Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Kumioko


 * 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 The result of the discussion was Symbol oppose vote.svg Withdrawn by operator.

Kumioko
Operator:

Time filed: 14:50, Thursday December 23, 2010 (UTC)

Automatic or Manually assisted: Manual

Programming language(s): AWB with Regex and a C/Regex module

Source code available: Partly Here, partly in AWB. Can be provided if needed.

Function overview: Talk page fixes. Will submit a seperate request for other changes related to article space separately

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval Has the discussion about some members in the community desiring I submit this as a bot request.

Edit period(s): Continuously but once I get the initial group of articles relating to US tagged it will be much less.

Estimated number of pages affected: I don't know exactly but it will affect several thousand at least (probably more than 50, 000)

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N/A for now

Already has a bot flag :N

Function details: The type of coding used follows the description of the change being made. I also perform these in a certain order. For example, I change the template redirect fixes and remove spaces from Section headers first because it allows me to reduce the code I need for other changes later in the order (but if I am not doing a more significant thing already these don't get chaneged and I skip to the next article): I perform the following as Primary edits. I perform the following edits only if I am making a more significant edit
 * 1) Add WikiProject United States if missing to US related articles. Usually not done if another US related project is present (Done partially with regex)
 * 2) If the assessment is missing from a WPUS tag and certain other projects have an assessment I make the WPUS assessment mirror that (For example if WPShips has B WPUS will reflect B). I only do this for about ten of the more common, active and more reliable projects such as (Wisconsin, NRHP, WPBiography, WPMILHIST and WPLAW). (Done with regex).
 * 3) I remove duplicate blp=yes parameters from the WPBiography banner (Done with Regex)
 * 4) I Move WPBiography to top billing of WikiProjects if living = yes (Done with Regex)
 * 5) I move some Templates around if out of place according to Talk page layout. (Mostly done with regex but some manual find and replace)
 * 6) Image/map/diagram requested goes below banners. (Done with Regex)
 * 7) Article history related items, Skip to talk, Talk header and a few others go above (Done with Regex, some built into AWB now though)
 * 8) If comments appear before Wikiproject banners I move the banners above them (Done with Regex)
 * 9) I remove some deprecated parameters from Wikiproject banners (like nested). I can provide a list of these but it is pretty long. (Some Regex & some standard find and replace)
 * 10) I replace WikiProjectBannerShell1 to WikiProjectBannerShell|1
 * 11) Standard AWB built in talk page related changes
 * 12) I move blp=yes from the bottom of the wikiproject banner shell to the top directly before |1 if it appears at the bottom of the banner (Done with Regex but I think a couple are built into AWB now)
 * 13) I fix some formatting issues with class and importance. For example:
 * 14) I change invalid characters to = after class and importance for +, -, _, [, ], {, }, ) and 0 (+, - and - are the most common)
 * 15) I add the = after class and importance if it is not there (for example I change classstart to class=start
 * 16) I change importance of things other than NA to NA for template, Category, project, redirect, disambigous or book. (Done with regex)
 * 1) Fix redirects for Talk page templates according to logic I wrote using a combination of C# and regex here. This list was accrued based on a list from Rich F, Magioloditis and myself but consolidated into one list for us all to use. I continue to refine it as new templates are created, deleted, changed etc. or as I am notified that changes are needed.
 * 2) I deleted some uncommon and uneeded fields from several WikiProject templates if they are not being used (i.e. = blanks) or if certain ones =no. For example if portal3-link on WPMILHIST is missing or no I delete that empty unneeded parameter. This makes it easier to update in the future, reduces the clutter on the page, is in keeping with the instructions for that WikiProject (they state if the parameter is not needed don't add it) and reduces the amount of space the the page takes for each consecutive historical save.
 * 3) I delete the spaces before and after == in the section headings. Among other things this reduces the code required that I use later
 * 4) I fix some broken bracket syntax (some Regex & some manual find and replace)
 * 5) I fix some broken or irregular HTML formatting (some Regex & some manual find and replace)

Discussion
First I would like to clarify if, when I make a change to the code (especially in the case of minor changes to the redirect list) do I need to come back here and update my BRFA everytime? Same goes for adding new code. If I add new logic for moving other talk page templates (such as DYK or Article history) do I need to come back here and submit another BRFA or is that allowed as it is in keeping with the spirit of moving templates to the proper order in #5 above? --Kumioko (talk) 14:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Minor changes in good faith do not need to be clarified. Bigger changes you can inquire on WT:BRFA first. You won't update this BRFA as it will be archived. It does not look like anything of what you do is controversial, and everything is in good faith and useful. The scope of this BRFA is to approve you for a bot account to do these tasks as long as there is consensus for them. All changes are manual, so what changes you make is at your own discretion. The only thing is that you do not perform changes that do not change the visual output of the page, like removing empty tags, removing header spaces, or something like that. This should not be done for large-scale edits. My initial response is to speedy approve this to answer the actual concern – whether you should run this under a bot account. You can then deal with individual concerns one at a time. For now let's see if anyone objects to you having a bot account, because now your edits will become hidden from many users and will become assumed fully non-controversial. —  HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:49, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the speedy reply. I do have one concern and that is about not being able to remove section header spaces. The way most of my code is written (for the code that deals with sections which for talk pages is about 75 changes) is that I remove the section header spaces initially and then I don't have to account for it later in the code. So not removing them would require me to now go back and update several pieces of coding to account for the spaces. --Kumioko (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

A few comments: Anomie⚔ 17:02, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Bot accounts aren't just for fully-automated edits; you can perform semi-automated and even manual edits from a bot account, as long as they are approved. If the intent here is to get the bot flag for these edits to avoid clogging watchlists and recent changes, you'll want to change this request to be for your bot account rather than your regular account as your regular account shouldn't get the bot flag.
 * I still question the consensus for bypassing some of these non-WikiProject template redirects. It's sad that AWB doesn't let you define a variable with a value like  and then just use the variable in later regular expressions to avoid having to write out and update the whole thing every time.
 * I still question whether there is any consensus for removing spaces from section headings. This is at best useless and at worst highly disruptive to editors who follow discussions on an active talk pages using the diffs. I really don't buy the argument that it saves you having to insert " " into your regular expressions; avoiding a slight inconvenience for bot coders isn't worth annoying human editors.
 * On point one, I believe the intent was that some editors felt that I was doing too many edits too quickly and it should be a bot account. Which I do not think is necessary just for the record. I don't believe anyone really mentioned watchlist clogging as being an issue but I do agree that having a bot flag on a regular account would be inappropriate. On the second item you mentioned, using C it may be possible to do this as a module. Admittedly I am not the greatest programmer so although I can do somethings, doing what you are asking is outside my skill level. I also don't really agree that we should have a dozen variations of a template (on either talk pages or articles). It makes it very confusing when you are looking at it when you have to remember all the variations of 50+ different templates. Its much easier to know that I when I see one thing I know thats what it means. On point 3 Actually it requires me in several places to insert [ ]* before and after an = for section headers. I also don't think its disruptive because remember I am only doing this if I am making another edit. Im not doing this just for the sake of making that change. If doing this edit is disruptive then cleaning up all the redirects and rearranging templates would also be disruptive while being done at the same time because no matter what edit I am making because its still going to show as a diff (unless its on a bot account) and as since I mark most of them as minor based on a request on my talk page, most wouldn't see it anyway because a lot of editros don't watch minor changes either. Its not just a matter of annoyance BTW its also a matter of performance because adding more code slows down the processing time. Althuogh it wouldn't make a big difference on most the bigger the page the longer it takes. --Kumioko (talk) 17:20, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Consider this diff (which is similar to what I look at all the time), and then think what would happen to the diff if some revision in the middle there removed spaces from all the section headers on the entire page. That's what I would consider disruptive. And then you might run into "wars" with other bots that add in those spaces (as was done ). A few extra milliseconds processing time shouldn't make that much of a difference either, there isn't any rush here. Anomie⚔ 17:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I have to say that diff is a rather bad example and rather a dramtization to prove your own point in the matter. Especially When compared to the edits I am actually doing. Here is an example of an extreme one with the changes I usually make: example In this case its clearly evident what I did and as I stated this case is extreme. Most of them only have one or 2 sections, if any at all, so its extremely obvious what was done (hence the ability for me to easily see the diff before hitting save). Here are examples of the ones that are more common to what I am doing. Adding WPUS, fixing the assessment for WPUS and fixing redirects, moving Image requested below banners (these would require more time to review and thus my edit rate would be slower but I could still exceed 1000 a day). In the end this whole situation and this additinonal requirement of me needing a bot request to perform these edits simply because of volume, IMO, is a storm in a teacup and is only an issue because I was spending several hours a day tagging and fixing articles and it is usually obvious to nearly anyone that takes the time to comapare the difference what has been done. This could all be fixed by me spending less time fixing articles and more time creating, supporting projects that I am a member of like GLAM/SI, WPUS and US related projects, etc. Or just learning to speak Greek. I just choose to do this at the moment. Excuse me for my somewhat poor attitude momentarily but I just perceive this all as rather silly and hope its over soon so I can spend less time discussing and more time fixing. The sooner I get the WPUS articles tagged as US scope the sooner I can get to fixing them and creating the new ones for the ones we are missing (like the 50, 000 in NRHP, the 1000+ Medal of Honor recipients, the articles missing for the Smithsonian, Library of Congress and National archives to name a few. I just fear that once I get the bot approval it will be the begginning of an unending drama fest from which I will spend endless hours in unending discussion because 1 editor somewhere on WP doesn't like 1 edit I do in AWB. I truly hope I am wrong though. --Kumioko (talk) 18:18, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not really, it's just the diff of about 24 hours of WP:VPT. I find it much easier to follow the various conversations on talk pages by using the diff since I last visited, rather than trying to look through the page and hopefully spot where someone replied in the middle of a bunch of old comments. Sure, WP:VPT isn't going to need WPUS tagging, and many article talk pages are so slow that yours would be the only edit, but if we get a bunch of bots messing around with header spaces eventually one of them is going to be wanting to do something on a high-traffic page. And besides that, changing header spaces is a completely useless edit that isn't even worth doing as a part of a larger edit (except maybe when you're editing that very header line itself). Just add the 4 characters to your regular expressions. Or go get actual consensus for removing those spaces at WP:VPR.
 * Chances are no one will pay any more mind to the bot than they have to you doing it from your regular account, and chances are more people will ignore the bot. Anomie⚔ 20:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Your definately right about the diff thing. I have found I need to do that on my own talk page because people comment to multiple comments one after the other and I can't tell what was the recent one. Theres no point in taking it to VPR I hardly ever see anything meaningful come out of that because there are always someone who has a problem with something. I still don't agree with you that its an edit not worth doing but if I have to concede on that edit to get this moving that I will let that one go and just rewrite all the code that deals with it and retest all of the edits to make sure that its not going to break anything. Since it deals with moving sections around and things that can cause significant problems it will take me a few days to recode and test. Which means at least a few days of limited AWB editing which is a shame because I have so much I want to try and get done with the project. --Kumioko (talk) 00:41, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The only things I want to make sure happen is that your edit summaries are consistent with what you are doing. They have been more correct lately, but keep an eye on them. I would also request when you are looking at articles, instead of just putting the US WikiProject's tag on it, if it is solely related to one state, that you add the state's WP tag to it instead, since all the state projects are descendants of WP US. --Admrboltz (talk) 19:16, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well as far as the edit summary thing goes I just expanded it a little. I don't really agree with adding the states instead and there are a couple reasons why.
 * Its a lot easier to add one tag that encompasses all than to try and guess at which one or ones it should be.
 * Most of the states are not really active even though articles under them might be being worked on. Only a handful of them are truly active and some of the rest are semi active. So adding it to an inactive state is the same as not adding it at all. Plus my goal is to incorporate some or all of the inactive ones into WPUS in the future. I have already done a couple of the subprojects (Superfunds, US counties and District of Columbia).
 * Its easier to watch one place (such as the case for Article alert bot and others) then trying to watch 50 plus
 * Depending on the circumstance I may go back and add the other tag later but I am first trying to define the scope of US. If someone else wants to take the initiative and start working the individual projects, great. --Kumioko (talk) 20:39, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Please excuse the friendly reminder but are there any other issues that need to be addressed before this can be granted or denied? Its been open for 7 days (plus a couple more as a discussion prior to submission) with no comments since the 25th. I would contend that if anyone had a problem with it they would have let us know by know! Again I would prefer to continue doing these from my main account if at all possible rather than to start doing 90+% of my edits from a different account. If I must I would rather leave this as my bot account create a different one for the remainder of the edits. --Kumioko (talk) 02:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, in reply what's above. If you can't be differentiating when a more specific tag is more appropriate, then maybe some things should be slowed down. We use the most specific subcategories on articles; we should be using the most specific/appropriate banner tags when dealing with a hierarchy of projects that use separate templates. Just my $0.02.  Imzadi  1979   →  03:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you clarify what your talking about please? If I am reading your comment correctly you are saying that if an article is more appropriately placed in Colorado then it should be placed there then United States. I would agree for some topics were the project is Very active such as Wisconsin, US roads and NRHP but most of the projects have minimal activity if any at all so placing a banner for an inactive project would be IMO no better than no tag at all. Additionally, Who is to say that having the United States tag and the Wisconsin tag is a bad thing. They are 2 completely separate projects with different participants. If they both want the tag on that article then they should be allowed. Since most of the projects work almost exclusively on articles in their scope this would allow the article to be covered by multiple projects allowing better coverage of the article. Also, in most cases the articles I am tagging are either being tagged because they fall in the scope of US/Whatever sub project is being added to the WPUS template/project group or it had no tag at all. Additionally, tagging is only one thing I do. I hope this answers your questions/comments but please let me know if I need to explain/clarify further. --Kumioko (talk) 04:20, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Your previous response makes it sound like taking the time to include a state tag is worthless. It is not. By definition though, adding the tag for the Wyoming project places it in the scope of WPUS since the WY project is a subproject of WPUS, as one example.  Imzadi  1979   →  04:32, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Although its true that by virtue of Geography the states fall under the United States, as far as I know the individual US related WikiProjects do not fall under WPUS. In fact it was made a significant issue in recent discussions by yourself and others that to assume so without the desire of the project, would be to unfairly subjugate the project under WPUS. So you can't have it both ways, either they do or they don't/ I am willing to live with either and have going along the course of they are all independent and autonomous to one another unless they agree to being part of WPUS. Such as the cases of the State roads projects/task forces falling under WPUS roads and the addition of Superfunds, DC, US counties and now the Library of Congress to WPUS. Additionally, they are not adding to any of the WPUS quality, importance or topic categories. So, for example, if someone wanted to view the status of the articles under that project, as reported by Article Alert bot for example, they would need to go to each project individually rather than looking at one place, WPUS and either taking action or moving on. --Kumioko (talk) 04:46, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The point isn't about scopes and relationships of project. The query was on adding state tags as well. Your previous comments indicate that you didn't feel it was worthwhile to do. I'm concerned now as before that you have editcountitis and that you've been undertaking this project at speeds and levels of inaccuracy designed to inflate your edit counts. I personally would feel better if you'd transfer these tagging projects to a bot-specific account separate from your own. If taking the time to figure out (based on categories or other data) when to add an appropriate state-specific tag is too much, maybe you should re-evaluate the urgency in tagging everything. There is no deadlines on Wikipedia except the ones you set for yourself. Having said that, I'm unwatchlisting now.  Imzadi  1979   →  05:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you kidding? Scope is a huge part of it because thats how many of the bots work not too mention a variety of other things. It sounds like your trying to make baseless accusations and arguments just for the sake of it. I'm not sure why you took the time to comment if you were then just going to "unwatchlist" it but I will respond to your comment for the other readers of this discussion who are taking the time to read it. First, I could care less about edit count. The fact that I have a lot of edits is meaningless to anything other than that I spend too much time on Wikipedia and that I do a lot of edits. That's it. The notion that I would involve myself in the unnecessary drama of starting up WPUS again, rebuilding it, cleaning up all the abandoned projects, templates, etc. simply for the sake of increasing my edit count is completely absurd. I will admit to doing a lot of edits a lot of fast but there really is no accuracy issue other than a couple of disagreements of my edit summery, which I have addressed. To answer your other comment though, yes I could add the state tags but if they are inactive why should I? also as I stated before most of the state projects don't even work their own articles actively let alone the ones in WPUS's scope. As far as transferring the edits to another account. If my edit rate and inaccuracy are as dubious as you claim I would first suggest providing some examples rather than unproven inuendo and exactly how would moving it to another account fix it? It would in fact make it more difficult. I am getting a little tired of people making issues with doing a lot of edits. If your that jealous over my edit count then do more edits and try and catch me! We can make an enjoyable competition out of it. The notion that someone is doing too many edits is completely absurd. That's like saying an inventor has too many good ideas. Can you imagine it...I'm sorry Mr. Edison your lightbulb is a great idea but you have just done too many inventions, why don't you take a break for a while and come back next month so some of the other inventors can have a turn. Although your right, there is no deadline I am also a little tired of hearing that thrown at me as well. Why put off till tomorrow what I can do today? WP didn't get 3million plus articles by people having the attitude "I'll just do it tomorrow, theres no rush" so although in theory you are correct that there is no rush, if I can do it now, why wait just for the sake of waiting? --Kumioko (talk) 06:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

"Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N/A for now" - Do you plan on being exclusion compliant if you get the bot flag? If no, why? --Admrboltz (talk) 18:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you please explain Exclusion compliant? I'm not sure what you mean by that. --Kumioko (talk) 18:40, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It means following bots. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thats no problem I can comply with that. I will mostly be editing in United States articles anyway and there are only 13 articles and 6 catgories with either the Bots or Nobots templates. Ill add logic to my module and I will preparse those out prior to starting the run. If it is an occasion were I need to make a change I will do it manually and state as such in the edit summery (something like Manually changed X due Bot/Nobot flag. Is that reasonable? --Kumioko (talk) 19:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as bots go, that sounds perfectly fine. Besides, AWB has built-in bots exclusion afaik. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That I didn't know but it makes sense it would be built in. --Kumioko (talk) 19:41, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm confused - are you going to be creating a new account (KumiokoBot?) to contain these edits? – xeno talk 16:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would prefer not too. Since 98% of my edits are done through AWB and are semi-automated edits (meaning there are things I need to check manually because there are occassional problems so I don't feel comfortable setting them all on auto) all it will do is make it more confusing. IMO the bot tag should only be given to an automated task that isn't manually watched by a human. Set it and forget it so to speak. Since most of the edits I will be doing need to be watched for occassional problems I hesitate in adding the "bot" moniker on it. --Kumioko (talk) 17:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * A bot can still be semi-automated; the benefit of using a 'bot account (especially for a task that proposes 50,000+ edits) is that editors who do not wish to see bot-like edits can hide them from their watchlist and recentChanges. – xeno talk 17:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There are benefits both ways to be honest and its hard to say how many edits I will be doing. The users can hide it now by not watching minor edits as well since I mark most of my AWB as minor based on requests from users in the past. I would argue that its just as easy to ignore my name. I would also argue that, if I make an edit that rearranges sections, adds persondata, categories, fixes formatting, etc. it might be something they would want to know just in case I do make a mistake. Thats exactly why I don't think it should be a bot. I don't want it "hidden" so if I make a mistake someone will see it and tell me about it. If everyone is hiding bot edits then how do we know when it makes a mistake? I admit that having a bot account would have beenfits and in that light I had created a bot account (that I can provide if needed) but given the rise in antibot sentiment lately and the problems I witnessed on Rich F's page I have become a little leary about being drawn into an unending barrage of complaints about trivial things and subjecting myself to the drama that having a bot account brings. I would prefer to continue just using AWB and doing things in a semi automated fashion. If the determination is that I must have a bot account though I will oblige. This may be in a combination of ways including transferring a bit of work to the bot or just not using AWB to do edits (or at least not as many). Of course the latter will have a negative affect to the detrmiment of the Pedia and to WikiProject United States and a lot of edits will have to wait (potentially not be done at all), but if the desire of the community is that its better to wait 2 or 3 years to make an edit when I can do it quickly then so be it. This whole business came about because I edit almost continuously 10 or 12 hours a day to some degree and that causes me to frequently exceed 10, 000 edits in a month or even a couple thousand in a day. IMO a lot of the complaints are results of edit envy. A further example of this for instance is my edits today. I have done over 300 edits today and I'm not even trying and I doubt I have had more than a couple minutes were I exceeded 5 edits. By the end of the day, even at a modest 3 edits a minute I will be close to 1000. --Kumioko (talk) 17:44, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think the edit envy/editcountitis (even if either is a factor) is really germane to the discussion. It is simply not fair to ask users to hide minor edits because you don't want to use a bot-flagged account, nor is it fair to compel users who are willing to trust bot edits as innocuous into reviewing botlike edits by omitting the flag. As far as the Rich F. situation, that was more to do with the operator than a manifestation of some kind of 'anti-bot sentiment'. If you really are going to make 50,000 similar edits, it should be done on a bot-flagged account. Any kind of unique one-off tasks can be done on your main account. Compare Special:Contributions/Xenobot (my bot for stuff other than WikiProject tagging) to Special:Contributions/Xenocidic (my AWB-edits account). – xeno talk 17:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well the 50, 000 number is just a guess anyway, it really depends. Even then it would take 4 or 5 months to do. I just threw that out because it asked for a metric and it wasn't particularly clear about the time frame. Depending on how long I saty on wikipedia it could be ten million ever a period of years. IRT to the bot edits being innocuous, I freely admit that some of the edits I am making are not innocuous and shouldn't be done a s a bot, but using AWB's find and replace and Module creation functionality makes it far far easier to fix the problems even when I have to manually check them than to do them individually. I really don't mean to drag this discussion out and be argumentative because as I mentioned if the desire is for me to create a bot account I will, but I would prefer not too. --Kumioko (talk) 18:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I certainly think using a separate bot-flagged account would be desirable for any large series of edits that are substantially similar in nature (e.g. tagging several thousand articles with WPUS banner). – xeno talk 18:09, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Again, except for certain occassions I find its easier to do the edits semi automated because of the sentiment by some that if there is a US related project then we shouldn't put the WPUS tag, eventhough they are separate projects with no current ties other than the same geography. What this will likely cause is for me to have to either create some logic that takes into account the 200+ US related projects (at least 100 common ones) which will be a challenge or to try and pull in all the projects related articles and then exclude them from the list, which is also quite time consuming. The last time I tried to do this it took me almost 6 hours to pull them all in (about 400, 000 articles since many of the articles have more than 1 US related banner) and for AWB to process is extremely difficult and taxing. Althuogh I can identify the US related project and move on very quickly (several a minute at least) I find its easier just to cull the list manually. I do feel that this requirement singles me out because of the number of edits that I do rather than as standard practice and think its rather silly to just use the account for AWB related edits. If this was needed it would be a requirements to setup a separate account when requesting AWB access, which it is not. --Kumioko (talk) 18:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Just because the edits will be done on a bot-flagged account does not mean you have to set it to full auto: you can operate it exactly as you are now. The requirement doesn't "single you out", it is for the benefit of the community (see WP:BOTPOL). I don't understand your resistance to moving this onto an account that people can more easily filter from their watchlist and recent changes. – xeno talk 19:19, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I already said I'd do it if required so theres really no push back, just general discussions. I just envision it being a lot of extra unnecessary and unwanted drama thats all but like I said before if thats what is required then thats what I will do. If I manage to get through it drama free then great if not well see where it goes. I will say that I have no intention in getting into a months long drama fest like Rich did so if it starts turning into that then Ill just hand the bot flag back and the pedia will just have to go on without the thousands of edits I could provide and live with a couple of hundred. Well in addition to the bot run requests I will submit to replace the deluge of daily edits I do. :-) Just wondering but is there a timeline when this thing might be approved or denied. Its been out here for a while now and it seems like we should wrap it up or close it out. --Kumioko (talk) 19:29, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not the bot flag that causes or abates drama, it's the operators' response to concerns raised. – xeno talk 19:33, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

&larr; As far as your question as to when this will be approved/denied - is the WPUS project on board with this? Is there a consensus discussion anywhere? – xeno talk 19:35, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well yes WPUS is on board with it. What kind of discussion are you looking for? I have been tagging articles for a while now and the only push back I get are from people that are not members of the project (comments like why are you tagging articles in the scope of US Roads when the US is implied). Thats why I have chosen, for now at least and based on those comments and discussions (although I disagree with many of them) to only tag articles that do not currently have a US related banner on it or if WikiProject United States is being adopted for use by another project like it did for US counties, Superfunds and District of Columbia. Other than that I there have been many many discussions over time about different aspects of the items I am trying to fix (such as WikiProject banner redirect standardization and all the other problems I detailed above). If you really want me to link to everyone of them I am going to be here for a long long time and some are being done by other bots as well in some form or fashion. --Kumioko (talk) 19:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well yes, I was mostly thinking about the main task. As for the incidentals, I don't think you can demonstrate consensus to muck about with ==spacing around headings==. – xeno talk 19:56, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Any chance there was a discussion regarding just what qualified as US-related so there's a defined scope to the task? For example File:Arnoldsquitieri1.JPG was tagged presumably just because it was created by the FBI, and I was wondering if that was intentional. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Reply to Xeno: If you scroll through Archive 5 of the WPUS talk page you can read about the discussions regarding adding the WPUS banner to pages that fall under other US related projects. There is also a couple of general comments on the talk page including Scope of WikiProject United States but knowone seems to be pushing hard against it, mostly just general inquiries for clarification. Since updating the member list for WPUS there are now over 150 Members to WPUS and my opinion is if they had a problem with it they would comment. In addition to the comments from the WPUS talk page I linked to above there are also several smaller ones relating on my talk page and I have addressed each comment or concern thats brought up (hence the need to not be bot flag hidden but I digress). There are also several in my last archive. Additionally there have been a couple of discussions on the US roads talk page, the talk page for NRHP and a couple of others. Most of the latter dealt with the issue of article scope and not taggin articles already in the scope of a US related project.
 * Reply to VW: There is a general concensus that if an article related to the United States, whats in it including people, buildings, etc then it falls into the scope. I would say the majority are already tagged by a US related project but generally by my calculations there are between 400 and 600, 000 articles in the general scope of US including the 200+ subprojects that relate (but are not directly related to WPUS) US topics (i.e, the state projects, US roads, NRHP, MILHIST/US/ACW/ARW, etc). If you want to see what the projects are see the WikiProject embassy. To answer your next question yes that got tagged because it was done by the FBI. In general if the image has the tag of the organization then it refers to it. Thats not always the case and I have gone back after the fact and removed some and will continue too. In fact thats part of the reason I am tagging them. There are at least (and probably lots more) dozens of images that we don't need, have multiple copies with the same name, have invalid copyrights, needs to be moved to commons, etc. that relate to US. As with articles once I get them added to the project I will go back through and start the culling process. This also allows us to see when an image is submitted for deletion or promotion. Without the US banner Article Alertbot can't tell us if its status is submitted for a change. --Kumioko (talk) 20:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Also to VM: that image was also related to a US mob figure of a very high profile case so I think that should be tagged. --Kumioko (talk) 20:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That was part of my point: obviously you think the file is related, but others mentioned above that some articles should only be tagged for state projects and not for WPUS so I was wondering if anyone besides you at WPUS had an opinion. Were you saying that everything related to any/all of the topics at WikiProject United States/WikiProject embassy is to be tagged? VernoWhitney (talk) 14:12, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually more the opposite. If its on the list of projects in the embassy then, for the most part, it isn't tagged. There are exceptions to this that I manually add occassionally (like I just added Benjamin Franklin because he has a high enough national importance and there is general concensus discussion on the WPUS talk page for national importance things to be tagged. Generally though if it has the banner for one of the states or one of the other US related projects I am not adding the banner. There are alot that already had it and I am not removing them, but I am usually not adding it. Most of the ones I have been adding it to are articles that either don't have a tag at all (ie the talk page is blank) or that do not have a US tag (it might have WPBIography, WPLaw, etc..but not US). I also have one counter to that and that is. Several of the projects (US Roads for example) have made it very clear that they are in no way associated with nor do they want to be associated with WPUS. So who are they to say that WPUS cannot place the WPUS banner on a US related article. WPUS is, as I mentioned before completely separate from the other projects so IMO any project should be able to place their banner on an article. A prime example is the Barack Obama article that has about 20 different banners. Who is going to decide which projects have the right to place their banner and which ones do not? --Kumioko (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry Xeno I didn't see your other comment. If I need to drop the logic to remove the unneeded and useless spaces between the equals and the heading texts then I can live with that. --Kumioko (talk) 12:29, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've stricken it from the list of changes, since it's not something we could approve without consensus. – xeno talk 14:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

BAGAssistanceNeeded Any chance this might be closed out soon? Wether its approved or denied I would like to wrap it up please. --Kumioko (talk) 18:28, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Any word on this yet? --Kumioko (talk) 03:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that before a decision is made here, the decision makers read the project talk page and ANI. If the bot request is granted, it is not clear how it would be used. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 20:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Racepacket, Kumioko has requested this request be withdrawn. See User talk:Kumioko & User talk:Jarry1250. Please stop beating this deadhorse. --Admrboltz (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed. See also . Withdrawn. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 21:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 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.