Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Jmax-bot

Jmax-bot

• (BRFA
• Approved BRFAs
• talk
• contribs
• count
• SUL
• logs
• page moves
• block log
• rights log
• flag)

Operator: Jmax-

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Perl, WWW::Mechanize

Function Summary: WP:FA counting

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Daily

Edit rate requested: 1 edit per day

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

Function Details: Currently, it merely counts the number of Featured Articles and places them on User:Jmax-bot/FACounter, as per this request by User:BanyanTree. Perhaps more at a future date, pending any requests.

Discussion

• Quick question - can you explain a little about the whitelist? (And how a newly registered account can't mess it up by making a vandalism at the right moment). Also, if/when it is given the admin flag, I assume it can be retargetted at template:FA number, right? Raul654 03:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

From the example here:

• One question. What happens if an RC patroller reverts the vandalism? Neither UserA nor VandalReverter would be on the whitelist... what would the bot do then? Titoxd^(?!?) 04:30, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
• Another question: non-admin users routinely change the categories or names (to fix redirects) of featured articles: if the last edit is not an admin or a whitelist user, what will the bot do? (Thanks so much for the help, Jmax.) Sandy (Talk) 04:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• The bot does not currently support any whitelist, as I was expecting to encounter issues, such as these, that I had not previously prepare for, and it would have been a waste of resources to design a system without fully understanding the requirements. So, I was thinking that in the event the current revision was not made by a whitelisted user, the bot would check the last 5 or so revisions, and comparing them for differences, and attempting to determine if any vandalism had occurred (perhaps someone could clue me in on a good method of determining vandalism). Of course, this introduces some faults: the implementation of the vandalism detection may not, and probably will not, be perfect; as well as the issue of attempting to craft a perfect whitelist for a community-contributed project. Thoughts? --Jmax- 07:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jmax-, Thanks for all your work on this. Last night, I came up with an example of how the whitelist might work with a 15 minute wait after an edit by an editor not on the whitelist on the FA talk page, which I'll paste here for convenient reference:

11:30: AdminX removes two articles as part of FARC

11:58: UserA blanks the page.

12:00: The bot checks the page, sees that UserA is not on the whitelist and waits

12:02: WhitelistedUserB reverts the vandalism by UserA to the version by AdminX

12:15: 15 minutes having elapsed, the bot checks again. It sees that the last editor was whitelisted and updates the count.

Both Titoxd and Sandy both make good points above in response. Sandy's point can perhaps be addressed by having the bot check for changes to the FA number, rather than any change at all. So for example: (I have commented out my extended examples in the interests of keeping the viewed page to a manageable size. - BanyanTree 15:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC))

My thought is that the vandal spoofing feature is to stop ridiculous changes to the number. An additional feature throttling changes to 5% or less may do that, while the whitelist check and pause greatly reduces the chances of a bad change going through at all. (The FA regulars can state if an update has ever involved a greater proportion than that.) I'm not sure that the effort involved in a technical solution comparing a user who removes an article and one who reverts him, and trying to decide who is correct, is worth the effort. Thoughts on this?

Also, the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles suggested an update closer to every hour. Is that possible? - BanyanTree 13:30, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I have a simple suggestion which should be relatively simple to code (simpler than most of the above suggestions). If we have to choose between having the count slightly stale, or allowing vandals the opportunity to vandalize it, I think it's obvious everyone here would choose the former. Bearing that in mind, I suggest: run the bot once an hour. When it runs, it goes to the page history, and selects the last version by a trusted user, and generates the count based on that version. (Only three users regularly add/remove articles from that page - myself, Marskell, and Joel. For now, that should suffice as a list) This technique is 100% vandalproof and should produce very accurate results. Raul654 16:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll think further on it, but Raul's plan seems to make sense, since the only users who change the number (add or delete FAs per FAC or FARC) are Raul, Joelr31 and Marskell, while other users may make other sorts of changes. A recent (but rare) example: an admin deleted his own featured article, although there had been no FAR. The bot (as proposed) would have allowed that (someone caught it manually). If the count is based on Joelr31, Marskell, and Raul, it will stay accurate. I believe. I track the changes, but if I see a problem, I could alert one of them. Sandy (Talk) 18:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm a little lost having been out of the loop for a while, but as far as I'm understanding this, Raul's suggestion makes sense. The people taking care of the numbers are pretty close knit and careful about things, and I don't think anything will slip by. Marskell 22:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that is what I have gone with. It will search the last 15 revisions for the latest revision by any of Raul654, Marskell, or Joelr31. It will then use that revision as the count. See the updated debug report on User:Jmax-bot/FACounter for an example --Jmax- 09:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks good - nice work! Sandy (Talk) 09:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

(reindent)Yes, that is much simpler (aka better) than what I was thinking. Final-ish questions: (1) can you set it to run hourly and (2) do you foresee any problems with adding Template:FA number as another target, since the page with the update times and list of articles is useful. BanyanTree 15:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It is currently running hourly, and, adding another target is no problem whatsoever. --Jmax- 03:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I also have one final question - what happens if it scans through the past 15 revisions and doesn't find one by myself, Joel, or Marskell? Presumably, it should do nothing in that case. Raul654 21:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

You presume correctly. Perhaps I should go one step further to make it post on the talk page in that case, or some other way to notify you three in that situtation (currently it merely prints an error). --Jmax- 22:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

That seems excessive, as it would mean about 23 talk posts a day given that the total on WP:FA changes at best once in 24 hrs. The update will show up on watchlists? That should be oversight enough. Marskell 03:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I think Jmax means that if of the last 15 revisons to WP:FA, none are by either one of you three, to ask at WT:FA? That would be a good idea. The only thing I would like for it is to store in memory the revision_id of the last edit it processed, so if indeed hell freezes over and no "authorized user" edits the page substantially, it doesn't warn over and over again every hour. Titoxd^(?!?) 07:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)