User talk:Tinucherian/Archives/2019/August

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM

• Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.

BAG

• Several (1 + 12 = 13) users have been retired/resigned from the BAG due to inactivity, per our new activity requirements (discussion).

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

• Two BAG members retired
  • Madman (talk · contribs) retired.
  • BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) vanished and retired.
• Three new BAG members have been voted in, welcome to the BAG!
  • Primefac (talk · contribs) joined on 2018-12-12 (RfBAG). Primefac operates PrimeBOT (talk · contribs) which does a plethora of tasks.
  • TheSandDoctor (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-01-21 (RfBAG). TheSandDoctor operates several bots including DeprecatedFixerBot (talk · contribs).
  • Enterprisey (talk · contribs) joined on 2019-08-07 (RfBAG). Enterprisey operates EnterpriseyBot (talk · contribs), which does a plethora of tasks, RemindMeBot (talk · contribs) which posts reminders, and codes several scripts.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

• Editor-hostile wikitext – describes wikitext structuring that is editor hostile, even if it renders correctly
• Spectrum of usefulness – describes how tasks are deemed useful or not

BOTPOL

• Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
• Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
• Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.

BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

• 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
• 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
• In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
• Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
• 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).

New things

• All bot-related discussion pages now have a centralized and searchable archive box (see discussion). Discussions are searchable per noticeboard, or globally.
• {{Bot}} now supports |status=expired (see discussion). This led to the deletion of Category:Indefinitely blocked Wikipedia bots as useless (see discussion).
• WP:BOTREQ now mentions WP:SCRIPTREQ and WP:AWBTASKS as alternatives to bot requests.
• The bot creation guide now mentions bot flags, and two new languages Awk and MATLAB. Other minor tweaks have been made.
• AAlertBot has received major code updates. In particular, WP:AALERTS will now report splits, mergers, and AFC submissions.
• Citation bot has received several updates (User talk:Citation bot/Archive 10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17). In particular, the bot stopped the automated removal of |publisher= from {{cite journal}}, and stopped the automated addition of CiteSeerX links, and now uses OAuth to authenticate those who make requests of the bot.

Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Adminbots requests page
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Double-redirect tagging (2019)
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 12#Long and Winding Road to Parsoid
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Bot-like user scripts
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#WP:URLREQ
• Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Wikipedia:Bots/Status
• Wikipedia talk:Bot Approvals Group#Minimum edits
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Minor update to WP:BOTISSUE
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Semi-automated Portal creation
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Clarification on "Bots operated by multiple users"
• Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Bots triggered by multiple users
• Wikipedia talk:Bots#How to use Special:ApiFeatureUsage

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

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The Bugle: Issue CLX, August 2019

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Peacemaker67 look at Italian, German and Australian forces in World War II

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CLX, August 2019

Your Military History Newsletter Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content Book review: Hawkeye7 and Peacemaker67 look at Italian, German and Australian forces in World War II

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 09:42, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Backlog Banzai

In the month of September, Wikiproject Military history is running a project-wide edit-a-thon, Backlog Banzai. There are heaps of different areas you can work on, for which you claim points, and at the end of the month all sorts of whiz-bang awards will be handed out. Every player wins a prize! There is even a bit of friendly competition built in for those that like that sort of thing. Sign up now at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/September 2019 Backlog Banzai to take part. For the coordinators, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:18, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2019

• News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings

• In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff

• In the media: Many layers of fake news: Fake fiction and fake news vandalism

• Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users

• Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes

• Op-Ed: We couldn't have told you this, but Wikipedia was censored

• Opinion: The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia

• Community view: Chinese Wikipedia and the battle against extradition from Hong Kong

• News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year

• Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research

• On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:42, 30 August 2019 (UTC)