Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Dylan620 Bot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

Dylan620 Bot

• (BRFA
• Approved BRFAs
• talk
• contribs
• count
• SUL
• logs
• page moves
• block log
• rights log
• flag)

Operator: Dylan (chat, work, ping, sign)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic, unsupervised.

Programming Language(s): JavaScript

Function Overview: Notifying admins and XfD-goers of redirects of pages being nominated for speedy or normal deletion.

Edit period(s): 24/7, 'round the clock.

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: OK, I have another idea (and if this doesn't go through, I'm withdrawing the request outright). My new function for the bot relates to WP:CSD and WP:XFD. Some admins may view from my deleted contribs that I've been tagging broken redirects for speedy deletion lately. After about 5 minutes, a bot would scan Special:WhatLinksHere for redirects to an article for deletion, and would post about those redirects at the XfD page. See User:Dylan620 Bot/Message/doc for how this would be used. --Dylan620 _{Efforts · Toolbox} 19:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

You'll need to find an operator who is already an admin. Wronkiew (talk) 15:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

What does that mean? --Dylan (chat, work, ping, sign) 15:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Does it mean that I can't operate an adminbot if I'm not an admin? And if so, then why? --Dylan (chat, work, ping, sign) 15:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

That does mean that you can't operate an adminbot. One reason for this is that as an adminbot operator, you will have access to all admin functions. Another is that you have to be able to revert any mistakes the bot makes. Wronkiew (talk) 16:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Dylan, Z-man stopped the bot due to disagreement about those deletions. You'd need to first reestablish consensus that all those pages from CAT:TEMP should be deleted. --Amalthea 17:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

{{BotWithdrawn}} With a request for the bot account to be blocked indefinitely until I can find it a job. --Dylan (chat, work, ping, sign) 17:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

For the record, it wasn't really due to lack of consensus. I believe most people still agreed with the deletions or didn't care; it was primarily a small number of very vocal opposers (probably <5), and I got tired of repeating myself over and over again. Mr.Z-man 17:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

WAIT! There was consensus back in December 2008 at WT:RFA that a tallybot could be used to update RfA and RfB tallies on the RfA and RfB nomination pages. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 152#Bot idea. Maybe this could be the new function, in place of deletion of pages from CAT:TEMP. BTW, Z-man, you're a genius for founding the late CAT:TEMP deletion bot. :) --Dylan (chat, work, ping, sign) 18:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

That's not very strong consensus. If you read the full discussion, you'll see in the comments without bold at the beginning, that many people (including me) were against the idea. Xclamation point 20:21, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I have a new idea. See above. --Dylan620 _{Efforts · Toolbox} 19:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

The new task seems reasonable. Some of the redirects might have content in their page history that we might want to keep. How will you handle those? Wronkiew (talk) 20:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

The bot would handle such redirects by moving the page to its own subpage of User:Dylan620 Bot/HistoricPages. For example, let's just say it had reviewed Main Page as a redirect or an article currently up for deletion, but Main Page had content in its page history that we might want to keep. The bot would move the page to User:Dylan620 Bot/HistoricPages/Main Page. At the exact same time, the bot would create a page called User:Dylan620 Bot/HistoricPages/Main Page/Community review, where the community would review the redirect's past history and see if they wanted to keep its content. If the community wanted to delete the past content, the bot would add it to the main article's deletion page with a note that consensus existed to delete the redirect. If the community wanted to keep the past content, a volunteer editor would be requested to develop the content into a legitimate article.

We have a problem though; I don't know how to program in JavaScript. Maybe an expert bot-op who programs his/her bots in JavaScript could help me? --Dylan620 _{Efforts · Toolbox} 21:34, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

That seems like a really complicated solution. Perhaps you could just mark redirects with non-trivial page history as such in your AfD messages? Which parts of your bot will be written in JavaScript, and which in Java? Wronkiew (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know there was a difference between Java and JavaScript; the whole thing in JavaScript I suppose. And yes, I will take your advice. --Dylan620 _{Efforts · Toolbox} 22:27, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

You have a good idea here, but this page might not be the best place to discuss it. If you want to run with the redirect notification task, you could take it to bot requests. Alternately, you could find someone who can help you write the bot and bring it back here when you have a better idea of how it will work. You might find an advisor in Category:User js. If you want to do a different task on your own, you could look into pywikipedia or AWB, both of which support automated tasks with little or no programming experience required. Wronkiew (talk) 23:09, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I requested an update from Dylan620. Wronkiew (talk) 05:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Dylan620 has indicated that this BRFA can be closed. Wronkiew (talk) 15:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Withdrawn by operator. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.