Memory Alpha:Bots

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About → Policies and guidelines → Bots

This page describes one of Memory Alpha's policies and guidelines.
Please read through the policy below to familiarize yourself with our common practices and rules.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints, please post them on the talk page.

On Memory Alpha, bots are used from time to time to do minor tasks via automation. To the outside, a bot looks like a normal user, but they have a special bot flag so they can become invisible when looking at the recent changes.

Bot policy

• Every bot needs a user page
• On this user page the bot's tasks must be explained
• The page must contain a link to the controller
• Bots shall not be used just because the controller doesn't want to do the edits
• At first the bot shall only be used in a limited way, so the controller and other users get used to its behavior
• All bots must be listed on this page and their activity can be questioned by other users

Leave messages for bots on the bot requests page.

Taking care of broken XML export

Bots using Special:Export to grab the wikicode of an article must check for and remove a "credit line" added to the end of the code by Wikia. Currently, the text of this credit line is:

<div id="wikia-credits"><br /><br /><small>From [http://memory-alpha.org Memory Alpha], a [http://www.wikia.com Wikia] wiki.</small></div>

For the Python Wikipediabot, a possible fix would be to change the file wikipedia.py as detailed below:

1. The method this fix needs to be added to is put, which can be identified by searching for this line:
   def put(self, newtext, comment=None, watchArticle = None, minorEdit = True):
2. Find the end of this method by scrolling down to the line which reads:
   return self.putPage(newtext, comment, watchArticle, minorEdit, newPage, self.site().getToken(sysop = sysop), sysop = sysop)
3. Directly before that line, insert the following block of code (Attention: Make sure each line has the same indentation as the one starting with "return"):

 # This is a fix to make the bot work properly with the behavior of Wikia's [[Special:Export]]
 # which adds a "credit line" to the XML dump:
 # 
 # ATT: This assumes that this id is NOT used in the article text itself!
 newtext = re.sub(r'\<div id=\"wikia-credits\"\>.*\<\/div\>','',newtext)
 comment = comment+' !!wikia-credits fix!!'

Bots on Memory Alpha

Active

SulfBot

• User page: SulfBot
• Controlled by: sulfur
• Status: Active
• Contributions: link cleanup, random odd tasks here and there
• Notes: Pywikipedia based, used for cleanup tasks primarily.

Inactive

DataMA

• User page: DataMA
• Controlled by: Florian K
• Status: Inactive on MA/en
• Contributions: Development system
• Notes: Started as a development bot and now assists Morn in detecting interwiki links. In MA/de it is now used as a categorization bot.

DelBeccio-bot

• User page: DelBeccio-bot
• Controlled by: Alan Del Beccio
• Status: Inactive
• Contributions: Maintenance/cleanup
• Notes: Primarily used for various cleanup tasks, such as correcting redirects and (re)categorizing pages.

DYKBot

• User page: DYKBot
• Controlled by: Bp
• Status: Inactive
• Contributions: Maintenance, episode data, picture of the day synchronization, IRC, various other evil schemes
• Notes: Was a proposed method of maintaining the "Did You Know" section of the main page. Now, it does various seemingly unrelated things, which are, in reality, part of a complicated master plan. It is controlled by Bp, except in Soviet Russia where it is the other way around.

HighwindBot

• User page: HighwindBot
• Controlled by: Cid Highwind
• Status: Inactive
• Contributions: Maintenance/cleanup
• Notes: Primarily used for various cleanup tasks, but is also used to support the other bots if requested.

MantiBot

• User page: MantiBot
• Controlled by: Manticore
• Status: Inactive
• Contributions: Used to fix double redirects on various Wikia wikis.
• Notes: It uses Pywikipedia.

Morn

• User page: Morn
• Controlled by: Kobi
• Status: Inactive
• Contributions: Interwiki links
• Notes: The first bot used on Memory Alpha. It is based on the Python Wikipediabot framework.

PlasmarelaisBot

• User page: PlasmarelaisBot
• Controlled by: Plasmarelais
• Status: Inactive
• Contributions: Interwiki links
• Notes: It uses Pywikipedia framework.

External links

• Bots at Wikipedia
• Using the python wikipediabot at Meta
• PyWikipediaBot at SourceForge.net