Talk:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias

"monolithic point of view" - and what does that mean ?

"Monolithic point of view" - Hey Yekrat, what point of view does "New York labon belödanis 18 976 457 (2000)." represent? (vo:New York (tat)). Hillgentleman 00:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand your question. Since it has only been edited by bots, I would guess it represents a robot's point of view. -- Yekrats 04:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The question is clear and without any difficult word. I do not understand what you don't understand. Hillgentleman 04:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

This SmeiraBot user in Volapuk -- while prolific -- is not a very good editor. I worry about her. I think she may be on drugs, or suffering from some psychosis. Sometimes she writes in English, sometimes in Volapuk, and sometimes leaves a mess behind her. She doesn't seem to be very careful, nor creative about her subjects. But she is prolific! -- Yekrats 08:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yekrats, why the irony? What is the use? Look: the point is that 99.5% percent of "her" edits are in Volapuk, not in English; the cases in which "she" copied over texts are being corrected and should disappear in the following months. Surely we shouldn't count your spelling or grammar mistakes in an edit in Esperanto or English as showing that you are "on drugs" or "suffering from some psychosis"? And perhaps they occur in at least 0.5% of your edits? I'm sure your own mistakes shouldn't be used to judge whether or not you are a POV problem or show a bias -- it's your correct contributions, the ones without errors, that could do that. So Hillgentleman's question is relevant, and your irony isn't -- actually it illustrates a POV problem (a bias -- "I don't like SmeiraBot's style, that's why I'm in favor of deleting her work") much more than "New York labon belödanis 18 976 457 (2000)" does. --Smeira 10:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, only part of it is the wrong "style", I really don't like SmeiraBot's style. However, writing in the wrong language is unforgivable! Sure, I have probably made an odd grammatical mistake here and there, but I've never accidentally written an article partially in the wrong language! -- Yekrats 13:18, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

But this is an error, just like your grammar mistakes, Yekrats. SmeiraBot didn't plan "her" comments in English, and she's correcting them, just like you correct your mistakes with new edits as soon as you see them. See, a frequent misspelling when people write in English is "teh" instead of "the". It so happens that "teh" is also the word for "tea" in Indonesian. That doesn't mean you were trying to write Indonesian... There is no "writing in English" going on; there are simply "typing mistakes", which in SmeiraBot's case, due to the specificities of this lady's incessant work, can be several paragraphs long. To her, this is just like "teh" to users like you and me. (Writing in the wrong languages is unforgivable? That sounds like "bonvolu ne krokodili" ;-}) --Smeira 15:47, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yekrat, I do not see the relevance of your second comment, the fourth in all of this thread, to my question. Thanks. Hillgentleman 16:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey Yekrat, How is the concept "bot-point of view" that you invented different from the neutral point of view, to wit "a fair, neutral description of the facts"? Hillgentleman 12:45, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Adding "the other side"

Hi Yekrats! This is a good attempt at presenting the question, and you have clearly succeeded in not singling out one project (vo.wp or lmo.wp). Your proposals are also quite moderate, when compared to the more extreme ones that e.g. Arnomane represents. I just thought I should also add "the other side"... I did it by adding a parallel subsection to the "is the bot-heavy Wikipedia a problem?", because it looked like the right place for it to be. If you think it disturbs something, you can move it somewhere else. --Smeira 00:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I wish you wouldn't do it within the body of my proposal. If you wish to put in in the comments, or make your own proposal, that would be preferred. -- Yekrats 04:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Why not? Surely it is a good thing to have both sides of an argument presented for debate? --HappyDog 06:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I moved it to the comments section, where it belongs. -- Yekrats 08:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, no problem with that. People can still find it. I placed them closer to your points just to make comparisons easier. I hope that wasn't the reason for your outburst of anger in the other discussion? If it was, I'm sorry -- I hadn't meant to hurt your feelings. --Smeira 10:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not angry. If I came across that way, I'm sorry. I have a head cold, and the medication I'm taking is keeping me awake at night. So, I substituted insomnia for a clear head; I'm not sure it was a good trade. Anyway, maybe I was a little intense during my vote switch, but I'm certainly not angry. Yes, Yekrats is actually the one on drugs. ;-o -- Yekrats 13:18, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that was it! Now, what a coincidence -- my little daughter now has a bad cold, and she can't sleep well at night because she can't breathe so well... so she keeps us awake also at night. I hope her cold will disappear after a couple of days... and also your head cold! :-)... --Smeira 15:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we need not just "one" other side, but all the other sides. The main focus, of course, is Yekrats' moderate proposal, but it is only appropriate to give space to more extremist point of views, such as Smeira's and Arnomane's. --Lou Crazy 05:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

to engage people

Hey Yekrat,

"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free content license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Which people do the Wikipedia in Volapuk most need to engage? Hillgentleman 16:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Presumably other Volapukists. -- Yekrats 16:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

There are some already: me, HannesM, Robert. Presumably, like all conlangs, any person anywhere is a "potential Volapukist" -- or Esperantist, or Idist, or Interlinguist for that matter. --Smeira 15:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

• So we have agreed that the Vukiped should attract Volapukist. It would be great if somehow we can find a way to attract them to and help them join the Vukiped. But how is this proposed action relevant? Thinking from the point of view of a Volapukist who knows nothing about wiki, how is this proposed action going to help?
• I have asked Jimbo Wales, upon his comment, the question, that how many wikipedians start out creating a brand new article on their very first edits. Since our target audience (Volapukists who may know little about wiki) are such, I ask the question here again. Please note that question is a fundamental part of our discussion "to engage Volapukists".Hillgentleman 16:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

At Esperanto conferences, we advertise Wikipedia liberally, and we even have a low-cost book of how to edit Wikipedia in our own language. I think it's going to be something you figure out for yourself though. I'm not exactly sure why you're asking me, though. -- Yekrats 22:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Yekrats, That is a very good initiative; speakers of many a language can learn from your experience. You mentioned that the stubs created by Smeirabot is not in accord with the mission to engage people... I want to know what you mean by that. I do not not see how the your proposal supports the wikimedia mission. And if you do not know Volapuk or the Volapuk communities, how do you know that the act of creating these articles are not in some ways engaging people? Hillgentleman 12:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

And I am asking anybody who can answer a very simple statistic question: How many wikimedians started out with creating a brand new article in their very first edits. Hillgentleman 12:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Year "articles"

Many smaller Wikipedias seem to consist mostly (as in, 99%) of year stubs, with only a half dozen actual articles. Should the policy say something about those? :-) - ∅ (∅), 04:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that, as long as they were created with bots, Yekrats' proposal would cover them automatically. If, however, they were created manually, then this proposal wouldn't cover them, and the question would become interesting: should the final policy (if there will be one) consider "low-quality stubs" worthy of being kept just because they were entered manually, or should these stubs be judged just like those created with bots? --Smeira 13:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

Have a look at Providing information when there is little or none.. Thanks, GerardM 14:35, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Succinct statement of what problem this is trying to solve

I think that would be helpful. Further, is this really something that writing a policy proposal on meta would sort, one way or the other? I suspect this will become an essay rather than a policy. ++Lar: t/c 22:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Counting bot-created articles

For reference, we can use a tool like Escaladix's created articles list to determine how many articles were created by bots at a given Wikipedia, feeding it a list of bots from Special:Listusers/bot. (We'd need to take into account any bots without bot flags, of course.) Although the process is time-consuming and probably weighs down the servers a bit, it does make the proposed human:bot article ratio enforceable.

(Proud to be from the Vietnamese Wikipedia where, of the nearly 30,000 articles, only 1.5% were created by bots.)

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 01:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)