Wikidata talk:Bots/Archive/2017

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Bot flag taken away?

Moved from Wikidata:Bot_requests

Here Vogone takes away the botflag of User:Edoderoobot. I see no prior discussion about the recent edits of the bot but I do see a very personal directed discussion full of PAs here: User_talk:Edoderoobot#Bot contributions. I like to ask a review user:Vogones decision to take away the flag. Note: due to the remarks ("Unreliable operator") bot operator User:Edoderoo also stepped down as admin. The Banner talk 20:23, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

If this comment is the issue and made him feel hurt, I would like to apologise to User:Edoderoo for this remark. The block itself, however, is according to our rules. --Vogone (talk) 20:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there any prior discussion over this case where was decided to this drastic action or was it just you prosecuting, judging and executing your decision? The Banner talk 20:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I just explained it on the talk page you linked. But to be honest, I do not think asking for an authorisation of a bot task before proceeding is a "drastic action" at all. That's simply what our rules require. Blocks can always be undone. --Vogone (talk) 20:45, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Blocking a bot and removing as bot flag based on your own decisions is a drastic step. That is why I ask the community to review this action. The Banner talk 20:59, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

It was maybe not the best way to handle it to suddenly remove his bot flag without prior warning, but on the other hand the issues the bot in question caused were known for a long time and the bot owner did not take steps to fix the issues. So I understand Vogone's "judging" upon seeing that the bot made (strictly speaking, per policy unauthorised) edits that have been causing issues that remained unfixed; a better way to proceed could have been to first give a firm warning, have the bot stop temporarily and go into discussion. SPQRobin (talk) 21:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I do not have anything against a review, but I am surprised about this section since I offered this review to Edoderoo myself already (before he decided to resign). --Vogone (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

• Somehow this is on the wrong page. This is for new requests for work to be done by bot. For permissions, there is Wikidata:Requests_for_permissions/Bot or the general Bureaucrats board. That said, it's a bot that is known to have some function that don't work in an optimal way (that could happen with any bot) and, personally, I don't think responses like on User_talk:Edoderoobot#Items_for_disambiguation_pages are ideal.
  --- Jura 06:44, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Like I've said yesterday to others, I will repeat. It seems that people expect perfection from the start, when something goes wrong once it will follow you for ever on this project, and now I'm blocked+revoked for edits that were not even wrong, and again people are looking a year back to find a reason to say "i was right, and you're just a stupid ....." It is better that I will not get any rights on this project, because I'm not perfect, I'm just a human being. You should have taken all my rights away in last year may already, when the first mistake was encountered. Edoderoo (talk) 07:42, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
    • I agree with most of it. The problem with User_talk:Edoderoobot#Items_for_disambiguation_pages is that you acknowledged it and wrote it's currently not happening again (as it's not running) and I later came across another edit where it had happened afterwards.
      --- Jura 07:48, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
      • The cases of http: // tinyurl.com / zm6f7yz (why do we use shortURLs that we block later on???) ... Only 7089 to go. But in your example my bot didn't do anything wrong, it was more that "we" preferred a different approach for those special cases. But without a bot flag it will not executed the amended code, it will just keep all Dutch descriptions empty from now on. The Dutch mobile users will be very happy. Edoderoo (talk) 09:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Edoderoo, we do not browse your bot's edits looking for possible errors from years ago in order to find a reason to block your bot, as you seem to interpret. Rather, we encounter those errors browsing certain items and then realise that these year-old errors still have not been fixed even though they were reported on the bot's talk page. E.g. I fixed a few like this for example (there are still quite a few of those "Dutch" labels in English). Yes we can all make errors, we do not expect perfection from the start, but I do not think it is a good idea to just keep on making millions of bot edits while not caring about fixing widespread errors. SPQRobin (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
      • The conclusion last year july was that not all wrong edits could be simply found, they are too spreaded over many items, and we created some queries to find some series, and there ain't no way to be sure we got them all. For me it's still clear that my bot was blocked + revoked bit, because it made correct edits. Jura is even making it more weird blaming my bot doing right edits, but the data was wrong. That was not my fault, so why am I blamed for that? I still do not understand this kind of punishment, and I'm still believing I'm getting punished for something that went wrong last year. If not, I am getting punished for doing the right thing. Edoderoo (talk) 20:56, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
        • The block is appropriate as the bot is malfunctioning. However, I don't think it's appropriate to remove the bot flag directly, as bots can not damage the project once it is blocked (there're two bots currently blocked), and Wikidata:Bots does not indicate that bot flag can be removed without discussion. Maybe users should start a request at Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Removal or this page first.--GZWDer (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

"KeyError: 'upperBound'"

When I try to .get() some items, I get this error "KeyError: 'upperBound'" and the script aborts. I have added a try-except (I use Python) to skip these items, but that it isn't a proper solution. I use branch2.0 and it is updated (git pull). What is that error? Thanks. Emijrp (talk) 12:12, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

@Emijrp: Sounds familiar and fixed. Are you sure you are on the master branch and not something else? "git config --get remote.origin.url" should give something like "https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/pywikibot/core.git" and after a "git pull origin master" the command "python pwb.py version.py" should return "Pywikibot: [https] r-pywikibot-core.git (50e39f8, g7860, 2017/02/17, 13:03:10, n/a)". Multichill (talk) 12:20, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

@Multichill: I was using branch 2.0, I followed these instructions. I have changed to master and it seems to work fine now. Thanks. Emijrp (talk) 12:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Good to hear that fixed it. Some people started making branches and releases, but didn't really maintain it. So yet again, we end up with multiple versions.... I always use the master branch for all my bots on all Wikimedia projects. Multichill (talk) 12:43, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Fetching from infoboxes

Is there any bit that can enable fetching data from en Wikipedia infoboxes? There's too much available that needs to be tapped. Capankajsmilyo (talk) 01:16, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

You can use Harvest Templates or a Pywikibot script with the same name. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 14:31, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

New requirement

Perhaps, a bit too late to talk about this, but all WMF projects will continue to grow constantly and this leaves its mark on Wikidata as well, so I think this requirement will be helpful.

Currently there is at least one active bot which adds item descriptions in multiple languages, in multiple separated consecutive edits (up to ten, or maybe more when possbile, IDK), thus cluttering the item history. Another flaw of such bot activity is that it increases chances of servers overload, and per overall it's waste of resources. I suggest to add a new requirement for bot operators - when working on category/template/disambiguation items, depending on task, add all your descriptions (and probably labels) in a single edit. Let's save resources and to keep items histories tidy and short. --XXN, 18:37, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I guess you're not aware of en:Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. I generally like to see different edits from bots when multiple tasks are combined (like here), but updating descriptions should just be done in one edit with a clear edit summary. I'm sure if you ask the operator of the bot nicely that it can be updated to produce less history clutter. Multichill (talk) 18:54, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Like the history, also watchlist is affected if one have enabled in preferences the option "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent".

The "Don't worry about performance" essay is for humans; bot operators have to respect some API/bot etiquettes/policies. --XXN, 15:56, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

If talking about performance, more recently I see too often such messages. XXN, 10:35, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

• I don't think this is a good idea as-is. There could be valid (technical) reasons to separate out edits.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:37, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Check if my bot has already modified a page?

Hello, not sure it is the best place to ask but let's give it a try. I'd like to re-run some scripts I had run years ago to run them on items that have been created since then. But I'd like to prevent touching items that I had already modified when running the script for the first time (if information I had added has been removed, there might be a good reason so I don't want to add it back). Is there an easy way to do that by getting a list of contributors to an item ? I am using pywikibot. Thanks, Symac (talk) 08:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Given that you have an item object, you can do 'userName' in item.contributors() (link). Matěj Suchánek (talk) 08:51, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Matěj Suchánek: great, thanks ! Symac (talk) 07:36, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata:List of wikis/python updated

More info in the talk page. Report any errors. Emijrp (talk) 07:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Drop "if possible" for the need for P31/P279

"Bots should add instance of (P31) or subclass of (P279) if possible" I advocate to drop the "if possible", especially given that the sentence already says should and not must. ChristianKl (talk) 15:13, 10 November 2017 (UTC)