Wikipedia talk:Bots/Approvals group/Archive 2

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Bot approvers need approving? 2 Suggestion 3 Commons delinker bot 4 Approvals Group Election Process 5 Approval Statistics 6 Inactive Members 7 Tools 8 Election Proposal 9 Ram-Man's Election Procedure 10 Bluemoose/Martin 11 I Need some Support 12 Blocked a pseduo-bot 13 WP:BAG addition 13.1 Survey 14 Yet another RfBAGA 14.1 Discussion 15 Request for Access 16 Request to join bot approval group 17 Talk page templating for WikiProjects 18 Protecting the approved page

Bot approvers need approving?

Just wondering if people in the bot approvals group need get their bot approved by someone else. Sounds sensible encase of any flaws/problems are not noticed by the owner of the bot.--Andeh 16:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

This sounds reasonable, and in practice is exactly what happens. My own bot was recently approved, and while I may have archived it (it already had the bot flag), I didn't do it under my own "authority". I think this goes without saying. On the other hand, if no one was active on this page, then I wouldn't have a problem if someone approved themselves. But with new members, that seems unlikely to be a problem. -- RM 16:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree, we should never approve our own bots. If it comes down to one of us being the last bot approver we've got a much bigger issue at hand! — xaosflux ^Talk 01:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

OK fair enough, may want to add this somewhere, saves people (like me) from asking.--Andeh 16:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

Maybe add signatures to the page so users can recognise the users more easily when they respond?--Andeh 16:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. Now persons in the approval group just need to add their signature. -- RM 19:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, if you could change the page to semi-protection users such as myself could edit it. :) --Andeh 19:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I myself had to wait until I could use my admin account to semi-protect the page, as I couldn't edit the page when you posted this. Ironic :) -- RM 21:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The protection has been updated to edit=autoconfirmed, move=sysop. We should all have this on our watchlists by now, and not be adding users adhoc. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:58, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Commons delinker bot

Commons gets a lot of images that ultimately, need deleting. Red links on wikis referencing them are ugly. There are 701 different wikis that can get images from Commons. A bot has been created and tested to perform the delinking. But consider if all 701 wikis were asked for bot approval! gaak! So concerned commons admins and 'crats are asking on Meta for an exemption to normal bot rules... See Requests_for_permissions/CommonsDelinker on meta for more details. Your support would be greatly appreciated, I expect. You can also discuss it at the Commons noticeboard at the delinker bot topic ++Lar: t/c 18:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

BAG members, please visit this commons: discussion to put forth input please! — xaosflux ^Talk 03:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Approvals Group Election Process

This would be the ideal place to hash out a more formal process for adding and removing members of the bot approvals group. I've cleaned up this page so that when we are finished with the bot backlog and other issues, we can work on this here. -- RM 04:10, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

xaosflux's notes for future discussion on this:

Terms or Perms?

Source of Charter?

Voters: BAG or community?

Suffrage?

Removals, inactives?

Addition period-constant ala rfa or period based?

needs requirement:how many do we need?

candidacy requirement (e.g. admin?)

— xaosflux ^Talk 05:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you guys need any more members? I'm willing and (IMO) able to serve on the Bot Approvals Group. — Werdna talk criticism 04:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

We have no process, and in my opinion we could use a few more members. I just cleared out a bunch of bots today that have been sitting around for quite some time. Still though, we don't have an established process for adding members. Xaosflux added a number of good points for discussion above that could be addressed. Perhaps if you were willing to address some of those issues and perhaps come up with a proposal for comment then we would be in a position to consider adding more members. It would surely show good faith if you did that! Still, the commenting on bots in the approval process is not isolated to members of the approval group. I looked through your edits and you have not participated. So I would suggest participating more in the approvals process and working on a voting process. If you do both, I think you should easily win approval to join the approvals group, as you are already a respected bot writer and operator. I have not checked to see how well you understand policy, but I'm assuming its there at this point. I would obviously check that if there was a vote on new members. -- RM 02:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Approval Statistics

BAG Member	Approvals
Betacommand (talk · contribs)	11
Voice of All (talk · contribs)	15
Xaosflux (talk · contribs)	4
Ram-Man (talk · contribs)	19
Tawker (talk · contribs)	3
5 Active Members	52
Bureaucrat	Flags
Redux (talk · contribs)	13
Rdsmith4 (talk · contribs)	3
Taxman (talk · contribs)	14
Nichalp (talk · contribs)	1
4 Active Bot Flagging Bureaucrats	31

Since we've added new members to BAG and changed the archival process, I took a few minutes to get some statistics on the Wikipedia approved bot requests. I don't know how many people are aware of them, but there are now a number of categories setup to monitor the bot requests (See here: Wikipedia bot requests for approval). The statistics above are for an approximately 1 month period since the election. The table suggests to me that we still could use more members to spread out the work. Perhaps more bureaucrats would be helpful. Most bot flagging tends to occur within a few hours, but it would never hurt to be better. The obvious caveat with this table is that it does not show those BAG members who comment extensively but don't approve bots. It also doesn't include who approved bots for trial or how many people "voted" to approve. Naturally it also doesn't include any failed or withdrawn bot requests. -- RM 20:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting table! I dont think there's a RUSH requirement to get crats to flag these bots, if they get it within a day of being notified it usually sufficient. As for the counts, I know that I personally do more trials approvals then bot approvals, often on purpose to make sure others in the team are on board. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to imply that the bureaucrats were doing a bad job or that the process was horribly deficient. I was implying that while we're doing fine now, more wouldn't be a bad thing. I think overall everything is going quite well. And I know that if someone wasn't paying attention they might assume that some people are carrying all the load, but that's obviously not true in your case: You do a lot of commenting and the work you described above. That's why I added the caveats in the first place. It's just a table of statistics afterall. -- RM 00:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Inactive Members

I've updated the inactive members who have not made any bot approvals action recently. Those members not in the table above have not approved any bots but have at least contributed to the discussions on the bots. At issue is Joshbuddy who has never made a contribution to any page of Wikipedia:Bots or its subpages. Please see here and here. I don't know how historically this user was placed on the approvals group, but I seek to remove this user immediately, as someone who has never contributed to the bot approval process should not be on the approvals group. No activity is unacceptable for this position. I am seeking the approval of other BAG members to remove this user. It is important to note that I am not criticising Joshbuddy, but only that he should not be granted BAG membership if he isn't going to contribute to it. -- RM 20:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone asked him about it yet? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I just noticed this before I left for the weekend. I'll do it now and we'll see what happens. -- RM 00:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems that Tawker added the entry to the approvals page. See this edit. -- RM 01:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Tools

I've added some template tools to be used by BAG to facilitate the approvals process. See {{Template:BAG Admin Tools}} for a table containing all of the available templates. I've also added my own template for use on my user page for bot related pages. In case anyone wants to use something similar, it can be found at {{User:Ram-Man/Tasks}}. -- RM 14:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Election Proposal

No one else has taken a stab at the creation of an election proposal and we are due a clearer policy. To start I'm going to use Xaosflux's questions to start the discussion. Others can add as they see fit. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Terms or Perms?

  I know that "offices" such as admin and bureaucrat are essentially permanent positions, but I don't think that it is appropriate for bot approval group members. In the case of administrators, the admin powers have not changed much since they were first instituted. Plus, the policy surrounding things like blocking and deleting is fairly well standardized and isolated to a few pages. The same cannot be said for approving bots. While bot policy itself is well-standardized, bot approvals group members have to keep track of a lot of different potentially changing policies constantly. Now of course each group member is going to be aware of different policy areas based on their skill-set, but I think that there should be some sort of term limit. My suggestion is as follows: Once elected, renewals are automatic so long as the user has non-trivially contributed to Requests for approval or its subpages and talk pages sometime within some time period, say 3 months. Removals from office due to expiration will then be automatic and not require discussion. Although, I'd say add a clause that before removing the user require a post on their user page and wait 1 week before removal. I would say that once a user has been a member then it should be easier to become an active member again as opposed to someone who has never been a member. Nevertheless, it perhaps shouldn't be automatic. More on that later when discussing the voting process. For the record, I don't believe strongly in permanent or temporary limits, but I'm leaning for a automatic system of renewals with non-permanent membership. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Source of Charter?

  None? Perhaps I don't understand the purpose of this question, but the last BAG election roughly took the form of a straw poll from those who were interested in the bot approvals process. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Voters: BAG or community? Suffrage?

  Unlike RfA, I would allow the entire community to provide input, be they anonymous or otherwise. Obviously vandals and sockpuppets don't count. I don't think we really need to have any arbitrary number of edits or other such standards. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Addition period-constant ala rfa or period based?

  Is this a question about the voting period? I would say it should work like RfA. It should be open for some minimum period of time but can be extended if discussion has not completed. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• needs requirement:how many do we need?

  This is a tricky question. "All" bot approvals group members do is close discussions by determining consensus based on knowledge of Wikipedia policy and the discussion itself. Anyone from the community can and should contribute. However, as was made clear from the recent RfA for a bot, BAG members are given considerable power and respect from the community itself: In the RfA the lack of agreement between BAG members was considered sufficient reason by some to oppose. A BAG member needs skills at determining consensus and wide knowledge of Wikipedia policies. So on one hand the job is fairly narrowly defined but on another hand the community has granted BAG members a certain amount of leverage past simple closing of discussions. It is because of this latter reason that I would not limit the number of members. If someone is qualified and willing to help out, then their opinion should be granted the extra weight that being a BAG member affords. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• candidacy requirement (e.g. admin?)

  Candidacy requirements should be fairly strict in principle, but are likely to be somewhat arbitrary. I specificially don't think a user is required to be an admin or run a bot, but either of those clearly add to the user's ability to help out in a useful way. I think the focus should be understanding of Wikipedia policy. A BAG member must have a wide understanding of Wikipedia policies so that when a bot comes along they know if the bot's task is appropriate. This can usually be seen by extensively looking into a user's contributions. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Removals, inactives?

  I've already dealt with my proposal for inactive users, but have said nothing about specifically adding or removing users outside that process. I will have to say more later. -- RM 16:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Ram-Man's Election Procedure

I've stated my thoughts on the issues regarding an election. I'd like to lay out an election process based on some of those thoughts. We'll see how much sense it makes. :) I'd like to suggest that all existing members be reconfirmed though the process.

Before anything else, any election should be closed by a bureaucrat or an admin who is also an existing member of BAG. It should be obviously why a bureaucrat should be allowed, but maybe not the BAG admin. It seems to me that an admin already has garnered the trust of the community and with the addition of being a BAG member has the ability to determine consensus based on the requirements of the service of bot approvals, perhaps even better than an outside bureaucrat would. A closing user should not close an election when consensus is not clear and they have directly participated in the process. Some issues should be given more weight than others. For example, a user's understanding of wikipedia policies is more important than whether or not the user has run a bot. The person closing the election should consider the relative weight of such discussion. When in doubt, a BAG member should not be elected since BAG membership is not adminship.

The requirements for BAG membership can be broad like in the case of administrators, but should focus on the user's understanding of Wikipedia policies and workings. A BAG member must have a fairly broad understanding of policy in order to judge the appropriateness of a bot, since bots can cause considerable damage if approved incorrectly. Ideally, a new BAG member should have existing experience in commenting on previous bot requests for approvals, although this could be waived if the user's background and skill set make them qualified (as was the case in the recent election). While I don't think we need to have any edit count requirements, it should be clear that a user who has not participated in policy discussions or editing a wide range of articles will probably not have sufficient experience. Membership should have term limits as I've described above (with automatic renewals and removals). A user who has already been a BAG member but let their term expire should not require as high a standard as someone who has never been a member. Also, adminship should be a plus but not a requirement.

Anyone should be able to vote and voice their opinion. Vandals and sockpuppets should obviously not be allowed. The user closing the election should take into account the content of comments by supporters and opposers and weight them relative to their importance on being a BAG member.

The procedure for adding new members should (probably) use transcluded pages on a voting page similar to how pages are done on the requests for approvals now. Anyone can nominate at any time, but it must be accepted by the user. The format should be similar to that of RfA, although perhaps not so formal. The previous election (See the archive) worked well. Users names were listed and people commented on them by listing whether or not they supported. I don't see the need for as formal a system as RfA unless the number of voters get really large. Reconfirmations for users who are expired (or withdrawn) without controversy should be given considerable latitude in becoming active again, but should otherwise go through the same process as new members.

Removals should be a separate function of the member voting page. Anyone can suggest that a BAG member is inappropriate for any reason, but must be seconded by another independent user. The member should be given the opportunity to address any charges before any removal action is taken. The member should, however, voluntarily recuse themselves from approving/denying requests until the issue is resolved. This will essentially be a probation period with no guilt implied. They can still comment on bots as any normal user can. In order to remove a user, a voting process similar to the process for adding new members must occur with the following caveats: A user cannot be removed without a plurality of other BAG members voting and a plurality of non-BAG members voting. In any case, consensus to remove must still be established. This prevents hijacking the process.

That's my first draft. Let's see what other people come up with. -- RM 17:37, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Bluemoose/Martin

Since Bluemoose has apparently left the project, his name was placed on the inactive list. I'd propose that we accept Bluemoose's stated departure as a resignation from BAG and remove his name from the list. At the very least it will prevent imposters from using his name in bot procedure, but I can see no other reason to keep it around just for memories. We have history for that. Since discussion on this page appears almost non-existent, I'm going to go ahead and remove it and unless there is significant discussion to the contrary we can leave it at that. -- RM 12:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that BAG members are more than capable to decide whether or not a fellow member should be removed, but if I may suggest: maybe wait a little while, to make sure that Martin's decision is indeed final and that he in fact left. I mean, recently we saw an admin declare that he was leaving the project, but then he thought it over and went back on his decision to leave, within a few days. So maybe wait and see if Martin is really gone, maybe for a month, or two or three weeks... Just a thought, but again, BAG members are certainly capable of making this decision. Redux 15:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a well reasoned thought, but the way I see it is that there is a minor practical reason for not cluttering the list with users that have stated that they are done for good. Let's say for sake of argument that he did return. In that case, we'd treat him the same way that we'd treat an admin who's powers were voluntarily withdrawn: we'd reactivate him as a BAG member without much fuss. But if he says he's gone, I'm going to assume good faith on this one that he really meant what he said, and as such act accordingly. Also, if he ever came back under a different name, we'd have no easy way to verify that he was the same person, so we wouldn't want someone to try that tactic either. -- RM 19:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's now safe to assume he's gone. (alas). --kingboyk 15:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I Need some Support

As a member of the BAG I think we need to give cyde our full support in a statement or something. Cyde is getting flak for his WP:CFD/W work we have given him the nod for this task but haven't full officially approved it though and he is taking heat over it. I thought we could draft a statement as the BAG showing our support. See: User talk:Cyde#Deletion_summaries for the full issue Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 18:11, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think an official statement is necessary, since at least four group members have commented already. If there is an issue with a bot, it should likely be discussed here anyway. -- RM 20:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I chimed it with an 'its ok' on that page just now as well. If this was a RFBOT, the feature I'd like to see added would be to include a wikilink to the CFD page when the deletion is happening. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Blocked a pseduo-bot

Please see Wikipedia talk:Adopt-a-User regarding a call to editors to be mass welcomebots. I put a 15 min block on the first one, but it seems they don't want to go through a bot approval at this time; please sanity check me and let me know if that was too much. Thanks, — xaosflux ^Talk 02:08, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That seems perfectly sensible. This is ridiculous. I don't even let my bot run that fast. alphachimp. 02:18, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:BAG addition

Talk page templating for WikiProjects

I was a bit concerned to see BotanyBot (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BotanyBot) tagging articles as Stub class, without leaving behind a note that the article had been automatically assessed. The practice of automatically equating stub templates with stub class articles was controversial when it first started and threatened to derail the assessments process. That's why I created the now much-used {{stubclass}} template. I'd ask fellow members to insist that any auto assessing of stubs use that template or an auto=yes parameter so that the automated assessment is transparent and human editors can follow behind checking and reassessing where necessary. --kingboyk 13:54, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The summaries note that it is auto assessed. -- RM 14:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

That's not enough, as the talk page is not in any "auto assessed" category. If need be I can dig out the controversy about this, but I hope my word can be taken that this was very dodgy ground when the assessments scheme first started. --kingboyk 14:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Does it matter whether or not the specific WikiProject approves of the usage? I've been checking many of the articles that are in my watchlist that have been flagged as stubs and checking them manually, but perhaps that's not good enough. I looked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants and there was no discussion about this issue, so either no one has notice (which seems unlikely) or no one cares. As a relatively new member of the Wikiproject, I have no objections, but if others complain, then perhaps we should do something. Since I don't have the discussion that you stated above, I don't know if this is sufficient behavior or not. -- RM 01:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The controversy came from people who don't like the templates, not from the Wikiprojects. Iirc correctly the rationale was that if a stub is stub class, you don't need to a WikiProject tag at all for assessments, just use the stub tag.

Now, ok, if there've been no complaints then things may have moved on, which is cool; I personally prefer to mark these edits assessments as auto but I can't force it on others. --kingboyk 00:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well if I notice any discussion on the WikiProject from members or otherwise about this issue, perhaps we'll address it at that time. -- RM 01:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Protecting the approved page

According to Wikipedia:Bots/Approvals group, all active members are sysops. I move that Wikipedia:Bots/Approved bot requests be protected as it's not for general editing; it can always be un or semi protected if we get a non-sysop member. Any objections? --kingboyk 17:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

We've had this discussion in the past. The consensus was not to protect the page, because some of us (like myself) do edit from accounts without sysop access and there is no reason that someone else couldn't edit the page for other reasons other than to add or remove names. I would, however, not have a problem with semi-protecting the page. -- RM 17:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

We had the debate in the past when we had non sysop members. Why would you edit the page from a non sysop account? How are the bureacrats supposed to know if it's a genuine approval or not if you don't edit as Ram-Man? :) Not meaning to be confrontational, just don't follow the logic :) --kingboyk 17:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC) PS I'll semi-protect in the meantime.

The approvals page says that I edit from that account, plus it's easy enough to verify that I am who I say I am here. But that said, I could be doing something like updating the table format to be more attractive or have a better layout. Perhaps the names are not in alphabetical order. Maybe the opening paragraph needs expansion. Whatever the reason, I don't think it needs to be (fully) protected. -- RM 18:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking through this history, I don't see any recent or ongoing vandalism or misuse. Perhaps we can wait until there is a problem before we fix it. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:06, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the page needs protection, the current 'crats that deal with bots are pretty familiar with our group. I do urge any of us that do not alreay have it, to put it on your watchlist though. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:42, 20 March 2007 (UTC)