Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SodiumBot 2

SodiumBot 2

Operator: Sohom Datta (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 20:03, Tuesday, July 16, 2024 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: https://github.com/DreamRimmer/SodiumBot

Function overview: Notify previous reviewers of a article at AFD about the nomination

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Initial discussions on NPP Discord + previous BRFAs surrounding AFD notifications

Edit period(s): Continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: 1-2 per day (guessimate?)

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): No, on enwiki, yes, for other wikis on other tasks

Function details:

Use the eventstream API to listen for new AfDs
Extract page name by parsing the AfD wikitext
Identify previous reviewers of page at AFD
Notify said reviewers on their talk pages with a customised version of the existing AfD notification message

Discussion

I like this concept in general. I tried to make a user script that does this (User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/WatchlistAFD.js#L-89--L-105), but it doesn't work (I probably need to rewrite it to use MutationObserver). Would this bot be automatic for everyone, or opt in? Opt in may be better and easier to move forward in a BRFA. If not opt in, may want to start a poll somewhere to make sure there's some support for "on by default". –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:58, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be better to be on by default with the option for reviewers to disable. (t · c) buidhe 14:28, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes. "Opt out" might be a good way to describe this third option. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support - seems like a good idea. I've reviewed several articles that I've tagged for notability or other concerns, only to just happen to notice them by chance a few days later get AfD'ed by someone else. A bot seems like a good idea, and I can't see a downside. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 16:31, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the sort of thing that would be really good for some people (e.g., new/infrequent reviewers) and really frustrating for others (e.g., people who have reviewed tens of thousands of articles). If it does end up being opt-out, each message needs to have very clear instructions on how to opt out. It would also be worth thinking about a time limit: most people aren't going to get any value out of hearing about an article they reviewed a decade ago. Maybe a year or two would be a good threshold. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:48, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The PREVIOUS_NOTIF regex should also account for notifications left via page curation tool ("Deletion discussion about xxx"). The notification also needs to be skipped if the previous reviewer themself is nominating. In addition, I would suggest adding a delay of at least several minutes instead of acting immediately on AfD creation – as it can lead to race conditions where Twinkle/PageTriage and this bot simultaneously deliver notifications to the same user. – SD0001 (talk) 13:41, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{Operator assistance needed}} Thoughts on the above comments/suggestions? Also, do you have the notice ready to go or is that still in the works? If it's ready, please link to it (or copy it here if it's hard-coded elsewhere). Primefac (talk) 12:48, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Primefac I've implemented a few of the suggestions, I've reworked the code to exclude pages containing {{User:SodiumBot/NoNPPDelivery}}, which should serve as a opt out mechanism :) I've also reworked the code to include SD0001's suggestion of adding a significant delay by making the bot wait at least a hour and also added modified the regex to account for the messages sent by PageTriage.

Wrt to Extraordinary Writ's suggestions, I have restricted the lookup to the last 3 years as well and created a draft User:SodiumBot/ReviewerAfdNotification which has instructions on how to opt out. Sohom (talk) 16:02, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'll leave this open for a few days for comment before going to trial. Primefac (talk) 16:07, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Please make sure this BRFA is linked in the edit summary. Primefac (talk) 23:50, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{Operator assistance needed}} Any progress on this? Primefac (talk) 12:44, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had left the bot running, it hasn't picked up a single article by the looks of the logs. I'mm gonna try to do some debugging on what the issue is/was. Sohom (talk) 14:22, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've pushed some fixes, gonna see how that does. Sohom (talk) 15:24, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I ran across Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SDZeroBot 6 today, which is a very similar task, and uses an "opt out" strategy. This suggests that the community may be OK with having AFD notifications be on by default for a bot task like this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A user has requested the attention of the operator. Once the operator has seen this message and replied, please deactivate this tag. (user notified) What is the status of this? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:05, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I remember @DreamRimmer helping me out a bit with this, I'm not sure what is going on with the bot atm/why it is still stuck :( Sohom (talk) 16:11, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lemme take a deeper look and get back to you by ETOW Sohom (talk) 16:11, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Sohom Datta: What is the status of this? Requests shouldn't linger for almost a year. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:35, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Noting that I'm aware -- I'll try some stuff over the weekend and report back -- If it doesn't work out, I'll close this as declined. Sohom (talk) 15:09, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Job is now working (thanks to a lot of work by DreamRimmer!) Sohom (talk) 14:57, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Came across this after receiving some (unwanted) messages at User_talk:Joe_Roe#Nomination_of_Vũ_Duy_Hoàng_for_deletion. The NppNotifier task should be opt-in. It would make sense to run it opt-out if notifying NPP reviewers of AfDs manually was previously a common practice, but that isn't the case. I'm pretty much average in terms of reviewing activity and I've reviewed 2100 pages in the last three years – that's potentially a lot of unwanted messages to send to someone without asking! Also, regarding Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Initial discussions on NPP Discord – this is really not good enough. It should have been discussed on-wiki, in advance with the people who are actually going to receive the automated messages (i.e. NPP reviewers). – Joe (talk) 08:52, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Joe Roe, It should have been discussed on-wiki, in advance with the people who are actually going to receive the automated messages (i.e. NPP reviewers). -- I will start by noting that the NPP discord is made up primarily of NPP reviewers. Also, this BRFA was also advertised onwiki for the large portion for a month last year at WT:NPR during which multiple people commented above that having this be opt-out was a good idea (see above). I only implemented this to be opt-out after the onwiki consensus had been formed. Sohom (talk) 09:23, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A small minority of NPP reviewers. Consensus is reached through on-wiki discussion or by editing. Discussions elsewhere are not taken into account. This is a policy. And I'm aware of the notification. That's what I meant by discussed in advance (of the BRFA). Doesn't it make sense to find out whether people actually want to receive these messages, before you request permission to run a bot to send them? – Joe (talk) 09:28, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused about what you are implying here, the initial idea of a bot to notify NPP folks of AFD discussions was borne out of a discussion on Discord, when the BRFA was filed onwiki it was advertised in places where you would expect NPP editors to show up, folks edited, discussed it onwiki (here or remained silent), they said that opt-out was fine and that was what was implemented. I don't understand what policy was violated here. The BRFA is explicitly meant to be a venue to discuss the working of the bot, it's not insular to only folks who have technical knowledge and it is not required to work out every single thing about the bot before filing a BRFA.

Regarding the meat of the complaint, as @Novem Linguae mentions above, there are cases where we do have opt-out notifications about AFDs from bots (another example of opt-out notifications would be the modus operandi of bots that WP:G13 drafts). There is a implicit consensus that these kinds of bots are fine and do not violate policy. Also, and I've reviewed 2100 pages in the last three years – that's potentially a lot of unwanted messages to send to someone without asking assumes that a large portion of these articles would get AFDed, when in actuality, you are probably expecting that number to be much much lower. Sohom (talk) 09:45, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are implying the existence of a consensus to run this bot opt-in that does not exist. I can only assume that this is because either you think it was formed on Discord, in which case again see WP:CON; or you have misread the discussion above where the very first commenter suggested opt-in, the second preferred opt-out, and no subsequent participant expressed a preference. I'm not saying this is a bad idea for a task, but you do not currently have consensus to run it this way and I'm suggesting that you perhaps could have done a better job in seeking that before writing and running a bot (even as a trial). The other AfD notification bots automate notifications that are or were previously commonly performed manually; as I mentioned above, this is not the case here. Thus I do not think you should send people automated messages that they did not ask for and would not currently expect to receive.

assumes that a large portion of these articles would get AFDed – I have no idea what the proportion would be. But 1% is still 21 messages and any value is greater than the number I would like to receive if asked, which is zero. – Joe (talk) 10:02, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Joe Roe, I have disabled the bot for the time being. I still stand by the fact that I have to the best of my ability tried to have folks be involved, advertised discussions and acted based on what I understood the on-wiki consensus on the matter was. I also want to be extremely clear, I resent and reject your implication that I somehow willingly violated WP:BOTREQUIRE by running a bot "without consensus". That is a serious accusation. The burden of proof (imo) is still on your end that I have somehow ignored some form of established consensus and policy. If you have problems with the opt-out nature of the bot and want to restart the discussion, feel free to do so on WT:NPR and ping me to it. Sohom (talk) 12:09, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see plenty of support for this bot in this BRFA and at WT:NPPR. Joe Roe is the only objection so far.

As evidenced by the WT:NPPR diff provided by Sohom above, and the existence of this BRFA that has had 10 unique editors post in it, this task was properly socialized onwiki. Focusing on the Discord part is distracting and a red herring.

Sometimes the best or even only way to get more comments on a software proposal is to deploy it more widely.

I think it'd be reasonable to resume and finish the trial. If there are other folks that feel like Joe Roe who want to comment against the bot task, I think the best way to find this out is for the bot to do its trial.

I am not unsympathetic to Joe's concerns. My initial instinct in the very first comment in this BRFA was to make the bot opt in. But that is not the way the onwiki BRFA discussion went.

–Novem Linguae (talk) 13:31, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pending no concerns/objections by tmrw, I'll start the task again. Sohom (talk) 23:58, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]