User:Snotbot

Deactivated

This bot is no longer active on Wikipedia.

This user account is a bot that uses pyWikipedia, operated by Scottywong (talk). It is used to make repetitive automated or semi-automated edits that would be extremely tedious to do manually, in accordance with the bot policy. The bot is currently inactive but retains the approval of the community.
Administrators: if this bot is malfunctioning or causing harm, please block it.

Snotbot was created and is maintained by User:Scottywong. If you have any suggestions or notice any bugs, please contact me at User talk:Scottywong.

Emergency bot shutoff button

Administrators: Use this button if the bot is malfunctioning. (direct link)
Non-administrators can report a malfunctioning bot to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

Bot tasks

Task 1

Snotbot monitors the backlog at Special:Newpages and identifies articles that have not been patrolled for 30 days after creation. Such articles are normally deleted from the Newpages queue and are never patrolled. When an unpatrolled, 30+ day old article is found, Snotbot adds the {{New unreviewed article}} template to the top of the article, allowing it to be tracked at Category:Unreviewed new articles. The bot also posts a list of these articles on the monthly index page at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Unpatrolled articles.

Note: This task has been suspended indefinitely.

Task 2

Snotbot tagged all image files on video game articles with {{WikiProject Video games}} so that the Wikiproject can track and maintain these images more efficiently (about 20,000 images total). This script may be used in the future to tag image files for other WikiProjects.

Task 3

Snotbot replaced all section headings of "==Plot synopsis==" with "==Plot==". This script may be used in the future to find and replace text in selected articles.

Task 5

Snotbot finds articles with improper heading hierarchies and fixes them. Headers should always increment sequentially and not skip levels. For instance, a ==Level 2== header should never be immediately followed by a ====Level 4==== header. Proper hierarchy is important for accessibility.

Task 9

Snotbot analyzes the list of articles that are currently tagged for rescue by the Article Rescue Squadron and compiles a table with information about them. The table is located at Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Article list. This task is no longer active.

Task 10

Snotbot checks recent AfD's to ensure that they have been transcluded to the daily log, and that the articles under discussion still have an AfD template on them. It also creates two reports:

User:Snotbot/AfD report - lists potentially problematic pages that the bot couldn't deal with
User:Snotbot/Current AfD's - sortable table of all currently open AfD's and some statistics about them

Task 12

Snotbot clerks WP:RFPP and automatically archives old threads. This task has editable parameters which can be viewed/edited on User:Snotbot/RFPP. This task can also be temporarily stopped by editing User:Snotbot/RFPP.

Other tasks

Snotbot updates the New Page Patrol DefCon userbox, which alerts editors when the Special:NewPages queue is approaching its limit.
Snotbot created a list of articles on scientists and correlated it with Science's recently released Science Hall of Fame (SHOF) list. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Science and academia/Science Hall of Fame for the list.
Snotbot periodically updates a summary table for open unblock requests.

Denied tasks

Task 4

This task was an attempt to reduce duplicate references in articles by detecting redundant references and naming them, so that they are grouped. After some opposition and much discussion, I withdrew the request for approval.

Task 6

This task was to replace start and end dates in various templates with {{Start date}} and {{End date}}, templates which support microformats. This task was requested by another user. The request for access was denied because there was no clear consensus for the changes the bot would have made.

Task 7

This task was to create an editnotice to warn users about an established English variation which is already in use in an article. The editnotices would have only been added to pages which already have an identical notice on their talk pages. This task was requested by another user. There was opposition to the task, and therefore I withdrew the request.

Task 8

This task was to look at all new submissions at Articles for creation for submissions which satisfy some of the quick-fail criteria. The bot would have warned the user that their submission satisfies the quick-fail criteria, and then declined the submission an hour later if no changes have been made. This task did not find consensus.

Stopping the bot

In the unlikely event that the bot is doing something harmful or malfunctioning in some way, there are mechanisms available to stop the bot from editing. Of course, if you are an admin, you have the ability to block the bot. If you are not an admin (or if you don't want to block the bot), but believe that the bot is malfunctioning in some way, you may be able to pause the operation of the bot by editing User:Snotbot/control. For some tasks, Snotbot is programmed to check User:Snotbot/control, and if the page is not completely blank it will pause. If the page then becomes blank again, it will resume. Note that the bot may only check the control page after every 10 edits or at the start of each run (and in the case of some tasks, it may not check the page at all).

Please do not stop the bot if it is not malfunctioning. If the bot is correctly running an approved task which you happen to disagree with, please don't stop the bot, and I would be more than happy to discuss it with you on my talk page. Editors who abuse the ability to stop the bot will cause this courtesy mechanism to be disabled on all tasks.

Currently, task 1 checks the control page after every 10 edits, and task 10 checks the control page at the start of each run. Task 12 has its own control page at User:Snotbot/RFPP, which it checks prior to each run.