Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Betacommand/Proposed decision

Arbitrators

Active

• Charles Matthews
• FloNight
• Fred Bauder
• Jpgordon
• Kirill Lokshin
• Mackensen
• Morven
• Paul August
• SimonP
• UninvitedCompany
• Blnguyen

Inactive

• Jdforrester
• Flcelloguy
• Neutrality
• Raul654

As of the opening of this case, there are 13 active arbitrators of whom none are recused, so the majority is 7. Although Blnguyen is currently listed as away, he voted to accept this case and therefore is included as an active arbitrator on the case unless he states otherwise. Newyorkbrad 00:16, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Update: Blnguyen is now fully active. Flcelloguy currently away. Thus, as of the voting stage, 12 active arbs, majority still 7. Newyorkbrad 22:34, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

BInguyen is away again but has voted. Jdforrester has not edited in 3 weeks and is listed as inactive, FIcelloguy has returned but is not active on cases opened or placed in voting while he was away; tally is now 11/6. Thatcher131 01:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

WebmasterWorld

I'm particularly amused by the implication in proposed finding of fact 12 part 3, that anyone could consider WebmasterWorld a reliable source of anything. I suppose if the owner of website admits there and on his site that he's doing inappropriate things, it might be appropriate to propose it for the Meta blocklist, but, even then, there may be legitimate sub-sites hosted there. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

History of inappropriate blocks

I stayed out of this ArbCom case because my only unprovoked interaction with Betacommand has been my most horrific experience on wikipedia (and I've seen a lot around here.) I simply did not want to wake my memories about this incident through participating in this case. But as far as my block is concerned, the current statement of fact is not complete. It says

• 21 December: Without warning or prior discussion, Betacommand blocked long-time established editor for 48 hours for "personal attacks" ([1]. {missing and suggest to add: also failing to notify Irpen (or anyone) about the block}. Betacommand made no {missing and suggest to add: further} comment about the block, on Wikipedia, until nearly a day later ([2]), saying that the block was because of Irpen's comments at WP:PAIN ([3]). This block was criticized at WP:ANI ([4]) and at User talk:Betacommand ([5])...and Alex Bakharev unblocked ([6]).

Lack of even notification in addition to lack of merit, discussion, or explanation upon repeated requests adds a huge insult to an already significant injury. This was a "Hit and run" block in addition to being an abusive one as mentioned during the community outrage in the post-block discussion linked above. More on this (with diffs) can be found in the third paragraph of my statement.

In a similar fashion, Betacommand did not notify other users whose blocks the section address,users Hillock65 and Chuprynka, as the history of their talk pages show ([7], [8].)

Additionally, in connection to the Irpen's block, how this low profile discussion at PAIN was brought to Betacommand's and several other users' attention can be seen from this as well as from the fact that none of the participants in this discussion have ever been seen at the WP:PAIN before and there is no on-wiki messaging between users about that (more here.) I know that ArbCom was reluctant to intervene into the ethics of the admins' off-wiki conduct, so it is up to the Arbitrators whether to include the seeming unexpectancy of the coordinated intervention; but that the "communication problem" also included lack of the notification even is the grave violation of the policies and commons sense. --Irpen 06:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Irpen, the proposed principle on communication (#7) is more explicit than in the past. In part it states:

• "all editors are expected to respond to messages intended for them in a timely manner and to constructively discuss controversial issues. This is especially true for administrators in regard to administrative actions. Such expected communication includes: giving appropriate (as guided by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines) warnings prior to, and notification messages following, their actions;..."

Does this go partway to addressing some of your concerns? My personal feeling is that, if there were "backroom scheming," it would be undercut by requirements for clear communication. Some behavior fares poorly in bright daylight. Jd2718 15:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've modified finding 14, to include the lack of notification regarding the block of Irpen. Paul August ☎ 13:14, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the consideration. Please note, however, that either Hillock65 or Chuprynka were also not notified. That these are lower activity users is the possible reason why the lack of notification here did not become a high-profile issue like in the first case, as the users were unblocked within 48 hours. On the side note, user Chuprynka never edited after this incident despite being unblocked. We can now only guess what was the role of this grievous abuse in that but it is certainly not Chuprynka's being anyone's sock as I observed when I cried wolf upon the ill-considered block for the supposed sockpuppetry. Whatever Betacommand thought about sockpuppetry being involved (see my statement) the fact remains that he did not notify either user. --Irpen 13:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've again modified finding 14 to include the lack of notification regarding the blocks of Hillock65 or Chuprynka, and the fact that Chuprynka has not edited since being unblocked. Paul August ☎ 16:06, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Desysopping

I will say once again, as I said on the workshop page, that I see no justification for this in the evidence presented or in the findings of fact on this page. I would be grateful if arbcom members supporting this remedy would explain their reasoning. Thank you. Chick Bowen 19:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I feel likewise, but didn't say anything before as I wasn't sure if it was allowable to query arbitrators' pending decisions. --kingboyk 13:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

You must have missed the so-called "Giano" case. :) It is certainly allowable to comment on proposed decisions. Of course, whether and when and how to respond is up to the arbitrators. Newyorkbrad 14:12, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The justification is persistently bad judgement which is amply demonstrated in the fact findings. Whether desysopping in a case like this is in keeping with past arbcom history, I don't know. I do believe that the inappropriate uses of sysop bits in this case were all pretty easy to reverse. The massive spree of inappropriate bot edits, on the other hand, are much harder to reverse (it would require writing another bot that's much smarter than the one that did the bad edits) and as far as I know, nobody has done it. Since the rampaging bot didn't use any admin tools, desysopping won't create any technical obstacles to more such rampages. So whether or not there is a desysopping, I don't think the underlying problems are being addressed deeply enough. 75.62.7.22 (formerly 64.160.39.153) 18:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I am watching what I say for several reasons, One I dont want to drege up others mis-deeds as that is not something I do. Two several users including several parties to the case do not want to see me desysoped. Three I dont want to get admins/users on the front lines in trouble.

Basically I have made a few mistakes. we are all human. The Irpen block is something I am not going to discuss. I made my statements before (Irpen has tried to drag me into an IRC conspiracy after I blocked him). I am one of the few admins who do the dirty work, I clean CSD, the image backlogs, and other crap admin task. There is no glory in clearing CSD (very rare to happen). I dont go for the attention, I dont write FA articles, I dont participate in XfD's, or the other glorifying task. Instead I clear backlogs. Something few admins do. yes Paul pointed to 117 pages that I un-protected, those were setting on the protected page log. Some of the pages that i handled were protected for over a year, I didnt un-protect pages that were under a month of protection. a lot of the pages were protected forgotten about. In regard to admin bots I never ran one. I had a reporting script yes, if you want I can try and dig out an old copy of it. (that code has morphed into my linksearch bot). Yes I made a one time mistake with with image deletions, I have never repeated that. In regard to the palywood issue, a user came to ANI about an editing dispute. I decided to try and see if I could help solve the issue. I added the {{notability}} tag to the page and left a note on the talkpage clearly stating that any more edits regarding that tag should be stopped until a consensus could be reached on the talkpage. I also clearly stated that any editing to the tag would get said user blocked for edit-warring. less than 12 hours later the edit dispute continued. I thus placed a block for edit-waring, exactly what I said I would do if the edit-warring did not stop. I know of 2 current admin bots that are working as we speak, one is admitted and the other would get hung and probably brought to arbcom for it if they were exposed. I hate to brag but i think this needs to be said before the ArbCom makes a decision. I personally have 24,000+ edits, and my bot account has 80,000+ edits. I have placed over 5,000 blocks for vandals, and Usernamevio's, and over 5,000 deletions. there are some admins who's last 50 logged actions go back over nine months, (they are still active editors) while personally I can do 3-4 times that number an hour. I ask the arbcom thing before you decide to desysop one of the most dedicated admins that you have and what kind of message that sends. many admins are already afraid to do admin work because they know that few users AGF toward admins. most of the time admins are thrown to the wolves. I ask what will wikipedia gain by removing me as an admin? you would loose one of the few admins who keeps CSD in check, a dedicated bot programmer who has improved wikipedia. I see no gain. I also know that I have made some mistakes and need to work on my communication skills. But who among us hasnt made mistakes and doesnt need to improve? Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 02:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I might say that another admin was desysopped with 50k edits, and not machine edits either. Personally, I would have to point out that it is your excessively indiscriminate use of admin tools which is the problem, as I have noted below. Some people with perfectly legitimate entries and very notable articles are having their work indiscriminately massacred at a high rate. A large amount of these errors, and an apparent unwillingness to change tack is the problem. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The concern, at least from my perspective, is not that you have mistakes, and not even really their scale (although, admittedly, your mistakes have involved a rather large number of actions); rather, it's that when you're confronted with complaints, you don't seem to be sufficiently forthcoming in responding to them. I'd like to avoid seeing any further flare-ups on the noticeboards and similar ocurrences related to what you're doing; do you have a convincing explanation of why they wouldn't happen if you were to continue as an admin? Kirill Lokshin 04:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

There are more problems. I took a look through Betacommand's latest set of speedy deletions. Some of them are done at 8 deletes per minute. Did you even read the article to see if they are speedyable? What if the tagger was ingorant and vandalously tagged the article. I checked 23 of the deletes at random and had to undelete 8 of them [9]. And I don't mean that they were non-speedyable but Betacommand took a shortcut, some of these would almost unanimously be kept at AfD, including a few players who played in the top league in professional football (clearly stated) and also one guy who PLAYED FOR HIS COUNTRY - Danny Ward - "In 2004 Danny made the transition into the Great Britain team making his debut off the bench against New Zealand in the Tri Nations competition". There is already a 33% error rate in deleting blatantly notable entries. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I won't bother looking through the other ones you undeleted—although I strongly suggest checking them very carefully—but Danny Ward was a copyvio from [10], so I've deleted it again. Notability is not the only reason we speedy things, after all. Kirill Lokshin 04:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

True, although the fact he marked them all as nn, suggests he only read the tag, without looking at the article. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

(3x edit conflict)

Since the issues of communication have been brought up I have been working on them. see [11] [12] (I posted to ANI and unblocked I thought the spammers would be gone and collateral was too high) [13] for some examples. I would in the past just ignored [14]. and I hope to prevent any flareup again. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 04:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

(editconflict) In regard to those athletes I remember them, they appeared to be copy/paste copyvios by the way they were formated. and yes I do read articles before deleteing them

editconflictX2 thanks Kirill Lokshin I knew they were copyvios but didnt bother finding out from where.

See, that is the problem: if you knew they were copyvios, why not say so in the edit summary instead of "nn" which means something completely different? This is why people keep complaining about communications problems. 75.62.7.22 07:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Copyvios aside, that's still 3/23 that would easily pass AfD and are not speedyable, and some of those articles had many grammar and spelling errors, so they may not all have been copyvios. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 04:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It does look like he is doing an attempt to do better though. He has learned how to communicate correctly when concerns are raised. I'm wondering which 3 were "ok" and should not have been deleted? He does appear to have the best interests of wikipedia at heart. —— Eagle101 ^{Need help?} 05:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I can see that he feels he is doing the right thing, but I think that he continues to persist with an unsustainable style. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you arbitrators for explaining your position; I have a much better understanding of your reasoning now. I wouldn't like to say at this stage whether or not I agree with you, but what I think doesn't matter anyway :) Again, thank you for taking the time to respond. --kingboyk 12:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I would urge the arbitration comittee to read over the comments that have been made regarding Betacommand being desysopped in the workshop page, many established editors don't want this to happen, and there are few that think it is a good idea, I said there, and I'll say again, there are less severe remedies that would better serve the community. Let's face it, if we're wrong and there is a reoccurance, the case can be re-evaluated. I'm not asking you to explain your descision, but only to take into account the thoughts of the community. Ryan Postlethwaite 10:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Ryan, let's ignore every misuse of sysop bits described in this arb case, i.e. pretend that the improper blocks and deletions never happened. Concentrate completely on the communications issues and the non-sysop automated link removals and imagine how an RFA for Betacommand might go with a history like that, if he were not already an admin. I'm claiming neutrality on the desysopping question out of deference to the admins who say Betacommand is doing a lot of useful admin work, but I'm sure that such an RFA would crash and burn. Therefore, not desysopping seems a bit weird. Whether Betacommand is desysopped or not I'd encourage him to spend some time editing in article space (I mean actually researching and writing about encyclopedic subjects, not removing links) instead of doing admin/maintainance stuff for a while, then (if desysopped) put in a new RFA after building up a history of article contributions and improved judgement. I'm always far more resentful of errors from admins who don't edit articles than from those who do, on the theory that those who don't, can't possibly understand what article-space editors deal with and how to interpret policy in ways that actually make the encyclopedia better. 75.62.7.22 04:52, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I initially didn't think this was a desysopping case, but the evidence mounted. --Tony Sidaway 05:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it can be said with certainty that desysopping wouldn't be unfair; as you say, the findings of fact as now presented are rather more substantial than the early workshop discussion indicated.

As above, that's not to say I support it or even wish to take a position, with the repeated proviso that my opinion doesn't count now anyway :) --kingboyk 12:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Jurisdiction of the Bot Approvals Group

I note that the arbitrators are in the process of delivering a judgement which would confirm that the Bot Approvals Group have jurisdiction over bot activity on the English Wikipedia. This seems reasonable and sensible enough to me. However, I think arbitrators should be aware of a storm which has brewed up at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard and to a lesser extent at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Approvals group which has lead me to resign from the group.

Basically, Cydebot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked by BAG member xaosflux (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for editing at some 50 pages per minute, well over the current limit of 15ppm. I, Kingboyk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), endorsed the block, as did several non BAG members, and unblocked when the operator, Cyde (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), returned. However, it soon became apparent that Cyde had received "authorisation" elsewhere; I've deduced that this was on IRC, and nobody has rebutted my claim. My reward - from my perspective - for attempting to enforce bot policy (and for not knowing that gmaxwell (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a developer) was gross incivility, personal attacks, and assumptions of bad faith. Faced with such a community reaction, I had little choice but to assume that BAG does not have community support and to resign, and that the actual procedure for seeking bot approval is to request it on IRC. --kingboyk 11:16, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Further discussion is here ( permalink). --kingboyk 12:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

heh. The situation is kinda funny. What you have to remember is that there are certain people who always know better than us lowly peons. They are the ones who wrote the software, and in their spare time invented the internets. They hang out in the cool irc clubs forbidden to us lowly worker bees. They make decisions and implement them, and there is no need to let the peons know because, well, they always know better, and the peons should know better than to question them. Of course, these superior people need not lower themselves to your level to ask for "approval". Perhaps they could have notified you, but, hey, they are busy people who don't concern themselves with the workings on of the lower classes. You should be thanking them that they even deign to talk to unimportant people like you. And, yes, David Gerard a complete jackass. Good on you for resigning, and I suggest you direct all bot requests to these people. 166.150.34.253 16:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Lol, I don't know who you are anon, but that made me smile for the first time in about 24 hours. Cheers. Best end the conversation here as this page should be about Betacommand. Any further comments not specifically about Betacommand or the mandate of BAG to the pages linked above please :) --kingboyk 16:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't get a sense from /Proposed_decision so far that Arbcom was going to hand bot jurisdiction over to BAG (beyond accepting some classifications of bots), but I haven't had time to follow it closely. I do think Arbcom should be careful about that. Wikipedia in my view is a human-edited encyclopedia that delegates a few functions to bots for practicality reasons. BAG is a special interest group in wikipedia that likes bots and likes to write and run them. I don't know if it's possible to get a sense of whether the community in general thinks there should be more bots or fewer bots but I do get a sense that BAG wants there to be more bots, so there may be a disconnect. BAG's technical knowledge is valuable but it should not dictate bot policy for the whole encyclopedia, any more than drug companies should dictate healthcare policy to the US government. I'd personally rather have fewer bots on wikipedia but that's just me. 75.62.7.22 04:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I think they are doing just that. See Automated editing ("Unsupervised and supervised automatic bots require approval of the BAG." 5-0); Admin bots ("Admins should not run bots on their sysop account that are enabled to perform sysop actions (blocking, deleting, etc) without specific community approval from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval and/or WP:RFA" 3-1); and to a lesser extent Approval for high-speed automated edits ("Editors who wish to use semi-automated tools for high-speed editing are advised to seek the approval of the BAG.", this one says advised, is stuck at 2-2, and being semi-automated I'm not sure that it's a good finding. Per Kirill Lokshin: "Not helpful without a rigorous definition of "semi-automated".) I think the arbs are coming to the right decisions here and welcome it.

As for whether BAG wants more bots or not, I'm not sure if it's true nor if it's relevant. Yes, the membership is technically inclined, but the membership is decided on by the community. The BAG merely accepts or rejects applications based on the rules. If the community want the rules changed, they can change them, and BAG would comply. This is indeed being discussed at the moment, although there doesn't seem to be a huge demand for change and certainly not for reducing bot activity. --kingboyk 12:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

adminbots

Kirill's reference to Curpsbot doesn't fit my (hazy) recollection of that situation. I don't think Curpsbot fit into any category permitted by editing policy back then, formal or informal. Admin bots were just plain forbidden, and Curpsbot was treated as exceptional as something of an IAR matter, since the MediaWiki developers were familiar with its workings and were ok with it, and there were plausible reasons to not implement its functions in MediaWiki itself instead of in a bot. A number of users (some combination of process freaks, and bot writers who wanted to run admin bots of their own but had no way to get them approved) objected to Curpsbot as being against policy, which it was; however, its operation was important enough that the objections didn't get much traction. I personally viewed it as a hack that the MediaWiki devs had taken under their wing to get around limitations in the wiki code, which made it something of a wiki feature rather than a creature of the editor community. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that Curpsbot shouldn't be viewed as reflecting the state of bot policy in those days. Its legitimacy (such as it had) as I see it came from the wiki developers and not from the editors, and the devs in almost all other cases have had nothing to do with bot approvals. 75.62.7.22 05:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, I think it's a mistake to focus on the single example provided; it was merely the most well-known admin-bot, so I can certainly provide other names. For example, Cydebot uses admin tools (albeit through Cyde's account) when processing CFD, and so forth.

My point is more to the fact that there appears to be a contradiction between what the community has said about admin-bots (to wit, that they need to go through RFA separately) and what the community is actually doing about admin-bots (to wit, letting them run when they're useful). Kirill Lokshin 11:51, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep. And IIRC, didn't the suggestion that one of the early proposals go through RFA come from up high?? Either that or it was a unilateral decision by the bot ops that they would seek consensus at RFA whether or not it was actually necessary. --kingboyk 11:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo requested that TawkerbotTorA go through an RFA, which failed. When I brought this up earlier Ram-Man stated that RFA for adminbots was what the BAG wanted anyway. But yes, vaious adminbots have existed over the years, some with tacit approval, some (like Curps's) with just a lot of traction, and some more or less illicitly. Personally I feel that adminship as currently conceived will not scale as the project grows--already the backlogs are out of hand--and that adminbots are needed. What is germane to this case is that I was one of a couple of experienced admins (as I already said somewhere in this case, and I do hope the arbitrators noticed) who told Betacommand to go ahead and edit {{deletedpage}}-tagged pages en masse. In that case, I was wrong since our attempted "fix" made a bad system a little bit worse, but as a general principle, I was right, and if the adminbot issue is one of the things BC is being desysopped for, than he's taking the fall for a lot of us, including me. Chick Bowen 22:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that if we're beating up on BC for doing dumb things on his own initiative while refusing the advice of other admins, and now it turns out that one of the bigger incidents was at the advice of other admins, the arbs should certainly take that into consideration, ease up on BC (at least for that particular incident) and offer some gentle words of counsel to those who gave the not-so-wise advice. Anyway, if that deletedpage categorization really has to be automated it's probably better done in MediaWiki itself, or alternatively (since info wasn't destroyed) it wouldn't be that big a deal to reprogram the bot to get the dates right. The scaling problems you describe partly reflect an IMO intentional cultural decision from way back, to choose to record a lot of metadata as manually-maintained wiki markup in the page body, instead of having the wiki software manage it separately. That may have made more sense in the old experimental days than now, at WP's current size. Maybe m:API will help write cleaner automatic clients than what we currently think of as "bots" in the near term, and m:Semantic MediaWiki indicates a longer-range direction. This stuff sounds like a saner approach than turning yet more bots loose editing wiki pages. 75.62.7.22 06:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

After the TawkerbotTorA incident, it became obvious from those comments that the community is hostile to admin bots. Now I personally hold the belief that we should have admin bots and that they will likely be required, but that doesn't give me the right to ignore consensus. TawkerbotTorA failed partially (or entirely) because the community does not desire admin bots and because they want direct oversight over them. By extension, it would seem that they'd want to restrict bots running on a main user account as well. I don't think the issue here is the name on the account! There is evidence that this anti-admin bot feeling is starting to shift, but it has not happened yet and ArbCom is correct to confirm this through a principle. -- RM 12:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Saying "the community does not desire admin bots" is simply false. ProtectionBot's RfA was passing (80-something percent) before it was withdrawn, and there are adminbots running at the moment which I would argue have tacit approval. I think a vast number of the people opposing adminbot RfAs do so either misunderstanding what adminbots can and cannot do (hence the various references to The Terminator in both RfAs), or on wikiphilosophical grounds which is not helpful at the best of times. – Steel 12:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I was speaking in general, but you are exactly right and it was my mistake for not mentioning that case. As I said, opinion is shifting and that RfA showed that people are becoming more open to it in certain very specific instances. I realize that many people oppose adminbots for philosophical reasons, but not all of those reasons are entirely unfounded. Admin bots malfunctioning can cause a tremendous amount of damage, and thus they will likely always be met with great difficulty in approval. They *should* be more difficult than the average bot. The issue of community consensus around admin bots will likely remain mostly unresolved until the next admin bot request stirs the pot again. As for adminbots currently running covertly, it is just anyones guess whether or not they would be approved. -- RM 12:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Approval_for_high-speed_automated_edits (Aleternate version)

Dear arbitrators,

Would you care to consider an alternate proposal to #6 of Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand/Proposed_decision#Approval_for_high-speed_automated_edits, which I have made today, in the workshop here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand/Workshop#Editors_who_Wish_to_use_Semi-Automated_Tools_for_High_Speed_Editing_who_pass_5_Edits_per_Minute_Must_seek_A_Bot_Flag.2C_without_the_nessecity_of_creating_a_seperate_Bot_account.

Thank you.

--Parker007 11:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Semi-Automated

I've been following the results of this case, and the new proposed principle 6a concerns me as a member of the community and a member of the BAG. The term "semi-automated" is not officially defined anywhere and as a result, any ArbCom ruling over whether or not "semi-automated" scripts or bots are acceptable is not helpful. In the worst case, it could be used by users to abuse the system. I ask that ArbCom consider clarifying this definition. How does semi-automated differ from a manual bot? A manual bot performs certain actions automatically, but the important distinction is whether or not the edits must be confirmed. BAG has differentiated between types of automated bots for convienence, but nothing more. The threshold for approvals is whether the final decision-making is automatic. Now, I wouldn't mind a definition separating types of manual bots: sometimes the manual confirmation is straightforward and represents a trivial change, but other times it is much more complex. I think of image deletion tasks. Before deleting an image, an administrator must check numerous pages, including "What Links Here" before finalizing the delete. A bot could conceivably be used to automatically gather these pages and then present the user with a question as to whether or not to delete. This would technically be a manual bot, and except for its admin functionality, it would not require approval. Is this considered semi-automated? -- RM 12:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Motion to restore adminship

The below motion in a prior case, voted on at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration, did not pass.

With the passage of time and Betacommand's continued contributions to Wikipedia, the Committee hereby restores Betacommand's administrative privileges under these stipulations:

• Betacommand may not operate any bot that utilizes administrative privilege without prior approval. For the avoidance of doubt, the term "bot" is to be construed broadly to include any full or partial automation of the administrative functions not already in widespread use by other administrators. Prior approval may come from the Bot Approvals Group (BAG), or for bots that provide partial automation that would not ordinarily require BAG approval, this committee.
• Betacommand must observe the notification requirements and delay periods specified in policy prior to deleting images.

Support:

1. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Raul654 15:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
3. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 15:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Uncomfortable with this, given his continually controversial behavior. Kirill 17:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Paul August ☎ 03:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
3. Oppose. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
4. Oppose. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 03:30, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
5. Oppose for now. Keep doing your good work and we can talk about down the road. I feel you are too controversial now to be effective as an admin. FloNight♥♥♥ 00:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
6. Oppose. SimonP 15:05, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
7. I'm afraid that I'm not convinced, either. Sorry. James F. (talk) 20:51, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Abstain:

1. Abstain until I discuss with Betacommand by email his views on blocking established users. FloNight 21:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC) See above vote.