Requests for comment/Bot policy

The following request for comments is closed. The request was eventually archived as inactive.

Hello, with Wikidata phase 1 live on about four Wikipedias now, and the other Wikipedias expected to get interwiki links from Wikidata around February 27, there may need to be a few changes to the bot policy. I have no idea when there will be implementation for the other sister projects, but with Wikidata around, interwiki bots won't be needed as much (eventually shouldn't be needed at all). As a result, parts of the policy, mainly Bot policy#Global bots and Bot policy#Automatic approval would need updating. Does anyone have any comments? Hazard-SJ ✈ 22:54, 16 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Global bots are currently permitted to perform two tasks (only): maintain interlanguage links and/or fix double-redirects.

maintain interlanguage links

Wikipedias: In my view, after Wikidata will be live on all wikipedias (around February 27, 2013), the global bot policy should be amended so that global bots may only remove interwiki links that are already present in the corresponding wikidata entry and not make any other interwiki changes across wikimedia projects. (Bot activity on wikidata.org itself should be covered by wikidata's local bot policy.) A few months later, when most local interwiki links will have been removed, the global bot policy could perhaps (after a new discussion) be amended again to prohibit interwiki modification by global bots on wikipedias altogether.striked per Xqt's comments below --UV (talk) 15:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Other wikimedia projects: No changes for now.

fix double-redirects: Perhaps we might consider phasing out using global bots for that purpose, as MediaWiki has a built-in functionality to fix double redirects (User:Redirect fixer, currently disabled due to a few problems). After such a phase-out of global bots fixing double redirects, the built-in MediaWiki functionality could be enabled on all projects, except those projects that explicitly opt out of the built-in MediaWiki redirect fixer (and decide to fix double redirects by local bots). But this is just an idea; I have no strong opinion on this point.striked for now. Might be worth discussing this someday but this is not an urgent matter. --UV (talk) 15:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Other: Please add an explicit rule to the global bot policy that inactive global bots (e. g. bots with less than 10 edits altogether in 6 months, not counting the bot's home project) have their bot status revoked. The current practice on this point is not clear: Revoking the bot status of inactive global bots was sometimes granted by stewards and sometimes denied by stewards, see Talk:Bot policy#Inactive global bots should lose their global bot status.

What do you think about these suggestions? --UV (talk) 09:25, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If global bots may complete only these two tasks, and we prohibit two of these, what remains? Your suggestion seems to propose keeping global bots that do nothing and will be automatically deflagged at the end. Is it not easier to end up with global bots directly? Bináris^{tell me} 10:32, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is not what I intended to propose, sorry if my previous post was ambiguous. I have striked parts of my previous post in order to make my position clearer. --UV (talk) 15:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here are my comments as one of the developers. I would not give any proposals to the global bot policy but some hints to the current bot tasks:

interwiki.py: At the moment interwiki maintainence is blocked by the script for sites which have (wiki)data repository transcluded. As per UV interwiki bots will be able to remove interwiki links which are already on the data repository (I am just working on such behaviour). This is not only a task for the near future but could be a general task. Bots can handle local interwiki links, put them to the repository if there is no interwiki conflict with other pages and delete the old link on the source page. I found there are still a lot of local interwiki links especially for new pages which (sh|c)ould be maintained by bots.
redirect.py: I aggree with UV, the redirect fixer could do this job for those sites who want's it. For other sites this could be done by bots. There is a new task for redirect.py which I've tested in the last weeks. It is also be able to fix some broken redirects when the target page was moved without creating the redirect page or while deleting the source page afterwards. I would suggest to allow this behaviour for global bots too. There as another ability in my test environment to solve broken redirects but this is not for automatic mode but is helpful for that issue. I've no idea whether this is good for global bots whereas it is good for trusted bot owners.

@xqt 11:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments! I have now striked parts of my previous post. I agree that handling interwiki links in the manner you described could be a general task. (One might also imagine that adding local interwiki links might be forbidden someday using the abuse filter/edit filter. In this case, bots would not be needed any more. But this is something that should not be discussed now but perhaps in a few months.) --UV (talk) 15:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the section maintain interlanguage links needs to be expanded. What about interwiki links that can´t be added to wikidata becouse of technical limitations? And what about user page interwiki links, which may not be included on wikidata (see d:Wikidata:Requests for comment/Inclusion of non-article pages)?--Snaevar (talk) 18:14, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are there in fact any interwiki links on wikipedias that cannot be added to wikidata because of technical limitations? As to user page interwiki links, many users do not like bots to edit their userpage, and many users prefer just the interwiki link to their home project, not the entire lot of them. Therefore, I would prefer it if global bots do not edit interwikis on user pages. --UV (talk) 19:26, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

None that I'm aware of at the moment. Also, I believe GlobalProfile was being developed for a solution to the user pages issues. Hazard-SJ ✈ 03:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As far as interwiki links that Wikidata is unable to support, see for example the link pl:Biblioteka Ossus#Empirepedia on en:Wookieepedia. Wikidata does not support section links. jcgoble3 (talk) 18:59, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked at bugzilla:45314. Helder 19:36, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Xqt, you may be interested in a very special case: de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Merlissimo#Erroneous_bot_edit. It is similar to what you described above but the new target link in Meta is a soft redir to MediaWiki, so it is a double bottom case. :-) Bináris^{tell me} 21:04, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems as though the date for completion of deployment of Wikidata phase 1 changed to March 6. Hazard-SJ ✈ 04:17, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]