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

BAG Nomination: Cyberpower678[edit]

• Cyberpower678 (talk · contribs · count · logs · page moves · block log · edit summaries)

Cyberpower678 has been editing since June 2011. He is an experienced bot-op, who created two bots (Cyberbot I & Cyberbot II), and has ten approved BRFAs. Cyberpower678 knows, which tasks could and shouldn't be done with a bot. The user is responsive to requests, is fairly active and civil, therefore I think he would be a great addition to the Bot Approvals Group.

Candidate acceptance: I accept.—cyberpower _Offline^{Merry Christmas} 04:06, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Questions[edit]

1. One important task for BAG members is reviewing code written by others for potential issues. I've written a really basic bot here. It's similar to SuggestBot: Users list themselves on a page, it generates suggestions for them (using a separate program that is assumed to work correctly for this purpose), and puts a list on their talk page. Review the code, identifying any potential issues both code-wise and bot policy-related. Mr.Z-man 17:37, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
2. Can you point to any recent BRFAs or bot requests where you feel you made a substantial positive contribution to the discussion, outside of your own BRFAs or bot requests where your contribution was to volunteer to do the task? Anomie⚔ 18:41, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

• Support as nominator. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 02:43, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support No objections from me. Hasteur (talk) 14:35, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Disagree with nomination. Editor deploys buggy code User_talk:Cyberpower678/Archive_14#Spam_blacklist_false_positive and reacts poorly to communities concerns Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive814#Bot_gone_wild, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive815#Cyberbot_II.2C_take_2. (Their replies on the latter thread indicate they an unable or unwilling to deploy code sufficiently robust to handle unexpected conditions, such as an API not working as intended.) NE Ent 15:12, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  In all fairness I was under a lot stress, and suffered a blow to my head from a rain gutter that fell. My judgement clearly wasn't all there. It is for that reason I went on a Wikibreak. The bot is robust against errors now, and it does now comply with nobots after several bug fixes. The bot even has been designed to notice changes in the blacklist sooner to avoid retagging no longer blacklisted content.—cyberpower _Online^{Merry Christmas} 15:49, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Neutral To be absolutely fair, your talk page and other locations contain literally dozens of one-liners where you explain, justify, excuse or obfuscate over concerns raised about your code. I for one have raised concerns about your approach to making hurried quick fixes rather than a more considered approach but I don't know what passes for acceptable standards of development, testing and deployment around here rather than a proper, professional organisation with defined standards. Maybe your approach is perfectly normal for en-WP. There are also concerns raised by others about your planned adoption of a code set from another user, relating to a perceived proprietorial attitude to "your" code which you rebutted by stating: "I was always nervous that my code would receive criticism, and that it would reflect badly towards me as a botop." [2]. Whether any of this is strictly relevant to your suitability as part of BAG I have no idea, but it is only fair to put out for others to evaluate some concerns about your recent body of work. Leaky Caldron 16:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  My diagnosis of bugs in a code are usually quite thorough. But like all things, sometimes a bug isn't easily caught. That bug where the exceptions list was being ignored was caused by a missing statement the resets the variable for the next run. But the reason I couldn't find the bug is because the API was also at the same time throwing a "503 service unavailable" error, which made me believe it was the API causing the issue. In the end, my bot is now designed to handle the 503, and the exceptions list bug has been fixed. As for the proprietorial concerns, I will admit, that was an issue, primarily because of what you quoted above. But thinking it over, that wasn't a reason why it should be kept closed-source. After coming to that realization, I posted every bot code and xtools code onto GitHub, and intend to keep it that way from now on. I also believe I owe you an apology Leaky Caldron. My actions in response to your comments were quite divaish.—cyberpower _Online^{Merry Christmas} 16:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support — ΛΧΣ^{21 Call me Hahc21} 17:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Cyberpower has good intentions, but I am afraid that merely good intentions are not enough. Only after this exchange did he release the source code of his bots -- while I appreciate that he realized his mistake in keeping proprietary code, this "realization" came too recently for comfort. Additionally, NE Ent has already provided several relevant links, above. While I again appreciate that C678 appears to have learned from his mistakes, these, like the proprietary code fiasco, happened much too recently. I'd like to see much more of a history of stability and maturity (not just in demeanor but also in coding style/QA/accountability/etc) before supporting him for BAG membership. By the way, C678, I was looking at this recent commit to one of your bots in the process of reviewing this nomination, and I'd just like to note that goto is evil... Theopolisme (talk) 18:48, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was a COBOL programmer in the '80s. GoTo was banned even then! Leaky Caldron 18:54, 22 December 2013 (UTC) [reply]

• Support Cyber is an excellent bot operator and I feel he has more than enough knowledge and general common sense to make an excellent member of this group.Blethering Scot 20:22, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I'm afraid. My stance was closer to neutral towards the candidate, as they have shown good intentions and lots of bot work, but also lack of participation in BRFA matters and attention to detail. Without going into detail, recent AN and bot issues have not been dealt in the best of ways. And I don't find things like having code open source or using gotos particularly significant. I do however find no meaningful participation in BRFAs other than their own an issue. We have a long list of BAGs that can procedurally close BRFA, what we need is people to look through edits, find issues, suggest potential problems and solutions. I have not seen the operator demonstrate this in recent time. Although their own BRFAs are generally solid, there are most of the time subtle details and clarifications, as well as most tasks are take-overs. I don't think this quite lives up to the level of attention and inquiry needed for some of our BRFAs. Given all this, I would expect the nomination and nominator's statement to be strong, informative, and assuring. Especially addressing the concerns of the previous nomination. However, the nominee has not even added any comments to their own nomination to sway me the other way. To summarize, my concerns are lack of excellent communication, attention to detail, and participation in BRFAs. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 22:02, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SELECT CONCAT("Wikipedia:", page_title) as brfa,
       rev_timestamp
FROM   revision
       JOIN page
         ON rev_page = page_id
WHERE  page_title LIKE "Bots/Requests_for_approval/%"
       AND page_namespace = 4
       AND rev_user_text = "Cyberpower678"
       AND rev_timestamp > 20130601235959
GROUP  BY page_title
ORDER  BY rev_timestamp; 

+----------------------------------------------------+----------------+
| brfa                                               | rev_timestamp  |
+----------------------------------------------------+----------------+
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_II_3 | 20130606151700 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_II_4 | 20130627020736 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_I_4  | 20130703023041 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_I_5  | 20130724120230 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/RotlinkBot    | 20130820191156 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Cyberbot_I_6  | 20130824101952 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Hazard-Bot_27 | 20130913141157 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/VoxelBot_5    | 20130920223211 |
| Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/TyAbot        | 20130921021949 |
+----------------------------------------------------+----------------+
9 rows in set (0.08 sec)

• In the four BRFAs that were not for your own bots, your contributions were minimal. Thus, Hellknowz's comment about participation resonates with me. I also find your attitude toward technical matters to be significant. I sense that you appear to be very... hungry... to take over these types of things for the sake of it. And when other people hint that perhaps it may be a better choice to find someone who is willing and far more experienced in the matter, you react irritably, it gives the air that you're looking to take over these tasks not to reproduce their utility, but in order to take over more tasks. As such, I oppose. →Σσς. (Sigma) 23:43, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I'm afraid that while Cyberpower clearly has good intentions, his execution, and attitude towards his own bot is problematic, namely his first reaction tends to be a defense of his code, dismissal of other's concerns, assignment of blame elsewhere, and then hurried fixes. I'm not sure this reflects sufficient maturity as a programmer to justify an oversight role. Sorry, this is in no way meant as a personal attack. Rwessel (talk) 08:50, 23 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]