Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Werdna (talk | contribs) at 13:15, 12 October 2006 (→Discussion: Just closed: No consensus. The idiots have won.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

TawkerbotTorA

• (BRFA
• Approved BRFAs
• talk
• contribs
• count
• SUL
• logs
• page moves
• block log
• rights log
• flag)

Operator: Tawker — written by Werdna

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): C#

Function Summary: Standardising blocks of Tor open proxies to anonymous only with account creation disabled

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Weekly

Edit rate requested: 12 blocks per minute

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: See Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/TawkerbotTorA

Discussion

See Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/TawkerbotTorA

Ok, it's not editing, it's blocking. I'll let someone else make a post saying it's approved, being the judge and applicant at the same time doesn't work too well. If nobody else feels like posting approved - there :) -- Tawker 06:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Just one question, can the bot be stopped by other admins if it starts malfunctioning? (since blocking the bot would not prevent it to block others) --WinHunter 06:37, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It's more so a script, I just liked calling it a bot. It's a little application that I manually run and if a talk page message comes up saying its screwed up I just click a little button and close it. Not something that runs 24/7 like TB2 -- Tawker 12:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think RFA is premature, as we haven't determined consensus for this bot here yet, or had any testing. Also I'm a little confused on who the operator of this is, the RFA appears to be from someone else? — xaosflux 12:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It has been tested in a sandbox wiki which is pretty much the same enviroment as en.wp. For obvious reasons it wasn't trested directly on en.wp :) -- Tawker 12:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I am the author of the bot, Tawker is the operator. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Werdna (talk • contribs) 13:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Biggest concern right now, how will the externally managed lists be validated before blocks are placed (or will they not?) — xaosflux 12:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

  The external lists are managed by the Tor people themselves. I don't understand why we need to validate it, given that it's the list used by Tor clients to find an exit node. — Werdna talk criticism 13:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• A concern is being raised by several editors in the RfA that they are worried that once an adminbot exists it will be used for purposes other than the ones for which it was approved. I would request that the approval of the bot is only for its currently stated function, and that any future change in functionality be accompanied by a new RfA (preferably under a different username), as a condition on approval; the 'requests to add a new function to a bot' proces should not apply in this case. Can I have any such assurances? --ais523 13:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This is common sense/current convention. Don't worry about the scare tactics our friends on RfA like to use. — Werdna talk criticism 13:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Pretty much it's a core group of people who think that I have some sort of hidden adgenda regarding bots. Something like this technically could be run on a user account but that breaks my belief that automated actions should not be done on human accounts and hence a seperate account exists. Some of the names are the exact same people who opposed Tawkerbot2 just as strongly and now I think there'd be more than a couple complaints if TB2 was turned off. As for a new feature (say adding open proxy blocking to the list) a proposal on RFA and going through the same procedure before running the code is the best way to do it I think. -- Tawker 17:32, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually lemme clarify on that one step further. Pretty much the only thing that would make sense for TBTA would be to add open proxy detection and blocking (and if that were the case it would require an seperate RfA even if a new flag isn't being set) - any other tasks would require a new account and flag -- Tawker 18:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Any additional features for this bot would have to be approved by another RfA. That is only reasonable. A bot with admin flags needs community consensus, not just enough from the bot community. -- RM 12:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• I am not familiar with how the Tor list is maintained, so I want to ask that if it is possible for an average user to manipulate the list? (i.e. add any IP as tor node to the list so as to make the bot ban someone) --WinHunter 13:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

  No. — Werdna talk criticism 13:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

  No.? The bot code published so far does not appear to validate the authenticity of this externally managed list at all, nor the authenticity of the site. Additionally nothing has spoken to the concerns as to the accuracy of the list, in affect whoever owns, or pwns, that external web page would cause this bot to start blocking editors, would it not? (While ALL discussion is welcome here, answers from the operator are pretty much a de facto requirement) — xaosflux 02:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Important: please list the safeguards installed for allowing this bot to be stopped. One things that is required is that it should test page editing to check if it is blocked. If so, it will stop. This is important to that any sysop that sees it going bad and blocks it is actually able to stop it, rather than requiring some obsure method.Voice-of-All 16:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It can be stopped currently with a checkpage. Block detection is under consideration (as in, methods for detecting blocks are.) — Werdna talk criticism 17:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Pleased do so for the reasons above. This is pretty high priority.Voice-of-All 22:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

As this bot is scheduled to be automatic, please state how this admin enabled (as request) bot will be secured from account compromise, and what if any monitoring will be in place to ensure that the operators are notified in the event of account compromise. Normally a compromised account is fairly evident to the owner, as they can't login or have things not attribututed to them. If this is monitored, how often will it be? — xaosflux 22:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The password is stored in my head which is pretty secure I thnink. My exact IP and network address are dynamic and unknown, and is protected by a double firewall. I'm going to login to this one at least once a week to ensure that it's running ok (and to clear the new messages thingie.) IMHO the bot account is less likely to be compromised than my regular account, it's login cookie doesn't get transmitted nearly as often. Otherwise the heaven only knows how many inactive sysop accounts, we don't know if they've been compromised or not (perhaps it's time for a removal of rights of inactive users with automatic re-assignment upon request or something) -- Tawker 15:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Have you consulted with the folks at meta:Proxy_blocking regarding being able to have the existing system take care of blocking these? — xaosflux 01:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Serious concern: http://tor.noreply.org/robots.txt disallows anyone from anything, if I read it correctly. Are you planning to breach the robots.txt exclusion on the site? --ais523 16:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• If necessary. — Werdna talk criticism 17:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• It could be argued that since the URL of the page in question is known, robots.txt is irrelevant, since the bot is not spidering, per se. 164.11.204.56 21:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Block rate concern: The current requested block rate is 12 per min, so if the bot is run for ten minutes it'd create 120 entries and would completely flood both Special:log/block and Special:Ipblocklist with no measures to hide those entries. Would it be better to lower the rate so that while the bot is running, other admins and users can still use both lists? --WinHunter 14:13, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

  Botflagged bots do not appear in RC or the block log. — Werdna talk criticism 02:04, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

  The parent question didn't say anything about RC, and as for the logs, where are you getting this from, we dont acutally have any accounts with BOTH sysop and BOT flags to demonstrate this. — xaosflux 03:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

  And if they don't how do you monitor them, is there a &bot=1 orsomething argument for the log file? — xaosflux 03:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

  I tested it myself on my own wiki. Yes, blocks from sysopped bots do not appear in the in Recent Changes. My apologies, they do, in fact, appear in the logs. However, we can slow it down to say one edit every minute, or even every ten minutes, if this is desired. — Werdna talk criticism 04:24, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The request for adminship on this bot was just closed by Taxman with no consensus. — Werdna talk criticism 13:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages bot requests for approval