Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2013-10/User:Buttermilch for bot status

• Nomination: I hereby request the Bot flag for User:Buttermilch. Tasks:

  Converting simple translation items to use {{t}}, and attaching verb aspect markers to any {{t}} template they accompany. As explained at: Wiktionary:Grease pit/2013/September#Requesting a bot flag for User:Buttermilch. Test run: Special:Contributions/Buttermilch.

  I expect to also find other mechanical tasks, maybe items on WT:TODO. Will discuss on Wiktionary:Grease pit, of course. Not sure if I need to re-request the bot flag then.

• Operator: User:Kephir
• Implementation notes: Two versions of the bot, one written in JavaScript, the other in Lua. (I thought it would be faster to write a bot from scratch instead of studying pywikipediabot documentation. Also, Python annoys me.) Implemented a "dry-run" mode which instead of saving displays a diff of the would-be change; errors revealed by it have been fixed. Implemented a six-second delay after saving a page to throttle editing rate.
• IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS.

  Keφr 06:19, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• Vote ends: 23:59 19 October 2013 (UTC)
• Vote started: 06:19, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• Discussion: linked above.

1. Support —Ruakh_TALK 07:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
2. Support. I trust Kefir. --Vahag (talk) 08:35, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
3. Support. Trustworthy user. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 09:30, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
4. Support --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:20, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
5. Support, and I suppose Ruakh is just trying to be humorous. At least I hope so. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

   The phrase "CodeCat's Path of Evil™" was an attempt at humor (admittedly, probably a bad one: it would work better from someone who hadn't recently been sincerely annoyed at her), but the rest of my comment was wholly sincere. According to Wiktionary:Bot policy, the main purpose of a bot vote is to demonstrate the community's trust in the bot owner, that (s)he will only use the bot to implement consensus. —Ruakh_TALK 04:13, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

   The mix was a mite unclear, at least to me. Disclaiming one's comments is pretty ridiculous as well, though; it reminds me of the stereotypical principal's office in elementary school ("Now take back what you said about Billy right now!"). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:55, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

   Huh? Sorry, that makes no sense. It's not like Kephir said something mean that he has to apologize for; it's just that he said it was O.K. for a bot owner to violate the bot policy, and if he wants to become a bot owner himself, he should make clear that he no longer feels that way. (Surely you don't think it's "pretty ridiculous" for someone to change their mind about something they said?) —Ruakh_TALK 18:53, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

   Erm, OK. I for one trust Keφr's intentions. Guess that's that. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:14, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

1. Oppose --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:04, 5 October 2013 (UTC) I cannot support a bot run by a user who openly disregards going by consensus on Wiktionary. I find it likely that the user will use the bot for actions unsupported by consensus. Admittedly, using bots for actions not supported by consensus has sadly become something of a common practice on Wiktionary, for some editors anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:04, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
   • Can you give an example? —CodeCat 13:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
     • See his posts in Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/September#Block_of_User:MewBot, in particular diff. Then I posted this to his talk page, but he seems unbothered. He may have changed his mind; I don't know. You can ask him whether he thinks decision making on Wiktionary should proceed by consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:41, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
       • Yes, that worried me, too. I voted 'support' because his more recent comments suggest he's not planning to take CodeCat's Path of Evil,™ and in the vote description he says he'll discuss any future tasks at Wiktionary:Grease pit; but it would be good if he explicitly disclaimed those comments. —Ruakh_TALK 19:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
         • I don't even think that Grease pit is the right place for discussing such changes as switching {{rare}} to {{context|rare|lang=en}} across the wiki; it is not a minor technical subject of interest only to script masters. But come to think of it, if he starts doing changes not supported by consensus, the bot can blocked by a bureaucrat, so the risk of harm is probably negligible. Nonetheless, I will let my oppose stand, as I find such an open disregard for the principle of consensus--unretracted so far--basically incompatible with running a bot. Maybe I'll have the opportunity to play the "I told you so" card :). --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:50, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
           • It is a technical subject, because the dictionary content stays the same. Only the markup/formatting changes. (And my bot is a she.)

           This might not be the best forum for it, but whatever. I have come under the impression that the goal of this project is to build a dictionary. And whatever "consensus" is supposed to mean, it is just a way for everyone not to cut each other's throats along the way as a side effect. Of course there are things that need discussion. Running a bot on thousands of pages (21946 pages to be processed in this task, as of the 2nd of October dump) is one of them, because this has a potential for creating subtle errors in corner cases and is hard to undo. But discussing every single little thing ever (like the {{l|en}} around definitions; otherwise, I would use {{l/en}} or {{l|en}} around individual words, which some definitions already use, and is actually even more counter-intuitive) is just silly. You may either trust my judgement about what needs discussion, or not. What I actually quite strongly oppose is bureaucracy — enforcing rules for the sake of rules — and people who try to impose it. I can usually tell them by seeing them talk loudly about "consensus" and not actually contribute to building it. Or oppose things based on the most obnoxiously literal or narrow interpretation of written policy, or without any argumentation at all. Or revert things because of "no consensus, restoring status quo ante, quia quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur". (Excuse me for the Wikipedia links. Some of the reasons they list may be less applicable here. But it does show some problems with attempting to strictly adhere to an ill-defined notion of "consensus".) Dan Polansky has a habit of telling people "I disagree with/oppose/am annoyed by what you do, full stop" and leaving it at that, without arguing his point. He wrote something like that on my talk page twice. How am I supposed to respond to that? How am I supposed to treat him seriously?

           In other words: "You did not persuade me, Nicholas. You did not persuade me!". (If anyone wants to continue this discussion, I would rather do it on another page. But this is just a suggestion.) Keφr 08:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

           • From reading your post, do I understand correctly that you feel free to use your bot to add {{l|en|...}} around definitions without first ascertaining that a supermajority supports such an action? ---Dan Polansky (talk) 08:25, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

2. Oppose I'm annoyed enough about continually fixing my tools after CodeCat's illegal but runs (such as changing instances of {{term}} to {{term/t}} recently). I'd prefer if future bot owners discussed these "little things". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 04:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

This vote passed by 5-2 (and a while ago, I might add), but we need a 'crat to confer the bot flag. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

• Conferred. —Ruakh_TALK 22:49, 24 November 2013 (UTC)