Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Foxy Loxy

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a unsuccessful request for BAG membership. Please do not modify it.

I'm withdrawing this nomination as, realistically, this is a snow close. Thankyou MZMcBride, Neurolysis and Bjweeks for your remarks, I will take them to heart and perhaps revisit some other time. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 11:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

BAG Nomination: Foxy Loxy

• Foxy Loxy (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Greetings BAG members and all others who have found their way to this page. I am Foxy Loxy, a editor and bot operator on the English Wikipedia. I have been active on Wikipedia for roughly 11 months, 6 months of which I have been running LoxyBot, a bot that updates the pages listed on the {{opentasks}} template.

LoxyBot originally ran off SxWiki, a PHP MediaWiki framework project that User:SQL played a large part in the development of. I made extensive modifications to the framework to help better fit my needs and eventually I forked the framework into PHPediaWiki, which aims to be highly Object-Orientated and extensible (primary development goes on in the subversion repository).

Due to my development on LoxyBot and PHPediaWiki, I have become a proficient PHP programmer (with a beginners regex knowledge) and have utilized my knowledge to create a collection of scripts that have, in the past, helped me improve the quality of Achewood (the scripts processed and output a changed page, which I reviewed and incorporated into the article).

Recently I have tried to bring my knowledge of PHP and bots to bot discussions (both BRFAs and BOTREQs I believe), where I have voiced my objections, opinions and ideas. Particularly, I originally opposed Chris G's AntiAbuseBot (BRFA) due to concerns over its blocking methods, but after reviewing the blocking regexes and discussing the bot with Chris G over IRC, I came to the conclusion that the blocking regexes were not harmful to the project.

I wish to become a BAG member to better apply my knowledge of PHP and WikiBots to the acceptance and rejection of bots, and, once sufficient experience has been gathered, close BRFAs myself. Thankyou for your time in reviewing and discussing my nomination. Happy editing! Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 03:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: I think you need more time and experience with bots. I can expand upon this further if necessary. More broadly, however, I think BAG's current membership needs to be culled. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:32, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
• Tentative oppose - "once sufficient experience has been gathered" sort of put it on a bum note for me, I'd rather the experience was present first. That said, I have doubts in my mind that it really matters so much. — neuro^(talk) 09:36, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• I feel that I should explain my wording there to try and clarify things, when I said "once sufficient experience has been gathered, close BRFAs myself" I meant that if I become a BAG member I'm not just going to jump in start approving and denying straight away, I'd rather, for my first times, determine what I think the consensus is, then check with other BAG members to see if I would be making the right decision in closing the BRFA the way I think. This would allow me to gather the experience of what criteria are involved in a BRFA close (which I don't believe are documented anywhere) and prevent me making mistakes. There is nothing like WP:NAC for BRFAs, so you can not gather any experience closing BRFAs unless your part of the BAG (sort of a Catch-22), and I would not like to close any until I have gained that experience. Foxy Loxy ^Pounce! 10:00, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• Whilst that is all very well and good, you don't need to be a BAG member to check you're on the right lines, I'd rather see that done before not after. As for the comment that "you can not gather any experience closing BRFAs unless your part of the BAG", I don't see how that is true - just because you can't do the actual task itself, doesn't mean you can't get experience in it. — neuro^(talk) 10:08, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose along the same line above. Comments and code reviews are always welcomed from everybody. You say in your statement, "once sufficient experience has been gathered, close BRFAs myself". Until you feel you are at that point there is no point to being on the BAG. BJ^Talk 11:23, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The above BAG membership discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.