Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ReaperBot

ReaperBot

Operator: Reaper Eternal (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 00:45, Monday December 23, 2013 (UTC)

Automatic:

Programming language(s): Java.

Source code available: No, for all the obvious reasons.

Function overview: Revert template vandals and (potentially) block them.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Continuous.

Estimated number of pages affected: Tens of thousands of pages per revert.

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No. We don't want vandals being able to tell the bot to ignore the vandalism.

Adminbot (Yes/No): Yes(?)

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): n/a

Function details: The bot will scan for and remove template vandalism in realtime. It may or may not block said vandal, and it will semiprotect the affected template to prevent future abuse until an admin reviews. (All of the templates are being protected anyway.) It already has a true negative count of at least five thousand template edits, a true positive count of roughly ten, and zero false positives or false negatives.

In terms of libraries, it utilizes several functions from MER-C (talk · contribs)'s Wiki.java with my bug fixes. The IRC component of the robot uses the Java-based pIRCbot module to maintain a stable connection, to enable event-based reading, and to allow asynchronous writes. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:45, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This sounds interesting. Do you mind letting me have the source so I can study it? →Σ σ ς. (Sigma) 01:00, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose. The bot's source code is very messy due to multiple rewrites, so it probably is not something you'll want to be studying much. Reaper Eternal (talk) 02:01, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the bot going to be editing "Tens of thousands of pages per revert"?
I still don't believe this is needed, there have been like what, 10 instances of template vandalism in the recent spree? Why can't you write an abusefilter rule for this? Legoktm (talk) 01:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It makes one edit. Said vandalism is transcluded on thousands of pages.

Because I've been trying this since 2011 and it generally didn't work. The abusefilter also generated numerous false positives.

When the vandalism goes live in templates and is not immediately noticed by highly technical editors (or bots), the vandalism commonly remains for over an hour andd gets cached in Google searches. Reaper Eternal (talk) 01:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I've fixed that for you then.

Use whatever regexes or detection methods your bot is using and stick them into a filter? Legoktm (talk) 01:33, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So then the proper solution is to prevent the edit from being made aka abusefilter. Legoktm (talk) 01:41, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Possible concerns of a filter: 1) RE said he wants to protect the templates, 2) filters slows the entirety of Wikipedia down, 3) in case you want to block the users (adminbot), filter can only block for one duration at a time (indef by default) and always hardblocks. Ginsuloft (talk) 01:44, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are elements of the bot's scanner that would be extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to add to the edit filter. It isn't just a basic regex scanner. Reaper Eternal (talk) 01:49, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a pretty intriguing proposal. How would the bot be able to recognize an edit on a template as vandalism? Wouldn't it need to be triggered by an edit filter? If so, wouldn't the bot also need the abusefilter permission? Epicgenius (talk) 18:47, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Huh?