Wikibooks:Requests for permissions/Sysopbot

+Administrator
On the suggestion of Whiteknight and the RC patrollers, this bot would be able to perform sysop functions under the bot flag. The bot will be a shared account among wikibooks administrators, for the purpose of doing large cleanup task which require sysop tools, but would also be handy for other cleanup functions.

We already have a fully automated deletion bot (gift from a meta admin), which is being used for deleting unlicenced images. I recommend that any new scripts involving sysop tools should also need community approval (here or on the SL) before they are put to use. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion:
 * Please see below for discussion of this bot, under "requests for bot status".

Votes
 * Support - It would be nice to consolidate the various bots we use to work under this one so that confusion over who is doing what gets minimized. -within focus 19:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. (edit conflict - damn you beat me to it!) You trust the admins - you trust this.  All actions will be transparent (pretty sure?) to all.  If there is anything anyone abjects to I'm sure they will make their feelings known -- Herby  talk thyme 19:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment - support withdrawn - see my comments under bot request -- Herby talk thyme 09:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment vote returned to support on the same basis as my vote on the actual bot - ie those mentioned only. I'm not fully comfortable but having deleted two books now I do see a real need for this power from time to time.  As an admin if I saw anything I was uncomfortable with I would block the account until it could be sorted - I hope this may re-assure non admin voters -- Herby  talk thyme 16:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment. Is it not possible that such a bot could be abused by someone?  There are many inactive administrators and it seems quite risky to allow a bot admin rights.  I could be wrong of course as I'm not 100% sure about what it would be able to do.  Xania 21:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. In response to User:Xania, Johnny and I have discussed this very issue, and I think what we will do (if this request is accepted by the community) is to only give the password to well-trusted administrators. We might even create some kind of nomination proceedure for active admins to get access to the bot. Also, we would change the password on a regular basis, and people who arent trusted, or who aren't active wouldnt receive the new password. The bot essentially is capable of doing whatever an admin is capable of (blocking, deleting/undeleting, protecting), but can perform these actions on multiple pages very quickly. For instance, we could delete an entire book (all subpages, images and categories) in a single click. This sounds dangerous, but consider trying to delete an entire large book by hand: It's terribly boring! This kind of thing isn't a problem on other projects like wikipedia, because deleting an article is not nearly as big a job as deleting an entire book! Also, this bot could be used to block a list of open proxies, which is a job that currently can take several hours to do! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 04:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose there is nothing wrong with a bot having sysop status (I have one on WN myself :)) The problem with this is consolidating it. If a bot starts acting up we need to be able to block it without harming its other functions. I do however fully support individual task sysop bots.--Cspurrier 15:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I am uncomfortable with the idea of a multi-user account. I know you guys have methods of secure sharing, but it just seems to risky, and the precedent is not one I intend to be complicit in forming. --Iamunknown 05:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose since there seems to be some good points brought up on why sharing an admin bot could be trouble. I guess we may be better off having one or more sysop bots, each controled by a single admin with community approvel on both it becoming a sysop bot and on what functionality it will have and developing some guidelines to address this issue. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 06:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose see my comments above and at the bottom of this page. Xania 14:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm closing this one as failed -- Herby talk thyme 08:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

+Bot
On the suggestion of Whiteknight and the RC patrollers, this bot would be able to perform sysop functions under the bot flag. The bot will be a shared account among wikibooks administrators, for the purpose of doing large cleanup task which require sysop tools, but would also be handy for other cleanup functions.

We already have a fully automated deletion bot (gift from a meta admin), which is being used for deleting unlicenced images. I recommend that any new scripts involving sysop tools should also need community approval (here or on the SL) before they are put to use. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Discussion


 * Who will operate from this account? What will be the engine of this bot? --Derbeth talk 20:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The idea is to share this account among active, trusted admins. As things stands now, that would mean you, me, Whiteknight, WithinFocus, and darklama. If we end up with a lot more active admins in the future, we might want to do something like a "second RFA" for access to the bot. Right now it's such a small group that making all tools available to all of us makes a lot of sense. -- SB_Johnny | talk 21:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Is it necessary for multiple admins to have access to this account? How long does it take to delete untagged images? --Iamunknown 05:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Votes


 * Support - didn't need to read it as I am one who asked for this. Good idea tho anyway and should be supported (can I welcome the "new user" ) -- Herby  talk thyme 19:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * comment OK I naively imagined that this had been sorted on IRC before it came here. Reading this now it obviously has not.  I actually think that this request (& and the admin status) is premature without a real discussion somewhere.  I think this process should be put on hold until the discussion takes places and any wrinkles are ironed out.  If this doesn't happen my vote will be oppose -- Herby  talk thyme 09:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment with some considerable thought I have amended my vote to in favout again. However that is for those mentioned and in the way mentioned only.  If any others were to be allowed to use this without reference here again I would be concerned -- Herby  talk thyme' 16:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Support - It would be nice to consolidate the various bots we use to work under this one so that confusion over who is doing what gets minimized. -within focus 19:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. It's an interesting idea that I wish I had put more thought into before I suggested it. Not that I disagree with it, but it is a big deal and is worthy of some serious consideration. What we are talking about here is a bot which is also a sysop. To make matters more confusing, the bot would be shared among people who are already sysops, for performing sysop-related functions such as page deletions (I can't think of any other admin tasks that should be automated in any way). On one hand, we would make life easier for the admins without having to promote any additional admins (the current admins essentially benefit from having a bot flag, without being invisible like a bot is). There are some questions that are worth considering before we move forward with this plan:
 * Who uses the bot at which times? We likely shouldnt be logging into the same username at the same time
 * How do we decide what projects to use the bot on?
 * How do we securely share the password to this bot among people (can't post it on wiki, shouldnt post to IRC, etc)
 * How do we decide who gets access to the bot?
 * It almost might be worthwhile for trusted admins to create their own suckpuppet accounts, and we could vote to give those accounts both the bot flag and a sysop flag in a single RfA (and reduce the dependancy on a shared account). Now, i'm not voting against this proposal (i'll likely vote for it eventually), but I'm just saying that we should all think about this carefully before doing anything. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I just talked to Whiteknight on the phone, and I do agree with all of his concerns (and Xania's). My reply:
 * Who uses the bot at which times? We likely shouldnt be logging into the same username at the same time
 * I don't see us having a need for the bot all that often. There's really not so many tasks that would require a bot like this, and not so many admins running around looking for things to do (we're all busy with our own projects and don't have time for rote chores, hence the need for a bot).
 * How do we decide what projects to use the bot on?
 * Sysopbot's talk page might be a good place for requests to be made. There are probably a lot of jobs for this bot that will come up (such as deleting images from deleted books, etc.). The bot should be deployed to do tasks that would be a big pain in the neck for humans to do.
 * How do we securely share the password to this bot among people (can't post it on wiki, shouldnt post to IRC, etc)
 * We'll have our ways :).
 * How do we decide who gets access to the bot?
 * For now, I'd say it should be given to active, proven administrators. In the future, we might want to add a section to the RFA page for "access to the sysopbot password".
 * I think a sysopbot is a scary thing to have... but under the circumstances, our active sysops are a small group who know one another fairly well, and I think we're doing a pretty good job overall. It's appropriate here, now, and with this group of sysops. It might not be later, but we can deal with that then. -- SB_Johnny | talk 22:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, i like all those answers. Let me post a few suggestions then, and see what that does for the discussion. I think the first thing we should do would be to formalize a list of people who will be granted rights to use this bot. The users would have to be current admins who are active and well trusted. Also, (and i shouldnt have to say this), giving out the password to the bot should be strictly prohibited. Also, we need to formalize specifically what software is going to be used with the bot. We can't just vote to give this bot a blank check, we need to know precisely who is using it, and precisely what "it" is. If we stick with a smaller list of admins (myself, derbeth, withinfocus, sbjohnny, darklama) that would probably grease the wheels a little bit. I don't mean that as an insult to some of our other admins, but I am saying that people with access to this bot should be experianced and active (and there are plenty of admins who are one or the other right now, some who are neither, and some who are almost there). LEt's say, for the sake of argument that:
 * Users:Derbeth, Myself, Withinfocus, SBJohnny, Darklama
 * Software:Image deletion script from commons
 * Method to change Users/Software: New users could be given access to this bot, or new software could be approved for use with this bot given community concensus, and majority approval of current users of the bot.
 * What do people think of these rules? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:33, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I like this plan for the most part and think the approved users' list is appropriate. However, I think it's a good idea to check into who exactly is flagged as a bot on this site and who's using bots inappropriately like under their own account. Bots (and I'm not even sure if this one has the flag) like User:Guanabot I find especially offensive since there's no predication towards their use and some users just take it upon themselves. Admins or other users shouldn't just find software to do this and run it under their account, something I've seen a lot of lately. I think bot use here needs to be watched more closely and all the tools we use to be grouped as the usable software under this bot user. -within focus 18:30, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Opposed doesn't really make sense to have, since the tasks it needs to do cannot be done without sysop status too. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 06:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Opposed Given the possible controversy and opposing votes and a few more concerns I feel inclined to vote against this. Xania 14:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm closing this as failed. While there is a need for some form of bot for major deletions this obviously does not have consensus -- Herby talk thyme 17:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)