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The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was Approved.

NekoBot

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Operator: Crashdoom (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 21:02, Tuesday May 17, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Automatic Supervised - Will be monitored and fixed ASAP if any problems arrise.

Programming language(s): PHP

Source code available: ClueBot base source, modified.

Function overview: Manage backlog notifications and notices to reported users at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring

Edit period(s): Continuous - 10 minute scanning intervals

Estimated number of pages affected: Currently only Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring would be edited, with a few one-time edits being made on user talk pages.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N/A (Can be modified to be included upon request)

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): No

Function details: The bot will work by regularly checking Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring for new reports and count them as per their result, currently only blank results will count towards a backlog. The bot will also notify the reported users that they have been listed on the noticeboard and inform them of what it means and how to go about replying to/contesting the report.

Discussion

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I don't believe there has been a bot in this specific part of Wikipedia, but understand there is for various other pages monitored by various other bots. Also, no, it hasn't had a request, but it would seem wise to make sure the page is monitored for backlogs and reported users are notified, so that potential mistakes are not made where another involved editor gets away with it, or manages to pin the blame on another without them being able to dispute such. -=- Adam Walker -=- 06:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I left a note on that talk page. If I don't hear back by tomorrow, I'll trial it. MBisanz talk 06:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, once cleared for usage, I'll change the page from the userspace to the WP:AN/EW page, it can be stopped as detailed at User:NekoBot. -=- Adam Walker -=- 19:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial (10 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Response to trial

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Well.. this is a useful bot, but extreme care needs to be taken over its actions because of the nature of the board it is monitoring. For example this morning I noted that it notified Darkstar1st despite the fact that his report had been withdrawn by the submitter about 24 hours ago! The dispute there is somewhat precarious and there is a risk this will just set it all off again! It also notified Sleetman who is already blocked (though this is a lesser issue). Can I suggest the following - the bot checks the header to see whether the report has been resolved before notifying (and doesn't notify if it has been resolved). --Errant (chat!) 10:11, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Trial complete. This was a minor technical glitch in the programming from the switch from a personal userspace to the mainspace, this has since been rectified and the bot will not submit any notices to users with results that are not blank/unfilled. This was the original ideal for the bot, so this problem should not occur again during normal operations. I apologize sincerely for any problems caused by this error. -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:16, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What about notification to blocked users? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎[[User talk:|TALK]] 10:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At the moment, if the result has been changed to reflect the action taken, e.g. (Result: 24 h), the bot will ignore the notification stage and just add the user to it's database to prevent it being re-checked by the bot. If need be, I can attempt to make the bot check for a block before that primary check and also base it's assessment on that too. However, so long as someone updates the report, the bot should not have a problem. The only problem was the current users on the noticeboard where the technical error occured, since the bot scans in 10 minute intervals, it would hopefully pickup users before action is taken against them. -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds fine thanks Adam. FWIW I don't think it is worth worrying too much about checking for blocks... it's impossible to know if the block is related, and that could leave someone un-notified. I just raised it as a discussion point. --Errant (chat!) 10:31, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Althought I'm rather partial to this, the bot's name does not identify its task nor its operator (per BOTPOL "The account's name should identify the operator or bot function."). But then again, I don't really care much.

Why is there "{{Nutshell|title=This notice|For using edits to fight with other editors, you have been reported and may be [[WP:BLOCK|blocked]].}}" added to the notice? Where is the source for the message? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that edits like [1] or [2] do not really serve an encyclopaedic purpose. While you can do test in your userspace, this generally applies to limited edits. Do you need these for some bot task other than the user page message informing about last run time. The message can be configured to be updated once a day or so and then automatically show a notice if no edits no update happened recently. Is it important that it shows the exact time? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:45, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've been mulling over that whole notification in general. Personally it would be nice to see:
  • The bot make a new header on the talk page (it seems to be appending it to the end w/o a new header at this point)
  • Use the normal talk-page style notification rather than the "big red box" (i.e. normal text with a mini image)
  • This is a formal could be tweaked to This is a friendly
My reasoning is that being reported for EW pretty much means your in a dispute, and getting a big red box notice like that might cause more frustration etc. --Errant (chat!) 10:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Taking these on board, the nutshell was requested on the IRC Network the bot reports to, but under consideration of making the notification more friendly, it would be removed and the template changed to reflect a more natural notification. With regards to the time edits, these were originally planned for during testing for debugging purposes and were intended to be removed before full release with replace of User:NekoBot/Log to display the logfile. I can update the bot's template to reflect the changes suggested here to make the notification seem less threatening. -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What template does it use? Is it hard-coded or do you subst: a template other editors could potentially improve/discuss? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:58, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The template it uses is located off of the mainspace at User:NekoBot/3RRAttn but can be moved if required. The template is subst: by the bot upon editing. -=- Adam Walker -=- 11:28, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks brilliant :) Thanks for tweaking things. --Errant (chat!) 18:26, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just tweaking the bot again to try and get the header to work, not sure if it's the bot or the API that doesn't like the bot submitting it. Strange, but I'll hopefully have it working soon. -=- Adam Walker -=- 18:29, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
API shouldn't generally give any trouble for either placing the heading manually via mark-up, or submitting as a new section (as summary). —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:36, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for extended trial (3 days). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:34, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oversight on my behalf, the bot now renders the headers correctly and is now operationan once again, all logging data is reported to irc.bitsjointirc.net #nekoai is stated on it's talk page, and User:NekoBot/Log for any editing changes it makes. -=- Adam Walker -=- 20:58, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Question: Would it be worth adding, and be allowed to add (if possible), an internal protection to prevent users under x edits changing the User:NekoBot/Run page? I don't believe any administrators, or established community users would have less than 80-100 edits. -=- Adam Walker -=- 00:31, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can semi-protect the page; that will limit it to auto-confirmed users (10 edits, 4 days). To be perfectly honest, in this case, I don't think you need a run/don't run page for regular users. --Errant (chat!) 09:09, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The run page was made to make it easier to shutdown/test the bot without it making any edits, it still runs even while User:NekoBot/Run is off, but cannot make any edits. If you could semi-protect it, it would prevent people abusing that, but equally, if a consensus is that it's not needed, then I can remove it. -=- Adam Walker -=- 09:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can the bot link to the relevant section of the AN/EW page? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:36, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can try and get the bot to take the whole header and place it after the hash symbol in the link to AN/EW and see if it works that way, it would make it easier for users to find their report. I need to make a few precautionary checks because of a few outputs as seen at User:NekoBot/Log where malformed reports have caused processing errors, I can run a regex filter to remove certain parts of the formatted username text so it remains correct, even with malformed reports, as well as attempting to setup a split filter for multiple IP/user reports (e.g. User:88.109.19.52 and User:88.109.29.126, as well as User:74.192.46.84, User:74.192.42.102) -=- Adam Walker -=- 11:53, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Update: The bot will not read malformed reports (That do not contain User:), however will still count them towards the backlog, and will link directly to the section on the AN/EW page, but it does require that users stick to the format for the page at the moment: [[User:ReportedUser]] reported by [[User:ReportingUser]] (Result: ) -=- Adam Walker -=- 20:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's perfectly fine. You can tweak and improve it as you go if you want to.
Anyhow, User_talk:John_Foxe#Notification_of_WP:AN.2FEW_report did not work.—  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:20, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am currently looking into this as I got a notice regarding the report being malformed (Missing the result data.)
<&NekoBot> ALERT: [[User:John Foxe]] reported by [[User:Routerone]] is malformed.
, it should now be working:
<&NekoBot> WP:AN/EW#User:John_Foxe_reported_by_User:Routerone_.28Result:_.29
so the bot should now post the templates correctly. -=- Adam Walker -=- 21:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Trial complete. Ending trial after 3 days, taken the changed recommended on-board and updated the links. The bot will begin ignoring any malformed reports to prevent it from causing editing errors (Needs to be in the [[User:ReportedUser]] reported by [[User:ReportingUser]] (Result: ) format until I can compensate for the variation), if permitted, I may attempt to get the bot to place a note on reports it detects as malformed (See below template). I will also work on improving the debug logging on it's IRC channel to report any further issues the bot encounters so I can fix them easily.
  • Malformed Report: Please edit your report to make sure the header is in the format: [[User:ReportedUser]] reported by [[User:ReportingUser]] (Result: ), and that you have removed both <!-- and --> tags from the report template. ~~~~ (False positive? Report it!).
    • Would the bot be able to tell a malformed reported from a deliberately differently formatted one? Or is it really mandatory all reports are the same format? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:19, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • At the moment, it classes any reports that it can't read (out of the format), as malformed since it can't get the required data it needs to submit a notice to the user. Currently, it splits everything around the header tags, then the first User:, I am moving to improve it so listing users (User:Name1, User:Name2) and (User:IP1 and User:Name1 and User:IP2) both work. The links directly to the section on AN/EW appear to be working now. -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:15, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for extended trial (1 week). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Since there aren't a lot of reports and to iron out whatever issues. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:19, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Parsing error: User_talk:Editting_War:_User:Medeis User_talk:Mattyjacky/18.252.5.59. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:34, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, To prevent the first happening, I'll make sure the data is stripped of content before the "User:", as for the latter, it doesn't seem to have parsed it after the second User:, I'll have a look into this -=- Adam Walker -=- 08:39, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, it should now parse /, , and " and " (with the whitespace), as additional users on the reports. Also, there was a little error with double reports not long ago, this should also be fixed, it was because I didn't re-activate the database connection after completing my testing. -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:26, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Trial complete. Once again, completed trial, I have had to rollback some of the recent code, but that appears to be the only error, I am currently looking to re-run the code in a test environment and tweak it until it operates correctly. However, the core bot does function correctly at the moment by submitting notices regarding open AN3 reports, and managing the backlog tag as intended. -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
{{BAGAssistanceNeeded}} -=- Adam Walker -=- 10:26, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for extended trial. Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Sorry, did not notice you posted. Keep the bot running until you are confident it works correctly. A few more edits to see that everything is fixed and it should be fine to approve. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:25, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. Bot seems to be working correctly again, implementing the requested prevention for edit conflicts, I have noticed that if someone saves the page at the same time as the bot tries to retrieve the data, it sometimes returns nothing for the data variable, the double check allows the bot to get the data twice, if the data is more than 29 characters either greater or less than expected, then it will abort editing the page if it needs to and attempt to during the next cycle. If the bot does not need to make a modification, it will bypass this step and continue to reviewing the reports, no further edits to WP:AN3 will be made after that until the next cycle.
I am going to be trying to build a database of report headers and analyze them to hopefully find a better method of detecting and dealing with malformed reports that seem to pop up frequently. (Possibly attempt to setup tagging the reports after testing on userspace and sandbox zones, then request approval for such with BAG at a later date). + Crashdoom Talk // NekoBot OP 09:51, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
{{BAGAssistanceNeeded}} I have attempted to enable tagging on malformed reports to inform the user, it does appear to be working as shown at User:NekoBot/Sandbox, barring the small false-positive that happened while I was editing the script. Would this be an acceptable addition to the bot? + Crashdoom Talk // NekoBot OP 16:31, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please use BAN template when no BAG assistance has been rendered for some time, usually a week or more.

Otherwise edits seem mostly fine, with you taking care of erroneous/multiple posts. Feel free to expand and test any new cases and malformed request logic you encounter.

Approved for extended trial (as long as you need). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. for tagging malformed reports and any editor feedback on that. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Trial complete. The bot appears to be functioning correctly with the current two malformed report templates. If any other tags are required, they can be brought up by any editor on the bot's talk page for addition, testing and approval by BAG. If it's okay with BAG, would it be possible for the decision regarding approval over the next few days? + Crashdoom Talk // NekoBot OP 09:37, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

 Approved. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.
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