The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a request for Bot Approvals Group membership that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

BAG Nomination: Cyberpower678[edit]

No apparent consensus to be admitted to the BAG demonstrated. -- Avi (talk) 02:25, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cyberpower678 (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log · edit summaries)

I'm applying for BAG membership because it appears that recruitments are needed. It was suggested by my mentor User:Worm That Turned that I take this venue. I think this would be an interesting place to contribute. I currently run and maintain User:Cyberbot I and am familiar with bot policy. I hope I can be of assistance to BAG. I'm not much of a python expert but do understand Java and PHP.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 12:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions[edit]

Would I be right in saying that you haven't contributed to somebody else's BRFA in six months? Why no non-BAG contributions? - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 13:44, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You would be right. My contributions constantly keep shifting through Wikipedia. I do still monitor them but haven't contributed because real life was somewhat in my way. I started college 6 months ago. Rest assured though, BAG is something I would definitely stick with granted if I meet the approval of the community. Because of the gap though, I would take it easy at first and brush up before I do some serious work.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 13:54, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from Chris

What programming languages do you have experience with? Which is your favorite/preferred and why?
I currently have experience with Java, as well as JavaScript, PHP, and Visual Basic. I have very little knowledge of python, but I hope to be able to learn that language soon. I really don't have a language preference although I do more PHP these days because of my bot. I'm probably the best at Visual Basic and Java.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How long is a reasonable time before a request can be marked as withdrawn?
It should never be marked as withdrawn unless the requester clearly indicates that they withdrew. A reasonable time to mark a request as expired would be somewhere around 1-3 months.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, my mind must have been wandering. I did mean expired. --Chris 16:37, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly, a prerequisite for approving a bot is that community consensus support such a task. However, WP:BRFA is largely ignored by most of the wiki community. How then does one gauge consensus for a task?
A discussion or RfC is started on a page that is highly visible. Once the discussion is closed, and consensus is in favor, it can be linked to the BRFA request.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you could change anything about the bot approval process what would it be and why?
I don't receive any attention for quite a few days. I would as a BAGer at least post a comment on the request to let the requester know that their request is not going unanswered.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I notice you have a status template on your userpage -- to show if you are online/offline. Say hypothetically, someone were to create a a bot that updated this automatically for you (opt-in, obviously) based on your editing. Would this bot, be a good or bad idea? Would you approve such a bot?
My editing is on and off and the bot would obviously keep switching my status making tons of redundant edits. As a result, I made a time-based template that approximates when I'm usually available. I would say that would be a bad idea and I would not approve the bot given that its not doing anything productive on Wikipedia. I would change my mind if there is a consensus for such a bot.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your choice - Favorite book, movie or Shakespearean play and why?
Book: None/Movie: Transformers/Shakespearean play: Hamlet—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

--Chris 15:30, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Haven't followed a BAG nomination in a while, do we still do the spam to the boards as we used to? Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 12:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The appropriate places to spam are listed at WP:BOTPOL#Bot Approvals Group. Anomie ⚔ 13:24, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done Forgot about those.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 13:32, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm rather undecided on this. Really, what I look for in a BAGer is just sane judgment and general cluefulness. You certainly seem eager. In many respects you remind me of myself when I first joined Wikipedia (perhaps that's what worries me). What concerns me the most is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cyberbot I. Just the overall attitude from that BRFA leaves me with alarm bells ringing. However, that was March last year, perhaps you have grown since then. You have very few comments on BRFAs, and most of them are brief, but they show you do have a good grasp on the bot policy. I was hoping for somewhat longer answers to my questions, however I am aware some people prefer to be more to the point. Overall, I think I will go with an uneasy support. You still have some "growing" (for lack of a better word), to do wiki-wise, but perhaps this will help. Just remember to take your time, think clearly, stress less and you should be fine. --Chris 17:41, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I will take your advice and grow from it. I did learn a lot from that BRFA and my follow up BRFAs (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cyberbot I 1 & Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cyberbot I 2) went a lot smoother.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 17:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Can I oppose based on Transformers being your favorite movie? ‑Scottywong | spout _ 16:05, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, it's not the cartoon series. You can go ahead and oppose but don't be surprised if I send one of my favorite non-Wikipedia robots to your house, Optimus Prime. —cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 16:40, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, you've made 4 BRfAs in the past. Of these, 3 out of 4 were SoxBot replacements running code written by other people. The only BRfA you've made which is not, is Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cyberbot II (which is marked as expired and not actually running). This is a minor concern for me, but it does seem that you're not running any bots you actually wrote yourself (although I appreciate the maintenance and tweaking you do on the bots you do run). What compounds this issue for me, is the problems which were evident when you were taking those bots over, particularly, as Chris mentions, with Cyberbot I, in your interaction with others who were writing replacement bots during that period and also your reaction to the response you got. I don't particularly want to drag up the distant past, so I will note that, like Chris, I acknowledge you've made big improvements since that BRfA, which was 10 months ago.

However, as Jarry pointed out above, before this BAG nomination it had been nearly 6 months since you'd contributed to a BRfA (outside of Cyberbot's). Given this, I would suggest that perhaps this isn't the ideal time to be making a BAG request (especially given that if you had made this request 6 months ago, it would likely have been too soon after the issues I mentioned above).

Finally, I feel I should mention the issue of your bot's "Updating readiness of bot" edits. You were asked to turn these off by Amalthea on your talk page, where you said you wanted consensus first and he didn't press the issue. You were then asked to turn it off by Hellknowz at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Cyberbot I 1 where you said you had deactivated the script. However, you said afterwards that you thought Hellknowz was asking you to turn it off just during the BRfA (which isn't the impression I got from that discussion) and restarted the script. I asked you to turn that off again at your talk page and Reaper Eternal seemed to be agreeing that it should be disabled. However, you still insisted on keeping it, but did agree to bring it down to one edit a day once you got access to the toolserver - something which you are still yet to do despite that being several months ago. Now again, in itself, having the bot do these edits isn't a big issue (although it could be argued – and has been – that it violates the Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Bot requirements) the real problem for me is that you seem to be running afoul of Wikipedia:BOTPOL#Good communication, as users have repeatedly brought up an issue with the bot, and you have failed to deal with it despite making assurances that you would.

Now that is out of the way, I wanted to say that while reviewing this I was impressed by your contributions at BRfAs and the insights you gave. You have obviously demonstrated that you have a good understanding of how bots work and the various processes surrounding them (such as toolserver, the BRfA process itself and interwiki bots). However, given the the above (and sorry for the long-winded rationale) I am inclined to weak oppose - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I completely forgot about that status updater once my computer was back up and running. I have updated it now to only do it once a day as we agreed on, while I was writing this response so I don't forget again. The other bot project, I gave up on because I realized there wasn't really a lot of support for the task and script for your account could be written for the same purpose. I don't mind if I don't get accepted, it just tells me there are things needing to be worked on, such as the communication issues you brought up. I do my best to fix it and try again.—cyberpower _Offline^{Happy 2013} 18:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thank you for pushing that change through. Don't take my comment about not running any bots which you wrote from scratch the wrong way, I was simply pointing out that it's a bit of a concern when coupled with the issues taking over those bots. I do not de-value the bots or the work you do running them. In fact, what with the retention problems we often have in bot-related areas, it's incredibly useful to have an active user willing to adopt bots like that. Anyway, as I said, one of the main things which gives me pause at the moment is the communication issue, as well as the problem I noted above, I've noticed that in general you are often quite blunt with those asking you about the bot (for example, with the RfX report asking for the signature to be changed/preventing edits to the signature date when nothing else has changed), I'm not saying that you don't always deal with these issues, but it can sometimes take quite a lot of people asking you, and even then you can seem quite apathetic about dealing with their concerns. Again, I must stress that I've seen vast improvements from you in the past, so I have faith you will work on it and continue to improve. Best, - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objection to your oppose and I take criticism, no matter how harsh, and improve on it, provided I am given examples.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 01:33, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above BAG membership discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.