Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BJBot 4

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

[edit] BJBot

tasks • contribs • count • sul • logs • page moves • block user • block log • flag log • flag bot

Operator: BJ^Talk

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Python/pywikipedia

Function Summary: Informs users that edited (not all, see below) an article that it is up for deletion.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Continuous

Edit rate requested: 5 edits per minute

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Y

Function Details: I would just like to make a note, I'm just coming off a fairly long wikibreak. I'm not up to date on all the polices and bot doings.

The original idea came from here and I was bored so I implemented it. It currently reads from the current AFD page (could be expanded to all XFDs, prod, speedy, whatever doesn't have a bot already), checks to see if the bot has already processed the page, if not it gets the page creator (user or IP) and editors (with accounts only) that that have more edits that total_edits/total_editors, (this is just what I thought up at the moment,) then leaves a message for said editors. The edit rate of 5/minute was a very high estimate but I can't give a good estimate without some trials. If this has already been brought up or somebody is already doing it I'm sorry.

[edit] Discussion

Now what about people who just did gnome work, or other bots? Soxred93 has a boring sig 05:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Bots can easily be excluded by a a static list or looking up the bot category every run. Gnomes are a tad harder but I think only warning editors that have a number of edits on a article should weed them out. Also people doing gnome work can be excluded by edit summary (e.g. anything with "AWB" in the edit summary). I will add weeding out bots and AWB likes tools right now but I'm not sure about people doing gnome work by hand. BJ^Talk 05:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Even that couldn't be error free, though. What is they use no edit summary, or they make multiple gnome edits to one page? Soxred93 has a boring sig 05:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

One other way I see is not counting minor edits. Even with that I don't see any way of weeding out gnomes that have a large percentage of edits to a page that edited without tools. I think the collateral damage is acceptable (some gnomes may even have a say in the deletion) but I can understand why it wouldn't be allowed. BJ^Talk 05:22, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm...this is making me dubious. There is really no error-free fool-proof way to do this...as it seems.

I would suggest limiting this to creator only. Otherwise its just going to annoy people who don't care and create a biased sample in the AFD by bringing in all those who do. Mr.Z-man 05:47, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea that not telling people biased to the page staying that an AfD is ongoing will help the process. I just did a dry run on todays AFD page and it would end up warning on average 1.575 people per article. This is mainly because most articles up for deletion are fairly new. In most cases nobody passes threshold of needed edits to get notified and only the creator would get a notification. I think with this data the amount of gnomes warned would be very low and would be acceptable. BJ^Talk 07:16, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure this is necessary but we will see how much spam it send in it's trial. What are the exclusion options? Is it {{bots}}/{{nobots}} compliant? -- maelgwn - talk 08:08, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Not currently but I'll make it compliant right now. Should it also have a manual black list for people to add their name? BJ^Talk 08:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes or a category or something. -- maelgwn - talk 08:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Well the bots/nobots tag was easy, pywikipedia provides a method to check for it or people can use User:BJBot/Optout (from older bots). I'll advertise it on the bots main page. BJ^Talk 08:33, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I would actually like something like StatusBot has. I'm talking about, let's say you have a certain category on your talk page, like "Users who want to get notified of deletion notices", and only notify the users who have that on their page. Soxred93 has a boring sig 19:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, the users who are wiki savvy enough to do that are not the people who would benefit from this bot. From the testing I did advanced users are almost never notified by this bot, newer users that create or enhance an article are who get notified almost all of the time. BJ^Talk 02:33, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

As a status update. The bot's coding is now totally complete with a number of features added as discussed on this page. It will not leave a message for any known bots (updates from the bot category), any person who opts out with the {{nobots}} template or any person who lists their name on User:BJBot/Optout. I also made note of this on the bots user page. It will inform the creating user (IP or account) and any users (account only) that pass the edit threshold on the article to be deleted (total_edits/total_author_count * 2.5 for now, with people using AWB or TW not counted). From the testing I have done I don't see any gnome collateral damage. I'm requesting to trial the bot for one day (with a message requesting comment on if they found the notice helpful). BJ^Talk 13:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Approved for trial. (1 day, 50 edit maximum) --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹnoɟʇs(st47) 13:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Trial complete. After a few minor bugs it seemed to have worked well. It didn't leave any duplicate messages and the ones I checked the editor seemed to have a interest in the page. BJ^Talk 16:11, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I see no errors. Approved. Soxred93 has a boring sig 18:27, 24 December 2007 (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.