TestWiki:Bot approval requests

Examknow (Status: Done)
Examknow (talk) 17:24, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
 * User: Examknow ( talk · contribs · logs )
 * Bot name: EkWikiBot
 * Bot function: Blocks and unblocks users, deletes pages, gets user edit count, and has a logbot function. The bot is controlled from an IRC interface. For more information, please see User:EkWikiBot/Commands.
 * Reason for requesting: EkWikiBot could be a very useful tool for administrators on testwiki. For those wanting to see it in action, the bot currently resides in and can join other channels on request. RhinosF1 has been active in the testing and development of the bot and can attest to its usefulness and security.
 * LGTM, if no one does it before then and there’s no objections, I’ll process it when I sort out the next code release. Happy for this to be inactive-exempt as well. RhinosF1 (talk) 17:32, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Approved for non-test deletions, blocking and unblocking. RhinosF1 (talk) 11:57, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Naleksuh (Status: Done)
Naleksuh (talk) 08:01, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * User: Naleksuh ( talk · contribs · logs )
 * Bot name: Naleksuh BOT
 * Bot function: Clears sandbox, almost all wikis have something that does this. Can also revert other tests as needed.
 * Reason for requesting: Helps with taskgoal
 * In the unflagged run - it was set to clear after one minute. This time can be increased to something like two hours as needed. Naleksuh (talk) 08:01, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That diff looks good to me. Is the source for your bot public/open source at all (just curious)? Given the low activity in this sandbox, I would think something like checking and clearing the sandbox every 12-24 hours would be sufficient (to minimize the number of checks your bot has to make). Assuming the bot's locally hosted on a Raspberry Pi or something? One other question I had, is this bot setup just to check and clear, at a prescribed interval, sandbox, and could it easily be set up to also check any */sandbox* pages in User: namespace, or any pages which use sandbox heading other than sandbox heading itself? Dmehus (talk) 08:31, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Once flagged, it will be running on a cloud windows vps (although is on my local pc for testing currently). It processes recent changes edits within one second of them happening, but starts a timer that requires no edits on the sandbox for one hour at which point its cleared. This could be applied to other pages (preferrably by title, but by contents as well), although I wouldn't want it to reset sandboxes in userspace. Naleksuh (talk) 09:10, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. Do you already have a cloud-based VPS for which you are currently paying? Hopefully it doesn't consume too many resources for your own VPS. This may possibly be a candidate for one of the Miraheze bot servers; I'm not sure. RhinosF1 would be able to say definitively. Good point on the userspace sandbox clearing—users may not want their sandboxes cleared. From my less technical perspective, this all SGTM in terms of the proposed bot's clear use case and how it operates. Dmehus (talk) 09:13, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * MirahezeBots is currently only accepting bots from within users with access to the previous infrastructure or that were hosted on Wikimedia Toolforge as at the service launch. See here for more information. RhinosF1 (talk) 09:21, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Is this to imply that I can't run any bot without using this requirements, or just to use Miraheze servers? Is running such a bot under my own end any problem? Naleksuh (talk) 19:28, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I was replying to Dmehus. I am happy to approve this assuming no one raises concerns. RhinosF1 (talk) 21:00, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Approved. RhinosF1 (talk) 12:15, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Naleksuh (Status: Open)
Naleksuh (talk) 07:18, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * User: Naleksuh ( talk · contribs · logs )
 * Bot name: Naleksuh BOT
 * Bot function: Clears additional testing pages and not just Sandbox
 * Reason for requesting: New page Testing pages. Sorry if this was covered in the original request, but wanted to re-request just to besure :)
 * You were right to make a new bot request as I think the original approval only covered the Sandbox and possibly other community sandboxes as may be created as well. Looking over your request, it's not clear to me how this bot would operate and to what revision(s) it would clear any testing? Moreover, changes, even small changes, can be made to the testing pages and so reversion to a set, earlier revision would be undesirable in this case. Without knowing (a) the specifics and (b) how your bot would take into account changes to the testing pages, so that it doesn't revert to an earlier revision, I can't really offer further comment. Can you provide further details on the specific operating parameters and specifications and also how it would take into account good-faith changes to the testing pages? Then there's also the philosophical question of necessity. Public Test Wiki is, absolutely, a place to test the tools, but it also provides a testing environment for human administrators to interact with other editors or perform general mopping left behind by other editors. Often this doesn't require them to interact with other administrators, but it does give them exposure to monitoring Special:RecentChanges and Special:NewPages, among other places, and performing such cleanup. So, those are the comments I have at this point. Dmehus (talk) 22:09, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

What is testing pages are determined by human. Extends the sandbox to other things such as Restoring Deletion test, unblocking User:Example, etc.... Naleksuh (talk) 03:07, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The unblocking of User:Example could potentially be a good trial expansion for your bot, but I'd prefer the interval to be no less than 24 hours. An administrator could be doing various tests that requires one or more test blocks on that user in a few hours. To my mind, it's much less likely that any test blocks should need to continue past 24 hours and the probability that the administrator had forgotten to unblock User:Example increases, markedly, at that interval. Restoring of deletion test is not something that needs to be restored by a bot, in my view. If an administrator had forgotten to undelete that test page, it will get restored by another administrator (perhaps as part of more testing), bureaucrat, or consul quickly enough. In terms of changes to test pages, what I'm talking about is maybe a human administrator notes a spelling mistake or grammatical error on a page and corrects it. Or, maybe they are constructively helping the project and improve our categorization scheme. Thus, without seeing how your bot would determine what updates are good (i.e., will it be using some sort of machine learning/artificial intelligence, or will it be simply reverting to a set stable revision number?), my concern is that a lot of good-faith updates to test pages will be undone. Dmehus (talk) 13:36, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

It's been over a week since I last replied to this bot approval request and, while I provided tentative support to a trial expansion of the unblocking of the Example users, the more I think about it, and from conversations with RhinosF1 on Discord, I'm not even sure that is necessary as it could be done through the MediaWiki software (presumably, via the abuse filter whereby userName is equal to Example, Example2, or Example3 and the users' status has been blocked after a n period of time (where n equals the defined interval). So, for that reason and the above reasons, I'm not in favour of the proposed expansion. Dmehus (talk) 16:12, 28 July 2020 (UTC)