267:
current revision was not made by a whitelisted user, the bot would check the last 5 or so revisions, and comparing them for differences, and attempting to determine if any vandalism had occurred (perhaps someone could clue me in on a good method of determining vandalism). Of course, this introduces some faults: the implementation of the vandalism detection may not, and probably will not, be perfect; as well as the issue of attempting to craft a perfect whitelist for a community-contributed project. Thoughts? --
355:
that in mind, I suggest: run the bot once an hour. When it runs, it goes to the page history, and selects the last version by a trusted user, and generates the count based on that version. (Only three users regularly add/remove articles from that page - myself, Marskell, and Joel. For now, that should suffice as a list) This technique is 100% vandalproof and should produce very accurate results.
44:
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Would support the dirty hack (it was my first thought as an alternative), doubt I'd support it as an admin bot. As previous RFAs for bot accounts have shown, people are pretty wary of giving out those privileges unless there is a clear benefit outweighing the downside, in the scheme of things I can't
850:
The hack is not a good idea. However, I don't have any objections to Jmax supplying the code to someone who does have an admin account, who could schedule it as a cron job on their own admin account. I looked over the code myself a few days ago, and it seems straightforward (or as straightforward as
772:
I understand fully. If there are any admins with Perl experience who would like to use (perhaps contribute) the bot and accompanying framework (which is currently rather bare, but shall hopefully grow), then I would prefer that. Alternatively, Werdna (on IRC - #wikipedia) suggested that the count be
364:
I'll think further on it, but Raul's plan seems to make sense, since the only users who change the number (add or delete FAs per FAC or FARC) are Raul, Joelr31 and
Marskell, while other users may make other sorts of changes. A recent (but rare) example: an admin deleted his own featured article,
758:
I am philosophically opposed to allowing a non-admin to control a bot account with admin rights. If Jmax- publishes his code, I would not be opposed to allowing an existing admin to set up a bot account to run it. Or even just have Jmax- run all the code except the part requiring admin rights and
354:
I have a simple suggestion which should be relatively simple to code (simpler than most of the above suggestions). If we have to choose between having the count slightly stale, or allowing vandals the opportunity to vandalize it, I think it's obvious everyone here would choose the former. Bearing
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My thought is that the vandal spoofing feature is to stop ridiculous changes to the number. An additional feature throttling changes to 5% or less may do that, while the whitelist check and pause greatly reduces the chances of a bad change going through at all. (The FA regulars can state if an
794:
should be minimized. If the only need for sysop priviledges is to update a protected template, I recommend splitting the functionality into two bots, 1) a non-admin bot that updates a non-protected page (or equivalently edit a local file, send an email, etc.), and 2) an admin bot which does the
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The bot does not currently support any whitelist, as I was expecting to encounter issues, such as these, that I had not previously prepare for, and it would have been a waste of resources to design a system without fully understanding the requirements. So, I was thinking that in the event the
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although there had been no FAR. The bot (as proposed) would have allowed that (someone caught it manually). If the count is based on Joelr31, Marskell, and Raul, it will stay accurate. I believe. I track the changes, but if I see a problem, I could alert one of them.
510:? That would be a good idea. The only thing I would like for it is to store in memory the revision_id of the last edit it processed, so if indeed hell freezes over and no "authorized user" edits the page substantially, it doesn't warn over and over again every hour.
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update has ever involved a greater proportion than that.) I'm not sure that the effort involved in a technical solution comparing a user who removes an article and one who reverts him, and trying to decide who is correct, is worth the effort. Thoughts on this?
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Status - As I told Jmax, I'm letting it run for a few days. If nothing problematic happens (and so far, nothing has) then I'm going to set the bot and sysop flags on the Jmax bot account, and then all Jmax has to do is set it to target the FA num template.
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I'm a little lost having been out of the loop for a while, but as far as I'm understanding this, Raul's suggestion makes sense. The people taking care of the numbers are pretty close knit and careful about things, and I don't think anything will slip by.
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Hi Jmax-, Thanks for all your work on this. Last night, I came up with an example of how the whitelist might work with a 15 minute wait after an edit by an editor not on the whitelist on the FA talk page, which I'll paste here for convenient
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placed in a sub-page of User:Jmax-bot with the suffix '.js', which would make it only editable by that user, and sysops. This feels like a dirty hack, however, and may not be the best solution. In addition, I will publish the code shortly. --
213:
Quick question - can you explain a little about the whitelist? (And how a newly registered account can't mess it up by making a vandalism at the right moment). Also, if/when it is given the admin flag, I assume it can be retargetted at
249:
Another question: non-admin users routinely change the categories or names (to fix redirects) of featured articles: if the last edit is not an admin or a whitelist user, what will the bot do? (Thanks so much for the help, Jmax.)
405:
Ok, that is what I have gone with. It will search the last 15 revisions for the latest revision by any of Raul654, Marskell, or Joelr31. It will then use that revision as the count. See the updated debug report on
564:(reindent)It depends on if you want the vandal-spoofing feature, the lack of which is a total deal breaker if the number appears on the Main Page. It would be nice to be able to transclude a FFA count, perhaps to a
663:
I just finished the other stuff I was working on - is it solved, then, or should I have a look? If the bot is going to be counting, I'm going to delete those goofy commented subcounts by section, which are a chore.
640:
Please make sure that there are no "red herrings" in the FFA count debug. It only checks for links between two specified boundaries, and could possibly pick up false positives. I'll run it right now for you.
317:
Both Titoxd and Sandy both make good points above in response. Sandy's point can perhaps be addressed by having the bot check for changes to the FA number, rather than any change at all. So for example:
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You presume correctly. Perhaps I should go one step further to make it post on the talk page in that case, or some other way to notify you three in that situtation (currently it merely prints an error).
489:
That seems excessive, as it would mean about 23 talk posts a day given that the total on WP:FA changes at best once in 24 hrs. The update will show up on watchlists? That should be oversight enough.
469:
I also have one final question - what happens if it scans through the past 15 revisions and doesn't find one by myself, Joel, or
Marskell? Presumably, it should do nothing in that case.
989:
621:
This is great, Jmax. My count on FFAs is one off from the bot, so as I soon as I finish up some other work, I'll run through that and see what's up. Thanks so much. Back to you later,
442:(reindent)Yes, that is much simpler (aka better) than what I was thinking. Final-ish questions: (1) can you set it to run hourly and (2) do you foresee any problems with adding
748:
discussion, sysop bots are not exactly a ordinary thing, it's not something any 'crat can just set rights on. At the very least, the code for this one needs to be published --
524:
That's a given. So, what is the status on this? The bot is ready, and has been for some time. Oh, another question: Should I expand the bot to count WP:GA? --
821:
I was neutral on
TawkerbotTorA, but at least there was a decent rationale (a few hundred blocks per month). This is one edit per day? Opposed to sysopping it.
235:
One question. What happens if an RC patroller reverts the vandalism? Neither UserA nor VandalReverter would be on the whitelist... what would the bot do then?
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I see WP:FA in the bot count, which appears to coming from the link in the final section header, "Former featured articles that have been re-promoted". -
21:
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I don't see technical issues - it's just a major misuse of the .js file for something it was never intended for. It feels... icky.
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has a count in the text which myself, Joelr31 and
Marskell are keeping manually. The structure of the article is very similar to
84:
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see saving an admina single edit per day (or the FA count being wrong for while) being considered to be that huge a benefit. --
79:
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12:15: 15 minutes having elapsed, the bot checks again. It sees that the last editor was whitelisted and updates the count.
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OK, in that case, Jmax, can you please modify the bot to add the number (and just the number) to the Jmax bot's .js file?
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I would think GA would be pretty hard to count, because anyone can add and delete. If you're offering to expand,
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That's the feeling of a hack, alright. Anyways, if consensus proves to be to use the hack, I'll gladly do it. --
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320:(I have commented out my extended examples in the interests of keeping the viewed page to a manageable size. -
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I've updated the debug report to include a list of whitelisted users. I have also added FFA counts. See
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I'd also support the .js subpage, which makes a lot more sense than sysopping the bot. --
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as another target, since the page with the update times and list of articles is useful.
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It is currently running hourly, and, adding another target is no problem whatsoever. --
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necessary edit to the protected page with published, minimum number of lines of code.
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I agree that giving a bot +sysop is not to be taken lightly. This is like creating a
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Can you expand on why it is not a good idea? I can't see any technical issues. --
578:, as a way for final troubleshooting. Otherwise, I'm running out of questions. -
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12:00: The bot checks the page, sees that UserA is not on the whitelist and waits
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12:02: WhitelistedUserB reverts the vandalism by UserA to the version by AdminX
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Ok, thanks for your help BT! I've made the change and it's updated now. --
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Marskell removed an article, and it updated correctly in both places.
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have seperate bot controlled by an admin copy over the figures.
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Sweet! Can you have the bot put the most recent FFA number into
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suggested an update closer to every hour. Is that possible? -
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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate.
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Yes, that was it; it was counting the WP:FA in the heading.
204:. Perhaps more at a future date, pending any requests.
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count also approved, and if so, where is it being put?
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needs full code published. If anyone read the massive
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I think Jmax means that if of the last 15 revisons to
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Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
609:, so people can avoid the manual update. Thanks! -
990:Approved Knowledge (XXG) bot requests for approval
293:11:30: AdminX removes two articles as part of FARC
33:The following discussion is an archived debate.
605:? We can then transclude the number back into
8:
905:and article count put on the main page --
506:are by either one of you three, to ask at
188:Currently, it merely counts the number of
918:Knowledge (XXG):Former featured articles
708:Note - I promoted two FAs today and it
340:Knowledge (XXG) talk:Featured articles
155:(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run)
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935:I see it's already done - thanks !
535:WIkipedia:Former featured articles
28:
41:The result of the discussion was
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131:Automatic or Manually Assisted:
568:with a commented section like
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962:17:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
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931:15:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
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898:18:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
884:22:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
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866:17:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
856:17:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
826:15:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
817:11:48, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
778:08:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
764:08:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
753:07:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
737:04:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
725:01:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
716:20:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
703:18:52, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
688:03:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
674:03:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
659:02:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
646:02:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
631:02:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
617:01:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
586:14:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
551:12:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
529:09:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
520:07:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
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485:22:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
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296:11:58: UserA blanks the page.
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223:03:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
851:Perl can be, at any rate).
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836:16:09, 15 December 2006 (
419:Looks good - nice work!
971:Please do not modify it.
593:User:Jmax-bot/FFACounter
338:Also, the discussion at
137:Programming Language(s):
36:Please do not modify it.
742:Anything w/ sysop privs
508:Knowledge (XXG) talk:FA
408:User:Jmax-bot/FACounter
194:User:Jmax-bot/FACounter
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174:Already has a bot flag
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139:Perl, WWW::Mechanize
22:Requests for approval
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18:Knowledge (XXG):Bots
710:worked like a charm
607:Knowledge (XXG):FFA
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192:and places them on
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803:2006-12-15 08:41Z
410:for an example --
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160:Daily
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126:Jmax-
85:count
16:<
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656:Tree
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504:none
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170:day
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
