Apologies if Rob has already posted this elsewhere, but I wanted to make sure this was announced as widely as possible:
Developer Rob Church has enabled the [[Special:Makebot]] feature for Wikimedia wikis; this feature allows local bureaucrats to flag and deflag bot accounts on their projects.
Discussion on this proposal went on for quite a while, with almost unanimous support from both stewards and bureaucrats alike; it was approved by Jimbo (in March, I believe) for implementation.
A big thanks to Rob for working up a great extension (I've already used it on en.wiki, and it works beautifully), and to those who supported it's implementation.
As a side note, I suppose this means that stewards will be getting out of the bot flagging business on projects with local bureaucrats? (I've started a thread on [[m:Talk:Requests for bot status]] on the subject, if anyone would like to comment.) I may be being a bit bold in doing so, but I encourage those who read the list to make the communities on their respective wikis aware of this new responsibility for bureaucrats.
Essjay
Hello all,
On 4/26/06, Essjay essjaywiki@gmail.com wrote:> Developer Rob Church has enabled the [[Special:Makebot]] feature for
Wikimedia wikis; this feature allows local bureaucrats to flag and deflag bot accounts on their projects.
Now it seem to be activated on all projects. Perhaps some wikis may want to have their bot policies multiligualize.
If you may want to ask a help for translation, consider to submit your request on [[Meta:Translation requests]]. There you find a section dedicated for "requests from local projects". Cymri (Welsh)Wikipedia has once used it for i18n of their welcoming messages and they seem to be happy with results of their requests.
URLs are: Main Page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests
Submittion: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation_requests/fromlocalreqs
Enjoy! -- Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
Hello
A tiny point I'd like to raise is the suitability of bots with sysop status. I know it is being done in some places, but it seems generally frowned upon.
Recently, a sysop bot on cs:wiki started to blocked ip which appeared (how ?) to be anon proxies. 6000 blocks for now...
Good idea ? Bad idea ?
Anthere
.Aphaia wrote:
Hello all,
On 4/26/06, Essjay essjaywiki@gmail.com wrote:> Developer Rob Church has enabled the [[Special:Makebot]] feature for
Wikimedia wikis; this feature allows local bureaucrats to flag and deflag bot accounts on their projects.
Now it seem to be activated on all projects. Perhaps some wikis may want to have their bot policies multiligualize.
If you may want to ask a help for translation, consider to submit your request on [[Meta:Translation requests]]. There you find a section dedicated for "requests from local projects". Cymri (Welsh)Wikipedia has once used it for i18n of their welcoming messages and they seem to be happy with results of their requests.
URLs are: Main Page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests
Submittion: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation_requests/fromlocalreqs
Enjoy!
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
You can't make sysops bots with this feature... Though I don't know if it's possible to make a bot sysop.
On 4/28/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello
A tiny point I'd like to raise is the suitability of bots with sysop status. I know it is being done in some places, but it seems generally frowned upon.
Recently, a sysop bot on cs:wiki started to blocked ip which appeared (how ?) to be anon proxies. 6000 blocks for now...
Good idea ? Bad idea ?
Anthere
.Aphaia wrote:
Hello all,
On 4/26/06, Essjay essjaywiki@gmail.com wrote:> Developer Rob Church has enabled the [[Special:Makebot]] feature for
Wikimedia wikis; this feature allows local bureaucrats to flag and deflag bot accounts on their projects.
Now it seem to be activated on all projects. Perhaps some wikis may want to have their bot policies multiligualize.
If you may want to ask a help for translation, consider to submit your request on [[Meta:Translation requests]]. There you find a section dedicated for "requests from local projects". Cymri (Welsh)Wikipedia has once used it for i18n of their welcoming messages and they seem to be happy with results of their requests.
URLs are: Main Page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests
Submittion: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Translation_requests/fromlocalreqs
Enjoy!
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Best regards, Jon Harald Søby
Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/ Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs MSN messenger - jhsoby@gmail.com
Jon Harald Søby wrote:
You can't make sysops bots with this feature... Though I don't know if it's possible to make a bot sysop.
I was just getting ready to click "reply" and say this. If a steward *cough* Jon *cough* will stand by to remove the flags, I'll be happy to run a test of this on my test account on en.wiki. (That is, test whether an account flagged as a bot can be granted a sysop flag.)
Essjay
Go ahead. I'll remove it if it works. =)
On 4/28/06, Essjay essjaywiki@gmail.com wrote:
Jon Harald Søby wrote:
You can't make sysops bots with this feature... Though I don't know if it's possible to make a bot sysop.
I was just getting ready to click "reply" and say this. If a steward *cough* Jon *cough* will stand by to remove the flags, I'll be happy to run a test of this on my test account on en.wiki. (That is, test whether an account flagged as a bot can be granted a sysop flag.)
Essjay
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Best regards, Jon Harald Søby
Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/ Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs MSN messenger - jhsoby@gmail.com
Jon Harald Søby wrote:
Go ahead. I'll remove it if it works. =)
Just tested on en.wiki; you can assign a sysop flag to an account that already has a bot flag, but you cannot assign a bot flag to an account with a sysop flag. The account in question (User:EssjayTest, my testing account) is now desysopped and deflagged. (Thanks Jon!)
Essjay
Thanks Jon and Essjay for performing the test, it's good to know, *just in case* :)
g.
On 4/28/06, Essjay essjaywiki@gmail.com wrote:
Jon Harald Søby wrote:
Go ahead. I'll remove it if it works. =)
Just tested on en.wiki; you can assign a sysop flag to an account that already has a bot flag, but you cannot assign a bot flag to an account with a sysop flag. The account in question (User:EssjayTest, my testing account) is now desysopped and deflagged. (Thanks Jon!)
Essjay
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Guillom "Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom
Essjay wrote:
Jon Harald Søby wrote:
Go ahead. I'll remove it if it works. =)
Just tested on en.wiki; you can assign a sysop flag to an account that already has a bot flag, but you cannot assign a bot flag to an account with a sysop flag. The account in question (User:EssjayTest, my testing account) is now desysopped and deflagged. (Thanks Jon!)
Essjay
...
That does not really answer my question...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Desysopping_of_cs:Wi...
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD%3ALog&type...
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Ant
A bot with a sysop status may be temporarily useful if a huge number of pages must be deleted, but this shouldn't happen very often. For example, the new namespace Project: has just been opened on Fr Wikipedia, and all wikiprojects have been moved from Wikipedia:Project/X to Project:X. Thousands of redirects have thus been created. Redirects concerning project subpages are being deleted. This is a task a sysop bot could perform.
Blockin is a more delicate sysop tool, which imho requires a human being to be in front of the screen.
However, a bot is damn stupid: he just does what he has been told to do. If a bot is arbitrarily blocking IP or anonymous proxies, he has just been badly programmed :)
g.
On 4/28/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Essjay wrote:
Jon Harald Søby wrote:
Go ahead. I'll remove it if it works. =)
Just tested on en.wiki; you can assign a sysop flag to an account that already has a bot flag, but you cannot assign a bot flag to an account with a sysop flag. The account in question (User:EssjayTest, my testing account) is now desysopped and deflagged. (Thanks Jon!)
Essjay
...
That does not really answer my question...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Desysopping_of_cs:Wi...
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci ální%3ALog&type=block&user=Proxybot&page=
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Guillom "Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom
On 4/28/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD%3ALog&type...
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Perhaps more pertinently, why does this bot need bot status? I don't believe being a bot hides your admin activites from the log or elsewhere. Apart from it being semantically correct, there is no reason why this bot should be flagged as such. Indeed, I can't actually imagine any circumstance where a bot needs sysop privileges to *edit*, which is the only area that botship (?) actually affects.
-- Sam
Sam Korn wrote:
On 4/28/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD%3ALog&type...
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Perhaps more pertinently, why does this bot need bot status? I don't believe being a bot hides your admin activites from the log or elsewhere. Apart from it being semantically correct, there is no reason why this bot should be flagged as such. Indeed, I can't actually imagine any circumstance where a bot needs sysop privileges to *edit*, which is the only area that botship (?) actually affects.
-- Sam
Approved bots are exempt (I remember hearing once) from some edit throttling measures aimed at discouraging the use of unauthorized bots.
Neil
On Fri, Apr 28, 2006 at 05:27:02PM +0100, Sam Korn wrote:
On 4/28/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD%3ALog&type...
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Perhaps more pertinently, why does this bot need bot status? I don't believe being a bot hides your admin activites from the log or elsewhere.
From experience with ProxyBot
With bot flag, the bot did not clutter RecentChanges. In Block log etc. the activity was still visible.
The reason why ProxyBot was given both sysop and bot status was exactly that - to avoid making RC changes cluttered with robotic blocks.
Indeed, I can't actually imagine any circumstance where a bot needs sysop privileges to *edit*, which is the only area that botship (?) actually affects.
To delete huge ammount of pages.
Jan Kulveit - User:Wikimol
On Fri, Apr 28, 2006 at 04:38:57PM +0200, Anthere wrote: ...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Desysopping_of_cs:Wi...
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD%3ALog&type...
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Ant
I think several aspects should be separated -technical implementation & mediawiki issues (problems with cluttering of logs etc.) -questions od accuracy of open proxy detection, if such blocks can be automated -should open proxies be blocked just because beeing open proxies?
I hope Egg (creator of Proxybot) will post something about the bot in wikitech-l, in Requests_for_permissions also another solution was proposed, to import the blacklist directly into db. I hope this will be discussed in wikitech-l
What seems to me as relevant topic for Foundation-l are the policy questions
1. should open proxies be blocked? some possible answers a. yes b. only after they are source of vandalism c. no, they should be treated as normal ips d. it should be left to local communities of language versions / projects to decide
As we have a "WikiProject on open proxies" http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:OP and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:NOP no open proxies policy the answer seems to be "yes", but see complains at [[en:Wikipedia talk:No open proxies#Foundation Issue Violation]]
2. can such blocks be automated? a. yes b. yes, if the list was verified by hand by experienced users c. yes, if the list was verified by trusted script run by trusted user d. yes, if the list comes from reputable source (is meta: page a reputable source?) e. no, it should be checked by hand one by one f. no g. it should be left to local communities of language versions / projects to decide
In my opinion trusted proxycheck script run by trusted user is resonable. Scripts tend to err on side of caution (if I play with nmap etc. I'm able to identify more proxies simple script is).
My thought on the topic - if http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:NOP is official Foundation policy, it would make sense to have Wikimedia-wide ip blacklist, blocking proxies. One-by-one blocks by hand by admins of individual projects are IMO waste of time. That isn't a problem on en: with its overwhelming manpower, but for smaller project dealing with open proxy abuse may be non-negligeable burden. One technically savvy vandal can occupy several checkusers and admins for indefinite time period: all he has to do is to download some public open proxy list, run his own scan, and as soon as one proxy is blocked, switch to another.
If privacy policy is relatively strict and blocking policy relatively liberal (warn several times, block only after several repeated vandalisms, if vandalizing edits are mixed with good edits, talk more, use RfC etc.) time impact on wiki users vs. vandal plays in favour of vandal.
Jan Kulveit - User:Wikimol
Thanks for your feedback Jan.
Yes, you put your finger on it. I invited Egg to discuss the issue on wikitech. But for now, I see no posting on the issue.
Ant
Jan Kulveit wrote:
On Fri, Apr 28, 2006 at 04:38:57PM +0200, Anthere wrote: ...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Desysopping_of_cs:Wi...
Whether technically possible or not technically possible, Proxybot was both a sysop and a bot on the cs.wikipedia. His activity is to block ips : http://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD%3ALog&type...
Is that suitable that a bot also has a sysop status ?
Ant
I think several aspects should be separated -technical implementation & mediawiki issues (problems with cluttering of logs etc.) -questions od accuracy of open proxy detection, if such blocks can be automated -should open proxies be blocked just because beeing open proxies?
I hope Egg (creator of Proxybot) will post something about the bot in wikitech-l, in Requests_for_permissions also another solution was proposed, to import the blacklist directly into db. I hope this will be discussed in wikitech-l
What seems to me as relevant topic for Foundation-l are the policy questions
- should open proxies be blocked?
some possible answers a. yes b. only after they are source of vandalism c. no, they should be treated as normal ips d. it should be left to local communities of language versions / projects to decide
As we have a "WikiProject on open proxies" http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:OP and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:NOP no open proxies policy the answer seems to be "yes", but see complains at [[en:Wikipedia talk:No open proxies#Foundation Issue Violation]]
- can such blocks be automated?
a. yes b. yes, if the list was verified by hand by experienced users c. yes, if the list was verified by trusted script run by trusted user d. yes, if the list comes from reputable source (is meta: page a reputable source?) e. no, it should be checked by hand one by one f. no g. it should be left to local communities of language versions / projects to decide
In my opinion trusted proxycheck script run by trusted user is resonable. Scripts tend to err on side of caution (if I play with nmap etc. I'm able to identify more proxies simple script is).
My thought on the topic - if http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:NOP is official Foundation policy, it would make sense to have Wikimedia-wide ip blacklist, blocking proxies. One-by-one blocks by hand by admins of individual projects are IMO waste of time. That isn't a problem on en: with its overwhelming manpower, but for smaller project dealing with open proxy abuse may be non-negligeable burden. One technically savvy vandal can occupy several checkusers and admins for indefinite time period: all he has to do is to download some public open proxy list, run his own scan, and as soon as one proxy is blocked, switch to another.
If privacy policy is relatively strict and blocking policy relatively liberal (warn several times, block only after several repeated vandalisms, if vandalizing edits are mixed with good edits, talk more, use RfC etc.) time impact on wiki users vs. vandal plays in favour of vandal.
Jan Kulveit - User:Wikimol
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