Commons:Requests and votes/Computer

Computer (formerly WOPR)

• Commons:Bots/Requests/Computer (01)

User:WOPR is my bot, I'd like to request "admin access" in order for the bot to more easily fulfill its tasks. The bot is unable to edit protected pages. This bot is authorized to operate on commons, en.wikipedia and tr.wikipedia preforming similar tasks.

Admin access is necessary primarily for the ability to edit protected pages. There are lots of protected pages that need updating (such as recategorization tasks). The bot will not make any actual admin actions such as protecting, blocking, or deleting (or anything I left out). Admin access is only needed to edit protected pages.

-- Cat ^chi? 15:21, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Votes

•  Support ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Support --Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Oppose It's not necessary as it seems. Doing something as trivial as replacing superseded images that don't have much of a difference even on a large scale is not worth admin status for this bot. Also, please keep in mind that nobody should be worrying about server performance. Furthermore, if this bot gets admin status, it is liable to crash this site (fearfully) numerous times, which should not happen. If you can't safely do this task and get involved in crap from trivialness, then I suggest that this nomination should be removed until further notice. (→O - v d e) 16:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
  • (forgot to add this to my initial comment) Finally, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. (→O - v d e) 16:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I find it distasteful that you are referencing my comments as "crap". Admins do not have the access to crash the site any more than regular users. -- Cat ^chi? 16:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Not anybody's comments, but everyone else is concurring that this is way too trivial to warrant this at all. I don't care about the site crashing, but I do care that the bot needs to have whatever its doing perfected so that it does not cause any harm to users, other bots, and whatever else I may have said above. Therefore that is making me say it, and I apologize for the misunderstanding. (→O - v d e) 16:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
        • The bot is operating perfectly fine. It poses no threat to anyone else (bot/admin/user/whatever). I am sorry but I do not understand your concern. If you could show an example I would better understand the problem and post a more informative response. -- Cat ^chi? 16:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
          • Forget about the stuff I said above. Reach a consensus if CommonsDelinker/SieBot should do this possibly controversial task, then give that bot an admin flag if needed. With that said, I'm going to leave myself  Neutral for the time being. (→O - v d e) 17:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Support Sysop flag would be useful for this bot. Majorly (talk) 02:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
• I only support allowing this bot to edit protected pages in the Image namespace. Specifically, protected pages in the Template namespace should not be allowed to be edited by anyone but humans. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 05:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I can agree with that for license templates (if a template breaks, consequences can be dire). The bot can discriminate between namespaces. I do want to add that the bot can handle images in templates better than humans. I also would like to add that none of the license templates (as it stands) really needs any mass modification since they all use svgs now. -- Cat ^chi? 07:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Support, but only if editting in template namespace is supervised. -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • All edits of the bot is supervised. Will give heavy use images, templates and etc closer attention. :) -- Cat ^chi? 16:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Support, but only if the Cat stops commenting after everybody's remark. Cary Bass ^demandez 17:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Stop messing with the Cat... he didn't comment after MY support. :) ++Lar: t/c 17:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Support.--Jusjih 15:36, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
•  Support Majorly says it all. Jahiegel 05:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments

Could you provide a link to the original bot approval discussion so we can see what tasks it was approved for? Has it taken on any new tasks recently? Are there test runs that it would make sense to review? I'm inclined to support this request but do think a bit more background info would be helpful to help folks make up their minds. ++Lar: t/c 15:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Added. I use the bot almost completely for "find and replace" tasks that are either trivial (not worth a discussion) or based on solid consensus. For instance I recently committed edits like this. Protected license templates were rather wasteful since I had to make the edits manually. :) -- Cat ^chi? 15:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Nod. First, thanks for the original bot bit discussion link. Second, how did the bot know to do the example change, and how do you know it was non controversial? When and where to use {{Superseded}} has been a bit controversial lately IIRC. I'm still minded to support but did want to follow up a bit. ++Lar: t/c 15:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Almost all license templates were using the svg versions of images (used in hundreds of thousands of pages 1,632,290 pages). Whats left mostly is subst: and personal license templates (several hundred pages). The edit mostly was for consistency.

There were 1,632,290 (live number: 108,562,909) files on commons as I was typing this. At least 1/3ish (536,000 - somewhat outdated list) of them had a Creative Commons related svg on them (hence making this a performance issue). Pngs are an abuse to system resources when used in license templates since those are mass used.

I had not followed the superseded discussion very closely for quite some time. IIRC the superseded discussion almost completely concerns image quality. Images on license templates are not a critical part of the templates themselves. Anything that roughly resembles the GFDL or CC symbol is adequate on them and they are not expected nor required to display quality. I do not believe the SVGs are a compromise in quality either, at least in this case.

I can however manually revert them if there is an issue.

-- Cat ^chi? 16:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't catch from the original example that you were restricting this to license template images. I agree that there is little or no controversy about changing to a more performant image in that case and I thank you for taking this task on. ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really convinced that there is enough need to edit protected pages to make minor changes, that a bot must do it. Pngs are an abuse to system resources? What the hell?? You know MediaWiki thumbnails SVGs to PNGs anyway, right? So how does changing a PNG to an SVG possibly reduce such ""abuse""?

More importantly, a common reason for protecting pages is to reduce the job queue caused by trivial edits made to high-profile templates such as license templates. Allowing a BOT to edit them is exactly against the point of protecting them in the first place! --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the point of protecting license templates is to protect them from harms way (constant vandalism and etc). Alteration of license templates can have legal implications for example (like adding a disclaimer :) ). Of course this is merely my opinion. The bot merely preforms edits I am going to do by hand.

I think in general pngs made out of svg thumbnails occupy smaller amount of space and are better optimized than other pngs. Yes with todays technology svgs need to be converted to pngs so they work with most browsers. Eventually svgs (or some other vectorial format) will be popular allowing us to use them directly. The point is all similar license templates (all gfdl templates for example) should have the same image for consistency. Consider a case where GFDL decides to change their logo. We can update all instances of the GFDL logo by updating a single image at the moment. This saves time if nothing else.

Forget the PNG -> SVG arguments for a second. Think of a case where community decides to change a categorization scheme. There are many protected images on commons and updating their categories is particularly difficult. I'd trust a bot more than myself (preforming identical edits manually in mass quantities) when updating categories since I will more likely make a mistake.

-- Cat ^chi? 09:43, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I also don't understand intention to replace SVG with PNG. As far as PNG thumbnails cached on Wikimedia servers, I don't see any performance penalty. So, please don't solve problem, which doesn't exist yet. --EugeneZelenko 14:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

The intention of the PNG -> SVG strictly was for consistency. That has been already done. The PNG -> SVG thing was merely one example of bots legitimately editing protected pages. I intend to use the bot primarily for categorization.

-- Cat ^chi? 15:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Lets talk in numbers. 64px svg version of the GFDL logo used as of this version is 6.08 KB (6228 bytes) when rendered to a png via existing mediawiki software. 64px png version of the GFDL logo that was used prior is about 8.45 KB (8654 bytes). That's a 2,426 byte (23.41%) size difference between the svg-png and png. When the image is used on 100,000 images (we have several times the number of GFDL licensed images) the difference is 242,600,000 byte (231 MB) assuming every image description is loaded once and only once. The change isn't as trivial as it seems. -- Cat ^chi? 16:29, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you are clutching at straws to invent work for this bot. "What if GFDL changes their logo?" "Consistency"? I don't find your argument about a 2KB difference convincing in letting a bot edit protected templates. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 06:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I am merely trying to illustrate the benefits of such edits on a few "what if" scenarios. It wasn't intended to be "tasks" for the bot. The bot will almost completely operate on demand based on consensus. I just want the permission be there (in advance) should the need arise. I wont be editing protected templates daily after all :) -- Cat ^chi? 07:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this is subject to improve SVG -> PNG conversion in MediaWiki (like using pngcrush). It'll benefit other cases too. --EugeneZelenko 14:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

•  Comment Would it be possible for this bot to be renamed so its bot status is reflected (e.g. WOPRBot or something). It currently looks like an ordinary editor. Majorly (talk) 11:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I definitely think that naming bots so that they have Bot in their name is a good thing and support Majorly's suggestion. ++Lar: t/c 14:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

It were suggested several times during Commons:Bots/Requests for flags/WOPR. --EugeneZelenko 14:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that a bot should be so named as well --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

There are going to be a few exceptions to that rule—WOPR is one. As pointed out on that request, White Cat said that it stood for "War Operation Plan Response", which in itself is a computer. However, something flagged as a bot is a bot. This username is not offensive or confusing, and to learn more about this, just go to the bot's userpage. So for the time being, stop messing with the cat. (→O - v d e) 16:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

• WOPR has now been renamed to User:Computer, see COM:CHU#WOPR_to_Computer ... I am not convinced that is any better... I really do like having bot Ids have bot in their name. But it is not a big enough deal to make me want to change my support. ++Lar: t/c 14:32, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I really dislike "bot" in my bots name. However I have modified the bots code to add "Bot edit:" to every edit summary now on. -- Cat ^chi? 12:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm not real keen on it either but it does seem to be a defacto standard. Some projects will not approve new bots that don't have bot in the name, I believe. We're not that uptight here though. ++Lar: t/c 10:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)