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Bots Newsletter, January 2022

Bots Newsletter, January 2022

BRFA activity by month

Welcome to the ninth issue of the English Wikipedia's Bots Newsletter, your source for all things bot. 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 superseded tasks...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 almost two 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 71 BRFAs. Of these, Y 59 were approved, and 12 were unsuccessful (with N2 8 denied, ? 2 withdrawn, and 2 expired).

January 2020

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

• Y ST47Bot, Seppi333Bot, Qbugbot 4 · N2 PkbwcgsBot 25, PkbwcgsBot 26
• A new Pywikibot release dropped support for Python 3.4, and it was expected that support for Python 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 to STBot, and Seppi333Bot, whose task was to perform a weekly update of four "massive" wikitables for WikiProject Molecular Biology.
• Cydebot, an adminbot operated by Cyde since 2006, was blocked after going berserk on categories that hadn't yet been CfD'd.

February 2020

Speaking of WikiProject Molecular Biology, Listeria went wild in February

• Y AnomieBOT 78, Cewbot 2, DannyS712 bot 67, DannyS712 bot III 63, PearBOT 6, DemonDays64 Bot 2 · N2 PearBOT
• On February 1, some concerns were raised about ListeriaBot performing "nonsense" edits. Semi-active operator Magnus Manske (who originally coded the Phase II software|precursor of MediaWiki) was pinged. Meanwhile, the bot was temporarily blocked for several hours until the issue was diagnosed and resolved.
• On February 18, ST47Bot got into a tussle with Amalthea (bot), and had to be partially-blocked from Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview.

March 2020

• Y MajavahBot, SDZeroBot, TheSandBot 6, TheSandBot 7, Bitbotje, FACBot 6, TheSandBot 8, Qbugbot 5, Cewbot 3, SDZeroBot 2, PrimeBOT 31, WikiCleanerBot 12 · AntiCompositeBot
• In March, a long discussion was started at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy by Skdb 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 be Toolforge 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 were TheSandBot 6 (removing blocked users from Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues), and TheSandBot 7 (removing unblocked users from Category:Wikipedians who are indefinitely blocked for promotional user names). SDZeroBot 2 was approved to refine geographic stub tags. New bots approved this month were MajavahBot (to patrol WP:EFFPR), SDZeroBot (to merge stub tags), and Bitbotje (fixing DISPLAYTITLE modifications, DEFAULTSORT errors and broken behavior switches in draftspace).

April 2020

Listeria being examined

• Y TheSandBot 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 · N2 DaedanBot 1 · Creffbot
• A discussion on the bot noticeboard, "Re-examination of ListeriaBot", was started by Barkeep49, who pointed out repeated operation outside the scope of its BRFA (i.e. editing pages in mainspace, and adding non-free images to others). Some said it was doing good work, and others said it was operating beyond its remit. It was blocked 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, several safeguards 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 block IP addresses belonging to open proxies, public VPN services, and web hosts. New tasks approved for existing bots included BHGbot 5 (diffusing categories), TheSandBot 9 (taking over some tasks from the inactive RonBot), and WugBot 4 (updating data at {{Interactive COVID-19 maps}}). Also, DatBot 10 was approved to scale down non-free SVGs — I didn't even know that was a thing.
• A discussion at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy was started by Thryduulf about whether WP:BOTCOMM should explicitly specify that bot operators must be responsive to concerns raised on English Wikipedia specifically (as opposed to Phabricator, SourceForge, Toolforge, et cetera). Eventually, the policy was amended to its current form:

Issues and enquiries are typically expected to be handled on the English Wikipedia. Pages reachable via unified login, like a talk page at Commons or at Italian Wikipedia could also be acceptable [...] External sites like Phabricator or GitHub (which require separate registration or do not allow for IP comments) and email (which can compromise anonymity) can supplement on-wiki communication, but do not replace it.

May 2020

We heard you like bots, so we made a bot that reports the status of your bots, so now you can use bots while you use bots

• Y MajavahBot 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 · N2 MDanielsBot, 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 at User: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 were William 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 from Category:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices), Bot1058 7 (updating Wikipedia: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), and QEDKbot (deleting and nominating empty categories).
• General syntax fixing tasks were approved for DannyS712 bot 70, CitationCleanerBot 5, PrimeBOT 32, BHGbot 6, Cewbot 5, and EaglesBot 2, as well as WikiCleanerBot 15, 16, and 17.
• Seven bots who fell below activity requirements (with neither the bots nor their operators having any edits or logged actions in two years) had their bot flags removed. They were NekoBot, Robert SkyBot, DASHBotAV, VoxelBot, JackieBot, ReferenceBot, and CensusBot.
• On May 12, EmausBot was blocked.

June 2020

A partial block averted at the eleventh hour for the robot that makes Legos

• Y QEDKbot 2, AnomieBOT 79, WOSlinkerBot 6, Yapperbot 2, Yapperbot, AnomieBOT 80, Dreamy Jazz Bot 5, WikiCleanerBot 18, HasteurBot 15, MusikBot II 4, NoSandboxesHere · N2 RedWarn · ? Seppi333Bot 2
• In July 2017, Headbomb made a proposal that a section of the Wikipedia:Dashboard be devoted to bots and technical issues. In November 2019, Lua code was written superseding Legobot's tasks on that page, and operator Legoktm was asked to stop them so that the new code could be deployed. After no response to pings, a partial-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 blocked Citation bot for disruptive editing, saying it was "still removing links after request to stop". A couple weeks later, a discussion 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, and AntiCompositeNumber requested that BAG require a new BRFA. Maintainer AManWithNoPlan responded that most blocks were from years ago (when it lacked a proper test suite), and problems since then had mostly been one-off errors (like a June 2019 incident in which a LTA had "weaponized" the bot to harass editors).
• David Tornheim opened a discussion about whether 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 replace Legobot for handling the Feedback Request Service, and NoSandboxesHere, to remove {{user sandbox}} from articles in draftspace using Category: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 that InternetArchiveBot 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 2022 Bots Newsletter. Tune in, or miss out!

Signing off... jp×g 23:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

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Books & Bytes – Issue 48

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 48, November – December 2021

• 1Lib1Ref 2022
• Wikipedia Library notifications deployed

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --15:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2022).

Administrator changes

AustralianRupert • Cimon Avaro • Euryalus • Jehochman • Nunh-huh

28bytes

Bureaucrat changes

28bytes

Interface administrator changes

Evad37 • Galobtter

Ragesoss

Guideline and policy news

• The Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines have been published for consideration. Voting to ratify this guideline is planned to take place 7 March to 21 March. Comments can be made on the talk page.

Technical news

• The user group oversight will be renamed suppress in around 3 weeks. This will not affect the name shown to users and is simply a change in the technical name of the user group. The change is being made for technical reasons. You can comment in Phabricator if you have objections.
• The Reply Tool feature, which is a part of Discussion Tools, will be opt-out for everyone logged in or logged out starting 7 February 2022. Editors wishing to comment on this can do so in the relevant Village Pump discussion.

Arbitration

• Community input is requested on several motions aimed at addressing discretionary sanctions that are no longer needed or overly broad.
• The Arbitration Committee has published a generalised comment regarding successful appeals of sanctions that it can review (such as checkuser blocks).
• A motion related to the Antisemitism in Poland case was passed following a declined case request.

Miscellaneous

• Voting in the 2022 Steward elections will begin on 07 February 2022, 14:00 (UTC) and end on 26 February 2022, 13:59 (UTC). The confirmation process of current stewards is being held in parallel. You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.
• Voting in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey is open until 11 February 2022.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 6, 2022)

Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: Joseph Lelyveld Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Social equality • Television ratings Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 February 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

This week's article for improvement (week 7, 2022)

Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: Cult of personality Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Joseph Lelyveld • Social equality Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 14 February 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

This week's article for improvement (week 8, 2022)

Isabella I of Castile in the Rimado de la Conquista de Granada, by Pedro Marcuello Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: Isabella I of Castile Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Cult of personality • Joseph Lelyveld Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 February 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

This week's article for improvement (week 9, 2022)

Google's corporate headquarters is named Googleplex, and is also the headquarters of its parent company, Alphabet Inc. Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: Google Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Isabella I of Castile • Cult of personality Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 28 February 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

WikiProject Tree of Life Newsletter – 018

February 2022—Issue 018

Tree of Life

Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!

Newly recognized content

Black-and-yellow broadbill by AryKun Papuan mountain pigeon by AryKun List of leporids by PresN Algerian nuthatch by 2001:4455:364:A800:C13C:8A64:1CEF:F186, reviewed by AryKun Jungle bush quail by AryKun, reviewed by Jens Lallensack Lycorma imperialis by Etriusus, reviewed by Ealdgyth Harry Allan by Dracophyllum, reviewed by Esculenta Banded bullfrog by DanCherek, reviewed by GhostRiver

Newly nominated content

Queen angelfish by LittleJerry Red panda by LittleJerry and BhagyaMani List of lagomorphs by PresN Corsican nuthatch by 2001:4455:364:A800:39A6:A5D8:C903:5E1D Firefly by Chiswick Chap Mountain pigeon by AryKun Bonacynodon by Trilletrollet Golden eagle by Vaco98

News at a glance

• A competitive first round of the Wikicup ends, with eight TOL editors moving into the second round: AryKun, GhostRiver, Ealdgyth, Wretchskull, Charlesjsharp, Dracophyllum, Guettarda, and Casliber.

February DYKs

Dudleya cymosa subsp. pumila

A Golden Retriever retrieving a shot game bird

Rhododendrons at Sheringham Park

Seagrass in La Ciotat, France

• ... that Ozzie was the first gorilla to take his own blood pressure voluntarily? (February 1)
• ... that the Sonoran blue butterfly uses Dudleya cymosa subsp. pumila (pictured) as a larval foodplant and hummingbirds feed on its nectar? (February 2)
• ... that the spotted lanternfly has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat swelling since the 1100s? (February 2)
• ... that all Golden Retrievers (example pictured) descend from a golden-coloured Flat-coated Retriever named Nous and a Tweed Water Spaniel named Belle? (February 4)
• ... that Fagus langevinii is considered to be the oldest extinct species of beech tree? (February 5)
• ... that the white-headed fruit dove (Ptilinopus eugeniae) was named after Eugénie de Montijo, Empress of the French? (February 5)
• ... that Coleman's melibe is said to look like a "string of snot in the water"? (February 6)
• ... that Mini ature is the largest frog in its genus? (February 7)
• ... that the New Zealand stonefly Stenoperla prasina was the five millionth specimen digitised by the Natural History Museum in London? (February 8)
• ... that Wallace's fruit dove has been described as being one of the most beautiful fruit doves? (February 9)
• ... that the woodland garden (example pictured), "colourfully planted with exotic shrubs and herbaceous plants, dominated English horticulture from 1910 to 1960"? (February 17)
• ... that seas are being rewilded with seagrass (example pictured)? (February 17)
• ... that Potamophylax coronavirus's range has been described as a battlefield between scientists and hydropower plant management? (February 23)
• ... that the genus Xochiquetzallia was named after the Aztec goddess of flowers? (February 26)
• ... that despite being nicknamed a "lanternbug", Lycorma imperialis does not actually emit any light? (February 28)
• ... that although it is a bird of prey, the white-fronted falconet is only 14 to 17 cm (5.5 to 6.7 in) long and mainly feeds on insects? (February 28)

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2022

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2022).

Administrator changes

Modussiccandi

BOZ • Brookie (deceased) • Jackmcbarn • Jamesday • Jonathunder • Master of Puppets • Saravask

CheckUser changes

Callanecc

Oversighter changes

Callanecc

Guideline and policy news

• A RfC is open to change the wording of revision deletion criterion 1 to remove the sentence relating to non-infringing contributions.
• A RfC is open to discuss prohibiting draftification of articles over 90 days old.

Technical news

• The deployment of the reply tool as an opt-out feature, as announced in last month's newsletter, has been delayed to 7 March. Feedback and comments are being welcomed at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project. (T296645)
• Special:Nuke will now allow the selection of standard deletion reasons to be used when mass-deleting pages. This was a Community Wishlist Survey request from 2022. (T25020)
• The ability to undelete the talk page when undeleting a page using Special:Undelete or the API will be added soon. This change was requested in the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey. (T295389)

Arbitration

• Several unused discretionary sanctions and article probation remedies have been rescinded. This follows the community feedback from the 2021 Discretionary Sanctions review.

Miscellaneous

• The 2022 appointees for the Ombuds commission are Érico, Faendalimas, Galahad, Infinite0694, Mykola7, Olugold, Udehb and Zabe as regular members and Ameisenigel and JJMC89 as advisory members.
• Following the 2022 Steward Elections, the following editors have been appointed as stewards: AntiCompositeNumber, BRPever, Hasley, TheresNoTime, and Vermont.
• The 2022 Community Wishlist Survey results have been published alongside the ranking of prioritized proposals.

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 10, 2022)

Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: First Sudanese Civil War Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Google • Isabella I of Castile Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 7 March 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

This week's article for improvement (week 11, 2022)

A letter is a segmental symbol of a phonemic writing system. Pictured are uppercase and lowercase Z with stroke letters. Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: Letter (alphabet) Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: First Sudanese Civil War • Google Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:09, 14 March 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •

This week's article for improvement (week 12, 2022)

Tomba is a drink of Sikkimese cuisine made from fermented millet: warm water is added to the millet and the liquid is consumed. Hello, Spurb. The article for improvement of the week is: Sikkimese cuisine Please be bold and help improve it! Previous selections: Letter (alphabet) • First Sudanese Civil War Get involved with the AFI project: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: MusikBot talk 00:05, 21 March 2022 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject AFI •