Forum:CT:Droid use policies (or the lack thereof)

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Droid use policies (or the lack thereof)

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus Track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record.
The result of the debate was no consensus, leaning toward adopting Wookieepedia:Bots and requiring community approval of all bots. jSarek 03:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

It has suddenly become abundantly clear that we need some well-defined and well-enforced droid use policies. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about bots to know what those should be or how we should enforce them. Some bot edits are helpful, some are innocuous, some are pointless, some are destructive. We need to figure out how to have more of the first, some of the second, less of the third, and none of the fourth. -- Darth Culator (Talk)(Kills) 02:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Perhaps we should start a page with a list of tasks for bots to do, with each task having to be discussed/voted on/admin-approved or something, meaning any task would have to be given the "OK" somehow before it could be carried out. That way people would be aware of it and perhaps any potential bugs could be worked out ahead of time. -- Ozzel 02:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • As we discussed on IRC, I agree Darth_Culator (more to come later):
  1. Make Wookieepedia:Bots official policy. There are some minor details to work out in it, but that can come later.
  2. All bots must be approved before editing articles. This does not mean the have to be flagged as a bot, but the community must approve of a user having a bot. —Xwing328(Talk) 02:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • In response to Ozzel, yes - we should have a simple, quick approval system for site-wide or somewhat questionable/controversial edits. However, there are some minor (necessary) maintanence tasks that shouldn't be approved. —Xwing328(Talk) 02:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • If I can ask, Darth Culator, what has made this abundantly clear? Am I unaware of any particular instances? — SparqMan Talk 02:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
    • The recent onslaught of multiple bots and questionable edits, some helpful, some not. —Xwing328(Talk) 02:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Whistler and Q9-X2 have been largely innocuous with some useful edits, and R2-D2 and C-3PO have been useful. Navi, however, has been doing things that are somewhat more questionable. And we apparently have more droids in the works. --—Unsigned comment by Darth Culator (talk • contribs)
    • I agree very much with Culator that there needs to be a central policy for bots and I also think that the community should approve of the bot before its introduction into Wookieepedia. Zainal 2:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Why wasn't this in place to begin with? Of course I'd support oversight. -- Riffsyphon1024 07:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Following some questionable edits (eg a lot -> a large amount of), I think this would be a very good idea. Green Tentacle (Talk) 13:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Count me in. jSarek 17:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Is there a way to make it so that automatic bot updates don't swamp the Recent changes page, like the Navi the Bot ones are? - JMAS 17:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Approved bots can be flagged as bot accounts by the Wikia staff. This has already been done for all of the other bots that have been running. (Click "show bots" in the recent changes page to see what Whistler's been up to.) —Silly Dan (talk) 17:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
      • So how do we get Navi the Bot flagged then so it won't show up on the Recent changes page? For a "Recent changes patroller" like myself, that bot makes it virtually impossible to wade through. - JMAS 19:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
        • I wouldn't want Wikia to flag it as a bot until I'm convinced it's making changes we can ignore, though. —Silly Dan (talk) 01:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Why are bots like Navi the Bot bothering to replace redirect links with piped links on talk and forum pages? Seems like a waste of time. -Fnlayson 23:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Moreover, it's doing the opposite - making piped links into redirect links, against our policy. Navi's been making so many poor changes I'm half tempted to block it for vandalism. jSarek 01:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC) I can read article histories in the correct order. Honest I can. Glad my itchy ban finger only made me HALF tempted, or else I'd look REALLY foolish. jSarek 01:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)