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Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/InstructorCommentBot

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The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA. The result of the discussion was Request Expired.

InstructorCommentBot

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Operator: Rostaf (talk · contribs)

Time filed: 15:00, Thursday August 4, 2011 (UTC)

Automatic or Manual: Manual

Programming language(s):PHP and Javascript

Source code available:the sourcecode will be available once it is cleaned up for sharing

Function overview: The bot posts comments to article talk pages on behalf of an identified Wikipedia user who are experts in different scientific fields and the comments are their evaluation of the article and how to improve the article.

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):This bot is relevant to an ongoing project to work with different scientific communities to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles by involving the experts in the field. This project has been started as an initiative in collaboration with Association for Psychological Science. More information about the initiative can be found at: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiative, and http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Psychology/APS-Wikipedia_Initiative

Edit period(s): Continuous

Estimated number of pages affected: We expect about 500 pages to be edited in about 3 months time period.

Exclusion compliant (Y/N): N (see the explanation in function details below)

Already has a bot flag (Y/N):

Function details: The goal of the bot is to make the process of posting comments on article talk pages easy for users who are not familiar with Wikipedia markup language. The users who have access to this bot are experts in different scientific fields such as psychology and sociology and the purpose of the comments left on the article talk pages are providing information on how the article can be improved. The bot is connected to a portal that researcher at Carnegie Mellon University have been developing as part of the bigger project on involving experts in improving the quality of Wikipedia articles. As part of this project, the team is developing tools to support faculty who are interested to use Wikipedia in classroom. An important purpose of this bot is to allow faculty to share comments they are providing to their students with the Wikipedia community to broaden the audience who can contribute in addressing the problems with the article. To avoid the abuse of the bot, the bot is not allowed to post comments more than one in 2 minutes per single user. Any attempt to abuse the bot will alert the system administrators and they will follow up on the account which has been making the attempt.

Since the messages from this bot are individual messages from real people, we do not want to skip any message even if it is related to {{bots}} template pages, we would like all messages to be be delivered.

Moreover, for the same reason and the fact that these edits represents the comments of a real person we would like those post *not* to be flagged as by a bot to make sure that they are not going to be filtered out of watchlists and recent changes.

Discussion

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  • I've been working with the Carnegie Mellon University team developing the Wikipedia tools that this bot will support, and can vouch for Rostaf. The main purpose of this bot is so that the expert comment functions will work without users having to provide Wikipedia passwords offsite (the system has its own passwords, like TUSC and other bots that do manually-requested wiki actions on behalf of users).--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:13, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who exactly is the operator of this bot? Sounds very interesting. SQLQuery me! 15:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks User:SQL for your comment. I, Rosta Farzan (Rostaf) is the operator of this bot. Rostaf (talk) 15:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Also I see that 'about 500 pages' are to be affected - which articles are we looking at trying this on? SQLQuery me! 15:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • In the first stage we expect the articles related to Psychology to be the target. Exact articles are not clear at this point. Several classes in Psychology are going to use this tool and the list of the articles they will be creating/editing will be specified once the semester starts and the students get started on their assignment. Rostaf (talk) 15:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • What do you mean by "several classes in psychology are going to use this tool?" Will the psychology students' posts be labeled as "experts" by the bot? If not students, how will someone be qualified as an "expert" for using the bot? --68.127.234.159 (talk) 01:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • Good question, students are not considered experts, faculty of those classes are. The bot is a tool available to the faculty to share comments that they provide to their students working on Wikipedia articles to broader Wikipedia community if the faculty choose to. Rostaf (talk) 16:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the idea is sound and it could definitely pay off in the long run. So what kind of input do you users provide, and how will it look on the talk page side of things? Will it be a single post, a series of posts, a thread-like discussion? Will you employ a specific template/format for this or otherwise tag the discussions? Will there be a way to track all the discussions? I suppose the main question is, how will the output differ from the users entering it themselves? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • They will highlight a particular section of an article that they want to provide feedback on and the post on the article page will include both the highlighted section and the comment. You can see a sample at User talk:Apswi. If desired, we can add a particular template to highlight those comments. The comments will be signed with "Posted on behalf of User:Rostaf by User:ExpertCommentBot 14:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)"; and we will have a track of all those comments in our local database Rostaf (talk) 18:21, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Since the majority of editors won't know about the bot or its purpose, it would be helpful to provide a very brief description about it and link to an information page. I personally also think it would be useful to include some template, perhaps an invisible one, to tag/categorize the pages so they can be easily found. Also, whose account is User:Apswi? I assume User:Cwarrior's? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I totally agree with the information page and the template. Currently I provided information on the user page of the bot. Do you suggest to create a separate information page? or should I just add more information on this page? I will also create the template and add it to the posts that the bot makes. User:Apswi is just a test user we created which is created by User:Cwarrior who was a summer intern working on this project. once the bot is approved, I will delete this test user. Rostaf (talk) 15:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find this task very exciting - has there been any discussion on-wiki that we can reference to see how the community as a whole feels about this task? SQLQuery me! 08:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • For the sake of bureaucracy, you should drop a note at the Psychology WikiProject and probably the Village Pump. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed. I could possibly see a negative reaction (e.g., "creates classes of user"), so community input might be better now than later. :\ Apart from that aspect, one thing I know off-the-bat that should be easy to implement is that I'd suggest creating a template for whatever the bot will be adding that's similar to {{unsigned}}, rather than hardcoding it, so that it's easier for bots to recognize and so that your talk page doesn't get bombarded with requests for minor changes to the template. They're gonna do it anyway, but it's nice to have a place to point them instead of dealing with even more requests ad infinitum. I speak from experience. :P --slakr\ talk / 12:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Very good idea. I will post it on Psychology WikiProject and Village Pump. The WikiProject has been informed about our general project before and they have been very accepting and encouraging. Rostaf (talk) 15:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here is the post on Wikiproject Psychology talk page Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Psychology#ExpertCommentBot Rostaf (talk) 15:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I ask this above, but I would like this part elaborated upon, "The bot posts comments to article talk pages on behalf of an identified Wikipedia user who are experts in different scientific fields and the comments are their evaluation of the article and how to improve the article." How are experts identified? --68.127.234.159 (talk) 01:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The experts are identified through registration with our tools, to be able to access the tool, they have to signup and provide information about whether they hold a PhD or not, their expertise, their experience with Wikipedia, their email address, and a valid Wikipedia username. So basically those with PhDs or higher degrees in Psychology that are going to to teach a class in psychology will be considered as expert. Rostaf (talk) 16:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Will they be limited to commenting on talk pages of articles in their area of expertise? Psychology is a huge field. A PhD in one area does not make one an expert in another area. How do you or the bot deal with this issue?
      • If they are limited to their area of expertise in the broad field of psychology, how is their area of expertise decided? Do they assign themselves an area of psychology for their expertise? American PhDs in the sciences tend to be very limited, a geomorphologist and a seismologist may both have PhDs in geosciences. This does not mean they should both be labeled experts in geology in general. Well, I guess they are experts in geology, in general, but I would not want the geomorphologist's remarks labeled as "expert" on a seismology article.
      • Has the wikipedia community as a whole decided that it is allowing other than IP or registered user access to editing wikipedia? I assume so, by the nature of this discussion, but I think this information (a link to the discussion in the broader wikipedia community) should be included.
      • I disagree with this bot being used to stamp people as experts under these circumstances unless you can show me a community discussion that establishes that the wikipedia community agrees that those with PhDs in a subject are considered experts and should be given a special notice template to set their comments apart on article talk pages. Maybe just a stamp with their name and their PhD and their area of expertise in psychology.
      • --68.127.234.159 (talk) 18:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree with your points that they could potentially edit a page that they are not expert in; however, I think this is going to be unlikely since they are going to provide comments to their students on articles related to the topic of the course which they are expert in. Having said that, we are not planning to tag these comments with "experts". They will be only tagged with the name of the Bot and the name of the user submitting the comment. Rostaf (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • Then I would like the comments to be limited to the topic of the course they are teaching in some way, so the contributions demand less community monitoring.
          • The name of the bot is "ExpertCommentBot." So, using the name of the bot, tags the comment as by an "expert" posted in an unusual way: by a bot that posts only comments by experts, kinda creating a specialized class of editors. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 19:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I should clarify that the main goal of this bot is to benefit Wikipedia community from feedback that professors are providing to their students. We save those comments locally and are available to users of our portal but by employing this bot, we would like to broaden the audience for students to potentially receive feedback from others as well and also to provide feedback to Wikipedia community about issues with article. Comments specific to students will stay confidential in our system and will not be posted on the article talk page. Rostaf (talk) 23:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is confusing to me rather than clarifying. You say the main goal is to post the feedback professors provide to their students, but then say that "comments specific to students will stay confidential?" I'm now not certain what the bot is posting? I thought the bot was posting feedback from professors about ways to improve articles being edited and written by students as part of a class. Can you create an example with a real article and real comments rather than the link above? If there are other things to this project that are completely unrelated to this bot, and won't be posted, there's probably no need for disclaimers here. --68.127.234.159 (talk) 14:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • The bot will post comments from professors but some comments and feedback from professors are just for educational value for the students and could be considered part of the academic evaluation. Those will stay confidential. We leave it up to the professors to make that decision. If they find a comment general and not too private for students, they can choose to post it on the article talk page through the bot. I hope this makes it more clear. Rostaf (talk) 14:10, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I see what you're saying now. That seems so outside of anything to do with this bot, that teachers won't post private comments to students with it, that it was hard to figure out what, if anything, you meant. --72.208.2.14 (talk) 14:02, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Will you go ahead with the rename to something a little more "neutral", like "TeacherCommentBot" so we can move this on to trial? Have you left a Village Pump message yet? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Better name choice. Thanks. --72.208.2.14 (talk) 14:02, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moved the BRFA to appropriate page. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:10, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page threads ordinarily involve interaction with other editors. If the bot users don't know how to respond to other editors who comment on their contributions, everything posted by InstructorCommentBot may fall into disrepute. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:32, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sounds like a bad idea. It would give undue weight to the comments from these people. I don't see why it is easier for anyone to post comments in that way; it isn't hard to click 'new section' or 'edit' on a talk page, and simply write stuff; in what way is it easier for these experts to post via a bot? It sounds more complex, not less, if anything. Absolutely no "Wikipedia markup" is required; it'd be nice if they signed with ~~~~, but even that doesn't matter. I'm also concerned as to how they can respond to direct responses to their postings.  Chzz  ►  03:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • When instructors use this, they won't be actually on Wikipedia; they'll be reviewing their students' work through the portal that Rostaf and her colleagues are building to help instructors track Wikipedia assignments effciently. That system lets instructors choose to make inline comments about Wikipedia articles that only the students can see, or optionally to also post the comments publicly on-wiki. If they are already using this system, then navigating to Wikipedia to duplicate the comment they've already made is more of a hastle than I expect many will be willing to go through. Many instructors want to be able to give comments directly to students, some of which would be okay to be seen publicly and some which the instructor wants only the student to see. The point of this is to make it easy to post useful comments publicly when there's no reason not to.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 13:59, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oh, I see now why you elaborated on the private comments. Maybe a better explanation that this bot is part of an outside wikipedia interface would have helped pre-answer these questions. STrike my comment above. --72.208.2.14 (talk) 14:04, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to be clear, the "inline comments about Wikipedia articles that only the students can see" will not involve any kind of edit to Wikipedia whatsoever, right? Jc3s5h (talk) 14:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can't you just make a link to auto-add the comments (with them logged in) on the wiki (ie, preload)? Or, using JavaScript to give 'em a button to 'add this to wikipeida'? Both of which would mean, they'd be logged in, editing in the normal manner. I'm not entirely comfortable with the bot, because it seems 'hack-ish' - not convinced we need an exemption in this specific case, allowing 'posting by bot'; it should be easy enough to have 'em logged in and posting in the normal way - even copying over the comments for 'em with a formed URL. That seems a better solution, to me? Also, can you explain how they'd know about responses, how they'd notice if e.g. their posting caused them to be issued warnings on their talk page, etc.  Chzz  ►  17:45, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Chzz raises some good points. Can I respond to the user by clicking on their user name in the usual manner, if, for example, I have a comment that should go to the user on their talk page rather than on the article talk page? Can I see all of their contributions? --72.208.2.14 (talk) 00:50, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting Rostaf from above: "The comments will be signed with "Posted on behalf of User:Rostaf by User:ExpertCommentBot 14:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)"" —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:20, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, anyone will have the opportunity to leave messages on the users' talk page. and in fact that could be a good way to get them more involved in the community. and in our tool we show them if they have new messages on their talk pages. 00:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
So, the comments will appear in User Rostaf's contributions history or not? --72.208.2.14 (talk) 10:12, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently not. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:08, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • My concerns, after reading Chzz's posts, are that this bot allows editing in a method outside of long established editing practices of wikipedia, and that this could lead to the omnipresent cries of sock puppetry/meat puppetry/other scum when I disagree with you that is a huge part of the incivil mess that is editing wikipedia for outsider editors.
  • Will other bots from other similar projects then choose to use this editing mode, bot posted comments? I don't see that it's too much of a burden on a professor using wikipedia in his/her class for that professor to copy and paste useful comments about an article on the article's talk page. It shows that the professor is part of the community he/she is teaching and encouraging the students to use.
  • Some of the experts on wikipedia do get into hot-headed discussions. It can be frustrating to edit an article in your area of expertise, then have someone come by and rewrite the article to emphasize a crackpot theory. I watched in physics a huge argument over months of wasted editing time that included sock puppets, meat puppets, blocks, sanctions, AN/I, and RFAs and other discussions. A lot of the turmoil arose, in my opinion, because the expert was unwilling to negotiate his expertise in a polite way, but it continued because of the bull-headed idiocy of an established wikipedia editor who resorted to unsavory methods to get his way.
  • I want experts on board on wikipedia, but I would like them as full members of the community, editing in the same way everyone else does (but civil). That's how I add my own expertise, by the way, by simply editing the articles myself. I think that members of the community may not like this, that an editor's contributions are not so transparent, and I think it sets a bad precedent that has not been firmly chosen by the community: some editors get their comments posted by bots. -72.208.2.14 (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I understand the concerns brought up by the community but as Sage Ross mentioned the bot work on a system outside Wikipedia. We have a tool which presents changes made by students on any article revision by revision and faculty can just highlight any part of the text and add a comment for the students about the highlighted part and at this point we asked them whether they would like to post the comment to article talk page or not and if they agree the bot will post the comment on the article talk page. So I believe this is much easier for the faculty than navigating to the article page, going to discussion page, add a new section and past the comment there. In terms of adding a javascript button to allow them to post the comment with their username, again, since the system is outside Wikipedia that is not an option. If there is anyway to go around that, we would be happy to do that but as far as we know that is not possible. The only possible option that we know is asking their password every time they want to post a comment which can be very cumbersome and we imagine they will immediately oppose that. So we believe this bot will facilitate receiving feedback from experts in a field that they would not provide that feedback otherwise. Of course, it is ideal and our goal as well to encourage experts to get involved with Wikipedia community by directly editing pages but helping them to get started and get involved without too much barriers at the beginning can be helpful. Rostaf (talk) 15:25, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) As clarified above already, the posters are not editing Wikipedia articles. They are posting feedback to their students on a completely separate project. I suspect most have no desire and no time to get involved with Wikipedia. Yet, they can still contribute to the project, even if not directly. Their comments are to the talk pages, and not articles; and no one is obligated to act on these comments, like no one is obligated to act upon any registered editor's comments. The comments like "This article is wrong" can be safely ignored, while "Mary was born in 1892, not 1893; see Smith J. (2000) Mary the Great." are of note to article watchers and editors. WP:V is still there. Hypothetical AN/Is, stubborn editors, or loud RFAs have nothing to do with this request. I rather have potentially useful comments posted via a 3rd party tool, than not posted at all. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:27, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The comments are another hypothetical. Maybe a real example would help. --72.208.2.14 (talk) 04:44, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure what exactly you mean by a real example, but if you mean examples of those comments given by instructors, our system has not been live yet, so we do not have real examples yet. Rostaf (talk) 13:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ask an instructor who has used the set-up before to comment on a couple of wikipedia article talk pages in response to or about edits made by his/her students? To show me how useful the comments could be. --72.208.2.14 (talk) 18:34, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Approved for trial. Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Anyway, no point in speculating forever. Let's see this in action, when the system is ready/live. You can just run the tool, like you normally would and we'll see how many and what type of comments are produced. Leaving the number of edits at your discretion, my suggestion is some 20 or so comments or some 10 or so pages for the starters? Then we can see if this improves the encyclopaedia or not and how the process can be improved. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:42, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great! thanks for the approval. we expect the system to go live in about a week or so and should be used throughout the semester. 128.237.126.194 (talk) 20:29, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, be aware that this approval is for trial only - once you've had enough comments to demonstrate how this works, we'll need to revisit this for full approval. Hersfold (t/a/c) 23:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{OperatorAssistanceNeeded}} Any progress? Anomie⚔ 01:37, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are 10 courses registered with our system this semester but they are all still in early phase of the assignment so no commenting has happened. I expect this to start later in the semester. I will update this page once I have more information about users' activities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rostaf (talk • contribs) 02:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. I only asked because of the comment 6 weeks ago that it was expected to go live "in about a week". Take your time. Anomie⚔ 10:37, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • This seems similar to the feedback tool being developed.
  • Maybe I have been wiki-ing to long, but "click discussion, new section, and fill in title and content" doesn't seem complex. The only mark-up required is to sign with ~~~~.
  • Maybe the feedback tool should be API enabled.

Rich Farmbrough, 12:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC).

Request Expired. At least for now; there hasn't been any activity on the bot for a while, and it hasn't performed any edits since being authorized for a test run ~4 months ago. --slakr\ talk / 02:33, 20 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. To request review of this BRFA, please start a new section at WT:BRFA.
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