That would cover most of them, but runs into the problem of "you're only including the unauthorised bots written poorly enough that we've caught the operator" ;). It seems like this would be a useful topic for some piece of method-comparing research, if anyone is looking for paper ideas.
On 19 May 2014 03:30, WereSpielChequers <[email protected]> wrote: > If your bot is only running automated reports in its own userspace then it > doesn't need a bot flag. But it probably wont be a very active bot so may > not be a problem for your stats > > On the English language wikipedia you are going to be fairly close if you > exclude all accounts which currently have a bot flag, this list of former > bots<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits/Unflagged_bots> > (I > occasionally maintain this in order for the list of editors by edit count > to work, as of a couple of weeks ago when I last checked I believe it to be > a comprehensive list of retired bots with 6,000 or more edits), and perhaps > the individual with a very high edit count who has in the past been blocked > for running unauthorised bots on his user account. (I won't name that > account on list, but since it also contains a large number of manual edits, > the true answer is that you can't get an exact divide between bots and non > bots by classifying every account as either a bot or a human). > > If you are minded to treat all accounts containing the word syllable bot > as bots, then you might want to tweak that to count anyone on > these<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits> > two > lists<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits/5001%E2%80%9310000>as > human even if their name includes bot. I check those lists occasionally > and make sure that the only bots included are human editors. > > > On 18 May 2014 20:33, R.Stuart Geiger <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Tsk tsk tsk, Brian. When the revolution comes, bot discriminators will >> get no mercy. :-) >> >> But seriously, my tl;dr: instead of asking if an account is or isn't a >> bot, ask if a set of edits are or are not automated >> >> Great responses so far: searching usernames for *bot will exclude non-bot >> users who were registered before the username policy change (although *Bot >> is a bit better), and the logging table is a great way to collect bot >> flags. However, Scott is right -- the bot flag (or *Bot username) doesn't >> signify a bot, it signifies a bureaucrat recognizing that a user account >> successfully went through the Bot Approval Group process. If I see an >> account with a bot flag, I can generally assume the edits that account >> makes are initiated by an automated software agent. This is especially the >> case in the main namespace. The inverse assumption is not nearly as easy: I >> can't assume that every edit made from an account *without* a bot flag was >> *not* an automated edit. >> >> About unauthorized bots: yes, there are a relatively small number of >> Wikipedians who, on occasion, run fully-automated, continuously-operating >> bots without approval. Complicating this, if someone is going to take >> the time to build and run a bot, but isn't going to create a separate >> account for it, then it is likely that they are also using that account to >> do non-automated edits. Sometimes new bot developers will run an >> unauthorized bot under their own account during the initial stages of >> development, and only later in the process will they create a separate bot >> account and seek formal approval and flagging. It can get tricky when you >> exclude all the edits from an account for being automated based on a single >> suspicious set of edits. >> >> More commonly, there are many more people who use automated batch tools >> like AutoWikiBrowser to support one-off tasks, like mass find-and-replace >> or category cleanup. Accounts powered by AWB are technically not bots, >> only because a human has to sit there and click "save" for every batch edit >> that is made. Some people will create a separate bot account for AWB >> work and get it approved and flagged, but many more will not bother. Then >> there are people using semi-automated, human-in-the-loop tools like Huggle >> to do vandal fighting. I find that the really hard question is whether >> you include or exclude these different kinds of 'cyborgs', because it >> really makes you think hard about what exactly you're measuring. Is >> someone who does a mass find-and-replace on all articles in a category a >> co-author of each article they edit? Is a vandal fighter patrolling the >> recent changes feed with Huggle a co-author of all the articles they edit >> when they revert vandalism and then move on to the next diff? What about >> somebody using rollback in the web browser? If so, what is it that makes >> these entities authors and ClueBot NG not an author? >> >> When you think about it, user accounts are actually pretty remarkable in >> that they allow such a diverse set of uses and agents to be attributed to a >> single entity. So when it comes to identifying automation, I personally >> think it is better to shift the unit of analysis from the user account to >> the individual edit. A bot flag lets you assume all edits from an account >> are automated, but you can use a range of approaches to identifying sets of >> automated edits from non-flagged accounts. Then I have a set of regex SQL >> queries in the Query Library [1] which parses edit summaries for the traces >> that AWB, Huggle, Twinkle, rollback, etc. automatically leave by default. >> You can also use the edit session approach like Scott has suggested -- Aaron >> and I found a few unauthorized bots in our edit session study [2], and we >> were even using a more aggressive break, with no more than a 60 minute gap >> between edits. To catch short bursts of bulk edits, you could look at large >> numbers of edits made in a short period of time -- I'd say more than 7 main >> namespace edits a minute for 10 minutes would be a hard rate for even a >> very aggressive vandal fighter to maintain with Huggle. >> >> I'll conclude by saying that different kinds of automated editing >> techniques are different ways of participating in and contributing to >> Wikipedia. To systematically exclude automated edits is to remove a very >> important, meaningful, and heterogeneous kind of activity from view. These >> activities constitute a core part of what Wikipedia is, particularly >> those forms of automation which the community has explicitly authorized and >> recognized. Now, we researchers inevitably have to selectively reveal >> and occlude -- a co-authorship network based on main namespace edits also >> excludes talk page discussions and conflict resolution, and this also >> constitutes a core part of what Wikipedia is. It isn't wrong per se to >> exclude automated edits, and it is certainly much worse to not recognize >> that they exist at all. However, I always appreciate seeing how the >> analysis would be different if bots were not excluded. The fact that >> there are these weird users which absolutely dominate a co-authorship >> network graph if you don't filter them out is pretty amazing, at least to >> me. >> >> Best, >> Stuart >> >> [1] >> https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/MySQL_queries#Automated_tool_and_bot_edits >> [2] http://stuartgeiger.com/cscw13-labor-hours.pdf >> >> >> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Scott Hale >> <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> Very helpful, Lukas, I didn't know about the logging table. >>> >>> In some recent work [1] I found many users that appeared to be bots but >>> whose edits did not have the bot flag set. My approach was to exclude users >>> who didn't have a break of more than 6 hours between edits over the entire >>> month I was studying. I was interested in the users who had multiple edit >>> sessions in the month and so when with a straight threshold. A way to keep >>> users with only one editing session would be to exclude users who have no >>> break longer than X hours in an edit session lasting at least Y hours >>> (e.g., a user who doesn't break for more than 6 hours in 5-6 days is >>> probably not human) >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Scott >>> >>> [1] Multilinguals and Wikipedia Editing >>> http://www.scotthale.net/pubs/?websci2014 >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Scott Hale >>> Oxford Internet Institute >>> University of Oxford >>> http://www.scotthale.net/ >>> [email protected] >>> >>> >>> >>> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Lukas Benedix <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> Here is a list of currently flagged bots: >>>> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&offset=&limit=2000&username=&group=bot >>>> >>>> Another good point to look for bots is here: >>>> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Bots%2FRequests_for_approval&namespace=4 >>>> >>>> You should also have a look at this pages to find former bots: >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive_bots_1 >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Status/inactive_bots_2 >>>> >>>> And last but not least the logging table you can access via tool labs: >>>> SELECT DISTINCT(log_title) >>>> FROM logging >>>> WHERE log_action = 'rights' >>>> AND log_params LIKE '%bot%'; >>>> >>>> Lukas >>>> >>>> Am So 18.05.2014 18:34, schrieb Andrew G. West: >>>> > User name policy states that "*bot*" names are reserved for bots. >>>> > Thus, such a regex shouldn't be too hacky, but I cannot comment >>>> > whether some non-automated cases might slip through new user patrol. I >>>> > do think dumps make the 'users' table available, and I know for sure >>>> > one could get a full list via the API. >>>> > >>>> > As a check on this, you could check that when these usernames edit, >>>> > whether or not they set the "bot" flag. -AW >>>> > >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Scott Hale >>> Oxford Internet Institute >>> University of Oxford >>> http://www.scotthale.net/ >>> [email protected] >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wiki-research-l mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wiki-research-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation
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