User:PhloxBot/ Projects


 * User:PhloxBot/ Current tasks For upcoming PhloxBot Runs
 * User:PhloxBot/ Requests For proposals on maintenace tasks for PhloxBot. (limited time offer)

Bot methodology:
The goal is full transparency and deliberation, so that folks understand they and not the bots are in control. No one wants to contribute to a site where arbitrary actions are taken by faceless bots that they have no say over.

Procedure: Warning method #1

 * Do your first pass on the set of problem articles. Add a template with a warning message.  The warning message instructs the user to remove the template if they disagree with the proposed action, offers multiple lines of communication:
 * Page that exhaustively lists all pages that will be affected so that folks can quickly identify other problems they disagree with.
 * Exception/Not applicable Talk page- directs user to a talk page to briefly state why the article should be exempted.
 * Page presenting the Guidelines or policy that the Bot is implementing. Anyone with global issues about the policy may debate/ present their POV on the talk page.
 * After a period of time agreed upon with admins has expired, on the second pass the bot performs the proposed transformation.

Procedure: Requested tasks

 * User may post a requested task on a central bot requests page. if the change appears legitimate, it is included in the next bot run. EG:
 * Change all pages linking to George X (1800-1900) to George X (1810-1900) Reason: birthdate wrong!

Procedure: Pulling the plug- (Server loading/ Bezerk bot)

 * Bots runs on a separate account. If there are loading issues/ bot gone bezerk, any admin can turn off the bot by simply banning the account.
 * Runner of bot works out with responsible admin/bureaucrat/wikia tech what the edits per minute rate/ best server low load times is.
 * Construction of new bots/ new bot operators must test scripts on small runs before making large unattended runs- especially those which automatically create large numbers of articles. Such damage can be reversed easily with bots run from an admin account with deletion power, but this is really annoying.

Bot policy Page

 * eg- some sites state that bots users must request permission before running a bot on the site.
 * some sites prefer that only approved bot tools be used (eg pywikipedia) because it has protections against bad behavior (eg default throttling of the number of edits per minute)
 * Change log flooding: Wikimedia engines have support for a Bot flag on an account. This is assigned to trusted bot accounts so that admins may filter change logs/ rss feeds to non bot users.
 * Large scale runs must be approved by someone from a designated list of users.

Task: Living People

 * walk all articles. For articles on individuals,
 * If birth date of indivdual can be determined from article with near certainty
 * Do Warning procedure pass
 * Add Template:Living ( or category "possibly living" as appropriate) to all pages that were not exempted.

Category moves

 * Cat move all immigrants of to emigrants of
 * Switzerland, etc.
 * Others?

Privacy/defamation Violations

 * Scan for phone numbers, SSN#s, Credit card numbers.
 * For pages with email addresses, we might suggest to the user that they convert their email address to a bitmap, so that it is more difficult to be harvested by spammers.
 * For apparently living individuals, flag any articles for admin review if a list of inflamatory words are found (eg racial epithets, generally slanderous terms, profanity). Maybe this sort of thing would be useful for all articles, with the sensitivity turned much higher for living individuals.
 * Last name encodings in various cats. Problem, user wants to look up the surname in a category eg WWII veterans, but it is useless becaus you have to look under every single letter, eg J's for the Joe and John Smiths, G for the George Smiths, etc. For such cats, add assumed last name to the category string eg  will produce a much more easily browsable list.
 * List of Cats that would benefit from this?
 * Time Project
 * extract all births (and christenings?) / deaths and add cats for them. Maybe for other events?  Marriages?
 * Geography
 * Cats: Birth by State/province/canton- add cat using assumed lastname.
 * By request from sign up page,
 * WP link enhancement
 * add wp link to first mentions of famous people in all articles.

Spam

 * visit all pages, eliminate link to the site if it is on a banned list. Elimination may have some issues.
 * It is easy to break the link- just remove the http junk and leave the display text.
 * It's harder to eliminate more, since you don't know how much of the text accompanying the link is promotional/ should be deleted. Could remove the whole line if it is in a link section/ looks like a bulleted item.  But problematic if it is embedded in the article text.  Sorry, but bots really shouldn't muck with text unless it has high certainty of what it is doing.
 * Walk the tree of all edits for a given user and eliminate whatever links they added.
 * Detection: visit all pages, compile a list of domains with links. Post the list as a page giving each domain, the numbers of links- whether they are to an identical page, what the change is in the last week/ two weeks/ months.