Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Headbomb

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

BAG Nomination: Headbomb

• Headbomb (talk · contribs)

Headbomb has been editing is since May 2006. As well as doing quite a bit of article work, he has been active in bot creation. He has operated a bot, User:ArticleAlertbot, and soon will operate User:Bibcode Bot. He is generally helpful at WP:BRFA commenting on bots and providing helping on-wiki and on IRC to other operators. For these reasons, I nominate him for BAG. MBisanz ^talk 05:43, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Candidate acceptance:

• Registration is 2006, although I only got involved around March/April 2008. Got first involved with bots because of WP:PHYS and Wikiproject tagging runs with Anomie and Tinucherian, then moved on to bigger projects such as WP:AALERTS and WP:JCW, with Tedder, B. Wolterding and H3llkn0wz. Also worked with Smith609 on expanding and tweaking Citation bot and with Noomos on NoomBot.

  Latest project is Bibcode Bot, which got started by Delta and carried on by Snottywong. Never really coded until last Friday, where I undertook learning Python/Pywikipedia, and it came pretty naturally (I obviously don't know everything about it since it's not even been a week, but Snottywong would probably testify to my code being at least decent).

  Been watching WP:BOTREQ for a long time, both to give feedback and get new ideas for how to help the various WikiProjects I'm involved with, as well as large scale projects. Been lurking on the BAG channel for a while now, where I've helped with things when possible.

  Since I'm involved at pretty much every level of Wikipedia and got involed in a plethora of bot tasks over the last years, I'm pretty familiar with all the bot policies, and have a good grasp on what's controversial, what requires trial, what can be approved without trial, what would require more discussion, what has no chance in hell of ever being suitable for a bot, etc...

  So yeah, in a nutshell, since BAG is apparently overloaded, and I'm pretty much doing everything a BAG member would (minus the official stuff for BOT approval) anyway, might as well become part of the BAG proper. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Questions:

• Out of all the approval/discussion processes (RFA, AFD, etc) on Wikipedia BRFA by far takes the longest, it not being uncommon for a request to be open for several months. Why do you think this is? Is this a problem, if so how would you fix it?
• One of the criticisms of the BAG/BRFA approval process is that once approved there is a distinct lack of oversight of bot actions, do you agree with this/what are your thoughts?
• Do you think bureaucrats should play a larger role in bot approvals, or should they act merely on the advice of BAG (i.e. flaggings and deflaggings)? Should BAG have their own separate userright?
• If you could change the BRFA/BAG process would you? If yes, what would you change?
• What is your favorite play by Shakespeare?

Don't feel like you have to answer all (or any) of them. --Chris 06:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• Length of BRFA:: "Why" it takes a while is probably because some of these requests are tasks which are boring/have little purpose/have unclear purpose/unclear consensus, combined with BAG members actually having lives. If you're busy, you want clear requests, which have clear outcomes so it doesn't take a lot of effort to decide what to do with the requests. If a BRFA is tricky, then you go "ugh, do I really want to deal with this?" and go do something else less annoying. The bots I cared about never took much long as far as the BRFA process is concerned, but that's probably because of a combination of clear and well-defined BRFAs, plus me annoying BAG members about the requests. I don't pretend I'll be all that much better than other BAG members to address the "months old" BRFAs, since I I have a life too, but I do plan on checking those with explicit request for BAG attention fairly regularly. Any BRFAs where I get significantly involved (such as asking for consensus, or giving a thumbs up for trial) would in general have pretty fast response times from me however.
• Oversight: I disagree with that. BAG gives the approval for the task, and then the onus is on bot operators to keep within the spirit (or letter, when warranted) of their BRFAs. Lack of oversight would only be true if the bots were editing in a vacuum, rather than over millions of articles watched by thousands of editors. Malfunctioning bots get blocked all the time. Bots editing against consensus gets blocked all the time. If that's not oversight, I don't know what is. That editors/admins/non-BAG members do most of the oversight doesn't mean there is no oversight.

  You can more or less think of a BRFA as being a driving license. If you drive without one, you can get in trouble even if your driving skills are fine. And if you have a license, it still doesn't give you the right to run over people or drive 200 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. BAG gives out these driving licenses. If they are abused, they can be (and are) revoked, and bots are blocked accordingly.

• Bureaucrats, I think whatever the current situation is with bureaucrats is fine. I never had to deal with them AFAIK, or know of anyone who ever had to deal with them other than remind them that some bot needs to be flag. So if there's no problem with the status quo, then there's no real need to change it.
• BRFA/BAG process, other than the length issue previously mentioned, I think BRFA can too easily be hijacked by trolls and unreasonable people because BOT should be uncontroversial. As BRFAs usually get little opposition, one dissenting voice can often make or break a BRFAs. There's no real solution to this, other than get BAG members with a good ability to discern what is legitimate opposition and legitimate concerns to a task, and what is ideologically-driven wikilawyering / trolling / gaming the system. Luckily this doesn't happen very often, but BRFAs are vulnerable to this.
• Shakespeare Titus Andronicus. At least as retold by Julie Taymor.

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• What action would you take in the User:Lightmouse Lightbot BRFAs (i.e. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 6–14)? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:26, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Personally, I would deny most of them / put them on hold unless an RFC explicitly approved the task and the logic to be used. I would suggest that these fixes be implemented into WP:AWB when possible. Lightmouse has been a problematic bot operator in the past, and these deal with MOS issues which is always a Pandora's box, so the combination of the two makes me particularly uneasy. For example, converting MPH to mph has LOADS of false positives (see MPH for a partial list). What about the use of MPH in quotes? Etc... Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:58, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Votes

• You seem sensible, Support --Chris 06:14, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support As nom. MBisanz ^talk 06:15, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support if he's trustworth then yes Petrb (talk) 06:16, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support –xeno^talk 12:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Impressed with the candidate's answers, and with their bot work. That said... Titus Andronicus? Really? UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 13:22, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support; knows his way around. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Comment—Well, no offense intended, but I do have some concerns about this editor's apparent tendency toward edit warring and some strongly inflexible biases. However, I have no concerns about his work with bots. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• (Moral) Support I'm not a BAG member, and everything I know about bots I know from Futurama, so I'm not sure I can vote here, if so, this is only a "Moral" support. I can, however, attest to Headbomb's general competence and helpfulness. Also, I'm not sure if "uninhibited glee" is the correct term, but he was certainly enthusiastic about Noombot, so I know his heart is in the right place when it comes to bots. Sven Manguard Wha? 15:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support Would do well as a BAG member. Noom _talk ^stalk 18:17, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support Seems competent, and I think the driving license metaphor is exactly right. bobrayner (talk) 18:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support I'm also not a BAG member, but have had some interaction with Headbomb recently and can attest to his cluefulness. Given the current backlog at BRFA, we can use all the help we can get. Just don't let him code anything in Python... :p —SW— ^spout 20:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Does coding in python involve a flute? :P Sven Manguard Wha? 21:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
• Comment—I have to question whether Headbomb has the maturity for this kind of role. I have seen at least one vicious outburst on a public IRC channel that left me wondering. I also query the reasoning behind his statement that he would "deny most" of User:Lightmouse's requests, which had in principle been approved by ArbCom in the expectation that the details would be worked out by the experts at BAG—but which met, as far as I can tell, with tirades of bad-faith comments by a few users that seemed to derail the whole thing. More explicit reasoning is required to convince me. Tony (talk) 02:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Comment The project needs individuals to roll up their sleeves and do heavy lifting—bots included. Headbomb has volunteered to do so and I applaud him for that. His operating a bot with the consent of the community is fine. That is not to endorse his regular edits and I hope the community’s endorsement of his bot activities doesn’t go to his head as I find his position on article talk pages and his arguments betray a lack of sound judgement. Greg L (talk) 02:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support No major issues, IMO. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support Why not? -FASTILY ^(TALK) 04:19, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support YESYESYES <3 (sorry - it's late and I couldn't help myself!) — The Earwig ^(talk) 04:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support - we need more people to be actively involved with BAG. - Richard Cavell (talk) 04:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support Competent and knowledgeable user, I was wondering when he'd get nom'd! —James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 3:00pm • 05:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support definitely. Kaldari (talk) 01:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support unequivocal. I'm not a BAG member but have been around a wee while and Headbomb's intellgent input has always been appreciated and in my opinion can only aid this group in it's work. ^Khukri 11:31, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support Rjwilmsi 09:07, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support I had a discussion with this user the other day in the #wikipedia-bag ^connect IRC channel, very helpful and knew what he was on about. I was surprised he wasn't already voiced (i.e. a member of BAG). I'm sure he'll be a good member of the group! :) The Helpful One 11:54, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support. Ironholds (talk) 23:53, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

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.