User talk:ClueBot Commons/Archives/2007/October

1RR

I just noticed that this bot doesn't revert the same page or user more than once in 24 hours. Is there a reason for this? Sasha Callahan 04:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Same page and user. If User A vandalizes Page A, and then User A vandalizes Page B, ClueBot will revert both. If User A vandalizes Page A, then User B vandalizes Page A, it will revert both. But if User A vandalizes Page A, then ClueBot reverts, and User A vandalizes Page A, again. ClueBot won't revert the second. This is because it is possible for ClueBot to be wrong, and ClueBot shouldn't get into an edit war. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 04:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks that makes sense. Sasha Callahan 04:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hidden Tag

Hello, would it be possible to change the <!-- Template:uw-cluebotwarningx --> to <!-- Template:uw-vandalismx --> so that other bots and scripts recognize what level the warnings are on? Thanks. --Hdt83 ^Chat 05:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I would think other bots and scripts would check for uw-*x because vandalism isn't the only uw template. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 05:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

If you do wish to change it, however, the template it substitutes is here. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 05:57, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Cluebot 3

Is there any way to make cluebot automatically post the archive in this month's name. Thedjatclubrock :) ^(T/C) 23:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Please explain what you mean. I don't understand. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 22:41, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Mistake?

Article: Antibody The article had a perfectly reasonable, and accurate definition of antibodies. But then ClueBot came along, and replaced it with "Antibodies' are Y-shaped proteins that smell big time of poop! thats right poop!!" [1] I have seen ClueBot function perfectly in the past, but he really messed up this time. I am not the user whose legitimate edit was deleted, so I'm not posting on the false positives page. --Puchiko 17:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the user whose edit was deleted reported the false positive here User:ClueBot/FalsePositives/Reports/McSpurt. Which may not be where it should have gone, but is a great effort for someone making their second contribution to Wikipedia. I too would be interested to learn how this happened. Does ClueBot give a high negative score for a registered user whose first edit is a deletion? Or a user reverting an IP on a page when ClueBot has already reverted that IP on that page that day? (If it's the second then I'm going to be in deep, deep trouble.) Philip Trueman 19:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Fail

Two IPs (related dynamic, probably the same person) made two large removals to Seattle SuperSonics (hist), and you reverted the second removal to the first rather than reverting both. —Random832 19:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Furby vandalism

I found vandalism on Furby, so I went there and deleted the vandalism. The vandalism was by 209.221.90.204 again, so put a post on his talk page and say he is blocked from editing Wikipedia. The vandalism said that Furbys are his best friend etc. so put that he is blocked from editing Wikipedia on his talk page. --GranTurismo2 19:09, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

In2TV error?

Cluebot reverted my edit to In2TV. My edit mentions the addition of Josie & The Pussycats and Hong Kong Phooey. How can they be unconstructive edits? You can even check the site yourself. 71.115.192.199 02:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It reverted because it saw "pussy" in such a small edit. I will see what I can do to make it not do that anymore. I have restored your version. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 02:58, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Ignore "bad" words when said "bad" word appears in the page title. (I'm surprised you're not already doing that) – Gurch 20:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I do do that:

and (score($obscenelist,$change['title']) >= 0)

(here, around line 14). -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 20:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the Encirclement Campaigns

There are several campaigns sharing the same abbreviated names, so the more precise name in the long form was grouped under the same abbrivate names like in the article titled "Encirclement Campaigns", which listed all encirclement campaigns. For the same reason, the article titled "Second Encirclement Campaign" would be a list include all campagins with that abbreviated name. This is not vandalism or unconstructive, but to clearify ambiguity. For example, the Original Second Encirclement Campaign was in fact descrbibe the Second Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet, but there are also several different Second Encirclement Campaigns against other soviets sharing the same abbreviation, so the duplication in the original "Second Encirclement Campaign" was replaced with the list all of the campaigns with abbtreviated name of "Second Encirclement Campaign". Hopefully this will clear up the edit attempt and please provide your input. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.170.134.66 (talk) 21:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It seems as if someone (you?) made an incorrect move of Second Encirclement Campaign to Second Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet, Third Encirclement Campaign to Third Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet, and Fourth Encirclement Campaign to Fourth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet by copy and pasting the content instead of using the move button. By doing this you lose the entire history of the article. What should have been done is moving each of those articles then creating the disambiguation pages again with what you had. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:59, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You have a praise page, but no corresponding criticism page

Please create one, so that we may air our concerns about how this bot is reverting good edits, burying bad edits in recent changes due to incomplete reverts, leaving stupid messages, violating the bot policy and generally being useless. Thanks – Gurch 20:09, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If it is a false positive, please report it to User:ClueBot/FalsePositives. If it is a suggestion or comment (or criticism), this page is the correct page. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 20:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

OK.

• The bot reverts too many good edits. I'm not going to go through every single edit made by ClueBot looking for bad ones because I have better things to do, but rest assured it happens. Examples appear daily on your false positives page, and you have to realise that the examples reported there represent only a tiny subset of all the examples reverted. In most cases an anonymous user who is probably editing Wikipedia for the first or second time ever is the victim of an unnecessary revert. Most of these users don't even realise they are reverted – due to a fault in MediaWiki that the developers refuse to fix, most anonymous users are not notified in any way that they have new messages until several hours after those messages were left (by which time they will often never even use that IP address again). Those that do realize they have been reverted are likely to either ignore it, assume they violated some rule they don't understand, or assume it was intentionally reverted by someone who doesn't like it. Either way, they're not going to be left with a particularly good impression of Wikipedia; I know it would put me off making further edits if I thought there was someone waiting there to undo all my hard work. You have to understand that the problem of mis-reverts is bigger than a glance at the false positives page would suggest.

  ClueBot reports all changes it makes to me. If I am around, I check most of them. Very few are incorrect. And those I fix and then proceed to see if I can make the bot better. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• The bot only reverts the edits which it thinks are vandalism, ignoring other vandalism - obvious at a glance to a human - that preceded it. Yes, I fully realize that this is the only way such a bot could reasonably be expected to operate. I see that as an indication that vandalism-fixing bots should not be permitted at all. The bot's tendency to bury multiple bad edits in the page history by reverting only one and leaving itself as the last editor causes far more subtle and hard-to-fix problems than reverts of good editors, which are at least easy to reverse. It is because of this problem that I have to have the bot blacklisted in my anti-vandalism tool and check every revert it makes, going back into the page history to see what other vandalism lurks there. This creates extra work for me, which is annoying, because in the time I am finding things that ClueBot missed, I could have been finding and fixing other vandalism myself. Humans make this mistake too, of course, and miss vandalism, but humans are sufficiently good at spotting vandalism that they tend to miss only the really subtle stuff such as deleted words or changed dates. Any kind of automated process is nowhere near this capable.

  The bot will revert the previous consecutive versions by the same author who made the version that ClueBot deemed vandalism. Just like Twinkle's revert function. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, I know that. But if two or more users vandalize the same page one after the other, only the last one will be reverted, whereas a human would find and remove all the vandalism. Therefore revisions by ClueBot, unlike revisions by humans, cannot be assumed to be totally vandalism-free. Thus a human has to check them all, negating the only advantage of using a bot – Gurch 16:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• The bot constantly leaves messages that, as I have already mentioned, will never be seen and are completely useless. Our resource limitations mean that avoiding thousands of useless edits is crucial, and one of the main reasons why we have a bot policy. The content of the messages it leaves is also far from adequate, and gives the impression that it wasn't really thought through. It supplies a link to the edit it reverted, along with the time and date, but does so in a garbled format that is of no use to its readers. Remember that these messages will only be read by new users who have little experience with Wikipedia and can hardly be expected to know that "(t)" is a link to a discussion page and "(c)" is a link to a contributions page. And as for the timestamp, yes I know it's a valid timestamp format but of all the possible formats did you really have to choose the one that was least readable? Why not just use the same format as user signatures? The descriptions of edits that these messages give – one you seem to use a lot is "replacing content with useless junk" – comes across as insulting when the edit is in fact constructive and well-intentioned.

  The "with useless junk" was added at the explicit request of an administrator. It used to give much more detailed reason for the revert, but the administrator saw one day someone posted their phone number with the rest of their vandalism. ClueBot put this phone number along with the rest of it in the reason and the administrator saw fit to request that ClueBot's reason be oversighted. Then the administrator insisted that I change it. The timestamp can be changed. I originally used that timestamp because that is how api.php reported it. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• On those rare occasions when an incorrectly-reverted user notices this, finds your message and gets as far as the false-positives page, you expect an anonymous, inexperienced user to follow an unnecessary complex process to report it, which goes some way to explain why there aren't more false positvie reports. You bluntly state that if they don't fill in the form correctly, their message will be deleted; this probably puts off a good few of them. And why do you insist all registered users create a subpage? This added complexity is completely unnecessary... what's wrong with just adding a new heading with their username in it, and archiving when it gets long? If you're really expecting so many reports that they need to be split into across multiple subpages, then that's surely a sign you shouldn't be operating the bot at all.

  The reason I use subpages is so I can easily archive without copy-paste archiving. The process is relatively simple, all the complicated things are automatically filled in. I do read the malformed reports that are readable, and I do correct the ones that are valid. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, the bot does a lot of good work, but unfortunately doing a lot of good work and a small amount of bad work is not acceptable. The bot policy states that "the burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate that the bot ... is harmless". It doesn't matter how many good edits it makes, so long as it keeps making errors as well, it can never be termed "harmless". If you disagree with this, fine, but you'll need to get the bot policy changed.

  In the last 24 hours, I have gotten 1 false positive report. The bot has reverted 1,224 edits in the last 24 hours. Even if we assume that for every 10 bad reverts ClueBot makes, only one user files a false positive report, that is still only about an 0.8% false positive rate. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

  Yes, which is too high. If a category renaming bot put 0.8% of pages into the wrong category, it would not be approved. If an article creation bot created articles which were 0.8% false, it would not be approved. If human had that kind of error rate, they'd be blocked – Gurch 16:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I was denied approval for a bot because the bot approvals group thought that it might be possible to incorporate the feature into MediaWiki, and that I should therefore spend the next few years learning PHP, getting developer access and rewriting MediaWiki just so they didn't have to approve my bot. How they ever approved ClueBot I don't know; I can only hypothesize that they were all drunk that day. It doesn't comply with the bot policy; it's as simple as that – Gurch 20:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You have made some good points, Gurch. ClueBot went through 2 trials (a 50 revert trial and a fortnight trial) and performed admirably in both and was approved. There are other bots which do this task as well (User:MartinBot, User:VoABot II, User:CounterVandalismBot). From all the positive feedback I have received, it would appear that the community likes ClueBot and thinks it does a great job. But as far as people who have serious problems with it, vandals and you. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

MartinBot, VoABot II and CounterVandalismBot all suffer from similar problems. However, MartinBot is no longer running, and CounterVandalismBot's owner states on its task request page that he considers only reverts of good edits by registered users to be "false positives", so clearly any attempt to reason with him would be futile – Gurch 16:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit counter

Is it really necessary for the bot to embed an edit count in the edit summary? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

That isn't an edit count. That is a log identifier so I can quickly see *why* the bot did what it did. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 04:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah - that makes more sense. Thanks for the response. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 21:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

--Www999 21:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to accept your nomination to become an administrator. Please contact me as soon as possible once completed.

wow!

this bot is faster than me!

Someone dedicated to making your day a little bit better! 13:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

possible parsing error

You might want to look at User talk:70.90.233.41#October 2007 to see if it is the template above you or your issue Fiddle Faddle 18:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem is in the template above mine. It fails to close its div. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 18:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Redundant heading

I've noticed the bot makes an October 2007 heading right under a section with an October 2007. No emergency, but a bug that should probably be checked out. Thanks! нмŵוτнτ 19:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

That's not really a bug, all the bot does is subst a template, someone added the heading to that template. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 19:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

More vandalism

There is even vandalism on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and User talk:67.67.42.253. Robbie williams star 24576 17:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, the Michael David Crawford page looks like Kuro5hin members are trying to vandalize it. Thanks for the revert. American Virgo is one of the members from that site and he uses multiple aliases to vandalize Wiki pages over the Internet. Let us hope he does not come back. Mr. Crawford is at least as famous as Maddox, so he deserves an article. I am trying to write it as NPOV, but American Virgo had added in vandalism and personal attacks on Mr. Crawford. --Thomas Hard 14:38, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It appears Mr. Virgo has vandalized the article yet again. I reverted it. How do we submit vandalism to the admins so they can block users? Also an anonymous IP placed a deletion template on the article. I guess if they cannot vandalize it they will try to get it deleted? --Thomas Hard 17:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism can be reported to administrators by way of Administrator intervention against vandalism.  :) -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 05:21, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, 121.247.252.116 is again doing Vandalism on Dhangar. He has previously vandalised from 59.163.192.85. which you had reverted automatically. Rex

Grave concern

Hello, I am a Wikipedia user who was making a constructive edit to the page International Academy. I am a student at the school and was adding a list of the school's various extracurricular activities. I am wondering why I was reverted by ClueBot as I can't see how my edit was deemed as inappropriate or vandalism. I would like an immediate reply as to why this is so - my username is BeggarsBanquet even though I am currently not logged in. I am incredibly frustrated because I spent a lot of time editing that paragraph and I am frustrated to have it just suddenly deleted like that, for absolutely no reason. 24.192.248.238 06:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Now that I am logged in, I can add to this complaint. I have restored what I wrote to the International Academy page. Please do not delete any more of my constructive edits anymore. I have been monitoring the International Academy page for a while now. I am a student at the school, and I know what I am talking about. Beggarsbanquet 06:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

You could have restored it just as easily logged out. The bot won't double revert you. As for your note, it needn't go to both here and User talk:Cobi. In fact, the best place for this kind of message would be User:ClueBot/FalsePositives. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 06:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Concern about automatic warnings

I have a minor concern regarding the automatic warnings ClueBot (talk · contribs) places on user talk pages after reverting vandalism. ClueBot correctly reverted this obvious page blanking and warned the user. However, I find part of the warning (see here) possibly problematic: the log entry. ClueBot lists the log entry in this case as, "replacing content with useless junk." This could be seen as assuming bad faith, and it would be rather insulting to an accidentally reverted user. Perhaps you could change it to something more neutral, such as, "replacing content with nonsense." Thanks, Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 01:39, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Well it used to say exactly what it was replaced with (if it was relatively small) or a snippet of what it was replaced with (if it were larger). But due to an administrator's request I had to remove that ability because one vandal posted their phone number and the bot picked that up and used it in the snippet. I will change it to something more neutral. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 01:42, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

How does "replacing entire content with something else" sound? :) -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 01:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

That sounds much better. Maybe "replacing entire content with something unrelated" might be a bit more specific, though? Anyway, either one is fine. Thanks for changing it. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 15:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Please read

Well this is certainly fast. Anyways it caught me clearing the article

Between Me And You

I think it should be deleted! Just look at it and you'll see why... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.178.98.114 (talk) 12:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Blanking the article is not the proper way to delete an article. To delete an article, either:

1. List it as a candidate for speedy deletion using templates like {{delete}} and {{db-nonsense}} (see the whole list of such templates here),
2. Propose it for deletion with a template like {{prod}}, or
3. List it at Articles for Deletion.

Thanks. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 18:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright

Allright go ahead block me! 86.134.103.167 17:52, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright

Allright go ahead block me! 86.134.103.167 17:52, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Green

In the article for Green why did you type MAGGIE IS SEXY AS HELL!! you could get suspended from wikipedia if you do this more. User:CDHgrün. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.102.5.92 (talk) 01:27, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

ClueBot didn't, ClueBot removed it. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 01:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey ClueBot

Mate, I've got to buy you a drink, or whatever you robots drink. Nice work out there mechanical man, Cheers, Dfrg.msc 05:51, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

• Robots can drink?? now I have herd everything!!. Aflumpire 08:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit summaries

When Cluebot warns an IP user, the edit summary shows a redlink to usercontributions, ie it is treating the IP address as a username. Can this be fixed please? DuncanHill 18:08, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Poop

He wrote a book about dinosaur poop. He wrote in that book that he believed that dinosaurs used there own faeces to create nests; he also wrote that he believed that dinosaurs used there excrement to mark of territory. Why did you delete that. Besides being a chemist i also like biology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobtheseventeenth13 (talk • contribs) 12:14, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Microscope Vandalism

Eherm hello. There has been too mutch vandalism on Microscope so I think you need to get an admin to semi protect the page against vandalism. Robbie williams star 24576 16:29, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

OP tests

I'm just wondering how USer:ClueBot IV determines when IPs are open proxies, and where it gets the data for that determination. Thanks in advance! – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 19:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no place it gets its data. It scans the IP addresses with scanning tools that the other verified proxy checkers use. In many cases, its scan is more thorough than a verified proxy checker's scan. It knows it is an open proxy when it can actually connect *through* the proxy to Wikipedia. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 19:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. What scanning tool, and where can I get it/something similar? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Nmap would work very well to get the port list, it uses libopm with a HTTP GET scanning patch to actually check for open proxies. Flexscan is the tool it uses to get a port list, but it also uses nmap to get a version list of the servers on the remote host. But, nmap can do all of this. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 20:15, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks so much; this is exactly what I was looking for. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Question about ClueBot III

The ArchiveThis template just views indicies, but how does the bot detect actually when to archive and who to archive? --Coastergeekperson04 01:27, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the ArchiveThis template tells ClueBot where to archive, the parameters to it tell it when and how to archive. The template shows the indicies as an added bonus if the index parameter is set to yes. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 02:50, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

ClueBot warning format

Hi, is it possible for ClueBot to read previously placed headers so that it doesn't repeat the month-year header each time? I just saw this version of an IP's talk page, where ClueBot had put down two "October 2007" headers a few days apart. I understand that a bot may have trouble recognizing a manually typed header, but shouldn't it recognize the headers that it added itself?

Also, are there any plans for ClueBot's warnings to conform to the user warnings wikiproject's format? I don't mind if you don't conform, but I just wanted to make sure you're aware that this wikiproject exists. Thanks, Lisatwo 20:52, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually all it does is subst a template to the end of the page. The template did not originally have a date header, but User:Hdt83 modified the template to include it. The template is here. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:12, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, now I see why it did what it did. Thanks for the quick reply, Lisatwo 21:58, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

How does this bot work?

ClueBot is a bot, yet he must be some kind of smart bot in order to be able to distinguish legitimate edits from vandalism? How is some bot able to detect vandalism? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.162.9.24 (talk) 02:01, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

ClueBot is indeed a very complex bot, and it would be very difficult to explain exactly how it distinguishes legitimate edits from vandalism. However, it has a few rules which analyze the edit and compare it to traits generally found in malicious edits. If you know more about programming than you have let on, you may wish to take a look at ClueBot's source. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 02:19, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Strigiphilus garylarsoni

You have no clue about reversion, mister computer. Enlil Ninlil 01:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Bayesian detection

Have you thought about starting to teach a Bayesian classifier with the data cluebot collects? You could manage it like SpamAssassin; auto-learn things with very low scores (vandalism) and with very high scores (safe), and check for reversions over time. Again like SpamAssassin, the certainty of the classifier would dictate how many points are assigned (or removed) from the overall score. This would allow ClueBot to catch new terms or date-sensitive terms automatically, having learned them from those vandals that include them with known terms.

Hmm, now that I think about it, I'm likely describing a whole new bot. While it would certainly benefit ClueBot, I think the Bayesian database would be best trained by observing non-bot edits (which is easy to detect via summary content) and best executed independently. -- Adam Katz 19:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Dynamic IPs

I'd appreciate the bot writer's comment on this: [2]. I don't want to push this point too hard, because I have already raised a similar complaint against CounterVandalismBot, but it seems to me that the bot could be a little more careful either to do the right revert or not revert at all. The point is that, with a partial revert of a series of bad edits by a dynamic IP, the earlier vandalism becomes 'frozen in'; no anti-vandalism tools or bots (that I know of) will revert past it. At the very least, would it be possible for the bot's edit summary to say both who wrote the edit being reverted, and who wrote the edit being reverted to? Some human-driven anti-vandalism tools do this. Such an edit summary could then be analysed by a human-driven anti-vandalism tool looking for cases where the two are IPs that are close to each other. Philip Trueman 16:39, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

You must realize that if the IP addresses are different, the bot can't (and indeed, shouldn't) just blindly revert all the IP addresses that have contributed to the article since the last real editor. Furthermore, the bot can't really tell that those other edits are indeed vandalism. If you think you know a way to tell that those other edits are vandalism -- without the ability to understand English -- please let me know. Thanks. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 21:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I do realise that. Please note two things: I said, and I quote ".. it seems to me that the bot could be a little more careful either to do the right revert or not revert at all." (emphasis added). I certainly did not suggest that the bot should ".. just blindly revert all the IP addresses that have contributed to the article since the last real editor." - I think you are reading into what I wrote something that wasn't there. Secondly, the IPs in my example, though not identical, are close together. That is, or should be, cause for suspicion. As I understand it, bots commonly have heuristics along the lines of "don't revert back to an edit made by the bot itself". I am suggesting that this is another case where it might be better for the bot not to do the revert (though it could, of course, record in a public log that something may be wrong, leaving it for a human to check things out).

At the very least, will you accept my point that it would be an improvement to state in the edit summary (and preferably in a standardised way) the editor of the edit being reverted to, so that a human-driven anti-vandalism tool could, by analysing edit summaries, flag up for its user's attention cases where the reverted and reverted-to editors are IPs that are suspiciously close together? Philip Trueman 10:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. The new edit summary is a great improvement - it allowed me to detect this [3] and this [4]. Philip Trueman 18:37, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Report

I changed the content of a newlu created page, then several seconds later is is reverted back. Then I recieve a polite warning. This all happened inside of 15 seconds. Question: is 15 seconds an acceptable amount of time for this sort of thing, or should there be less time in between the reversion and the warning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.108.205.241 (talk • contribs)

Booker T. Washington High School article

Your recent edit to Booker T. Washington High School has caused a problem with the template for the page. For some reason, now the image is too big on the page. I can't seem to fix it... Bot error? It was fine before and I compared the code; it was the same. --Μ79_Šp€çíá∫횆^{tell me about it} 19:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Kwai Nyu

Please delete the article Kwai Nyu. There is an identical article called Priory Rugby. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.152.89.66 (talk) 04:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Obvious vandalism

ClueBot is great, but it failed to catch this edit, which was obviously vandalism. - BANG! 04:03, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

This is interesting, taking a look a ClueBot's Source this should have been picked up by:

/vagina/i

and

/!{5,}/i

--Chris  G  04:11, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

It didn't see that edit because it wasn't a small enough change to be considered a "small change" (between ±200 characters) but it wasn't large enough to be considered a "massive change" (greater than ±7500 characters) and it didn't have an AES which is the only other kinds of edits it checks right now. Perhaps I should add "medium change"?  :) -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 04:58, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Why not just check all edits and add on points for blank/Automated edit sums and big edits? --Chris  G  08:38, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Because that would take considerable bandwidth to do. I am already using a bunch of bandwidth with what I am doing now. I may eventually do that, though. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 14:47, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

True, still would be nice if you could do that, yet again that might take away more of what's left of the RC work for me, you know what we need?(I've just thought of this) A NPP bot that tags articles with Speed tags when they are nonsense or vandalism. --Chris  G  11:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Template Vandalism

Is Cluebot programmed to check for vandalsim on templates? This edit went unnoticed for something like 7 hours until I caught and reverted it just now, and to me its seems odd that something so simple would escape everyones attention, hence the question. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:49, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

ClueBot does not touch articles outside of the main namespace unless asked to. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 06:21, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Feature Missing

I noticed on the documentation PDF that "it" decides vandalism based off the amount of characters added, but the code is missing something very important, A flagged words list. Is it possible to query for flagged words? --Coastergeekperson04 21:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

You mean something like this? [5] --Hdt83 ^Chat 23:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I was expecting to have that in the PDF doc. Oh well, at least it does do that. --Coastergeekperson04 19:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

ClueBot I: Excusion compliant

I'm sure it's not a good idea to leave the first ClueBot an exclusion compliant one. Because then, disable ClueBot on a page, no reverts, and disable ClueBot on an IP talk page, no warnings. So I don't think ClueBot should go by Template:Bots. --Coastergeekperson04 19:09, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, vandals don't know about {{bots}}, and furthermore, if there is a page which triggers ClueBot, but it is legitimate, then they could prohibit ClueBot from reverting that page by using the bots template. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 20:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Sodium

This was funny. Revert -> vandalism -> blank -> revert -> anon FTW! --Kkmurray 20:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Not catching repeated vandalism?

ClueBot isn't reverting far enough in the case of repeated vandalism by a single user. (For example, see the article Company town (history | ClueBot's edit). An anonymous user vandalized the article three times before ClueBot got to it, but it only reverted the last edit, leaving the first two vandalisms. — Insanity Incarnate 02:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it reverted the edits by the second IP address (it went back 2 edits). It will only revert vandalism by the same user/IP address when reverting several versions back. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 02:13, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Michael Gomez

Hi. I think that the article I wrote should stay that way because I am an actor who stars in A Mi Manera, and I am Michael Gomez. I had to put in a false name!Empezardesdecero123 02:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

That would be a conflict of interest. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 17:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Ballet is not inactive!

Every member of WikiProject Ballet has contributed since the beginning of 2007, all but three during the past month; it is a small project but its members far more active than most! Robert Greer 17:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at the revision history for the page you linked and the corresponding talk page. You will see that prior to ClueBot II's edit, it hadn't been edited for several months. -- Cobi^(t|c|b|cn) 17:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Russian Civil War - Empire of the Bitches

This Empire of the BITCHES - I have not written! Doncsecz —Preceding comment was added at 07:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC)