Thanks again for reporting (this time, the bot really screwed up). Tizio 16:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, a related question. Since the bot can post at "Wikipedia:Copyright problems/date-X" reliably, is it ok for me to intentionally omit doing that after tagging copyvio at an article, and just let the bot do the work? Cool bot.--Vsion 18:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
One problem I see is that the author or a vandal may remove the copyvio notice before the bot had the time to add it to the daily page (the bot only runs once a day). Unfortunately, the software does not store the history of category membership, to there is no easy way to list articles that have been at some point part of the "possible copyvio" category. Tizio 17:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is a automated to all bot operators

Please take a few moments and fill in the data for your bot on Wikipedia:Bots/Status Thank you Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 19:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automated message to bot owners

As a result of discussion on the village pump and mailing list, bots are now allowed to edit up to 15 times per minute. The following is the new text regarding bot edit rates from Wikipedia:Bot Policy:

Until new bots are accepted they should wait 30-60 seconds between edits, so as to not clog the recent changes list and user watchlists. After being accepted and a bureaucrat has marked them as a bot, they can edit at a much faster pace. Bots doing non-urgent tasks should edit approximately once every ten seconds, while bots who would benefit from faster editing may edit approximately once every every four seconds.

Also, to eliminate the need to spam the bot talk pages, please add Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard to your watchlist. Future messages which affect bot owners will be posted there. Thank you. --Mets501 02:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] God Khandoba will punish you soon Vishal1976

jhsrhsdghb —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 61.17.193.80 (talk) 15:48, 28 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Brahma Kumaris

Your bot seemed to have removed the sprotected2 from the article and I do believe it was meant to be there as well as the discussion page. Can you please re-instate it so that we don't have further issues with wild editing, until someone from the arbitration committee/or Admin familiar with the problems removes it? Thank you in advance. TalkAbout 05:10, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

That article was unprotected already; the bot merely removed a template from it; that template was telling people that the page was protected, while in fact it wasn't. I don't think the decision of the ArbCom was that of having a fake template on the page, but if you really believe it was, well, you can still add it back to the article.
I gave a glance at the article history, and in particular to its protection log, and unprotection appears to be intentional. In particular, Thatcher131 protected the article on Jan 24 with an expiration of 1 month, which means it expired on Feb 24. Tizio 09:38, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Don't know what I'm doing here, but I feel I should correct your usage of intentional. Intentional refers to an action by another, if an administrator removed the protection then it was intentionally removed. What happened in this instance is it just expired, there was no action taken by an administrator or other and therefore it was simply removed. People can set expiration dates for things without ever actually expecting that date to come by and merly petition for it's reinstation.
Basically, even though my own grammar is atrocious, I feel I should correct other people's grammar in the most smart assy way possible. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.247.243.202 (talk) 20:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Bermuda Triangle

The purpose of a lock on a page is to protect it from vandalism. Guess what happened immediately following your removal of the lock. Carajou 23:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't unprotect that page [8] Tizio 09:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
The tag was removed by Dumbot, as stated in the history section. The problem with a lot of articles here is that they attract the attention of a lot of vandals, and these clowns started appearing as soon as the lock was removed...kinda like buzzards to the kill, if you know what I mean. Carajou 20:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
There is little subtlelty in the way pages are protected in Wikipedia and other wikis using the same software. You don't protect a page by adding {{protect}} or a similar template to it; these are just colored boxes with something written on them, they do not affect whether a page can be edited. Protection is done via a form such as [9] (you should be able to see the form even if you are not an admin, you just can't then submit it). After protecting a page, administrators are supposed to add a protection template to signal that the page is protected.
What happened in this case is that an expiring protection was used; protection expired automatically a week afterward (the expiration date can be set at will when protecting); at that time, noone was around to remove the pastel box. This is why the bot has this function: the page has a template on it indicating it was protected, while in fact it wasn't.
I believe it is generally agreed that non-protected pages shouldn't have protection templates on them. I'm saying this because you can place the {{protect}} template (the "lock" image) back to the article yourself if you want, but I believe you shouldn't.
Actually, this issue is raising here quite often, so I should probably write a Q&A sometimes, so that hopefully nobody will ask an Hindi god to punish the bot again 8-0 [10] Tizio 13:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks, DumbBOT, for removing protection notices from unprotected page. You are a good bot. --Yamla 15:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Star

The Blast of Searing Hot Resin Barnstar
Thanks for all your hard work, DumbBOT!
Thanks! (that image is hypnotic, but I guess that's not a problem for a bot) Tizio 09:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but is it hypnotic supersonic? Salad Days 02:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Can you get your bot to remove Template:pp-semi-protected from non-protected pages as well? Thanks, VegaDark 19:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

What happended to the semiprotection templates lately? It seems that all of them have been redirected to a 'pp-' version... Tizio 11:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of pages

Hi, Could you make sure your bot doesn't pass over either WP:UTM, WP:UW or their subpages please. It removed some protection templates from template detail pages. Many thanks. Khukri 16:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

You probably mean this one: [11]. I have added some markers to avoid the bot removing those again. Do you really need that page? Tizio 16:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
If you asked me I say no, but there are alot of editors around that want to hang on to the old warning system, and their pages. So for now were going to leave them and just let them fester hidden in a corner somewhere until we can get rid of them with mimimum fuss. Cheers Khukri 16:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
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