Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/NNBot II


 * 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 Symbol delete vote.svg Denied.

NNBot II
Operator: Nn123645 (talk)

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): PHP Hypertext Preprocessor

Function Overview: Enforce the rules of Removal of the Speedy Deletion template as per this bot request.

Edit period(s): Continuous

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

Function Details: This is a request to do three things (this could easily be broken down into 3 BRFAs but I decided to roll it all into one.):

1) Fix the removal of the speedy deletion template by the creator of the page as specified in policy while remaining 1RR complient so as not to edit war. In the event that the article creator removes the template again notify both the article creator and the person who placed the tag on the article.

2) For users who repeatedly remove speedy deletion templates warn them with the  series (or a similar derivative template) and report them to WP:AIV where appropriate, being lax with this to target only users who are obviously abusing the system by repeadly removing templates.

3) For articles that are incorrectly tagged with the wrong speedy template, either due to the article changing since it was placed or  the person who requested deletion making a mistake, either change the template to be accurate or notify the person that placed the speedy deletion template that the article may not meet the speedy deletion criterion.

Tasks added since the BRFA was opened

4) Maintain a noticeboard similar to Suspected Copyright Violations of all articles that have had the speedy deletion template removed by the creator to allow administrators and other users to easily check up on which articles have had the speedy deletion tag removed by the creator.

To alleviate spamming of messages on talk pages I plan to eventually include an onwiki configuration option on how notifications should be delivered.

Discussion
More detail on how #3 will work would be helpful. As for alleviating spamming, possibly for the tagger in case #1; the rest IMO don't need an opt out. Anomie⚔ 02:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I will probably implement control of the spamming via the bots tag, but I was kind of thinking of having on (and/or possibly off) wiki configuration to give maximum control over the types of notifications and way notifications are delivered. For instance you could configure the bot to only give a message every x hours, or only give you certain types of messages, such as if a person reverts the bot. This functionality is mainly for New Page Patrollers who may tag hundreds of pages a day and may (most likely will) not want a bot spamming their talk page every 2 seconds with a notice saying so and so removed some template, I know personally that would drive me NUTS. As far as the warnings, I do not plan to allow users to disable the bot from giving them warnings for removing the tags, as that would defeat the point of task #2. For task number 3 I plan to update obvious types of templates where the community will feel comfortable as discussed on the bot request page. An example would be the No Context and No Content speedy delete templates, obviously criterion such as the notability criterion (CSD A7) would be difficult, if not impossible, to accurately correct. —Nn123645 (talk) 02:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Due to some concerns about edit warring with removal of the templates I am prepared to change the first part of the request to just notifying, rather than fixing (readding both the and  tags to the top of the page) if the community is not comfortable with restoring tags that have been removed by the creator. Another thing that may be considered is just fixing when the user replaces the speedy delete tag with the tag due to a lack of understanding of how the tags work. —Nn123645 (talk) 05:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I question whether there is a need for a bot to edit war in the first place. How often are speedy tags removed by the creator, and what percentage of those times is the article in fact not speediable or in fact not deletable at all?  I sometimes remove bad speedies per IAR / SNOW.  I'm an experienced editor and I don't create speediable articles.  Occasionally they are placed in bad faith, and sometimes tendentiously, but more often the article patroller is just being sloppy.  Another issue is that many inexperienced editors save partly completed new articles, and patrollers follow behind within a few minutes.  I've learned to fend them off with  or  tags but until I did perhaps 15-20% of my articles got a speedy tag.  If this implemented I think the best thing would be to simply notify the tagger when the tags are removed - and it can notify them again if the tag is removed again.  If they're going to volunteer for article patrol they have to be ready to deal with it.  They should decide, not a bot, whether the tag was in error, the user needs a friendly caution, or the user is a problem who needs administrative intervention.  Wikidemon (talk) 06:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * While I don't have statistics on how often this occurs this is mostly a problem with new editors that may not understand either how the interface works or how policy works. User:-Zeus- estimated that this happens 25-30% of the time in his original bot request (see link in function summary). I am a strong beliver of not demolishing articles under construction the bot is not the one which is requesting deletion of the article, ultimatly it is an issue that is up to the person who requested deletion, articler creator, and admin which will decide whether or not to delete the page if the article gets deleted. I plan to be pretty lax with the templating and AIV reporting, only targeting users which are obviously abusing the system by constantly removing templates. --Nn123645 (talk) 17:39, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I was the one who originally requested this, and they do get removed fairly often. However, people seem to be forgetting that removal of the speedy by the creator is against the rules. -Zeus-uc 01:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm happy with this as proposed. The bot should restore the speedy tag once if removed by the creator. Stifle (talk) 14:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * How would it handle users who replace the speedy deletion template with the template? Could it also remove hang-on templates added to the article's talk page? --DFS454 (talk) 15:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The bot will monitor both the RSS and IRC feed (the RSS feed has the diffs of edit in the recent changes feed as you can see here, but it only displays the last 50 edits so I will use the IRC feed to count how many edits have happened since the bot last requested the RSS page and have it redownload the page when it hits say 45 edits so it doesn't miss any edits while the page is downloading) so yes, it would be able to see templates that are removed in the diff in any page. I will be able to code it to ignore certian namespaces, such as User, where speedy deletion templates do not need to be enforced. As far as replacement of the speedy deletion template I will have it readd both  and whichever speedy tag was added to the most current version of the article to prevent content from being removed if the user has added to the article since the tag was removed. --Nn123645 (talk) 15:40, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Enforcing G10 (attack pages) and G12 (blatant copyright infringements) seems to be a good idea in any namespace. -- Amalthea 22:02, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not too sure about the third task. It sounds like it could potentially have false positive issues and should really be the type of thing handled by humans, unless there's a specific case that comes up frequently enough in a way that can be reliably detected automatically. Mr.Z-man 23:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Well I was thinking this would only some of the speedy deletion templates such as A1 and A3 when it obviously no longer meets those criteria. Templates such as the notability ones for articles (A7 and A9) would be almost impossible to accurately detect if the article still meets those. —Nn123645 (talk) 01:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * How can a bot determine context? It can make a guess based on page length, but it wouldn't be a very reliable indicator. Mr.Z-man 02:26, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * There are plenty of other metrics, other than page length, that could be used to determine at nocontext pretty accurately provided you have a high threshold, though in the end you would be guessing. These metrics might include things such as (for the A3 criterion):
 * Does it have nothing but external links?
 * Does it have sections?
 * Does it have sentences? How long are they?
 * Is the text of the article nothing but a repeat or very similar to the title?
 * Does it have categories?
 * Does it have paragraphs? What are their length?
 * How many letters long is the average word? Very high (in excess of 20 characters) would indicate a test page?
 * Does the article appear to be correspondence? Does it began with "Dear (name here),"? Does it follow what an email or letter would look like?
 * Does it have a very high number of templates on the page? What are the templates, are they legitimate templates, or just jiberish/testing?
 * Does it have nothing but images? What percentage of images are on the page?
 * Does it consist solely of a see also section?
 * These are the same types of checks that you would do subconsciously when you look at the article to answer the question "Does this article look like it would fit this CSD criterion?". I was thinking of putting all test checks on a ClueBot type scoring system, where each would be assigned a value and if the value was high enough the bot would remove or notify depending on what the community felt comfortable with or how high the value was. Though I do agree that this task may not be nessacary at all, since in the end the tag will be reviewed by an admin anyway when they decide whether or not to speedy the page. —Nn123645 (talk) 16:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Removal of CSD tags (innocently and not) is reasonably common; I'd say this has been done and reverted on maybe 20% of the pages I speedy, and because of this, the taggers have to watch the pages like a hawk; it seems like an unnecessary burden on them. If the current plans don't work, another thing to consider is that the first link to a subcat at C:CSD is for "contested" speedies; one thing you might do is stick the hidden "contested" cat onto any page that has the speedy tag removed by the creator, so that it will still be in a CSD cat but we don't get an edit war over removing the tag. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 04:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Could you do the same for when an author removs the AFD template? --DFS454 (talk) 10:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I see no reason why not. —Nn123645 (talk) 15:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 1 and 2 will be useful. I'm unsure about 3.  3 may be unnecessary since the admin handling the speedy will tend to easily see if it's speediable under a different criterion, anyway.  For 1: I suggest creating a new noticeboard as an alternative to either editwarring the tag back in or notifying anyone.  Note that WP:SCV is composed only of bot-reports, for example.  You could just list the articles which have had speedy-tags removed by the creator, and admins could patrol that noticeboard in a similar way that they patrol the CSDs.  The noticeboard may be the most convenient way. If you restore the speedy tag, I suggest always placing a hangon tag and also always notifying the creator so that they will know that they need to put a message on the article talk page to explain their rationale; I think that would be the most helpful to the article creator.  If you use a noticeboard, it may be worthwhile to also always invite the article creator to post their rationale on the article talk page. Thanks for contributing a useful bot! ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 17:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I hadn't considered creating a noticeboard, that is an interesting approach to the problem and I see no reason why I couldn't do that. There seems to be support here that it would be okay for the bot to readd the speedy tag, provided the bot follows a 1RR policy; though I will do whatever the community feels comfortable with. As far as task 3 I added it primarily in response to the concerns raised by Kusma in the bot request, and do agree that it is probably unnecessary, though I think I will try to collect some statistics on that before I withdraw it. As far as a hangon tag I plan to do that, though I think I should probably place a derivative template rather than the actual hangon, since the hangon is implied, not actually requested.  --Nn123645 (talk) 18:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As long as you're doing a board, there have been a number of requests concerning CSDs, especially at RFA, to make it easier to figure out how to tag and to make it easier for admins to keep an eye on taggers. A bot-maintained board with all the articles that have speedy tags (including ones where the creator removed the tag) would be fantastic.  For people who want speedy tagging info in real-time, we could get an RSS feed to that bot's contribs.  I see you've posted notices about this bot request various places, which is great, but I think the people who would really like to know about this are the people who have complained about the lack of something like this in RFAs, so I'll also post at WT:RFA, if that's okay. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 19:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Sure, if you can think of another relevant place to post this request please do. I posted it to where I thought was logical, the RFA talk page never crossed my mind as a place where people would be interested. As far as making a noticeboard with a categorized list of all speedys I suppose I could do that if there is a demand for it, but considering its already added to the speedy deletion categories it would seem a bit redundant to me. For those that are interested in tagging articles more quickly I would recommend that they try a user script, such as twinkle, if they have not done so already. Twinkle makes it considerably easier to tag any article for speedy deletion by providing a list of all the speedy categories with radio buttons for each criterion. Clicking a radio button will tag that page for speedy deletion and notify the article creator, though there are computability problems with browsers other than firefox. —Nn123645 (talk) 19:53, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not possible AFAIK to get notification of additions to cats in (something close to) real time, or to filter them. I posted a notice about this discussion at WT:Rfa. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 20:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this bot will be quite useful; I'm especially a fan of it monitoring when article creators remove the speedy deletion tag, I see this happen on a fairly regular basis and I'm sure a ton of "speedy delete"-able articles slip through the cracks this way. I also like the idea of a catch in the event that the speedy delete template is replaced by a hangon template, this also happens regularly. Useight (talk) 20:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good, thanks. the fix hangon function is also useful. -Zeus-uc 01:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I support all four of these tasks, and hope they are approved. It will help to keep things running (more) smoothly. – Quadell (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I wholeheartedly support 1 and 2, but I remain to be convinced about 3. It sounds like there's a lot of room for false positives that could result in clearly unsuitable articles slipping "under the radar".  Lankiveil (speak to me) 09:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC).
 * For tasks 1 and 2, and you are approved to revert and warn both removals of speedy tags and of afd tags. ST47 (talk) 04:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
 * D Is this request still active? Noticed the trial has not been run yet. Q  T C 22:24, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry. Currently have the IRC portion done and am almost done with the diff parser. I have finished the list of speedy deletion templates and would appreciate it if someone could double check it for mispellings, or other errors that I may not have caught. —Nn123645 (talk) 22:27, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also note that the CSD cat page refers people to a log of "abuse filter 29", which notes when the speedy deletion tags are removed by some users: CSD. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 22:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

The templates in the code look fine to me, from a preliminary check. Let us know when your trial is done. – Quadell (talk) 13:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * SD templates that are used by Twinkle and Huggle but are missing from your PHP config are:
 * db-redundantimage (f1)
 * db-noimage (f2)
 * db-imgcopyvio (f9)
 * db-afd (g6)
 * db-blanked (g7)
 * db-r1 (g8)
 * db-notability (a7)
 * db-corp (a7)
 * db-music (a9)
 * db-userreq (u1) (you have uesrreq)
 * Then there's two that have been recently deprecated but might still be in use (previously used by Twinkle):
 * db-c3 (g8)
 * db-catfd (g8)
 * Also, hangon has a couple redirects, some of which I see from time to time (don't know which):
 * holdon
 * hold on
 * hang on
 * Hang On
 * HANGON
 * hang-on
 * Amalthea 14:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Added, thanks for the review Amalthea. :D —Nn123645 (talk) 15:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Any updates? – Quadell (talk) 23:20, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

D – Quadell (talk) 20:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict)Last week was pretty hectic for me, got a virus on my windows comp, spent a few days and many hours trying to remove it, tried installing ubuntu, ended up having massive driver problems, and ended up reformatting and putting windows back on. Everything kind of got moved around in all the reformatting, should be able to run the trial pretty soon here. —Nn123645 (talk) 20:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Dude, sorry to hear about your troubles. Have a soothing cup of the beverage of your choice, take your time, and let us know when you're ready. – Quadell (talk) 21:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Update: I am working on the notices for users, any suggestions in how to word the notices would be appricated :). —Nn123645 (talk) 03:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Why not just use the uw-speedy# series, as you said above? – Quadell (talk) 18:23, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

D Gentle nudge. – Quadell (talk) 14:08, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Currently debugging, I'm about to do a dry run probably by the end of tonight. There were some bugs in my parser that I had to go back and fix. —Nn123645 (talk) 20:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like most of the bugs are on the way to becoming fixed, the parser now correctly works (for the most part), but there are some lingering bugs in the revert code. —Nn123645 (talk) 23:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

D Gentle nudge again. – Quadell (talk) 01:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Dry run has been going okay, getting about 8 removals or so an hour that would be triggered. Still some lingering bugs in the revert code and a few issues to resolve. --Nn123645 (talk) 08:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Nn. A while ago I built a bot to do the same task, without realising this was up (I had the idea a before that, and when I checked then there was nothing). I hope you don't mind that. Anyway, the real reason I'm here is because I've had a few issues with the bot, so some catches you may want to put in are listed at User:SDPatrolBot. I can assure you that if you put these in the amount of times it'll replace an incorrect tag will be greatly reduced (you don't need to put all of them,and some of them aren't catches, but are more like errors, so you can keep those out ;D). Good luck with the bot :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 07:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * So far, I've been very happy with Kingpin's bot. - Dank (push to talk) 12:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

D What's the status on this? – Quadell (talk) 13:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * My grandmother died recently and I haven't been able to work with it too much. The parsing code works but I still have some bugs in the revert code that need to be worked out. --Nn123645 (talk) 20:33, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You may want to consider not reverting edits, and instead re-adding the CSD template, as much of the time, the user is adding content or a hangon tag. So reverting the edit is counterproductive. - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

– This request has been open for almost five months, there is another bot that does this, the trial has not yet been completed, and operator assistance is not readily available. &mdash; madman bum and angel 01:38, 1 August 2009 (UTC)