This user may have left Wikipedia. Traveler100 has not edited Wikipedia since 18 January 2020. As a result, any requests made here may not receive a response. If you are seeking assistance, you may need to approach someone else.
I will usually reply here, not on your talk page
Comments will not be edited except to reformat them to a nice thread format if it looks untidy
Obvious spam will be deleted
Typo fixing?
Not that it makes much difference, but what's the point of making fixes changes like this: [1]? I know either way works the same, but still. Ks0stm(T•C•G•E)18:52, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is just the first step in a number of runs through a list of orphaned article. First stage is to identify which articles do not currently belong to projects. Easiest way to do this is set all to syntax {{WikiProject foo}} so I can easily eliminate them from future runs. --Traveler100 (talk) 20:44, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your creating a link to 21 Aerospace Control & Warning Squadron on the Canadian Forces Base North Bay page, but for your information you should not have changed the ampersand to "and" in the squadron's title. Even in its abbreviation, the squadron is 21 AC&W Sqn. I don't know (yet) who created the squadron's Wikipedia page, but the given military designation is wrong and should employ the ampersand.
Your adjustment to the Canadian Forces Base North Bay page has been amended, but the link retained. Thought you deserved to know the reason for the change to your contribution. I shall be amending the 21 Squadron page shortly to the correct designation.
Captain Doug Newman, Canadian Forces Base North Bay
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Bali Aga, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages Kintamani and Madurese (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
To find pages in a category with no talk page, fire up your illegal version of AWB, make the list of pages in the category, convert (rt click the list and select the option) to talk pages. Now run "preparse" mode with all changes turned off, logging off, and "skip if exists" turned on. You will end up with a list of non-existent talk pages. You can use this or convert back to subject pages. RichFarmbrough, 23:56, 1 November 2012 (UTC).[reply]
I did work that method out after a while. Also could use for identifying pages not belonging to a WikiProject can be done in the same non-edit run of AWB. BTW - why do you say my AWB is an illegal version?
This method is fine if I am the only one working on this (which looks like I am at the moment) but it creates a static list that does not get updated unless someone proactivly does something. The best method would be an interactive tool that lists when someone asks like the Catscan or image existence tools. The second best would be to utilize an existing template. The second option was why I was asking about updating categories. I can get a template to check if a page exists, do you know if there is a template function to show the existence of a key word?--Traveler100 (talk) 07:51, 2 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's a joke. I am "banned" from using AWB by my dear friends at ArbCom.
A key word on a page? No, though this will likley change with Lua.
I think there may have been a confusion about Kettle Falls. It looks like the image you added is from Kettle Falls in Sturgeon River Provincial Park. The Kettle Falls on the linked page is(was) on the Columbia River in Washington state, USA. There really is no current image of the falls, as they were flooded behind Grand Coulee Dam in 1942.
Regarding these edits, you are entirely confused. First of all, AnomieBOT's OrphanReferenceFixer task has absolutely nothing to do with {{orphan}}, it has to do with fixing big red errors caused when someone accidentally deletes a reference from an article that was being used in multiple places.
Second, AnomieBOT did not add {{orphan}} to those or to any other articles. If you look closely at the diffs you linked, you will see that AnomieBOT only added |date=November 2012 to the tags that were added in the previous edits [2] and [3] both by Boleyn (talk·contribs). This is AnomieBOT's TagDater task. Anomie⚔19:44, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that misunderstanding. There is always something new to learn on Wikipedia. Would it be possible for the bot to check if the tag is valid or not, rather than giving it more credibility? --Traveler100 (talk) 07:04, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The date doesn't give the tag any more credibility, it just makes it categorize correctly. The problem with the bot trying to determine validity is that most tags don't have any machine-determinable objectivity criteria. Anomie⚔13:26, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Corrections of photo request templates
About most of the corrections, one of the problems is that the "Wikipedians in" categories and the actual "Photo requests in" categories aren't harmonized. I want both to display, but sometimes one of the former exists when the latter doesn't, or vice versa. If that is the case, I will create a "Photo requests in" to make up for the new one. If it isn't what I'm talking about, then please show me diffs.
I created that category because the Category:Wikipedians in Occitania category was created back in 2008 (by another person) and I wanted to harmonize it at that category. Even though there is no government administrative body that controls an "Occitania" today, there is a historic region where people speak Occitan WhisperToMe (talk) 13:03, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Now I understand your logic. Yes it would be useful if they matched but I think wikipedians in categories go down to a much finer detail than you would want the photo requests to go to. The point of the photo request categories is not to classify the request but to aid people in fulfilling them. One or two requests in each of a hundred locations per country does not really help. Requests can after all be mapped to Google. Does adding the Wikipedians in to the tag on the talk page help in any way? How often are these people contacted? There is unfortunately no link between Wikipedians in category to photo requests (interesting idea though), although I have started making links in the other direction (win= parameter in the {{howtoreqphoto}} template). --Traveler100 (talk) 15:05, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It might be good to contact a reference desk on the issue. I'm presuming that one contacts the Wikipedian via talk page or Wiki-e-mail but there's no guarantee that the person is still active. In many major cities, honestly I think there aren't enough requests, and if I wanted to I could add more specific requests that I know would help an article - i.e. a location can have requests for welcome signs, town halls, fire departments, schools, police stations, parks, corporate offices, major thoroughfares, etc. For regions with multiple small towns one could tag the towns each until they all had applicable requests. The link idea would be nice also! WhisperToMe (talk) 15:10, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for uploading File:Jellybabies.jpg. I noticed the description page specifies that this media item is being used under a claim of fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails the first non-free content criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media item could be found or created that provides substantially the same information or which could be adequately covered with text alone. If you believe this media item is not replaceable, please:
If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I understand that it's not a mere classification structure. However a lot of the reasons why these categories are underpopulated is because the vast majority of users are not aware that they can do it, not because the category can't naturally support it. In theory a Catalonia category can be full of photo requests; it is a major, influential region of Spain encompassing many areas. If one challenges me "make a list of photo requests for X" I can probably do it
So while I understand you don't want "empty" categories think hard about the scope of the category. If it was a category just for "Nowheresville, Kansas" I can understand why one would feel a concern for an empty category - But "Catalonia" should provide ample support for multiple photo requests.
Thanks for that - and have a very Merry Christmas yourself!
(I'm sorry that I can't sign under my real name of Alice, but I was unjustly and erroneously blocked as a "Sockpuppet" {of whom I'm still not sure of} many years ago!) --118.93.73.30 (talk) alias User:Alice11:47, 24 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of Organizations
I also noticed that Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of actors and filmmakers is unwieldy, with thousands of entries. Someone started making subcategories by country, but there's only a subcategory for India, not for any other countries. The one for India only had two articles in it, but I added a few more. It might be good to have subcategories for other countries, or to get rid of the by-country scheme if it won't get used.
The reasons I wrote to you are that
I'm new and don't know how to change these things
I suspect I may not be allowed to change them
I saw your name mentioned on the talk page for the reqphoto template.
I have create Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of skateboarders. As there is a WikiProject Skateboarding, seams reasonable to have a reqphoto category for the subject. The actors and filmmakers is a little more problematic. Have so far tried to classify notability subject and county of people as separate categories. Some of the Indian ones are ridiculously small and detailed, these categories are to help people find photographs not classify pages (subtle difference). On the other hand I see no other way of sub-dividing this large group, so maybe it is the right solution in this case. --Traveler100 (talk) 07:27, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for making the category and for putting some pages in it. If you decide to reorganize the actors and filmmakers I'd be interested in knowing. —rybec09:19, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Replaceable fair use File:Drag and drop.gif
Thanks for uploading File:Drag and drop.gif. I noticed the description page specifies that this media item is being used under a claim of fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails the first non-free content criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed media item could be found or created that provides substantially the same information or which could be adequately covered with text alone. If you believe this media item is not replaceable, please:
If you have uploaded other non-free media, consider checking that you have specified how these media fully satisfy our non-free content criteria. You can find a list of description pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that even if you follow steps 1 and 2 above, non-free media which could be replaced by freely licensed alternatives will be deleted 2 days after this notification (7 days if uploaded before 13 July 2006), per the non-free content policy. If you have any questions, please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. ViperSnake151 Talk 23:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well yes I see it has been replaced but I do not think by a better image. But go ahead. This is just an example of the sort of thing he discourages people working on this site. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:25, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for uploading File:Handelsblatt-1.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Hi. We really need your opinion on which of these photos would make the best Infobox portrait for the Rick Remender article. Could you please offer your opinion in that discussion? The most recent subsection of that discussion is here, so you can just chime in there if you don't want to read the whole thread. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 17:16, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Notification of automated file description generation
Your upload of File:Angel glacier.jpg or contribution to its description is noted, and thanks (even if belatedly) for your contribution. In order to help make better use of the media, an attempt has been made by an automated process to identify and add certain information to the media's description page.
This notification is placed on your talk page because a bot has identified you either as the uploader of the file, or as a contributor to its metadata. It would be appreciated if you could carefully review the information the bot added. To opt out of these notifications, please follow the instructions here. Thanks! Message delivered by Theo's Little Bot (opt-out)11:55, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject Orphanage is holding a month long Backlog Elimination Drive to de-orphan articles which have orphan tags!
The goal is to eliminate the backlog of orphan articles. There are currently 54441 articles which have orphan tags. The drive is running from April 12, 2014 to May 12, 2014.
Awards will be given out for all editors participating in the drive in the form of barnstars at the end of the drive. To add your name in the participants list click here.
So start de-orphaning articles! Click here to see the list of articles need de-orphaning. Visit Suggestions for how to de-orphan an article to know more!
Why did you delete my adding of that hammas ordered gazans to stay in combat zones during battles?it can give a different perspective of what happened.and here is the proof that hammas gave this order'taken from hammas TV channel:[4]— Preceding unsigned comment added by איש הצל (talk • contribs) 15:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes was getting a little annoyed about some of the procedures starting to pop up and a few over enthusiastic admin. Moved over to working on Wikivoyage. I see no one else can be bothered to clean up the photo requests now that I am not doing it. --Traveler100 (talk) 12:46, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hello everyone! I was just working on responding to a couple bug reports for a script that I worked up as part of a request from this project, and I noticed that only a couple people (who weren't even on this mailing list) are actually using the script. A little history on the script: In March of 2014, Jim Cartar came to my user talk page and said he needed some help in acquiring a script for a backlog drive that he was working on that could keep track of and score deOrphanings for a scored backlog drive. I took that request to the project's talk page (BackLog Drive "DO" (De-Orphaning) script proposal) and there was near unanimous support for this. I thought about the proposal and decided the best way to do it was to build a new script (which is still no where near as comprehensive as Manishearth's OrphanTabs) and build into it a mechanism that will make BLD scoring easy.
What I'm wondering at this point is, since there appears to be only two people using the script, should I continue to develop this script with a goal of using it for scoring BLDs or just debug the existing script and leave it at that. Thanks for any replies or comments.
Hello, I'm wondering if you still need User:Traveler100/sandbox/orphanexamples? If not, would you be willing to tag it for CSD:U1 deletion since it is creating categories with no real orphans in them and disrupting my workflow trying to clear out the att and few orphan categories? Thank you very much! 3gg5amp1e (talk) 12:23, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I just got a little fed up with some of the admin discussions here and move to helping with Wikivoyage instead. Have though about continuing again with sorting out the requests but woudl be a lot of work to clean it up again and when I was doing it there was little input from others. --Traveler100 (talk) 01:21, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:10, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge
You are invited to participate in the 50,000 Challenge, aiming for 50,000 article improvements and creations for articles relating to the United States. This effort began on November 1, 2016 and to reach our goal, we will need editors like you to participate, expand, and create. See more here!
Hello, Traveler100. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
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The BAG Newsletter is now the Bots Newsletter, per discussion. As such, we've subscribed all bot operators to the newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
There were two things here, first the link was to a redirect and the entry on the Wikivoyage page was not a listing so no anchor available. I have updated the pages, but I see I need to improve the documentation on the topic. Will do that in the next week.--Traveler100 (talk) 05:11, 13 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks kindly! Looking forward to understanding how this works...
Here is the 4th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
21 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion).
WP:BOTISSUE has been updated to mention that BAG members can act as neutral mediators in bot-related disputes.
WP:INTERWIKIBOT has been updated to reflect the post-February 2013 practice of putting interwiki links on Wikidata, rather than on Wikipedia (see discussion).
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ArbCom 2017 election voter message
Hello, Traveler100. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Here is the 5th issue of the Bots Newsletter (formerly the BAG Newletter). You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
While there were no large-scale bot-related discussion in the past few months, you can check WP:BOTN and WT:BOTPOL (and their corresponding archives) for smaller issues that came up.
The edit summary limit has been increased to 1000 characters (see T6715). If a bot you operate relied on the old truncation limit (255 characters), please review/update your code, as overly long summaries can be disruptive/annoying. If you want to use extra characters to have more information in your edit summary, please do so intelligently.
You will soon be able to ping users from the edit summary (see T188469). If you wish to use this feature in your bot, please do so intelligently.
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Question for administrator
This request for help from administrators has been answered. If you need more help or have additional questions, please reapply the {{admin help}} template, or contact the responding user(s) directly on their own user talk page.
Here is the 6th issue of the Bots Newsletter. You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
Highlights for this newsletter include:
ARBCOM
Nothing particular important happened. Those who care already know, those who don't know wouldn't care. The curious can dig ARBCOM archives themselves.
BAG
There were no changes in BAG membership since the last Bots Newsletter. Headbomb went from semi-active to active.
In the last 3 months, only 3 BAG members have closed requests - help is needed with the backlog.
{{Automated tools}}, a new template linking to user-activated tools and scripts has been created. It can be used in articles previews, and can be placed on any non-mainspace page/template (e.g. {{Draft article}}) to provide convenient links to editors.
AWB 5.10.0.0 is out, after nearly 20 months without updates. If you run an old version, you will be prompted to install the new version automatically. See the changelog for what's new. Note that the next version will require .NET Framework 4.5. Many thanks to Reedy and the AWB team.
BotWatch, "a listing of editors that have made >2 edits per minute [without] a bot flag", is being developed by SQL (see discussion).
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Why am I blocked?
You gotta help me! I'm blocked on Wikivoyage and I haven't even done anything wrong! Who the heck is LibMod, what is a doppelganger, and what does any of this have to do with me? American Ride (talk) 22:20, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, Traveler100. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.
BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.
We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.
Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
Hello Traveler100! This message is to inform you that due to editing inactivity, your access to AutoWikiBrowser may be temporarily removed. If you do not resume editing within the next week, your username will be removed from the CheckPage. This is purely for routine maintenance and is not indicative of wrongdoing on your part. You may regain access at any time by simply requesting it at WP:PERM/AWB. Thank you! — MusikBot IItalk17:11, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
Our last issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.
Overall
Between September and December 2019, there were 33 BRFAs. Of these, Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied, ? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput: Beeblebroxnoted that the bot for maintaining on-wiki records of UTRS appeals stopped working a while ago. TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. While OAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately, SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill: TAnthonypointed out that reFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creator Zhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021, Curb Safe Charmer had taken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
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Bots Newsletter, January 2022
Bots Newsletter, January 2022
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
BRFA activity by month
Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.
After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.
Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almost two years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.
Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).
January 2020
Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.
A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 2.7 would be removed in coming updates. Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons -- API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to be Toolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, several safeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.
May 2020
We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots
MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located at User:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
On June 7, RexxS blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed: Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. LizRead!Talk!23:20, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. LizRead!Talk!01:25, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. LizRead!Talk!01:49, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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