Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HagermanBot

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] HagermanBot

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

Operator: Hagerman

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic and Unsupervised

Programming Language(s): Visual C# .NET

Function Summary: Inserts the {{unsigned}} template on talk pages when a user forgets to sign a comment.

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

Edit rate requested: 3 edits per minute

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

Function Details: In order for the bot to classify an edit as a new unsigned comment, the following conditions must be met:

• The edit must fall under the Talk or User Talk namespace.
• The edit must only contain the addition of new lines and those lines must all be adjacent.
• The edit must not already contain a signature in the added lines. A signature is determined by either the presence of a link to the User namespace or the string "(UTC)".
• The edit must either create a new heading or exist as an indent under an existing heading.
• The edit must not contain a template.

[edit] Discussion

Sounds cool, can you provide a diff or two. Are you using the IRC recent changes feed to determine which pages to check? -- Tawker 07:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, here are a few diffs generated by the bot: 1 2 3. To answer your question, yes, the application monitors recent changes through the IRC channel. Thanks, Hagerman^(talk) 21:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I see no problems in approving this bot, please run it (rate limiter is optional) but please ensure it only runs on talk pages and not in mainspace -- Tawker 23:22, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, if you could put it in WP:AN, WP:AIV, WP:AfD, WP:DRV it would be good there too -- Tawker 23:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea! It's up and running now with the addition of the areas you mentioned. Thanks for such a quick approval process! Best, Hagerman^(talk) 00:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

It's been suggested by some users that the bot has a delay before making an edit to reduce edit conflicts. Since the bot makes its edit around 3-5 seconds after the initial edit is made. I feel that adding a delay will actually result in more edit conflicts since a user is more likely to be responding after the delay has occurred. Anyone care to offer their feedback? Thanks, Hagerman^(talk) 19:26, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Could you put in some way to turn it off on the talk pages of people who don't want it, or something? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 21:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, presently you can put !NOSIGN! somewhere in the edit summary and the bot will not look for a signature in the edit. But it sounds like you are talking about a template that could be placed on the page to disable the bot for all edits, correct? Thanks, Hagerman^(talk) 21:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

If you put <!--Disable HagermanBot--> somewhere on your page the bot will stop inserting unsigned notices. Best, Hagerman^(talk) 22:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Judging from the discussion of his page [1], Hangerman now (5th December) seems to be hesitating if he should allow such an opt-out. I am sad to read this. I thought he wanted to provide a genuine service to people who sometimes forget to sign (we can all be a bit absent-minded until we develop a habit) and not force something upon people who expressly ask to be excluded. I can only hope that he will not deny my respectful request to be excluded. -Sensemaker

As mentioned above, two forms of opting out already exist, they haven't been turned off and continue to remain as an option to all users. Placing !NOSIGN! in the edit summary will disable the bot for that edit and placing <!--Disable HagermanBot--> will disable the bot permanently on the page which has been marked. The real question here is as to whether a signature without a timestamp should count as a signature. I believe the spirit of a signature is to determine who made the comment and when they left it. Opinions anyone? Best, Hagerman^(talk) 00:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The main problem I see with this bot is that it hides vandalistic or inappropriate comments or spam on Talk pages from people's watchlists. A talk page spammer who used to be trivial to rollback becomes a much greater nuisance if he doesn't sign his posts. This bot means we have to check all the page histories instead of just rolling back the top edit. Kusma (討論) 10:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

An example of what I mean is here, where the bot forces a manual revert instead of single-click rollback. Kusma (討論) 13:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

And of course the bot makes mistakes, for example here. I think I would prefer a JavaScript thing that makes inserting {{subst:unsigned2}} even less work than it is now, so adding sigs to unsigned comments would become trivial and we don't have to deal with the problems using a bot does cause. Kusma (討論) 13:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

If the bot is given a bot flag, that should correct the issue relating to watchlists. I believe the mistake demonstrated above is in a very small minority. That specific kind of edit (relating to the insertion of archival points under a section) can be filtered out by the engine. Your discussion does raise several good points though. Thanks, Hagerman^(talk) 14:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite understand what the bot flag has to do with my watchlist. If I turn on "Hide bot edits" on my watchlist, pages that have been last edited by bots disappear completely, so choosing this option is obviously bad if I want to see what's going on. If I let the watchlist show bot edits, the top edit will be by the bot and so not informative. Kusma (討論) 14:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, what I am most concerned about is the hiding of edits like this. Kusma (討論) 14:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... I've got an idea. Perhaps we should consider not having a bot flag for this bot and instead, placing as much of the comment as possible in the edit summary?

Example:

m (Anshu.shah didn't sign: get latest academic Information In your mails, Subscribe or visit our page...)

Let me know what you think. Thanks, Hagerman^(talk) 23:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

It sounds good and should mostly solve the problem I have with this bot. Let's hope this doesn't cause other problems :-) Kusma (討論) 13:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've made the changes to the bot. Take a look at the contributions. Best, Hagerman^(talk) 00:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

This bot's reflexes are too fast. A grace period of 5-10 minutes would make it easier to remove trolling and/or talk page spamming with rollback as needed, rather than manually removing it. — CharlotteWebb 04:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The biggest concern I have with the insertion of a delay is that it will result in a lot of edit conflicts. I think the number of manual rollbacks the bot would cause is significantly less than the number of edit conflicts it would generate with a delay. Best, Hagerman^(talk) 00:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the bot could also add a message to the talk page of a user who failed to sign their comment, {{subst:sign}} or a similar note would be good. — CharlotteWebb 04:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, since that's not one of the bot's approved tasks, a user from the bot approval group will first have to give me the go-ahead. I would only like to add a comment on the talk page if the user performed at least 2 unsigned edits in a 24 hour period. Anyone from the approval group care to comment on that task? Hagerman^(talk) 00:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a note to advise this bot is already in operation and caught one of my edits where I forgot to insert my signature. Not sure whether its meant to be running yet, but it worked great in any case - PocklingtonDan 21:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Tawker approved it above. Glad you like it. Best, Hagerman^(talk) 00:01, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like this bot editing people's messages on other people's talk pages without either of their consent or even knowledge. I think it's a great concept, but it should be an opt-in thing (instead of opt-out), where people specify with a template on their userpage if they want it, like Werdnabot, it shouldn't just do it to everyone. Just my two cents. --Rory096 01:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Request to add two tasks to the bot:

• Leave a note on a user's talk page if they post two unsigned comments in a 24 hour period.
• Move new talk sections placed at the top of the page to the bottom.

Thanks to CharlotteWebb and ReyBrujo for the two suggestions for new bot tasks. Best, Hagerman^(talk) 03:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd approve the first one. Voice-of-All 18:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

You should really start an "additional task" request. Rich Farmbrough, 19:53 10 December 2006 (GMT).

Sorry, I'll do that now. You're right, we should let this close; it's getting big. Thanks, Hagerman^(talk) 22:24, 10 December 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.