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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 15:04, 30 December 2006 (→Discussion: comment). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 15:04, 30 December 2006 by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) (→Discussion: comment)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

ProtectionBot

Operator: Dragons flight

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Automatic

Programming Language(s): Python (partially dependant on pywikipedia, but mostly original code)

Function Summary: Intended to automatically protect templates and images appearing on the main page or today's featured article, and unprotect them when they are no longer in these high profile locations. This bot will require sysop rights.

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Every 15 minutes

Edit rate requested: N/A

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

Function Details: The bot reads Main Page and Main Page/Tomorrow, identifies the current and immediate future featured articles, and then generates a list of all templates/images appearing on any of these four pages. The bot then checks each template and image to see whether it is protected (i.e. edit=sysop, move=sysop). If it is not protected, the bot will automatically protect the template/image, and add that item to an internal list. The bot will also check this internal list for items it has protected in the past but which are no longer in high profile locations and restore those items to their pre-existing state. It will not remove protection that had been added by someone else.

I have already written code capable of performing most (but not all) of the above functions, but I am coming here to get feedback from the community before carrying this project further. As noted above, this bot would require sysop rights in addition to ordinary bot approval. For an alternative but less extensive proposal, see: Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Shadowbot2. Dragons flight 11:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

  • support, we need this. Giving it admin status is no problem as long as it is assured that it will only ever use them for the task described, and as long as it has a giant "nuke me now" button in case it should malfunction. dab (𒁳) 11:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support --Ligulem 12:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - On AN you also mentioned protecting templates and images for the article of the day, but this is not specified above. That should be clarified. (Misread section) I'm fine with the proposal so long as the article of the day page itself is not protected... the blurb about it on the main page and all templates/images displayed on it can be protected, but the article itself should be open to editing. Note that this might result in a vandal image being added to the page and then protected by this bot... but someone could then still revert to remove the image from the page itself. Also note that Main Page/Tomorrow duplicates all but four of the templates used on the Main Page and thus it might be better to check some of those templates directly. Specifically, the other templates are the 'article of the day', 'picture of the day', and 'on this day' sections for the following day and Template:Did you know/Next update in place of Template:Did you know. The 'next update' page often gets updated several times per day and is currently accessible to non-admins and thus might not be appropriate to protect prior to be placed on the Main page. --CBD 13:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - every 15 minutes is not good enough. That would give a vandal or an unauthorised (well, obviously it would be unauthorised!) vandal-bot 15 minutes to act first. Suggest changing to a lower but unspecified amount of time s that vandals are not aware of how long they have. Ideally, if possible, make it impossible to add unprotected images and templates to these sensitive areas. Can we also come up with a bot-assisted plan to deal with the template vandalism that was seen on 'today's featured article' for about a week, as that will surely return at some point unless it is dealt with now. Carcharoth 15:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
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