Wikipedia talk:Bots/Archive 10

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Archive 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

Bot flag for ZwoBot

I've now been running my interwiki bot ZwoBot since July now, and there have been no serious problems so far. AllyUnion has asked me to request a bot flag for the bot's account, so that it doesn't appear on recentchanges. Does anyone disagree on this issue? --Head 09:41, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

You've already requested above. --AllyUnion (talk) 00:49, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

HasharBot

Please add User:HasharBot on Wikipedia:Bots. Been around for a year. It uses the python wikipedia framework and I use it for interwiki update as well as for solving disambiguations sometime.

Hashar 14:06, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Approved to run, if no objections are made within a week, continue on. --AllyUnion (talk) 00:51, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

NotificationBot

The purpose of this bot is to notify users on their talk page of an event or reminder, based on whatever they schedule the bot to do so and whatever message they set up with the bot. More details found at User:NotificationBot. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

NotificationBot has been granted bot status. If there'll be any problems with him, please notify the Stewards at m:Requests for bot status. Datrio 09:46, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Pearle to auto-select articles from categories

I'd like to modify Pearle to select articles from categories and add those selections to wiki pages. The first application will be Template:Opentask. As discussed on Template talk:Opentask, I'd like to throw up a selection of articles from four different categories, once every 24 hours or so. (I'm tired of doing it myself.) I will have to embed some HTML comments which the bot will look for so it will know where to insert article lists. -- Beland 09:37, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm rather technical, do you mind highlighting how Pearle will do this? --AllyUnion (talk) 23:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
I wrote a description at User:Pearle#Opentask_demo. The last Pearle edit of User:Beland/workspace shows the finished demo code in action. I've also uploaded the source code for this new feature to User:Pearle/pearle.pl. The new functions are near the bottom; starting at "sub opentaskUpdate". Enjoy, Beland 02:55, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Kurando-san WikiProject Archival

Kurando-san will automatically archive any WikiProject that has not been edited in the past 6 months, and who's talk page hasn't been edited in the past 2 months. If the talk page doesn't exist, it is assumed as the same thing as a talk page that hasn't been edited in the past 2 months. --AllyUnion (talk) 22:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean by "archive"? -- Carnildo
It will mark the project with {{inactive}} and remove it out of the Category:WikiProjects. --AllyUnion (talk) 05:42, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
It would be splufty if it also updated Wikipedia:List of inactive WikiProjects and Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects, but it sounds useful as it is, too. -- Beland 03:24, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't know how to make the bot sort it into the correct category. It already posts the results into Wikipedia talk:List of inactive WikiProjects if any changes have been made. --AllyUnion (talk) 04:08, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Bot for interwiki es -> en

Hi, I'm es:Usuario:Armin76 from spanish wikipedia and I want to get a bot flag for this user to create interwiki links from spanish wikipedia to english wikipedia.

  1. Autonomous bot and sometimes manual
  2. Forever i can
  3. pywikipedia framework
  4. interwiki from es to en

--KnightRider 16:19, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm skeptical that it's a good idea to have a bot automatically make any interwiki links. Shouldn't they all be checked by a human to make sure the target actually covers the same topic as the source? It's perfectly find to have an automated process suggest interwiki links and/or help a human make links faster, though. Out of curiousity, how will your bot be deciding which links to suggest? -- Beland 03:31, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, it depends on how much you will be checking those interwiki links. --AllyUnion (talk) 04:21, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
The idea is put the interwiki link from es in the en wikipedia. I mean, in the es wikipedia there are the en interwiki links, but in the en wikipedia there aren't the es interwiki links. The bot i want is for insert the es interwiki link into the en article that is referred in the es wikipedia. --KnightRider 11:32, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
So long as your bot is not removing any other languaqge interwiki links, I would say your bot is okay. Approved for a test run for one week. --AllyUnion (talk) 19:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
This bot (KnightRider) does appear to be removing other interwiki links during some edits. See [1] [2] [3]. I request that it be turned off or blocked until fixed. -- DrBob 19:33, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Now seems to be fixed. -- DrBob 17:57, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Trial period resetted. Test run for 1 week. User has indicated that interwiki removal is done when the bot is running manually. --AllyUnion (talk) 19:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
Finally what? --Armin76 | Talk 16:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for front page

Is the following text reasonable enough to put on the project page? -- Beland 05:02, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

What counts as a bot?
If you are doing offline processing of database dumps, and using the result to guide manual edits, there is no need to request permission here. A script that helps a human editor make changes one at a time (like a javascript script) and where the human checks the output is not a bot, and no permission is required. Any process that makes edits automatically, or which makes multiple edits in response to a human's command, is a bot, and requires community pre-approval. Automated processes using admin priviliges should also be approved here. Read-only spiders are discouraged. To reduce load on Wikimedia servers, please use a database dump instead. Dynamic loading of pages may also be inappropriate; see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.

Sounds good to me. --AllyUnion (talk) 11:07, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

That definition would make some stuff we have been traditionally treating as bots such as semi automated disambig tools (retrive what links here for a disambig and then let a user quickly process each of the pages linking to the disambig by selecting one of the items on the disambig page to change the link to) not count as bots any more. I personally think this is a good thing but its certinaly a point to consider. Plugwash 22:19, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Plant bot

I would like to request to be able to add all known species of plant life by scientific and common name to the Wikipedia automatically with a taxobox on each page. I don't have an exact source yet and I don't have any code yet. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:41, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, how many articles is this going to add to Wikipedia? Am I going to need to adjust my guess for the Wikipedia:Million pool? --Carnildo 09:08, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If the bot will only add a taxobox, what is the added value compared to Wikispecies? --EnSamulili 21:19, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the only list of plants I can add are established and very well known plants whos sciencific name classification hasn't changed since the last past 25-50 years. -- AllyUnion (talk) 19:25, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

On somewhat of a sidenote, I've considered doing a similar thing for the fish in fishbase, but I have not had the time to put into that yet. I suppose the request would be quite similar, so I'll throw it out as an idea. -- RM 14:04, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
Both of the above sound like good ideas to me. Indisputably encyclopedic, and the stub articles are likely to expand in the fullness of time. Soo 13:18, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Taxobox modification for plant articles

In addition to this request, I wish to use a bot to automatically correct and add the taxobox to all plant articles. -- AllyUnion (talk) 09:46, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Status?

What is the current status of this proposal? -- Beland 05:11, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Inactive at the moment. It's filed away until I run into a database with this information. --AllyUnion (talk) 07:43, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Helpful links bot

Could it be a good idea for someone to create a bot that looks for new users that don't have a userpage set up that edits the userpage by setting up some helpful links that the new user could use to start his/her carrer in Wikipedia? --Admiral Roo 11:47, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

You mean like a bot that does welcoming committee duties? And I assume you meant User talk page, right? If it was a manual tool assisting users, run manualled by hand by several users, I would have no problems with it. If it was an automated bot... rather a cold welcome, don't you think? --AllyUnion (talk) 19:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't mean a bot that does welcoming duties, I mean a bot that puts up helpful links on the users page, links that would help a new user to be familer with wikipedia. --Admiral Roo 11:21, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Why don't you just modify the welcoming template? --AllyUnion (talk) 17:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Whobot

I finally have cable again, after almost a month after the hurricane. Whobot is running again, until final approval. See original request here. ∞Who?¿? 21:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Wahey, welcome back! --fvw* 21:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Thankies.. life is good now :) ∞Who?¿? 23:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I think it has been a combined week of use (not counting downtime due to hurricane). Request final approval and bot-flag. ∞Who?¿? 01:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I wanted to inform everyone that Whobot has been running at 10sec intervals, as I had planned to have a bot flag by now. I do not wish to flood RC, but cfd has been backed up, and I've been quite buzy. There are a huge number of naming conventions that have become speedy, and it affects a great deal of categories. Until the bug gets fixed on Meta, bot flags can't be set. If there are any objections, please let me know. ∞Who?¿? 10:05, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki bots and Unicode characters above U+FFFF

Interwiki bots should take extra care when doing interwiki links involving Unicode characters larger then U+FFFF. These don't fit into 16-bits, and must be represented by a surrogate pair, see UTF-16.

For example, this edit by FlaBot wrecked the zh: interwiki link for Bohrium. The Chinese character in question is U+28A0F (or &166415;) and looks like 金+波. -- Curps 09:45, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Mediawiki does NOT use UTF-16 so surrogate pairs have no relavence to mediawiki itself. What it looks like is happening is the bot is using UTF-16 as an internal format without realising that it contains surrogates. Plugwash 15:19, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Curps, please take up the issue with Flacus. I have already blocked his bot once for not properly taking care of his bot, but JRM let him run the bot again. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I have already left a message at User talk:FlaBot. -- Curps 16:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Curps in your initial post you said "for example" does this mean you have noticed other bots doing it and if so do you remember which ones? Plugwash 17:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
No, I just phrased it that way because I wanted to avoid singling out FlaBot. The only articles I know of that have such Unicode characters in interwiki links are Bohrium, Hassium, Dubnium, Seaborgium, in the zh: interwiki link. Yurikbot handles these correctly, and I haven't seen other bots alter these. Also Gothic language has such characters in the intro paragraph, as someone pointed out, but I don't think any bots have touched that. -- Curps 17:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
This can't happen with UTF8 wikies MvR 10:35, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Open proxy blocker

Open proxies have been getting more of a problem again lately, and the blacklisting incorporated into mediawiki isn't making much of a dent in it. Since Wikipedia has been upgraded a while back and the block list now finally scales nicely, I was thinking of resurrecting the preemptive proxy blocker bot. Any comments? --fvw* 15:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a really good idea provided that MediaWiki can handle it now. I'm just interested in the specifics of how the open proxies are detected. Is a scan of IP ranges performed or do we import some sort of blacklist? Carbonite | Talk 15:30, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Check the archives for the long version, but basicly I grab all the open proxy lists off the web I can and try to edit wikipedia through them. If it works, I block em. --fvw* 15:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Go for it. I remember your bot and my disappointment when the list it had carefully generated had to be removed from the block-list for performance reasons. If the block list scaling is good now, then we should all welcome the bot back with open arms. Shanes 15:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, provided everyone agrees here I'll go bug someone who knows to check exactly which code is running on the wikimedia servers. --fvw* 15:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I have no problems with it, it was working great. --AllyUnion (talk) 17:00, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Definitely go for it. -- Curps 17:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
If it stops the spammers, please... Shimgray | talk | 01:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
The spammers are back at WP:HD today. Of the four IPs so far, two were on the RBLs I checked. Even if it only serves to slow them down, I think its worth trying. Provided of course, that it doesn't hit the servers too hard. Off to look at the archives for more details. --GraemeL (talk) 15:04, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Here's one discussion on the open proxy blocker bot. There may be more. Carbonite | Talk 15:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Wahey! I just had a long and initially rather confused chat with Tim Starling, and it turns out the inefficient code (which is a mysql3 workaround (and mediawiki is mysql4 only now)) is still there but no longer getting hit. Since I've just discovered I have no class tomorrow I'm going to start hacking on this right away. Thanks for your support everyone! --fvw* 00:22, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
Up and running for HTTP proxies, now I have to go learn how to talk to SOCKS proxies. --fvw* 12:44, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to start it on blocking the first batch now. I'm going to be behind the computer for the entire run (email me if I don't respond to talk quickly enough, I may just not have loaded any fresh wikipedia pages), but if you see anything you feel is wrong by all means please unblock. --fvw* 18:53, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, on the first run (which took rather long because it involved writing the necessary tools along the way) it's blocked 1016 open proxies, and even managed to unblock a few that weren't open proxies any more. In future runs I'll try and gather up a larger starting set and see how that influences the number of blocks (if the number of blockable proxies doesn't increase much that would be a sign we're nearing saturation of the well-known open proxies, which is sort of what I'm hoping for). Let me know if you encounter any more open proxies or if open-proxy-related problems have ceased or diminished. --fvw* 04:46, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm no longer putting time into this one; is there anyone who's willing to take over the job of supporting the blocks (a few emails a week with people who don't understand they're running tor or where there's an open proxy running through their ISP proxy and you need to contact the ISP)? If not I'll get rid of its blocks, which seems a bit of a waste. --fvw* 02:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Bot for disambiguating Native Americans and American Indian

I want to run a simple bot, to be titled User:PhD-Econobot, for the purpose of disambiguating between the two pages that used to be Native Americans. This requires checking a long series of links, including redirects as well as American Indian and its redirects. My bot would be completely manual and would not be making superrapid edits. Do I need a bot flag? Looking at Wikipedia:Bots, it appears that there are some bots running in a similar fashion that do not require flags. - Nat Krause 08:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Regardless of the bot, care needs to be taken to differentiate the two as well as (Asian) Indians.
Well, it depends how frequently you will be running your bot and whether you will have it on auto-pilot or manually assisted. --AllyUnion (talk) 20:32, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
It will be all manually assisted. And I will run it about as often as I normally edit, I suppose. I don't have any specific plans. - Nat Krause 05:57, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Approved for a trial run of one week. May apply for bot flag if there is a high frequency of edits. (i.e. 100 edits a day) --AllyUnion (talk) 18:41, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Trial run begins today! - Nat Krause 11:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Why the odd name, though? Rmhermen 16:43, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I think it's a great idea, if you can ge it to work. Indian should be the Asian, Native American should be the original people of the continet. HereToHelp (talk) 02:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

KocjoBot

I would like to request a permission to use KocjoBot on :en. Primary mission will be updating link between :en, :sl, :bs and :hr. So far the bot was running on other 3 WP (with bot-flag) and without problems. Regards, --KocjoBot 22:12, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I see you understand English, Slovene, and German. I'm uncertain on what languages bs: and hr: run on, can you elaborate? --AllyUnion (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand your question; I also understand Croat and Bosnian (very similar languages to Slovene). Also, after I posted this request, I was asked by Serbian community to use KocjoBot on :sr; so this bot will be running on :bs, :en, hr:, :sl: and :sr. Because a lot of these WP has foreign iw, but others don't have theirs, so IMHO I think that this Bot is great need to coordinate these WP. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 09:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

We have a policy on the English Wikipedia, which is to ask Interwiki linking bot operators to understand the language that they plan to interwiki with. If you do understand the languages written on bs, en, hr, sl, & sr, then you are permitted to run a trial period of one week. If no complaints are made within that week, you can continue to run your bot. This is provided that you will be checking the interwiki links that your bot posts. --AllyUnion (talk) 18:38, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I've alreay bot status on other 4 WP and there were running for some time now (in :sl over 20.000 edits, on others 900+). So far there were no problems with interwikis. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 19:24, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

It is still general English Wikipedia policy for bots to run a trial run of one week, even if you have been running it elsewhere. Sorry, we deal with a lot of stupid vandals around the English Wikipedia. It is not to say you are one, but it needs to be proven that you aren't one. A trial run of one week will assert whether your bot is: harmless, useful, and not a server hog. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:30, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll run it. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 20:39, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The bot appears to be adding and removing interwiki links for languages beyond what it's approved for. For example, removing ast:, which appears to be an incorrect removal. I've blocked the bot until this is sorted out. --Carnildo 18:23, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The bot recognized such "articles" (minimal text) as non-text and removes it from the list. If you see, what is on the page you'll see. If that is a problem, OK. I've already made modification. About "beyond what it's approved for": I meant that I'll be running bot on 5 WP with fixing IW of all languages, not just these 5. If this is problem, sorry for not making more clear. BTW. I would reply earlier, but Carnildo blocked my IP-address and not just KocjoBot, so I couldn't edit. Regards, --Klemen Kocjancic 20:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Are there any further objections to this being flagged as a bot now? Please leave a note on m:requests for permissions to clarify this. Thanks. Angela. 10:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Responded to Angela's request on Meta. Stated that, at present, we want to resolve exactly what the bot will be doing, as it's still not clear - the user now claims to want to update all interwiki links across five Wikipedias, not the aforementioned five languages' worth of interwiki links on our Wikipedia; since this is confusing (and violates our general "must understand language" requirement) I've asked them to hold fire. Rob Church Talk | FAHD 03:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

A question about this bot : he added interwikis to my user page and I want to control the interwikis I put on each user page for personal efficiency use. Has these bot be authorized to do that ? Sebjarod 13:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Collaboration of the week update bot.

I wish to run a bot which will automatically update the dates and prune unsuccessful nominations on Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week. The bot would likely run daily, using the pywikipediabot framework. I've registered the name CollabBot for this. Talrias (t | e | c) 12:40, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Are you restricting your bot to only Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week or will your bot maintain all collaborations of the week? Furthermore, how do you determine which nominations are successful and which nominations are not? (The latter question is to just find out how you are making your bot tick, which for all intensive purposes, just helps to assert that your premise of getting your bot to function is valid.) --AllyUnion (talk) 18:40, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
At this time it will be restricted to the main collaboration of the week, and possibly the UK collaboration of the fortnight (as I am semi-involved in this). The bot would update the "number of votes by X" by counting the number of votes made (the number of lines starting with #, without a : (which would indicate a reply to a support vote) and with a signature in the line in the support section), discarding any votes from IP addresses, and changing the date and number of votes required appropriately. If a nomination failed to get the correct number of votes, as calculated above, it would remove it from the page and add it to the archive page. For both stages I would run trials where the bot would suggest a change to make before enabling the bot to do it automatically. Talrias (t | e | c) 19:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
What about sockpuppets? I'm thinking here of cases like the collaboration drive nomination for Seduction community, where all the support votes were by sockpuppets try to avert the closure of the AfD on that article. Not a huge problem, but it might suggest some human intervention would be useful. --fvw* 19:52, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
A fair point. This is something which would be a minor problem with the automatic removal of unsuccessful nominations rather than updating the no. of votes required and date for ones which get the required number of votes (as someone could remove the sockpuppet votes when they were detected, and the bot would correct the no. of votes required and date). It would only be a problem with removal because the article would stay nominated even though it may have been unsuccessful (and only kept due to the sockpuppets). However, I think that having an article stay by mistake is better than having an article removed by mistake, which is more likely if the bot attempted to do sockpuppet detection. I don't see this bot as being a substitute for people looking over the nominations, just a substitute for updating the no. of votes required and date, which is menial. Talrias (t | e | c) 21:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
How will you deal with unsigned nominations? --AllyUnion (talk) 21:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Nominations are not signed (the first vote is that of the nominator); I'm assuming you mean unsigned votes, and the answer is that typically the signature is the only text left by the voter and a vote without a signature I believe it is a non-issue. In the event it occured, the bot would not count it as a vote (but would if the person later added their signature or someone used the {{unsigned}} template). Talrias (t | e | c) 21:45, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't so much mind if it intervened in cleanup, or pushing the updated dates... but I'm not so certain I'd be the one having it actually select the winner. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:20, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
It would not do this - updating the actual collaboration of the week is non-trivial. Talrias (t | e | c) 13:34, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Approved support for trial run of one week. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:38, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Chobot exceeding its approved behavior

The approval given to Chobot (see Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Archive_interwiki#Chobot) covers only links between the English and Korean wikipedias. Recent edits by the bot include interwiki links to other languages, exceeding the bot's approved behavior.

I have left a note on the operator's talk page. User:ChongDae indicates on their user page that they can speak English, Korean, and Japanese. I'm fine with expanding the permission to include these three languages, but our policy requires that we ask them to please not modify interwiki links to any other languages.

Misbehaving bots are subject to blocking on sight by administrators.

-- Beland 01:59, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that policy may be a pain some times but it's there for a good reason. It appears to not be running currently though, let's hope ChongDae reads his talk before restarting it. --fvw* 02:09, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I was running the bot with autonomous mode. When running in autonomous mode, the bot tries to collect interwiki links and update it. (The bot don't run in en: now.)

When I got the bot permission in en:, The bot could update only the home language wikipedia. At that time to update a link using a bot, I have to run the bot on ko: first; analyze the log of bot; change the language setting to en:; and update a missing links depending on the log. This process is easy to do mistakes and sometimes outdated. (The time difference between running of the bot in ko: and en: can be a week or more.)

The pywikipedia software was updated to allow multiple site simultaneously after July. (cvs log) So I have been depend on it. Many other bot operators also use it. It is hard to say that the program is perfect, but it works well.

BTW, Is there any renewal procedure for bot's behavior? I want to update it. (for example, permission to generic interwiki bot, image mover to commons:, ...)-- ChongDae 18:24, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

How does it determine which articles are the same without user intervention? Just because nl:A links to ko:B and ko:B links to en:C, doesn't necessarily mean nl:A should link to en:C (or vice-versa). Article topics are frequently chosen differently which causes the link between nl:A and ko:B to be off but a reasonable approximation, however compounding the topic approximation error of nl→ko and ko→en is going to get an even worse match for the nl→en.
If it's determining which articles to link in a different way, how? --fvw* 18:46, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
That's the way interwiki bots work. Do you have any idea? -- ChongDae 20:25, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The pywikipedia framework just assumes that any link to or from en:A is just as good as any other link, and that if fr:B links to en:A, any links to and from fr:B might as well go directly to en:A. Unless there is a conflict, e.g. nl:C links to fr:B and en:D, in which case it asks for manual intervention.

We should be explicit - do we want to establish a policy that all interwiki links must be manually reviewed? Personally, I think an interwiki link to a slightly-off article is better than none at all, and humans can check that sort of thing after the fact.

I think it's important to insist that bots only modify articles in languages the bot operator can understand, to deal with complaints from denizens of that Wikipedia.

But what about links to various other Wikipedias? If we insist on manual review of all interwiki links, then obviously bot operators must speak the target language. (And by doing so we miss out on some of the links suggested by the pywikipedia method.) But with an automated default, what's wrong with bot operators replying to a complaint, "I don't speak German; if you do and you think the link should be changed, go ahead"?

If we insist on manual review (whether while the bot is running or afterwords, by looking at contribs) we have a lot of enforcement to catch up on. If we don't, then we can basically give blanket permission to run any standard interwiki bot based on pywikipedia for anyone that can speak English and who we trust to run a bot. Personally, I'm fine with the latter. Some WikiProject can systematically check interwiki links, if they want, either by following bots around, or in some other fashion. (After all, people make bad interwiki links, too, whether because they don't speak a certain language very well, or because they didn't know that there's a better article to link to.) -- Beland 02:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and if you want to do something new with your bot, the procedure is to let us know here, and we discuss it. (As we've started doing with the idea of a generic interwiki bot.)

Chobot wanting to move images to Commons

As for automated image moving to Commons, I would say that any such bot would need to:

  • Detect naming conflicts (e.g. if there was already an image with the same name on Commons)
  • Preserve all image description information
  • Note that the image was originally uploaded to Wikipedia, and who uploaded it
  • Preserve template information (especially licensing info). Remember that just because a template is defined on Wikipedia doesn't necessarily mean it's defined on Commons, or that it has the same definition there.

Images that have more than one version are somewhat problematic, because several people may have copyright on the image, or maybe the image has been wholly replaced, and only the latest uploader (or maybe only the 2nd and the 4th) have copyright on it. I guess these would have to be done manually. -- Beland 02:22, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm moving images manually. If images are required when writing articles in ko:, I first look at commons. If I cannot find any suitable one, I look around images in other wikipedias, en/de/ja/..., and transfer it to commons if the license is suitable for commons; PD/GFDL/SA/... (Note that these templates are almos same to commons and other wikipedias, as I know.) I'm using imagetrasfer.py in pywikipedia frameworks. It automatically leaves {{NowCommons}} macro on the original one. If you are complaining to moving images in hidden (bot account), I can change it. -- ChongDae 08:09, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't the history for the file upload need to be copied? --AllyUnion (talk) 00:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
  • It also needs to check which licensing the image has since fair-use is acceptable on the English-wikipedia but not at commons. RJFJR 02:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)