Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard

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This is a message board for coordinating and discussing bot-related issues on Wikipedia (also including other programs interacting with the mediawiki software). Although its target audience is bot owners, any user is welcome to leave a message or join the discussion here.

This is not the place for requests for bot approvals or requesting that tasks be done by a bot. It is also not the place for general questions about the mediawiki software (such as the use of templates, etc.), which have generally a best chance of being answered at WP:VPT.

Archives
2006 • 2007 • January to September 2008  • after September 2008

Contents 1 Pywikipediabot: cosmetic_changes.py 2 Miszabot 3 Anybot's algae articles 4 WP:BOTNOTNOW 5 API breaking change 6 Date unlinking bot proposal 7 User:TagsBot 8 SoxBot Blocked

[edit] Pywikipediabot: cosmetic_changes.py

Y Done There is a discussion of recommended settings for this module at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Cosmetic changes (Wikitext cleanup options of pywikipediabot) -- User:Docu —Preceding undated comment added 11:57, 4 May 2009 (UTC).

Stuff like this is why you need to put datestamps when making new threads. It won't get automatically archived if no one replies. –xeno^talk 17:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Miszabot

Hey. Miszabot just put 12 threads into 12 archives. Closedmouth has suggested I get an admin to help clean up. Admin or not, does anybody know why Misza did this? --I dream of horses (talk) 16:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Link? Perhaps the maxarchive size was set wrong. –xeno^talk 16:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Anybot's algae articles

I have asked in a couple of places about a bot that has created some 6000 algae articles. Every article I've reviewed has major errors of fact due to the way the bot was programmed to extract data from the data base and the bot owner's lack of understanding of the organisms (this point from discussion on the bot owner's talk page). A discussion about problems with the articles the bot created is at [1]. That issue can be discussed there.

What I would like to know here is why a bot was programmed at all to

1. remove more specific redirects to create less specific ones? [2]

2. delete disambiguation pages to create single redirects instead of adding the redirect to the disambiguation page? [3]

Should a bot be deleting entire disambiguation articles to make room for redirects? Is there a set of rules for bots that covers this and was maybe missed with programming Anybot?

--69.226.103.13 (talk) 21:12, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Full discussion is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Algae articles AnyBot writing nonsense OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 17:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BOTNOTNOW

I drew this up to hopefully save time and effort, whilst reducing the demoralising effect. Any contributions handy, particularly if you went for a bot whilst still inexperienced as a normal editor. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 11:08, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] API breaking change

r52190 changed the API so maxlag errors return with an HTTP status code 503 (where formerly they returned with a 200 and an API error message). If your bot code uses maxlag, properly handles HTTP errors, and doesn't treat the two in the same way, chances are you will need to update your code before the next scap. And if your bot code doesn't do all that, maybe it's time to update it Anomie⚔ 20:19, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

A bit of history: the API originally threw a 503 error for maxlag ([4]) but this was changed because maxlag was considered an API-level error instead of a transport-level error. Now it will apparently change back to a transport level error. In any case, well-written bots still have to check both HTTP error codes (for squid errors) and API error codes (for DB connection errors, which show up as internal API errors). — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:26, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

IMO it should have been left as an API-level error. To detect a maxlag after this change, you have to parse the transport-level error just in case it happens to be maxlag. Anomie⚔ 00:01, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Date unlinking bot proposal

I have started a community RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink dates. Please see Wikipedia:Full-date unlinking bot and comment here. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:25, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't sound too hard to create a bot to follow those instructions. Or do others disagree? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c, rfa)} 16:40, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Technically, it isn't difficult. But it's a delicate task that requires a bot-op who will be unceasingly polite, and who has the trust of the community. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] User:TagsBot

This seems to be an unapproved bot, making edits. I've left my own message on the talk page, as I'm not sure if there's some template for such things. I feel uneasy with a username report (which would be because it has "bot" in it's name while it's not one), so hopefully the owner will read my message. If someone more knowledgeable in such things could take a look at it that would be appreciated. Cheers - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay... just blanked my message, with a personal attack in the edit summary... I'm not feeling so inclined to AGF now. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Nor I. Blocked. –xeno^talk 20:31, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] SoxBot Blocked

I had to block SoxBot it was making a mess of WP:CHU. Q ^{T C} 01:50, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

X!, that's the 6th time the bot has been blocked for messing up chu (including the block log from the old account) --Chris 10:19, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I assume the message was meant to be placed below VisibleChanges request, and their request used incorrect formatting, which could have caused the error? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Bots should be built to fail gracefully and not mess up the entire page. --Chris 11:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)