User talk:Tawkerbot2

For information about Tawkerbot2, please read Tawkerbot2's Frequently Asked Questions

Any non civil messages may be sent straight to /dev/null (aka deleted) so please be nice. This includes all caps messages :)

Archives @ User talk:Tawkerbot2/archives

A note re reply times on this page

I am currently undergoing what has turned onto one of the longest sets of questions ever on an Request for adminship - possibly some of your bot questions are there so it might be a good place to check as a lot of Tawkerbot2 related stuff has come up (and I have 6 more days of this, I wonder if I can get 100 questions!) -- Tawker 08:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update, maybe not 100 questions but I'm 4 votes short of WP:100. No nominating the bots unless its April 1st, ok (someone was IM'ing me about it :) -- Tawker 21:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding pages blanked by author

Somebody created an article called "Ben Schwartz" and then blanked it. I've moved it to User talk:Tawkerbot2/Ben Shwartz since it's obviously not a worthy article, but I still wanted Tawker and Josh to take a look at the page history. Notice the bot's edit summary that says:

BOT - rv Jesuschristo (talk) (47571404) to Jesuschristo (talk) (47571104)

In cases like these, the bot should apply the template {{db-author}} onto the blank page instead of reverting and giving a warning. Feel free to delete this crap after understand the concern and add this feature. — Apr. 8, '06 [17:24] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

I noted something similar to this abov, note the db template should only be added if they are the sole author (which i guess is the scenario which creates the above situation.) I guess it might be worth having a slightly modified template to make it clear that it's an automated addition. --pgk^(talk) 17:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Completely valid point. This feature has been added. Thanks Joshsock 18:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New feature

Hey, nice new feature. With my new special administrator glasses, I can see that tawkerbot2 added db-author to an article [1] which an anonymous user blanked, not the author themself. Mak (talk) 19:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion log


    * 14:35, April 8, 2006 Makemi deleted "Touchpants" (content was: '{{db-author}}')

Page history

    * 14:30, April 8, 2006 . . Tawkerbot2 (auto add db-author)
    * 14:30, April 8, 2006 . . 71.225.0.164
    * 14:24, April 8, 2006 . . Fremitus

I deleted it before I realized, but it should have been deleted anyway, so no harm. Mak (talk) 19:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Let me clean this up.... No, this is great. I put in extra logging, and made a small change. I'm hoping if it happens again, I'll get to see it. joshbuddy^talk 20:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I am the one who created "German-Namibians" (from: Deutschnamibier) a few days ago but realised that it is much better to move the original "Germans of Namibia" (including the article history). Cant move though till the history-less dummy is deleted. ~

Mistake

I'm here to inform you that you made a mistake on reverting vandalism. Take a look at this edit. [2] As you can see, I've reverted it. Funnybunny 02:29, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I've corrected this now. Thank you for reporting this. If you see any other like this (after the time of this edit) please let me know. joshbuddy^talk 09:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry

Sorry about what I did to the Bartok disambiguation page. It was an accident. I accidently clicked on save.

Edit

This bot keeps pulling information from SPOOKED: The Ghosts of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

The information I put up is Valid.

Please discontinue.

Thanks.

Jessica Morris

Well, here is the edit history for the page, I don't see Tawkerbot2 in there at all. Might it be possible that you were talking about SPOOKED - in that case I see one edit and you removed all of the content from the page (I see you added a redirect on the second edit) - the total blanking is what triggered the bot. If you have any further questions please give me a shout -- Tawker 06:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bot is detecting a valid problem. User:Harlie8304 has created three copies of a biography for the same person, others have changed some of them to redirects, and the user is reloading the duplicate text. See User Talk:Harlie8304, and check all contributions for that user. Thanks. --John Nagle 06:56, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'm still not 100% sure of what the user is doing but it sounds like the bot is functioning properly, am I correct in this assumption? -- Tawker 07:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neopet Revision

I'm sorry for what happened to the article. Apparently, TBC and I reverted at the same time, and we must've overlapped each other's revision.—GH 01:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See reply on your talk page -- Tawker 04:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bhrigu Samhita

Hi, just wanted to let you know Tawkerbot2 detected vandalism (someone had blanked the page) on the Bhrigu Samhita article. But, it reverted back to another vandalized version. Don't know if there's a good way around this. I reverted to a good version in the meantime. --Laura S 02:33, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See reply on your talk page -- Tawker 04:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the followup. That makes sense. Neat concept for a bot, I'm pretty new here but from what I've seen, us humans are pretty overloaded. --Laura S 13:46, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question & pattern request

I've seen a couple of reverts on my watchlists and have so far seen no mistakes. Good show. :-) I was wondering if this bot also reverts vandalism and test edits to the various sandbox pages. Also, I'd like to be email the patterns for vandalism if possible. I can be emailed in the usual fashion. Thanks, Deathphoenix ʕ 15:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary

Your edit summaries at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/TB2 are pretty useless. I believe in good edit summaries wherever possible, especially for bots (bot edit summaries should be perfect). "Report 111.257.123.38, 6 warnings in last 24 hours" (yes I know this is not an IP address) would be a lot more useful than the meaningless "Wikipedia python library" you currently use. Please consider changing the edit summary when you find some time. Thank you, and happy bot-ing and coding, Kusma (討論) 16:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to support that idea. Or at least use a simple edit summary that makes sense, like the simple "Report possible vandal". Mak (talk) 18:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tawkerbot reverted to test edit

I just thought you'd want to know that while Tawkerbot reverted vandalism here, it only backed one step, leaving the immediately preceding vandal edit in place (and thereby highly likely to be overlooked by the next human reverter also). :-( Bishonen | talk 17:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Stem cell

There is a problem with your bot reverting this article. Funky Monkey 18:00, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I manually fixed it. Tawker 20:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

srsly

won't allow change to this page (the entry srsly)

Umm, it appears to be deleted, I didn't see any behaviour out of the ordinary in the deleted edits either. -- Tawker 01:08, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FIPS Place Codes deletion/ I am not vandalizing pages

I am not vandalizing pages. I've been told that because of their size they don't want them here and that they are inappropriate for an encyclopedia. I created the pages. Since people have said they shouldn't be here, I am marking them for deletion. What a wasted effort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rfc1394 (talk • contribs)

No vandalism in those edits, I just looked and the bots working perfectly. Instead of tagging it for deletion you put in an explicit word along with "I don't care any more *******" - the bot is working perfectly -- Tawker 01:10, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A request

Could you revert these kinds of test edits? [3]

Lotsofissues 11:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

the legitimacy of only "positive" information

I edited the wikipedia entry for Trenton, Ontario and now this Tawkerbot calls it vandalism for some reason? Does the Tawkerbot live in the city of Trenton, Ontario? I do not understand why my entry was pulled. It is factual. Just because it does not comply with a city's tourism board doesn't mean that it is not a fair and true about the city. I deleted nothing of previous entries, just added more truth. If wikipedia is supposed to be a truthful encyclopedia, than surely it must not only comply with the glorified truth, equal to that of a tourist brochure.

See reply on your talk page, though you might want to consider WP:NPOV - Wikipedia isn't exactly a tourist brochure, that seems a little on the side of POV'ism -- Tawker 14:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Faggot (epithet)

I reverted some wholesale vandalism by user Dragonsrevenge to Faggot (epithet), and it was in turn reverted back to the vandalised version by Tawkerbot2. And now, I'll re-revert.Eron 14:39, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, I'll take a look into that, thanks for pointing it out -- Tawker 14:45, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stupid mistake......

Whilst editing "List of catchphrases on the simpsons" I entered "Cowabunga dudes." for Bart Simpson and now I have recieved a stupid warning... Thanks a lot........

Well, one ! really would be enough :) -- Tawker 14:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted instead of moved, my bad!

sorry bout that. Im new to this whole thing and just realized what the move feature does. Tried to change List of Dalhousie Alumni to List of Dalhousie University people. It makes more sense and will meet with conventional naming of other universities. Dozens 16:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on user's page. - TexasAndroid 16:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Concern

I like the idea of automatically cleaning up vandalism, but I'm concerned that the bot approach may reduce the opportunity to make new people feel comfortable with editing. I am not sure what the algorithm is, but some first tries at editing - as we acknowledge with the test templates - are indeed just tests by redeemable newbies. When I revert such things I sometimes personalize the warning message in a way to encourage the editor to continue in a more productive way. It would be difficult for the bot to personalize in this way. An alternative that might take care of this would be to give humans some time to take care of the vandalism first. If, after some period of time (1/2 hour?) it is still there, have the bot do its thing. A complexity for the bot, I know, but worth thinking about? John (Jwy) 16:45, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortuneately, that goal goes counter to one of the active goals of the bot against real vandals. The fact that the vandal's efforts are reverted so quickly is intended to be a deterrent to further vandalism. Also, by reverting so quickly, the bot takes a good bit of the workload off of the human vandalism fighters. Since no human wants to let vandalism stand for 1/2 hour, having the bot wait would just put that work right back on the backs of the humans. Finally, there is already a problem occasionally with the bot when edits come rapidly before the bot gets into the act. If there was a 1/2 hour wait, then reverting many vandalisms might become impossible due to other edits in between. - TexasAndroid 16:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I could have not said it better - the idea of a delay has come up, but tb2 is a major deterrent, with it on the job vand lism has dropped a lot, a delay would seriously impar the deterrent. Better to fix the false positives than put more work on humans. Tawker 18:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hear you. But the 1/2 hour is only a suggested solution to a problem. If the bot could recognize "redeemable vandalism" (note, not a false positive) from the others and leave it alone for a human to handle, that would contribute to two goals: reducing vandalism AND converting a exploratory vandal into a useful contributor. Perhaps delay processing any vandal when you detect a empty user talk page. Or maybe just a carefully worded warning is the simplest solution. In any event, thanks for the good work on a very useful bot. John (Jwy) 19:14, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to help tweak the first message that the bot uses, which would be the one newbie tests would be most likely to get, it's at User:Tawkerbot2/test1. - TexasAndroid 20:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, the half an hour delay wouldn't be a technical challenge. With regards to tb2 blowing away someone's later edit, I believe that problem has been completely solved. I think the carefully worded warning is the best solution. tb2 also has a test4, which could take a much stronger tone. joshbuddy^talk 21:40, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saddam Hussein

Not sure what happened, but I was attempting to revert something someone else apparently reverted second before Radio Kirk talk to me 17:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You had a problem that the bot had in it's early life, and it likely has to do with the popups revert tool you appear to have used. Between the time you saw the vandalism and the time you sent your revert, an admin did a admin revert. Then your revert command came through and reverted the admin, right back to the vandalized version. The bot saw your revert, flagged it as vandalism, and reverted once more. So this is a case of your pop-up tool doing the wrong revert. The bot was 100% correct in reverting you. I would suggest you just delete the bot's warning from your talk page and move on. It wasn't your fault, but the bot acted correctly, so just move on. :) - TexasAndroid 17:42, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Non-causal edits

I've noticed that Tawkerbot2 seems to be non-causal ;-) In the history of, e.g., Ogden the revert is posted before the vandalism edit. Although the current version of the page appears to reflect a proper revert. Probably a problem with the Wiki, but thought I'd mention it. Great bot! MFago 19:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. That is just bizarre. Gotta be a Wiki problem, unless the bot has suddenly gained psychic abilities to revert vandalism before it happens. :) - TexasAndroid 20:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just trying to help

hey, i promise that i am not vandalizing the boards. for example, i just changed the information on the "devil jin" page. the raven link that was there was for the acutal bird raven and not the character. I apologize for any confusion. also, i dont remember editing the clarence thomas page. Caval — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.143.139.36 (talk • contribs)

The user was warned yesterday for this[4] edit, which looks to be fairly straightforward vandalism to me. - TexasAndroid 19:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the user isn't the original vandal and was confused by the messages on their Talk page from yesterday. I left a note for them explaining how IPs work and suggesting an account if they edit often. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Glenn Branca entry

Some of the information in this entry is false. I tried to correct it but I assume that tawkerbot2 didn't like my changes and changed it back to the original. My changes were in fact mostly just deletions of false or misleading material. I am Glenn Branca so I know what I'm talking about. I also received some kind of blocker warning accusing me of "vandalism". I don't know all of your rules but I assure you that I did not vandalize the entry. Thank You, Glenn Branca

I don't see any edits by your username. I should probally point out that editing your own bio isn't a great idea, Jimbo Wales (the founder of the site) did it once and he got well, not good things, for it from the community. Perhaps you could bring up the issue on the articles talk page instead? -- Tawker 02:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering

If you want could you tell me how this works? I am just curious to what it looks for to be considered a vandalism edit? I noticed Tawkerbot on my watch list, when it reversed the edits of a user who changed the year of birth from 1956 to 1926. That was really cool that it could do that. Kyle sb 07:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the exact criteria are something of a secret at this point. We would rather not let the vandals know what the bot is watching for, as that would make it easier for them to avoid the bot. The programmer has shared the criteria with me, and I suspect with several other admins, but in general it's kept under wraps. Sorry. - TexasAndroid 13:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kyle sb, where was that change? Can I please see it? joshbuddy^talk 14:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well now I go back and checked the article I was thinking of the year - 1956 to 1926 was not changed by Tawkerbot. A registered user edited that and I got it mixed up with another page Tawkerbot edited. Thats why i asked what it looked for, because it amazed me it could pick up on that. I wondered if it was just watching that particular IP or if it was manually assisted. Although obviously this bot is going to have problems, I have noticed its doing a good job and countering a very serious problem. And I understand its important not to release the details of how the bot works, so I no longer want to know. Thanks for the reply. Kyle sb 15:07, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What articles does it scan?

Does the bot currently scan all Wiki articles, or just selected ones? If selected, how can we make requests to have other pages added to the list? --cholmes75 18:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I beleive it's not so much scanning the pages, as the changes. There are feeds of all changes to WP, and the bot watches the changes, and checks each one against it's various checks to decide if the edit is vandalism or not. - TexasAndroid 18:48, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But there is a specific watchlist that all edits to the article will be checked. If you need a page watched send me a message. -- Tawker 18:52, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. I'm stumped. What benefit do you gain from having a watchlist of specific articles to watch, when you are already watching all edits from all articles by watching the feed of changes. - TexasAndroid 19:10, 13 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not much really, it was a legacy feature that we never took out, no real harm in having it check them, new users could possibly leave an account for long enough to bypass the "new user" protection then we'd need the watchlist -- Tawker 05:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Edit in the Article Mathrubhumi

HI, I had deleted most part of the article Mathrubhumi as the whole content is copied from the website mathrubhumi.com. It seems to be a copyright violation. Fo this clean up I got a warning message and the page was reverted to the previous version with all copyrighted materials. It seems unfair. I cannot understand why this bot behaves this way. Is this programme created to protect articles that are just copyright infringement?. I wonder !!. Manjithkaini 13:59, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To Tawker. You suggested on the above user's page that he use the copyvio tag. But I thought that the copyvio tag was more for entire articles that were copyvios. If it's just one or two sections that are copyvio, I though that general procedure was just to clear out the offending sections, not to tag the entire article. - TexasAndroid 15:48, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strange edit by Tawkerbot2

This one: [5]. Now reverted to the correct version. GregorB 14:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Joshbuddy? You'll need to take a look at this one. Looks like TB2 picked up a Wiki error message instead of the old version, and reverted to the error message. ^_^;; - TexasAndroid 14:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if wikimedia returns a better HTTP number (better than 200) in these instances. Otherwise, I'm not sure how I could go about fixing this one. joshbuddy^talk 15:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the actual returned content and comparing it against the standard error message could do the trick... GregorB 11:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Friedrich Nietzsche revert

I was editing the Friedrich Nietzsche article using Cyde Weys' WikiRefs to bring it up date with the new reference standards as per Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles and it got reverted. — Blahm 17:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stop this bot from undoing my improvements to the Arizona State University page

Dude, stop this bot from undoing my changes. I spent 10 minutes improving the page and it kept undoing what I was fixing. Turn it off if it's not going to work properly. I just spent another 5 minutes figuring out how to post a message here to tell you how to fix this thing. This is very frustrating.

Sorry about this. Its all fixed now. joshbuddy^talk 18:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted my work

You deleted my work to delete profanity left by another user... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.162.195.221 (talk • contribs)

I think this is in reference to Top-level domain; I returned the page to the appropriate state. An anon blanked the page and left only "fuck u hobo", whereupon the user who wrote to you simply removed the vandalism, but failed to revert the page, leaving an empty article. TawkerBot then reverted the "blanking" to the vandalized state. So, while the bot did return the page to an undesirable form, it did so only in view of the anon's failing to revert (I don't mean to suggest that he/she erred, only that TawkerBot performed as one would hope it would in a blanking situation). Joe 00:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grass mania 2

The reversion of a blanking by the pages only author, other than someone leaving a {{prod}} tag seems to a bot to be perfect vandalism... However it still seems like someone needs a bit of intelligence, which is why I am leaving this message here. Do with the bot what you must! Ans e ll 01:09, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand what you think the bot SHOULD do here? joshbuddy^talk 01:11, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Come to think about it, the page would have lost the CSD tag by the blanking, which would have meant it wouldn't be in the CSD system anymore. Good work BOT! Sorry. I thought that the bot should recognise blankings by pages only authors, but thats a bit intense really. Blankings aren't all that great. Ans e ll 01:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In fact it does (or at least is supposed to) understand those sorts of blankings. But if someone else is in the edit history, it no longer recognizes that sort of blanking as legit. joshbuddy^talk 01:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would have understood the legitimate effort of someone to blank their own page. It is a well designed rule overall. The fact that I think its better to leave it to CSD now has to mean it worked. Ans e ll 02:09, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bug/feature

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but on its automated vandal reporting page, it sometimes repeats itself: see this diff for example: [6]. It looks like this happened when the bot reverted someone for a 5th and 6th time. I don't know if you intended the bot to do that (and I can see why one might want it to) so this is just an fyi. JoshuaZ 04:23, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It was a bit of an unattended feature, essentially the bot is taking what it pumps out to IRC and posts it to AIV, it might be something to fix as the multiple alerts are really redundant (especially during a vandalbot attack) -- Tawker 06:18, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This has been adjusted per Tawker's recommendations. joshbuddy^talk 06:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for experimenting with the page De Stijl on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. A link to the edit I have reverted can be found here: link. If you believe this edit should not have been reverted, please contact me. Strothra 21:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC) Whoops! sorry, didn't look close enough on that one. --Strothra 21:19, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mew

Mew. m:User_talk:Pathoschild#Vandalism. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 22:12, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Eyeshield 21 edit reverted

I attempted to edit the various pages where it says that Hiruma Youichi uses the word "damn" as a prefix to many of the nicknames he gives to people. The correct word is "fucking," according to non-VIZ-mangled canon. The bot must have thought it was a malicious edit, due to the curse word. *laughs*

Vandilism

Dude, I sware I haven't a clue of what you're talking about. I use this site frequently, and wouldn't think of harming it.

A failing pattern?

Some guys were batting around a page titled with a person's name, changing redirects, usually God. At some point when one of them tried to blank the page to erase the previous ha-ha ("#REDIRECT Gay pride") User:Tawkerbot2 reverted the page blanking. I don't know that y'all could have done anything else, but it was probably hilarious to those "contributing editors". Shenme 00:20, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]