Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Grim Reaper Bot

Grim Reaper Bot

Automatic or Manually Assisted:Automatic

Programming Language(s): C

Function Summary: Notify article creators if their article has been tagged with the prod tag or an XfD tag (note, also applies to images, categories, templates, etc).

Edit period(s) (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Hourly/semi-hourly

Edit rate requested: 5 edits per minute

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): N

Function Details: It will scan the categories Category:Proposed deletion, Category:AfD debates, Category:Wikipedia templates for deletion, Category:Images and media for deletion, etc. and check if each page's creator has been notified. It will use custom templates that explain what is going on and that the notification is comming from a bot. It won't issue a notification if there is any occurance of the page's name on the creator's talk page.

Discussion

Sounds good to me. Just one question: is there any safeguard against abuse? I guess it's not really necessary, but I'll let you or someone else give their opinion on that. What if a banned/blocked user is nominating many pages in bad faith? I guess it's rare enough that it's nothing really to worry about. —METS501 (talk) 04:41, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't think about any such safeguard. It would be possible to have it not issue notifications if the nominator is currently blocked. But I think this would be a rare problem, as I've never had issues with anyone abusing Android Mouse Bot 2, which issues notifications for speedy deletion. --Android Mouse 05:33, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe delay 1 hour so that any bad faith noms can be closed in the meantime? They are almost all 5/7-day processes, so 1 hour of delay is not a bad thing. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 05:36, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a reasonable solution, I'll have it do that. Thanks. --Android Mouse 06:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, it seems like a great bot, and similair to existing bots. It also helps when editors forget to notify creators.

Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete.. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:42, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it just me or does this seem like a bad name for this bot? Android Mouse's speedy deletion notification bot still causes people confusion in that they think they bot either nominated it or deleted their article (I know, all they have to do is read the message it leaves, but that seems a lost art). People are going to make the same mistake with this and the name is going to further that. Is there a reason it shouldn't just be a descriptive name? -- JLaTondre 11:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do have to say, that ever since I've changed the bot message for the speedy deletion bot to point to the bot's userpage instead of directly to my talk page, I've had probably a tenth of the confusion because the userpage explains (in large font) that the bot doesn't make nominations or deletions. At this point it is almost difficult not to figure it out as they'd have to avoid reading the bolded text in the bot message and avoid reading the even larger bolded text on the bot's page. I'm willing to change the bot's name though. What do you think would be better? --Android Mouse 21:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]