Forum:Setting up a new bot account

It looks like this wiki could use a new bot account for both doing maintenance and cleaning up problems like vandalism. The current bot, Avtbot, is run by The avatar but that user has not made any edits here in over 6 months.

For those of you who don't know what a bot account is, it's an account that is specially marked so that its edits and other fixes are hidden from the Recent Changes List. This keeps the RC List from getting cluttered when a lot of edits are taking place. You can see those edits by clicking on "Show: Bots" at the top of the page. (There's none on this wiki right now.) Typically, you use a program like AWB under that account to make automated changes, such as changing a typo like "Heizn" to "Heinz".

I recommend that a new bot be set up, and there's two ways you could go about this:

1. Topher208 created an account called Ferbot. It's set as a bot account on the canon P&F wiki and I use it a lot for cleanup there, (over 43,000 edits as of today). Right now, it's just a regular user account here, but it could be switched to a bot account for this wiki.

2. One of the admins who's more active on this wiki could create a new account that would become the bot.

A couple of notes:


 * If Ferbot is selected, then it would just be me and Topher that uses it (I use it the most, actually) so that we don't have multiple people using the same account.
 * If you opt to create a new account, you will need to put its name in this forum so everyone can approve its use. That's a requirement by Wikia: announce your intention to run a bot account, then get approval from the community.
 * Whichever account becomes the bot needs to specifically state on its user page that it's a bot and identify who runs it.
 * The person or persons running the account would need to have Windows or a Windows emulator on their computer, since AWB and most of the other automated editing programs are only available for Windows.

As a separate item, one thing that would be helpful is to make the bot account an admin. That way if a page, file or blog needs to be deleted or renamed, that can also be hidden from the Recent Changes List. For example, I just had to delete about 50 pages and blog comments that were from an attempt to vandalize the wiki. If I was using a bot account, you wouldn't have seen them.

Making the bot account an admin is only to help keep the RC List tidy. Any normal edits should be made under regular accounts.

If making the bot account an admin is approved, naturally it should only be run by administrators on this wiki.

Let's open this up for discussion and see what you think. -RRabbit42 ( leave a message ) 07:00, March 22, 2011 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) If you support Ferbot becoming a bot account on this wiki, sign your name here.

Oppose

 * 1) If you do not support Ferbot becoming a bot account on this wiki, sign your name here.

Comments

 * 1) Any comments/discussion should be put here. Sign your name, please.

New account
User name: fill in here To be run by: list user(s) that will run the bot

Support

 * 1) If you support this account becoming a bot account on this wiki, sign your name here.

Oppose

 * 1) If you do not support this account becoming a bot account on this wiki, sign your name here.

Comments

 * 1) Any comments/discussion should be put here. Sign your name, please.

Support

 * 1) If you support the bot also being an admin, sign your name here.

Oppose

 * 1) If you do not support the bot also being an admin, sign your name here.

Comments

 * 1) Any comments/discussion should be put here. Sign your name, please.