Battlestar Wiki talk:Bots

Welcome bot

Shane or anyone else who might know: Is there a bot that can welcome new users? That way people are instantly given the information they need to begin editing the wiki properly. Just curious. -- Joe Beaudoin 19:34, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Question: can we have some, er, examples of the kinds of things this bot will be doing?--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 20:02, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Sure. Basically bots can fix common spelling errors, convert HTML to Wiki code -- some can even fix double redirects, if I can recall correctly. Essentially, bots are good at menial tasks so that editors can focus on more important matters. Wikipedia uses many of them (which is where Shane got the idea). -- Joe Beaudoin 20:07, 22 March 2006 (CST)

I would be remiss in my duties if I did not point out that the actions of bots can also be reverted, as bots are seen the same way regular users are seen. -- Joe Beaudoin 20:20, 22 March 2006 (CST)

I am uneasy about AI reliance, for obvious reasons :) --->How do we manually find double redirects?--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 20:09, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Special:DoubleRedirects lists any that the software detects itself. Obviously, we don't need a bot for that issue, but for others it'll come in handy. -- Joe Beaudoin 20:20, 22 March 2006 (CST)

I am sure there is a welcome bot. If not, I can write one. I am just learning the code now. I go by example :) The bot I been working on today is a bot for "Tasks". What it does is go through the "task" catagories and updates a template to what needs to be done. It can be set for any category, and I have made it so that is the only thing it does. Listing items for cleanup, expantion, and etc. I need to test it, joe, I will send you an e-mail on the spefics. Wikipedia:Bots is a good place to look for bots that run Wikipedia. Alot of these are closed source so I have to bug the author except the one I got. Open Source. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 22:32, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Just looked for a welcome bot. Can't do because the bot would have to run every mintue to see if there is a new user. It take up a lot of resources. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 22:34, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Is it possible for the bot to activate only when the newuser log is updated? Or we can have it run every 6 hours. -- Joe Beaudoin 22:44, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Bots run on the cron job. Bcause they run like:

perl botperlfile.pl <COMMAND1> <ARG1> ... <ARG2>

cron jobs can be designed to run every 10 mintues to every week to once a week to the 1st of the month. Anything is possiable. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 22:55, 22 March 2006 (CST)

A)How do I manually look up these "Tasks" (what do I click on)

B)Although I acknowledge, Shane, that Wikipedia itself makes extensive use of Bots, I wish to state for the record now that I universally and unconditionally oppose the use of Bots on BattlestarWiki. Of course, I fully expect you to use them and I recognize that I cannot stop you if you want to Joe so I'm not going to bring this up again, and I'm not starting an arguement; I'm just saying clearly and openly now that I oppose the use of AI here in any form :) --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:36, 22 March 2006 (CST)

this bot reads the categories that are needed. For example, the {{cleanup}} goes into the cleanup catagoriy. The bot won't search each page, that would take forever, but the catagory it self. Then it "creates" an "array" (the group of pages) formats the data, and places it in the correct area in the template. It's very hard to explain in words, but that's the basic of it. I can put the code out there for people to look at it, but don't ask me to explain each line, otherwise it might take a while. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 23:42, 22 March 2006 (CST)

I guess I'll have to wait for a trail run to see what exactly it does. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 00:18, 23 March 2006 (CST)

Policy Of Bots

I wrote it so if we have more bots on here, it be how a bot would get aproved and make sure it does not corrupt the Wiki. Please add a comment for change suggestions during the vote. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 11:17, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

It sounds promising. Can you clarify what you mean by a user having "ownership" of a particular bot? Shouldn't they be a community resource? --April Arcus 11:28, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

Most bots are running on a server that does not hold the Wiki. "Ownership" is basicly responible for it's (bots) actions, where it might be running from. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 11:31, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

Support

1. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 11:17, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

Abstain

Oppose

Bot source

How do you view the source of this "Archive Bot"? I would like to read the code so I can comment on it; it's a relatively complicated task for a bot. (Yes, I know Perl, and I can learn any other language you might have written it in, if it's not Perl.) --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 14:06, 1 August 2006 (CDT)

Still writing it. Based off the same one on Wikipedia. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:11, 1 August 2006 (CDT)

Could you please drop a note here when you finish? --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 14:26, 1 August 2006 (CDT)

Yep. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:41, 1 August 2006 (CDT)

MediaWiki API

For all you bot writers out there: the MediaWiki folks (myself included) are working on an API that makes it easier for bots to communicate with the wiki. The API is also operative at BattlestarWiki, although the version run by MediaWiki is more recent. For instance, to get information about all revisions of this page, here. A list of all supported functions with examples is here. Unfortunately, the API doesn't support any state-changing commands (i.e. move, delete, rollback or edit pages) yet, but I'm working on that. Just so you know. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 12:07, 17 June 2007 (CDT)

Archive bot run frequency

I don't see the need for the bot to be run every hour. It can be run every week and still be effective, since there's not a lot of changes that occur on talk pages, at least right now. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:14, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Also, why are some talk pages set to archive everything after 10 days? That's really very short. It depends on how much is posted (user talk pages might have some more traffic), but 30-60 days is perfectly fine for many cases. That way you can still find some halfway recent things on the main page. --Serenity 10:24, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Shane ToDo

Fix the Python bots. It has been broke for some time now, (At least a month). never relized it till my user talk page was not empty. :) Thanks Shane! Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 22:54, 26 November 2007 (CST)

A year later.. bots are getting back to work. :P Shane (talk) 16:09, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Task Bot sitrep

What's up with the task bot? Any word on when that'll be up and running again? We sorely need it, since a lot of the tasks are well out of date. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 14:37, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I bugged the author. I think we need to come up with our own version. Shane (talk) 20:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Gee... Shocking. LOL -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 21:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

VoteBot demo

I've just run VoteBot on the Hangar Bay for the first time. It's not set up as a cron job yet, and it requires MediaWiki 1.13 or later, but the demo's there anyway at hb:BW:VOTE. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 19:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Query. I think it's doing the math wrong. Most of the clearly do not have any {{Oppose}} votes, yet it counts 1 and one has 8 supports's where it says it has 1. Sooooooooo. :P Shane (talk) 19:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Argh, the instructions contain Support, Oppose, etc., incrementing the counts. I'll remove them. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 20:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

FYI, You noticed that I have already made some minor improvements to the VoteBot.php file. Just so we don't over write each other. Looks like your regex is case-senstive. Time to remove that :P Shane (talk) 20:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Just did that. And yeah, I noticed. It's probably more intuitive that the type1/count1 stuff. There's still some #expr: breakage going on, though. Maybe hb:Template:Roundup is the problem there? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 20:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you forgot to import Template:Pow. Fixed now. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 20:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Also... maybe a good idea so we can keep instructions on the page. Have the bot start to look for "votes" between

<!--VOTE-BOT-START-->

and

<!--VOTE-BOT-END-->

Shane (talk) 21:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

We should just use {{tl|support}} rather than <nowiki>{{support}}</nowiki> for the instructions. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 21:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

rgr. Anyway, I think we got rid of most of the errors. :D Shane (talk) 21:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)