Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard

This is a message board for coordinating and discussing bot-related issues on Wikipedia (also including other programs interacting with the mediawiki software). Although its target audience is bot owners, any user is welcome to leave a message or join the discussion here.

This is not the place for requests for bot approvals or requesting that tasks be done by a bot. It is also not the place for general questions about the mediawiki software (such as the use of templates, etc.), which have generally a best chance of being answered at WP:VPT. __NEWSECTIONLINK__

Using whatlinkshere rather than categories for maintenance lists
I've suggested we should convert most of the maintenance templates to use a "whatlinkshere" based mechanism rather than categories to keep track of articles needing maintenance, and have implemented an example using template:copyedit/test. If you have an interest in this, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Maintenance. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Beginner's question II - User Agent
This time I'm trying to get (read) access to en.wikipedia urls programmatically (using Python), and they all seem to be blocked (except perhaps ...index.php...&action=raw). Having read some posts in Python newsgroups, I understand that the problem (or at least one of them) is getting the right User Agent. The solutions suggested in the newsgroups revolve around setting the User Agent to be Mozilla/5.0 or some such. I don't doubt that this works, but is it good practice? Might it not be considered dishonest to pretend to be a browser you're not? Is there a better way?--Kotniski 20:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I call my agent "pywikibot", though I don't know if that's an approved practice. Staecker 20:12, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I call mine  or something like that. — M ETS 501 (talk) 21:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. So in fact any string will do for the User Agent, it doesn't have to meet any specific conditions?--Kotniski 09:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. &mdash; madman bum and angel 19:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Product tokens are often used, but anything will do. Grace notes T § 20:31, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Bot Code Wiki
After a bit of a discussion on irc I've started up the this sourceforge project, thew basic idea is it is an index of the source code for wikipedia bots and their libraries, each page has a description of the code on it, links etc and a copy of the code on a sub page(for bots with multi pal pages just zip them up and I'll upload them to sf) so can bot owners please upload their bots' and and bot's libraries code to the wiki, thanks -- Chris   G  10:36, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem with that is that the code is not as easily accessible as it is on an SVN server, which is where I have mine. You can't check it out with one command, you can't diff between different versions (or, you can, but not to a patch file), you can't revert the real code to a given version, etc... I really think an SVN repository is the best option for most bot operators.  &mdash; madman bum and angel 19:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

You store a cashed version of the code on the wiki in case your svn sever goes down or something and then you also have a link to your svn sever so the user can get the latest source, the basic idea of this is that It makes the source easy to find, for example say you where looking on wikipedia for the source of an archive you would first have to search through all the bots to find one and even then there is no guarantee that the bots source will be on a sub page or an svn sever, I just think it make it easier to find code if you use proper categories it makes it much easier. -- Chris   G  02:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps. You'll excuse me if I stick with the Toolserver SVN repository, however.  I don't see it going down in the near future, and I find the redundancy unnecessary.  &mdash; madman bum and angel 03:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Its not ment to be a copy of the toolsever's SVN repostory more like an idex that covers code on the tool sever and other severs. -- Chris   G  08:23, 10 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, if it's just meant to be an index, then you wouldn't store a "cashed [sic] version of the code on the wiki", would you? I honestly don't mean to be combative, I'm just not clear on this project's purpose.  &mdash; madman bum and angel 15:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Reason being for cashed version is in the unlikely event there is a fire at the tool sever or what ever and the svn sever hosting your code goes down there is a cashed version to fall back to, it could happen! -- Chris  <font style="color:White;background:Red;"> G  10:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * For the record, coding via an SSH connection to Toolserver is so slow that I keep a local copy of my Toolserv SVN repo to code with. I'm 99% sure that most other devs with toolserv accounts do the same thing, making the idea of a third backup site redundant. Oh, and it's cache. Shadow1  (talk) 21:00, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I actually don't log in to the Toolserver. I do everything through an SSH tunnel, and have a local backup of everything... &mdash; madman bum and angel</tt> 21:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

iw for Natalie Glebova
Bots keep adding an iw for ru:Глебова, Наталья Николаевна to this article, which keeps getting reverted with comments that the name is improper, however, there does exist what appears to me as the proper iw article at that location. Obviously, I don't speak this language, so can anyone provide some analysis, please? --After Midnight 0001 02:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The issue seems to be her patronymic (middle) name. The bots are linking to an article with middle name "Nikolayevna", while it seems that the editors think her middle name is "Vladimirovna". Right now the good article is at "Nikolayevna", with no article at "vladimirovna", even though the article text (at "Nikolayevna") says that her middle name is "Vladimirovna". Somebody at ru needs to move the article to "Vladimirovna" and delete "Nikolayevna" (assuming that this is the correct name), and the bots should get the clue. Staecker 12:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Alex Bakharev has in fact done that on Russian wiki. But I am not sure that the change was right. Here we find the name of her father: Vladimir Slezin. This is how they got the "Vladimirovna", daughter of Vladimir. But if the father's family name is Slezin, how did his daughter get to be called Glebova? I suppose if Nikolay Glebov was her real father and is now dead, calling her Vladimirovna would be OK in Russia, but she does not live there anymore. I will have to check Yandex on this one.--Pan Gerwazy 23:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * He's been reversed, using my argument. There seems to be a little edit war going on there. Yandex: I've seen a page stating Vladimirovna, and a page with comment by her grandparents, not mentioning any father switch at all. And a lot of pages about Glebova Natalya Nikolayevna, a Rusian banker... Under these circumstances, I think that Vladimirovna is probably correct: this "Slezin" must be a mistake, and they found Nikolayevna by yandexing without checking the articles. But to be on the safe side, perhaps dropping the father's name altogether would be better - but I suppose that may be asking too much of people accustomed to this naming style. Now trying to re-state the main problem: since January 2007, there has been an ru article Глебова, Наталья with a photo and an ru article Глебова, Наталья Николаевна without photo. Both try to link to the en Natalie Glebova and both authors introduced a number of silly re-directs: eg there is actually a second article entitled Глебова, Наталья which re-directs to Глебова, Наталья Николаевна. How they did it, I do not know, but someone in ru needs to clean up the mess. --Pan Gerwazy 23:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Solved, it seems. Someone found an explanation for the daughter of Slezin being called Glebova (her mother kept her family name and so could pass it on to her daughter). "Nikokaevna" seems to be the result of the mistake I described. That article has been deleted, and the silly redirects with it. The bots should have no problem now...--Pan Gerwazy 14:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks --After Midnight 0001 00:21, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

CFD discussion that bot owners may be able to answer a question about
There is a discussion at CFD about deletion of. The question has been raised whether any bot (presumably an anti-vandal bot) uses this category, apart from the HBC AIV Helperbots when commenting on AIV reports. Does anybody here know the answer? BencherliteTalk 21:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)