This user account is a bot operated by とある白い猫 (talk). It is flagged as bot.
It is not a sock puppet, but rather an automated or semi-automated account for making repetitive edits that would be extremely tedious to do manually. Administrators: if this bot is malfunctioning or causing harm, please block it.
Hence I hereby request -- Catchi? 15:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment It is not obvious from the bot's user name that it is a bot. —Benn Newman 00:09, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
WOPR (pronounced "Whopper") is an acronym for War Operation Plan Response, Stephen Falken and John McKittrick's fictional military computer featured in the movie and novel WarGames.
I think it should be fine. -- Catchi? 18:12, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
No objection. The people on en.wikipedia approved this bot/username even though it does signify a bot. Hence we give White Cat this exception. (→zelzany -framed) 17:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
How many bots do we need doing this, anyway? Are the current bots not keeping up? How will your bot figure out when renames are "agreed upon"? pfctdayelise (说什么?) 17:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
If we need more bots then go for it, but I don't want the situation that two edit-warrers can go to two different places to get different bots to revert mass changes. There seem to be a number of category rename bots now. Maybe I'm wrong. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 17:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
I am not certain how many bots there are taking care of this task. I would only operate my bot for issues there is consensus on such as via COM:DEL. Edit warring is out of the question on my end - wont happen. -- Catchi? 17:38, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
So are you saying you only intend to use it to enact decisions from COM:DEL? If so then that's fine by me. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 17:43, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, maybe a VP discussion or undeletion too - similar processes. I would use it to enact decisions only, yes. -- Catchi? 17:47, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree with pfctdayelise, that this is not good idea to have multiple bots with different configurations doing same thing. May be better solution to have several bots reading same configuration (User:CommonsDelinker/commands) and back-up each other. Same way as bots operates on Commons:Welcome log. I don't know how easily do this, this is question to Bryan.
I also agree with Newmanbe, that name of bot is not clear for those, who don't read or watch too much fiction :-) EugeneZelenko 14:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
There are many such bots (Example: User:Loveless). Something bot flagged is a bot. Its name shouldn't be an issue since it isn't offensive. The user can click on the username and learn that this is a bot. The discussion should really be about the bots functionality and not its name. -- Catchi? 17:13, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Done Stop messing with the cat. Cary Bassdemandez 15:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
User:WOPR is my bot, I'd like to request "admin access" in order for the bot to more easily fulfill its tasks. The bot is unable to edit protected pages. This bot is authorized to operate on commons, en.wikipedia and tr.wikipedia preforming similar tasks.
Admin access is necessary primarily for the ability to edit protected pages. There are lots of protected pages that need updating (such as recategorization tasks). The bot will not make any actual admin actions such as protecting, blocking, or deleting (or anything I left out). Admin access is only needed to edit protected pages.
Oppose It's not necessary as it seems. Doing something as trivial as replacing superseded images that don't have much of a difference even on a large scale is not worth admin status for this bot. Also, please keep in mind that nobody should be worrying about server performance. Furthermore, if this bot gets admin status, it is liable to crash this site (fearfully) numerous times, which should not happen. If you can't safely do this task and get involved in crap from trivialness, then I suggest that this nomination should be removed until further notice. (→O -vde) 16:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
(forgot to add this to my initial comment) Finally, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.(→O -vde) 16:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I find it distasteful that you are referencing my comments as "crap". Admins do not have the access to crash the site any more than regular users. -- Catchi? 16:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Not anybody's comments, but everyone else is concurring that this is way too trivial to warrant this at all. I don't care about the site crashing, but I do care that the bot needs to have whatever its doing perfected so that it does not cause any harm to users, other bots, and whatever else I may have said above. Therefore that is making me say it, and I apologize for the misunderstanding. (→O -vde) 16:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
The bot is operating perfectly fine. It poses no threat to anyone else (bot/admin/user/whatever). I am sorry but I do not understand your concern. If you could show an example I would better understand the problem and post a more informative response. -- Catchi? 16:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Forget about the stuff I said above. Reach a consensus if CommonsDelinker/SieBot should do this possibly controversial task, then give that bot an admin flag if needed. With that said, I'm going to leave myself Neutral for the time being. (→O -vde) 17:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Support Sysop flag would be useful for this bot. Majorly (talk) 02:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I only support allowing this bot to edit protected pages in the Image namespace. Specifically, protected pages in the Template namespace should not be allowed to be edited by anyone but humans. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I can agree with that for license templates (if a template breaks, consequences can be dire). The bot can discriminate between namespaces. I do want to add that the bot can handle images in templates better than humans. I also would like to add that none of the license templates (as it stands) really needs any mass modification since they all use svgs now. -- Catchi? 07:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Support, but only if editting in template namespace is supervised. -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
All edits of the bot is supervised. Will give heavy use images, templates and etc closer attention. :) -- Catchi? 16:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Support, but only if the Cat stops commenting after everybody's remark. Cary Bassdemandez 17:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Stop messing with the Cat... he didn't comment after MY support. :) ++Lar: t/c 17:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Could you provide a link to the original bot approval discussion so we can see what tasks it was approved for? Has it taken on any new tasks recently? Are there test runs that it would make sense to review? I'm inclined to support this request but do think a bit more background info would be helpful to help folks make up their minds. ++Lar: t/c 15:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Added. I use the bot almost completely for "find and replace" tasks that are either trivial (not worth a discussion) or based on solid consensus. For instance I recently committed edits like this. Protected license templates were rather wasteful since I had to make the edits manually. :) -- Catchi? 15:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Nod. First, thanks for the original bot bit discussion link. Second, how did the bot know to do the example change, and how do you know it was non controversial? When and where to use {{Superseded}} has been a bit controversial lately IIRC. I'm still minded to support but did want to follow up a bit. ++Lar: t/c 15:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Almost all license templates were using the svg versions of images (used in hundreds of thousands of pages 1,632,290 pages). Whats left mostly is subst: and personal license templates (several hundred pages). The edit mostly was for consistency.
There were 1,632,290 (live number: 111,700,954) files on commons as I was typing this. At least 1/3ish (536,000 - somewhat outdated list) of them had a Creative Commons related svg on them (hence making this a performance issue). Pngs are an abuse to system resources when used in license templates since those are mass used.
I had not followed the superseded discussion very closely for quite some time. IIRC the superseded discussion almost completely concerns image quality. Images on license templates are not a critical part of the templates themselves. Anything that roughly resembles the GFDL or CC symbol is adequate on them and they are not expected nor required to display quality. I do not believe the SVGs are a compromise in quality either, at least in this case.
I can however manually revert them if there is an issue.
Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't catch from the original example that you were restricting this to license template images. I agree that there is little or no controversy about changing to a more performant image in that case and I thank you for taking this task on. ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really convinced that there is enough need to edit protected pages to make minor changes, that a bot must do it. Pngs are an abuse to system resources? What the hell?? You know MediaWiki thumbnails SVGs to PNGs anyway, right? So how does changing a PNG to an SVG possibly reduce such ""abuse""?
More importantly, a common reason for protecting pages is to reduce the job queue caused by trivial edits made to high-profile templates such as license templates. Allowing a BOT to edit them is exactly against the point of protecting them in the first place! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I think the point of protecting license templates is to protect them from harms way (constant vandalism and etc). Alteration of license templates can have legal implications for example (like adding a disclaimer :) ). Of course this is merely my opinion. The bot merely preforms edits I am going to do by hand.
I think in general pngs made out of svg thumbnails occupy smaller amount of space and are better optimized than other pngs. Yes with todays technology svgs need to be converted to pngs so they work with most browsers. Eventually svgs (or some other vectorial format) will be popular allowing us to use them directly. The point is all similar license templates (all gfdl templates for example) should have the same image for consistency. Consider a case where GFDL decides to change their logo. We can update all instances of the GFDL logo by updating a single image at the moment. This saves time if nothing else.
Forget the PNG -> SVG arguments for a second. Think of a case where community decides to change a categorization scheme. There are many protected images on commons and updating their categories is particularly difficult. I'd trust a bot more than myself (preforming identical edits manually in mass quantities) when updating categories since I will more likely make a mistake.
I also don't understand intention to replace SVG with PNG. As far as PNG thumbnails cached on Wikimedia servers, I don't see any performance penalty. So, please don't solve problem, which doesn't exist yet. --EugeneZelenko 14:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
The intention of the PNG -> SVG strictly was for consistency. That has been already done. The PNG -> SVG thing was merely one example of bots legitimately editing protected pages. I intend to use the bot primarily for categorization.
Lets talk in numbers. 64px svg version of the GFDL logo used as of this version is 6.08 KB (6228 bytes) when rendered to a png via existing mediawiki software. 64px png version of the GFDL logo that was used prior is about 8.45 KB (8654 bytes). That's a 2,426 byte (23.41%) size difference between the svg-png and png. When the image is used on 100,000 images (we have several times the number of GFDL licensed images) the difference is 242,600,000 byte (231 MB) assuming every image description is loaded once and only once. The change isn't as trivial as it seems. -- Catchi? 16:29, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I think you are clutching at straws to invent work for this bot. "What if GFDL changes their logo?" "Consistency"? I don't find your argument about a 2KB difference convincing in letting a bot edit protected templates. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I am merely trying to illustrate the benefits of such edits on a few "what if" scenarios. It wasn't intended to be "tasks" for the bot. The bot will almost completely operate on demand based on consensus. I just want the permission be there (in advance) should the need arise. I wont be editing protected templates daily after all :) -- Catchi? 07:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I think this is subject to improve SVG -> PNG conversion in MediaWiki (like using pngcrush). It'll benefit other cases too. --EugeneZelenko 14:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Comment Would it be possible for this bot to be renamed so its bot status is reflected (e.g. WOPRBot or something). It currently looks like an ordinary editor. Majorly (talk) 11:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I definitely think that naming bots so that they have Bot in their name is a good thing and support Majorly's suggestion. ++Lar: t/c 14:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree that a bot should be so named as well --Herbytalk thyme 15:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
There are going to be a few exceptions to that rule—WOPR is one. As pointed out on that request, White Cat said that it stood for "War Operation Plan Response", which in itself is a computer. However, something flagged as a bot is a bot. This username is not offensive or confusing, and to learn more about this, just go to the bot's userpage. So for the time being, stop messing with the cat. (→O -vde) 16:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
WOPR has now been renamed to User:Computer, see COM:CHU#WOPR_to_Computer ... I am not convinced that is any better... I really do like having bot Ids have bot in their name. But it is not a big enough deal to make me want to change my support. ++Lar: t/c 14:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
I really dislike "bot" in my bots name. However I have modified the bots code to add "Bot edit:" to every edit summary now on. -- Catchi? 12:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not real keen on it either but it does seem to be a defacto standard. Some projects will not approve new bots that don't have bot in the name, I believe. We're not that uptight here though. ++Lar: t/c 10:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: double redirects, Flickr uplaods, category/image replacement, tag/retag all files in
a category/gallery
Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic (unsupervised for some tasks and supervised for others)
Edit type(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Continuous for double redirects sporadically for other tasks (when needed)
Maximum edit rate (eg edits per minute): 1 edit/sec
The find and replace tasks were approved a few years ago. I am only mentioning them here to verify if there are any problems. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 20:40, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
flickrripper.py seems to be ok and I think とある白い猫 can be trusted not to abuse the bot. Therefore the license-reviewer status should be added to the bot (and the reviewer in the template should be the bot) and とある白い猫 should be allowed to upload files from Flickr using this bot-account. -- RE rillkequestions? 17:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
It seems like someone de-reviewed files from New Zealand Defence Forces' flickr account which FlickrReviewer then reviewed - so that issue is resolved. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 21:00, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
What are criteria for replacing categories and images? --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Non-controversial replacements such as if a category is renamed. File replacement would probably be only used if commons delinker is unable to for some reason (such as when images are used inside templates without direct file links). I just want to maintain/verify existing permission for house keeping Find&Replace tasks people may need a bot to conduct. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 08:29, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable for me. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:46, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
If there are no objections, I think bot status should be granted. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:41, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
@EugeneZelenko: Would it be OK if my bot was granted back the admin flag as well? It would be helpful since we get a few protected pages as double redirects every now and then. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:09, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: Bot will tag featured pictures from other wikis (main concern is ar.wikipedia) using {{Assessments}}.
Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic, unsupervised after the generation of the list of pages to be edited.
Edit type(e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): infrequent runs to tag new promotions/demotions
Maximum edit rate (eg edits per minute): 60
Programming language(s): AWB, bot already has a flag
Please make a test run. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:55, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Certainly. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 14:31, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
It seems like someone has already manually tagged the images. I can demonstrate with another wiki if you approve. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 15:06, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
A small test run from any wiki would help us to evaluate this. --99of9 (talk) 03:55, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't quite understand this request. Is this about extending the scope of a previously approved bot request? For the description it sounds like this is a small one time task. Does this warrant a request? --Dschwen (talk) 15:23, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
I doubt it would be one-time, since other wikis are going to be periodically featuring pictures and not marking them here. But it does seem like it would be infrequent. – PhilosopherLet us reason together. 12:41, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
@Dschwen: It's quite common sense that small one time tasks (or small few times task) don't warrant a request, and I think such request basically give more work to bureaucrats, who have already a lot of work - judging by this page. Anyway, as far as I can see, bot policy is very strict about bots running without requesting, and there are no written exceptions in policy. IMO, providing some clear exceptions for low volume tasks would benefit bureaucrats, bot users and the project.--Pere prlpz (talk) 16:05, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Four months and still no report of a test run. I will close this as stale within the next few days. --Dschwen (talk) 17:19, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
What exactly am I supposed to test? I am merely trying to understand the nature you want me to run. How many edits would be sufficient? My plan is to grab a category off a wiki that has featured pictures and use a regex to apply it to the assessments template (or add the template if it isn't present). -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 23:58, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
I might not be able to generate 30 edits due to people manually tagging which is why I was asking. I am processing all 3,345 files from and hopefully I have enough to reach that mark. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 16:08, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Yeah I only have 17 edits (edit summary: "adding enwiki fa assessment, replaced: {{Assessments| → {{Assessments|enwiki=1|)"). It is a simple regex in AWB. Is this sufficient? -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 19:09, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Also, please note that 60 edits per minute is much higher than the normal maximum. --99of9 (talk) 00:09, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
This has been discussed before. Is there any reason why we have to worry about such an arbitrary number bot operators disregard? It artificially creates a massive backlog as 1000 edits would take 16.66 hours to complete. I have placed a remark on the talk page of the policy to avoid duplication. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 15:30, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
1000 edits would take 100 minutes with recommended maximum bot speed. I think that is a reasonable speed fot this kind of task. Bots can make errors and if they do they should not do it at to high speed. This bot needs to be fixed so that it links to correctly named nomination pages at English Wikipedia, like this. It also needs to make sure that the pictures it tags really are featured pictures, eg File:Eastern Screech Owl.jpg does not seem to ever have been featured and File:Ebony Bones backup performer.jpg seems to have been delisted as featured picture. /Ö 19:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
FA Page ghosts on en.wikipedia Eastern_Screech_Owl.jpg Ebony Bones-01.jpg
Linking to nomination pages is a later issue. Not all of them are marked on en.wikipedia or on commons and crawling for them is a non-trivial task. That is a future task I hope to tackle.
The idea is also to sync enwiki (and other wikis) delistings with commons. The bot has no way of verifying if a file is actually featured or if it tagged without even being nominated. It can however check if files are in the en:Category:Featured pictures or not. The two mentioned files were in the category or at least en.wikipedia reported them as such (Eastern_Screech_Owl.jpg doesn't exist as a page on en.wikipedia despite appearing on category, Ebony Bones-01.jpg is a redirect on en.wikipedia to Ebony Bones backup performer.jpg which is the matching image which again shouldn't appear on category). On my second sweep I'd run a similar regex to en:Category:Wikipedia former featured pictures. Also not everything is nicely marked so catching problematic images is again a future development task.
The restriction is no faster than 1 edit/10sec according to the linked policy page. Simple math is 10sec*1000=10,000secs, 10,000/60=166.66... minutes, 166.66.../60=2.77... hours, provided bot does not spend any time doing anything. I do not want to add a 10 second counter between edits which would serve no purpose than waste my time. I do not see the point of a speed limit for bots. It was thrown in as an idea that servers couldn't handle such speeds. Developers disagreed and did not see a problem. The quicker the bot edits the better as edits would be rolled out quicker. That way I can change the parameters to work on the next wiki. This script would probably check for about 20 wikis that have featured pictures - of which most don't have that many files or new files. This task would take probably no more than 20 edits per month after the initial run. I do not believe the speed limit is based on consensus mind you. Let's discuss bot speeds on Commons talk:Bots as its a more general question if this is worth tracking and enforcing.
Please notify me on my talk page if there are any developments here. I cannot watch a page forever. :/ -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 22:56, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Per the talk page I have adjusted the speed limit to 12 edits per minute (1 per 5s), but I'm not willing to go higher than that without very good evidence or directions from above (i.e. developers/techs of some kind). So please adjust this request to that rate. If the actual number of edits is as you expect, then this will take you only 2 minutes per month after the initial runs. --99of9 (talk) 12:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Ö that linking to the nom would be very useful, especially since this allows others to verify the bot's edits. How is your progress in implementing this? If it's too hard for you, I suppose I'm ok with running the job as it is now, with a view to crowdsourcing the nom-linking. --99of9 (talk) 12:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I unfortunately haven't focused on it yet. I want to see how the bot preforms with this task as is to establish the workload. One possibility is to add the new images into a temporary category for crowd-sourcers to plow through. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 14:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the temporary category idea seems good. --99of9 (talk) 15:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
I propose to approve this bot once the speed limit is adjusted to 12 per minute. --99of9 (talk) 12:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Exactly why do you want to force a speed limit? Speed limit for bots do not make any sense as I discussed on the policy page which didn't get much of a reply. I am just trying to understand the reasoning. I don't think the bot would make 12 edits per minute for this task (as typically you do not get 12 promotions even on en.wikipedia I think) but I am running multiple tasks and sometimes they may overlap. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 14:31, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
As a precaution to protect the server we need *some* limit (e.g. if supercomputer bot wanted to upload 1 million files per second, would you approve that??). I do not know what the ideal balance between bot operators and server protection is, but per that discussion I have doubled the speed limit and brought it into line with the absolute maximum on the meta policy page. You are going to have to ask someone above my paygrade if you want approval beyond the policy limits. --99of9 (talk) 14:49, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
I am not trying to be difficult. My question is more fundamental/philosophical, why do we care about edit speed at all when developers do not. When asked developers stated that such a protection isn't needed. Performance is their worry, not ours. There actually is an edit limit for bots too so it is not like a bot can upload a million files per second. Mind that it is impossible for bots to hit such edit speeds due to latency reasons alone (bot has to request a page, receive the page, parse the text on the page, send the modified content, request a confirmation (that it saved), receive the confirmation - even through API this takes time) unless they basically operate next to the servers or run multiple (unrelated) tasks at the same time through multiple computers (like my case). I just do not see the technical problem that prompts for us to even care about bot edit limits.
Mind that I am not complaining about my own bots edit speed. It will probably never hit either limits even if I don't bother with a timer due to latency. I am just saying the policy doesn't make sense.
If you can get an appropriately authorized developer to say that on record, then I'd be happy to see the meta policy changed. --99of9 (talk) 18:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
Some people have pointed to WP:PERF, which is basically what I'm going to reiterate. Basically as long as a bot is well behaved and obeys maxlag, people shouldn't worry about setting artificial limits on bot rate for "performance" reasons. It's up to the developers and ops team to enforce these sorts of rules at the software level, which we do. That's not to say you should write a stupid bot that overloads the API just because a developer says don't worry about it--remember that we should all be good API citizens and keep in mind there's other people using the API too. Of course communities can impose their own limits if they still want (for social reasons, or to make cleanup easier if something goes wrong), but please don't do it in the name of performance. Note that this is all just generic commentary because I was asked to weigh in...I've got no opinions on this actual bot in question or the tasks it wants to perform. ^demon (talk) 20:28, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
I'd like to clarify (as above) I did not seek dev comment in relation to my bots edit limits (discussed above). I have no intention of trying to punish API as I am a good API citizen. :) -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 05:28, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Unless there are further objections, I propose that we approve this bot. We will still need discussions to decide how the speed policy issue should be handled (preferably at meta first). Following ^demon's comments, I can't see the simple addition of a handful of templates crashing the servers, so I'm ok with approving this particular bot, even at this speed. --99of9 (talk) 15:09, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
I concur. --Dschwen (talk) 15:17, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
I will voluntarily use a speed limit beyond whats approved here for the time being as the workload for this bot wouldn't be that high. As I said my reservations mainly was the existence of the general speed limit which I feel needed more discussion. That of course as you said should be discussed at meta. -- とある白い猫ちぃ？ 01:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Approved. --Dschwen (talk) 04:02, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
