Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found onPhabricator and onMediaWiki.org.

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the eighth issue of the English Wikipedia'sBots Newsletter, your source for all thingsbot. Maintainers disappeared to parts unknown... bots awakening from the slumber of æons... hundreds of thousands of short descriptions... these stories,and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

Ourlast issue was in August 2019, so there's quite a bit of catching up to do. Due to the vast quantity of things that have happened, the next few issues will only cover a few months at a time. This month, we'll go from September 2019 through the end of the year. I won't bore you with further introductions — instead, I'll bore you with a newsletter about bots.

Overall

• Between September and December 2019, there were 33BRFAs. Of these,Y 25 were approved, and 8 were unsuccessful (N2 3 denied,? 3 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

September 2019

• YMonkbot 16,DannyS712 bot 60,Ahechtbot 6,PearBOT 3,Qbugbot 3 ·N2DannyS712 bot 5,PkbwcgsBot 24 ·?DannyS712 bot 61,TheSandBot 4
• TParis goes away, UTRSBot goes kaput:Beeblebroxnoted thatthe bot for maintaining on-wiki records ofUTRS appeals stopped working a while ago.TParis, the semi-retired user who had previously run it, said they were "unlikely to return to actively editing Wikipedia", and the bot had been vanquished by trolls submitting bogus UTRS requests on behalf of real blocked users. WhileOAuth was a potential fix, neither maintainer had time to implement it. TParis offered to access to the UTRS WMFLabs account to any admin identified with the WMF: "I miss you guys a whole lot [...] but I've also moved on with my life. Good luck, let me know how I can help". Ultimately,SQL ended up in charge. Some progress was made, and the bot continued to work another couple months — but as of press time, UTRSBot has not edited since November 2019.
• Article-measuring contest resumed: Thelist of Wikipedians by article count, which had lain dead for several years, was triumphantly resurrected byGreenC following abot request.

October 2019

• YOAbot 3,DannyS712 bot 47,Pathbot 2,PearBOT 2,DannyS712 bot 59,DannyS712 bot 62,HasteurBot 14,PearBOT 4,WOSlinkerBot 4,MilHistBot 5
• Curb Safe Charmer adopts reFill:TAnthonypointed out thatreFill 2's bug reports were going unanswered; creatorZhaofeng Li had retired from Wikipedia, and a maintainer was needed. As of June 2021,Curb Safe Charmer hadtaken up the mantle, saying: "Not that I have all the skills needed but better me than nobody! 'Maintainer' might be too strong a term though. Volunteers welcome!"
  

November 2019

• YBHGbot 4,YiFeiBot 2,DannyS712 bot III 64 ·?PearBOT
• Old bots do new tricks:DannyS712 bot III 64 prowled redirects,YiFeiBot 2 archivedGoCE requests, andBHGbot 4 removed links toportals deleted atMfD (until its authorization was revoked in January at operatorBrownHairedGirl'srequest).

December 2019

• YDemonDays64 Bot,DannyS712 bot III 66,Bot1058 6,Monkbot 15,MilHistBot 6,PearBOT 5,DannyS712 bot IV 65 ·N2SportsStatsBot ·Xinbenlv bot,SteveBot 8
• Redirects to be autopatrolled: ARfC took place atWP:NPP, closing with unanimous consensus that newredirects should beautomatically marked as patrolled by bot.DannyS712 wasted no time, and submittedDannyS712 bot III 66 the next day; it passed two days after that.
• 200,000 bios get short descs: Along a similar vein,Bot1058 6 was approved to remove disambiguation pages fromCategory:Monitored short pages and a new bot (DemonDays64 Bot) changed lots ofhttp links tohttps usingJavaScript Wiki Browser. One particularly neat task,PearBOT 5, automatically generatedshort descriptions for more than 200,000 biographies.

In the next issue ofBots Newsletter:
What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

• What happens when two bots want to clerk the same page?
• What happens when an adminbot goes hog wild?
• Will reFill ever get fixed?
• What's up withListeriaBot, anyway?
• Python 3.4 deprecation? Inmy PyWikiBot? (It's more likely than you think!)

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the January 2022Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off...jp×g04:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name fromthis list.)

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found onPhabricator and onMediaWiki.org.

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia'sBots Newsletter, your source for all thingsbot. Vicious bot-on-bot edit warring... superseded tasks... policy proposals... these stories, and more, are brought to you by Wikipedia's most distinguished newsletter about bots.

After a long hiatus between August 2019 and December 2021, there's quite a bit of ground to cover. Due to the vastness, I decided in December to split the coverage up into a few installments that covered six months each. Some people thought this was a good idea, since covering an entire year in a single issue would make it unmanageably large. Others thought this was stupid, since they were getting talk page messages about crap from almost three years ago. Ultimately, the question of whether each issue covers six months or a year is only relevant for a couple more of them, and then the problem will be behind us forever.

Of course, you can also look on the bright side – we are making progress, and this issue will only be about crap from almosttwo years ago. Today we will pick up where we left off in December, and go through the first half of 2020.

Overall
In the first half of 2020, there were 71BRFAs. Of these,Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (withN2 8 denied,? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

January 2020

Yeah, you're not gonna be able to get away with this anymore.

• YST47Bot,Seppi333Bot,Qbugbot 4 ·N2PkbwcgsBot 25,PkbwcgsBot 26
• A newPywikibot release dropped support forPython 3.4, and it was expected that support forPython 2.7 would be removed in coming updates.Toolforge itself planned to drop Python 2 support in 2022.
• Two new bots dropped in January 2020:ST47Bot, the successor toSTBot, andSeppi333Bot, whose task was to perform a weekly update of four "massive" wikitables forWikiProject Molecular Biology.
• Cydebot, anadminbot operated byCyde since 2006, wasblocked after going berserk on categories that hadn't yet beenCfD'd.

February 2020

• YAnomieBOT 78,Cewbot 2,DannyS712 bot 67,DannyS712 bot III 63,PearBOT 6,DemonDays64 Bot 2 ·N2PearBOT
• On February 1, someconcerns were raised aboutListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operatorMagnus Manske (who originally coded thePhase II software|precursor ofMediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarilyblocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
• On February 18,ST47Bot got into atussle withAmalthea (bot), and had to be partially-blocked fromWikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview.

March 2020

• YMajavahBot,SDZeroBot,TheSandBot 6,TheSandBot 7,Bitbotje,FACBot 6,TheSandBot 8,Qbugbot 5,Cewbot 3,SDZeroBot 2,PrimeBOT 31,WikiCleanerBot 12 ·AntiCompositeBot
• In March, a longdiscussion was started atWikipedia talk:Bot policy bySkdb about the troubling trend of bots "expiring" without explanation after their owners became inactive. This can happen for a variety of reasons --API changes break code, hosting providers' software updates break code, hosting accounts lapse, software changes make bots' edits unnecessary, and policy changes make bots' edits unwanted. The most promising solution seemed to beToolforge hosting (although it has some problems of its own, like the occasional necessity of refactoring code).
• Some of the twelve bot tasks approved this month wereTheSandBot 6 (removing blocked users fromCategory:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues), andTheSandBot 7 (removingunblocked users fromCategory:Wikipedians who are indefinitely blocked for promotional user names).SDZeroBot 2 was approved to refine geographic stub tags. New bots approved this month wereMajavahBot (to patrolWP:EFFPR),SDZeroBot (to merge stub tags), andBitbotje (fixing DISPLAYTITLE modifications, DEFAULTSORT errors and broken behavior switches indraftspace).

April 2020

• YTheSandBot 9,BHGbot 5,DannyS712 bot 69,SDZeroBot 3,ST47ProxyBot,WugBot 4,SDZeroBot 4,DatBot 10,WikiCleanerBot 11,WikiCleanerBot 13,WikiCleanerBot 14,AntiCompositeBot 2,Cewbot 4 ·N2DaedanBot 1 ·Creffbot
• Adiscussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started byBarkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and addingnon-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It wasblocked on April 10; the next day it was unblocked, reblocked from article space, reblocked "for specified non-editing actions", unblocked, and indeffed. The next week, severalsafeguards were implemented in its code by Magnus; the bot was allowed to roam free once more on April 18.
• ST47ProxyBot joined the stable in April, after a BRFA started in December was finally completed. As an adminbot, it was authorized to blockIP addresses belonging toopen proxies, publicVPN services, andweb hosts. New tasks approved for existing bots includedBHGbot 5 (diffusing categories),TheSandBot 9 (taking over some tasks from the inactiveRonBot), andWugBot 4 (updating data at{{Interactive COVID-19 maps}}). Also,DatBot 10 was approved to scale down non-freeSVGs — I didn't even know that was a thing.
• Adiscussion atWikipedia talk:Bot policy was started byThryduulf about whetherWP:BOTCOMM should explicitly specify that bot operators must be responsive to concerns raised on English Wikipedia specifically (as opposed toPhabricator,SourceForge,Toolforge, et cetera). Eventually, the policy was amended to itscurrent form:

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable viaunified login, like a talk page atCommons or atItalian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites likePhabricator orGitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromiseanonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

• YMajavahBot 3,DannyS712 bot 70,CitationCleanerBot 5,Dreamy Jazz Bot 4,QEDKbot,William Avery Bot 2,DannyS712 bot 68,PrimeBOT 32,TheSandBot 10,Bot1058 7,BHGbot 6,EaglesBot 2,Cewbot 5,WikiCleanerBot 17 ·N2MDanielsBot,PhuzBot 3,Gedimon ·?PearBOT 7
• MajavahBot 3, an impressively meta bot task, was approved this month for maintaining a list of bots running on the English Wikipedia. The page, located atUser:MajavahBot/Bot status report, is updated every 24 hours; it contains a list of all accounts with the bot flag, as well as their operator, edit count, last activity date, last edit date, last logged action date, user groups and block status.
• Other approvals for this month wereWilliam Avery Bot 2 (processing redirects in{{R from scientific name}}),DannyS712 bot 68 (allowing users to schedule bot reminders for themselves),TheSandBot 10 (removing blocked/locked users fromCategory:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices),Bot1058 7 (updatingWikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests/Permalink),Dreamy Jazz Bot 4 (adding {{WikiProject Biography|living=no}} to talk pages where their associated article is in a year of death category), andQEDKbot (deleting and nominating empty categories).
• General syntax fixing tasks were approved forDannyS712 bot 70,CitationCleanerBot 5,PrimeBOT 32,BHGbot 6,Cewbot 5, andEaglesBot 2, as well asWikiCleanerBot15,16, and17.
• Seven bots who fell belowactivity requirements (with neither the bots nor their operators having any edits or logged actions in two years) had their bot flags removed. They wereNekoBot,Robert SkyBot,DASHBotAV,VoxelBot,JackieBot,ReferenceBot, andCensusBot.
• On May 12,EmausBot wasblocked.

June 2020

• YQEDKbot 2,AnomieBOT 79,WOSlinkerBot 6,Yapperbot 2,Yapperbot,AnomieBOT 80,Dreamy Jazz Bot 5,WikiCleanerBot 18,HasteurBot 15,MusikBot II 4,NoSandboxesHere ·N2RedWarn ·?Seppi333Bot 2
• In July 2017,Headbomb made aproposal that a section of theWikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019,Lua code was written supersedingLegobot's tasks on that page, and operatorLegoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, apartial-block of Legobot for the dashboard was proposed. Some months later, on June 16, Headbomb said: "A full block serves nothing. A partial block solves all current issues [...] Just fucking do it. It's been 3 years now." The next day, however, Legoktm disabled the task, and the dashboard was successfully refactored.
• On June 7,RexxS blockedCitation bot fordisruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, adiscussion on the bots noticeboard was opened, saying "it is a widely-used and useful bot, but it has one of the longest block logs for any recently-operating bot on Wikipedia". While its last BRFA approval was in 2011, its code and functionality had changed dramatically since then, andAntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. MaintainerAManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a propertest suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like aJune 2019 incident in which aLTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
• David Tornheim opened a discussion aboutwhether bots based on closed-source code should be permitted, and proposed that they not. He cited a recent case in which a maintainer had said "I can only suppose that the code that is available on GitHub is not the actual code that was running on [the bot]". Some disagreed:Naypta said that "I like free software as much as the next person, and I strongly believe that bot operators should make their bot code public, but I don't think it should be that they must do so".
• Two new bots had their first BRFAs approved:Yapperbot, to replaceLegobot for handling theFeedback Request Service, andNoSandboxesHere, to remove{{user sandbox}} from articles in draftspace usingCategory:Non-userspace pages using User sandbox.

Conclusion

• What's next for our intrepid band of coders, maintainers and approvers?

• Will Citation bot ever be set free to roam the project?
• What's the deal with all those book links thatInternetArchiveBot is adding to articles?
• Should we keep using Gerrit for MediaWiki?
• What if we had a day for bots to make cosmetic edits?

These questions will be answered — and new questions raised — by the February 2022Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off...jp×g23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name fromthis list.)