Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Bots

AWB disabled

Anet has changed our Captcha settings to require passing a Captcha on every login. It looks like this has disabled AWB because it performs logins through Special:UserLogin rather than using the API. So short of taking the time to write custom Perl scripts for every task, I can't really do anything at the moment. —Dr Ishmael 15:43, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hrm, Jink tried from home and it didn't give her a captcha. And now it's gone for me too. Strange... Maybe someone at my workplace was trying to hack the wiki? —Dr Ishmael 15:55, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Nope. ConfirmEdit is configured to show captcha after *one* failed login. I got a new work laptop, had to set up AWB again, and typoed my password the first time. >.> Bot ishmael 15:59, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Ahaha! At least it works now! --JonTheMon 16:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Good news!

The wiki upgrade has fixed the incompatibility with AWB where the only list that worked was Category. Now, I can generate lists from What links here, What transcludes page, Links on page, etc. Nice. —Dr Ishmael 15:38, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Request for sysop user rights on User:AWB Alex

Basically I'd like to go cleanup about 500 or so unused armor gallery images, and I don't feel too happy about deleting them with this account. -Chieftain Alex 13:29, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Questions about pywikibot

I've been tinkering with pywikibot (made a few test deletions, kind of successful but can't restore via bot yet)

1. Firstly, does anyone use mw:Manual:Pywikibot?
2. If so, which files would I have to modify to stop producing the following error message when running a script? WARNING: API warning (tokens): Unrecognized values for parameter 'type': undelete, deleteglobalaccount, setglobalaccountstatus, centralauth
3. ... and lastly, in a similar vein, how to get the restore pages functionality of mw:Manual:Pywikibot/delete.py working? (I suspect if I can get the token for undelete fixed then this will work)

Help appreciated ;) -Chieftain Alex 21:02, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I’ve used pywikibot (originally “pywikipediabot”) in my early botting days. But since then, I have switched over to my own bot framework, so I can’t directly help you.

As for your second point, pywikibot is constantly updated to work against Wikipedia, which always runs the bleeding edge of MediaWiki, so when there are new features—or new auth tokens for certain actions—then the bot framework needs to support those. But of course, older wikis don’t need those. Since it’s a warning, you should be fine, as you don’t need any of the latter tokens.

As for that undelete token, it is indeed weird; because there is no undelete token. Instead, the edit token is used… and pywikibot should know that :P poke | talk 20:37, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Yep I probably solved the tokens thing when I commented out some lines. I'll just comment out the undelete token too.

Knowing that the undelete function uses the edit token might mean I can fix it thanks.

I guess as long as I don't make a huge number of mistakes then I won't have to restore any pages :P -Chieftain Alex 21:48, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Yep, replacing token = self.tokens['undelete'] with token = self.tokens['edit'] worked :D

I can now do everything apart from stay logged in between commands - and meh I can delete/restore multiple pages with the same command so I don't care. -Chieftain Alex 22:04, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Bot account

I want a bot account to change crafting infobox to item infobox, I'll use AWB. It's an easy task. Raljeor (talk) 11:55, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

How To Get One

Also, do you need anything to run one, like a server or sonething. - Do_odleplex 01:31, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Going to swap your thinking around for a second:

• Admins have the ability to "hide" edits from the recent changes page. These are called "bot" edits, and admins rarely if ever use them, for obvious reasons.
• A bot account is an "admin" account which is set to hide its edits by default. (Actual rights can be found on Special:ListGroupRights).
• If you know how to automate edits (start by making easy-to-read lists like Alex's sandboxes, then do programming magic), you can do the edits on the bot account rather than your own account.

tl;dr: Bot accounts are normal accounts which hide edits by default. Useful to avoid spamming the RC. Extra programming knowledge required. G R E E N E R 02:48, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

To complement what Greener has said, the 'easy' way to run a bot is to use the Auto Wiki Browser. It runs off your computer, no special server needed. I could technically make the edits from AWB on this account, but then they would spam recent changes and no one would like bots; so it logs into the bot account. -Darqam (talk) 03:16, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh I thought it was a program that you had to run or something, probably because in the past I used to mod a trivia game on deviantArt that had a bot, and I could have sworn it was a program that ran on a server. So then if I understand correctly, all I need to do is make a bot account, get that AWB program(do you have to register it to get it?), ask for bot account to get bot powers, and then ask Alex and Darqam a zillion questions on how it works go from there? - Do_odleplex 03:34, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

You actually need neither bot permissions nor a bot account to get started. You can use AWB (or any other software) with your current account and just try it out for a while. Getting familiar with it is a good idea anyway, and you don’t need to create a new account yet (of course you can if you like to separate your edits).

People just tend use a separate bot account to be able to differentiate automated edits from non-automated edits. Of course it also makes sense to highlight that fact always in the edit message, especially when your bot account name is not “something-bot”.

To correct the others a bit, an account having bot rights just gives them the ability to make bot edits; it’s a special flag when making edits. You need to specifiy it with every edit, otherwise it’s just a normal edit from some account. Bot edits have the benefit of not appearing in recent changes, which is great for simple repetitive tasks. However, that also makes them hard to monitor (since you need to explicitly opt-in to see them). That’s why it takes quite some responsibility to set up a bot; it’s very easy to mess up things (that of course also depends on what you’re doing), and unless you as the operator take special care in making sure that does not happen (e.g. by checking the edits your bot makes), it’s hard to spot these mistakes, and it can take quite a while to get them fixed. That’s why we usually expect people to use their bot without bot permissions first, to “proove” that they are capable of running the bot without messing up (too much (of course, everybody messes things up eventually ;) )). Then once the operator is trusted to run the bot well, the bot can get the bot permissions to run in “stealth mode” from that moment on. poke | talk 06:33, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Bots aren't necessarily admin accounts btw, though obviously if they have both bot+admin rights they can delete in addition to everything a bot account can do.

Also, if the bot screws up, the user has to go and fix the mistakes made by it :p -Chieftain Alex 17:01, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Okay playing with AWB right now, it seems sorta similar to the trivia bot's back end stuff, so I feel like I should be able to get a good understanding of it after a bit of usage. One question for now though, how do I disable it from doing certain things? Like it wants to change [[Pagename]] to '''pagename'''? - Do_odleplex 19:16, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

In the first option tab, uncheck "Apply general fixes". I believe that's the option that, among other things, disables a page from linking to itself. -Darqam (talk) 19:26, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Bingo, that was it, thanks! - Do_odleplex 19:31, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

If you're going to keep at it with the bot, you might want to apply JARVIS for a bot tag. I got mine by bothering Poke on his talk page. It's also a good idea to keep records of how many pages you've edited with your current editing list. Also, I'd recommend making a note on the bot page that it's a bot operated by yourself so that people know whom to talk to if there is an issue with an edit done by the bot.-Darqam (talk) 19:48, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

In regards to it's page, I already had a pretty page for J.A.R.V.I.S. set up, just wanted to run some test before I popped it. Also, by keeping record of the current editing list you mean the line at the bottom that says "Edits: X Skipped: X"? And I dunno, should I play around with it more before I ask or should I just ask now(because boy does this make fixing the little things fun!)? - Do_odleplex 20:08, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

hold up on the edit spam until you get a tag, the phrase was get familiar with it, not nuke rc :p -Chieftain Alex 20:25, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Oops, sorry! Asking now. - Do_odleplex 20:29, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

So, judging by those “STAHP, RC IS DEAD” messages, I assume that you already know your way around with it? And you’re only semi-automating for now, right (looking at every change before hitting save)? poke | talk 01:52, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

It seems "simple" enough for the most part, if I need to do something fancy, I'll ask Alex/Darqam or run tests on sandbox until I figure it out. And yep, I'm checking before hitting save, though to be fair, I also don't know how to make it save things automatically. - Do_odleplex 02:03, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Things I learned today...

Currently we cannot edit pages with "&" in the title. However, apparently the AWB bot can. Tried it on a whim, and apparently it worked, so I thought I'd share. - Do_odleplex 05:30, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

AWB programmers weren't running windows servers. Users can edit pages with ampersands if they do something like this. I'm going to run with that for a while and if I don't find it breaks anything, we could give that to everyone. -Chieftain Alex 17:51, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

If you still want that tested out on multiple pages over time, want me to add it on my page as well? I can report back to you if I find it to be the cause of any buggery. -Darqam 18:48, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Go for it. -Chieftain Alex 20:01, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Sadly this "fix" doesn't work for the purge button accessed via clicking on the clock (returns you to the page title truncated to end at the ampersand. -Chieftain Alex 21:30, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Bot

So i've been removing left-to-right mark characters from the template pages and wanted to do the same in the mainspace now. However that would appear to affect 768 pages and remove a total of 1332 left-to-right marks. That, unlike the amount of pages it was in the template namespace (17), seems a bit tedious to do with javascript however; so i thought of writing a bot. Now before i create a dedicated bot account, have a look at the edit API and do some test edits; i wanted to ask if i can go ahead and do that. Can i do that? Nightsky (talk) 18:28, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it would be objectionable for you to have a bot account. I think you can safely go ahead and create an account (clearly named if you don't mind); if you stick a note on the admin noticeboard one of the b'crats will mark it as a bot for you. Once it's marked as a bot, anything you do would preferably be recorded on Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Bots to ensure maximum openness due to being hidden by default from recent changes.

But yeah once approved + marked as a bot, go ahead.

Any idea how these RLM marks are being added? Is this particularly when pasting from a certain source, something from certain software etc? -Chieftain Alex 21:50, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I mean, some number of the bcrats also watch this page anyway if you just wanted to make the request here. - Tanetris (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Since zero is a number, it should be clarified that at least one bcrat does. Greener (talk) 22:44, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I went ahead and made an account named Daysky now which is the one i would use for bot edits if that's ok? (I was thinking of giving it a userpage once i've figured out the edit API but not before in case that doesn't work out for whatever reason.)

Regarding how left-to-right marks are added i can only speculate. I was thinking it might either be browsers automatically adding them if they are set to a language with per default right-to-left text when editing left-to-right text or maybe the wiki is adding them under certain circumstances but i don't know. (You mentioning RLM reminded me i wanted to look for those too. Seems to be 15 of them over 10 pages accross the template and main namespaces. (Seems a great (since relatively small) amount for test editing.)) Nightsky (talk) 18:38, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

I was vaguely wondering if I've been accidentally adding them when adding in manual tweaks to automated tasks via AWB for example. -Chieftain Alex 18:53, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Get a few runs in using Daysky, and once you've shown you know the ropes, we'll tag it as a bot and you can cause havoc edit without spamming the RC. Greener (talk) 00:07, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Alright, Daysky has now been flagged as a bot. Make sure to track your edits on this page, and if you have questions or concerns, please ask before running a script. Best of luck! Greener (talk) 21:21, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Making test edits to figure out the editing API was the idea. It took quite a while to get the HTTP bits up and running in the first place; especially the keep-alive as it was initially mysteriously missing the Content-Length header field occasionally or in other words was using chunked Transfer-Encoding instead. The encoding and cookies didn't make it easier either. But now it should work and what remains is a better way to deal with ratelimited requests, if there is one. I'll have to check that though if i run into it again. (Will probably try running into it later on, so i can see.)

Thanks! I was thinking of putting things on this page here too (like on the not talk page part of it) but wanted to see if i can get the API to work first. And after some differences here and there (see above) things should work now (sans responding to rate limiting) so i can probably now add what i was thinking of (following typing it down) on there already. Nightsky (talk) 00:51, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

(Reset indent) If i'm only using the bot for queries and no edits anymore, is it considered active for the purposes of the list of currently active bots still or should i remove it? Nightsky (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Upto you whether it remains active on the list; you've very competent with your bot. (Maybe we should just make this section list all bots on the wiki though, not just active ones?) -Chieftain Alex 15:33, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

While it's great that it's up to me; what does being active mean for a bot so i can tell whether it would make sense to leave it on there or not? Is it that they have recently performed edits, that they are available for performing tasks propposed, a combination thereof or something else entirely? (I guess making it a list of all bots would at least obsolete this question.) Nightsky (talk) 15:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Considered replacing it with {{Special:ListUsers/bot}} but then we lose sight of who is the bot owner. Chieftain Alex 16:04, 31 July 2022 (UTC)