Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval

< Wikipedia:Bots

New to bots on Wikipedia? Read these primers!

To run a bot on the English Wikipedia, you must first get it approved. Follow the instructions below to add a request. If you are not familiar with programming, consider asking someone else to run a bot for you.

 Instructions for bot operators
I Before applying for approval
  • Read the bot policy, and check the list of frequently denied bot requests.
  • If your task could be controversial (e.g. most bots making non-maintenance edits to articles and most bots posting messages on user talk pages), seek consensus for the task. Common places to start include WP:Village pump (proposals) and the talk pages of the relevant policies, guidelines, templates, and/or WikiProjects. Link to this discussion in your request for approval.
  • You will need to create an account for your bot if you haven't already done so. Click here when logged in to create the account, linking it to yours. (If you do not create the bot account while logged in, it is likely to be blocked as a possible sockpuppet or unauthorised bot until you verify ownership)
  • Create a userpage for your bot, linking to your userpage (this is commonly done using the {{bot}} template) and describing its functions. You may also include an 'emergency shutoff button'.
II Filing the application
  • Enter your bot's user name in the box below and click the button. If this is a request for an additional task, put a task number as well (e.g. BotName 2).
  • Complete the questions on the resulting page and save it.
  • Your request must now be added to the correct section of the main approvals page: Click here and add {{BRFA}} to the top of the list, directly below the comment line.
    • For a first request: use {{BRFA|bot name||Open}}
    • For an additional task request: use {{BRFA|bot name|task number|Open}}
III During the approvals process
  • During the process, an approvals group member may approve a trial for your bot (typically after allowing time for community input), and AnomieBOT will move the request to this section.
  • Run the bot for the specified number of edits/time period, then add {{Bot trial complete}} to the request page. It helps if you also link to the bot's contributions, and comment on any errors that may have occurred.
  • AnomieBOT will move the request to the 'trial complete' section by moving the {{BRFA}} template that applies to your bot
  • If you feel that your request is being overlooked (no BAG attention for ~1 week) you can add {{BAG assistance needed}} to the page. However, please do not use it after every comment!
  • At any time during the approvals process, you may withdraw your request by adding {{BotWithdrawn}} to your bot's approval page.
IV After the approvals process
  • After the trial edits have been reviewed and enough time has passed for any more discussion, a BAG member will approve or deny the request appropriately.
    • For approved requests: The request will be listed here. If necessary, a bureaucrat will flag the bot within a couple of days and you can then run the task fully (it's best to wait for the flag, to avoid cluttering recent changes). If the bot already has a flag, or is to run without one, you may start the task when ready.
    • For denied/expired/withdrawn requests: The request will be listed at the bottom of the main BRFA page in the relevant section.
Bot-related archives
Noticeboard
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
Bots (talk)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22
Newer discussions at WP:BOTN since April 2021
Bot policy (talk)
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28
29, 30
Pre-2007 archived under Bots (talk)
Bot requests
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
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Bot requests (talk)
1, 2
Newer discussions at WP:BOTN since April 2021
BRFA
Old format: 1, 2, 3, 4
New format: Categorized Archive (All subpages)
BRFA (talk)
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11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Newer discussions at WP:BOTN since April 2021
Bot Approvals Group (talk)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
BAG Nominations
Bot Name Status Created Last editor Date/Time Last BAG editor Date/Time
DSisyphBot 2 (T|C|B|F) Open 2025-10-23, 22:01:23 Asoundd 2025-12-01, 14:35:36 Primefac 2025-11-22, 12:51:04
AydoBot (T|C|B|F) On hold: User response needed! 2025-10-19, 04:29:12 DreamRimmer 2025-12-17, 13:31:05 DreamRimmer 2025-12-17, 13:31:05
RustyBot 4 (T|C|B|F) In trial 2025-12-15, 01:17:48 DreamRimmer 2025-12-17, 13:22:59 DreamRimmer 2025-12-17, 13:22:59
Scaledbot (T|C|B|F) In trial 2025-09-16, 12:58:39 Scaledish 2025-11-07, 19:55:39 DreamRimmer 2025-09-24, 13:58:59
DreamRimmer bot II 7 (T|C|B|F) Trial complete 2025-12-12, 14:20:12 DreamRimmer 2025-12-15, 16:57:59 Primefac 2025-12-14, 20:49:57

Current requests for approval

DSisyphBot 2

Operator: Sisyph (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 22:00, Thursday, October 23, 2025 (UTC)

Function overview: Update tennis rankings and career prize money for women tennis players

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): pywikibot

Source code available: fr:Utilisateur:DSisyphBot/Script/màj tennis.py

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): weekly (following WTA updated ranking)

Estimated number of pages affected: ~100 pages per week

Namespace(s): main

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: 1/ Get WTA profile from wikidata page. 2/ Get data (best ranks + career prize money) from WTA profile. 3/ Update best ranks if needed + update prize money if > $US10000 to not spam edit for "small" earns.

The bot has already edits pages on one loop. For inactive players, it is a one shot. For active players, there will be a weekly check. Next step will be to do it for men tennis players with atptour.com site to get ranks data. --Sisyph (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I've reviewed a lot of the edits and they seem fine to me. This saves hours of manual labour on updating rankings and prize money. Do you feel it would be within scope for a bot to be able to update the win and loss totals as well? The only downside is that we'll have to follow the bot and manually update the 'last updated' timestamp at the bottom of the infobox, unless the bot is smart enough to do that too. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 13:53, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I note when something similar came up recently, a suggestion was that this sort of thing should be done in Wikidata, or failing that a centralized data page (i.e. a template, a module, or a .json page that's read by a module), instead of making repeated bot edits to individual articles. Anomie⚔ 14:10, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Note: This bot appears to have edited since this BRFA was filed. Bots may not edit outside their own or their operator's userspace unless approved or approved for trial. AnomieBOT⚡ 22:07, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, for win / loss total, it is posssible [1]. For the current rank, my issue is to get the date of this rank and mentionnent in the infobox, it must be : <!--ONLY UPDATE WITH LAST DATE THIS RANKING WAS HELD, NEVER UPDATE UNTIL THE WTA WEBSITE IS UPDATED (date should be a Monday), THE REFERENCE DOES NOT NEED TO BE UPDATED -->, so not possible so far, it doesn't seem to have sources to find it. For update field, it can be updated if already existing [2]. For wikidata centralization, for sure it will be the best option, like ELO rank for chess players. But I am not skilled to initiate it for tennis players. I will be able to update wikidata if one day it is implemented. Sorry to have edit 2 more pages it was for the 2 examples --Sisyph (talk) 22:25, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Sisyph: Do not allow the bot to edit the English Wikipedia again until it is approved for trial by a member of the Bot Approvals Group. This will include use of the {{Bot trial}} template. If the bot does edit again, the bot account may be blocked until a trial is approved. Anomie⚔ 23:17, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to point out it is pointless this bot being used to update career prize money in tennis player infoboxes when the rest of the statistics remain unchanged. Either get this thing to update everything (win/loss records, rankings, prize money) or stop doing it. The current practice is misleading and inaccurate. I have posted this message on the bot's talk page too. Shrug02 (talk) 09:02, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Shrug02, I can understand your view. I don't agree with inaccurate, but I can confess that only update the prize money could be pointless for some players. My fear to not update this field in the infobox independently (because, yes the bot could be only update when the rankings or win/loss records change), is to be in front a never update (by bot), for players who reach their highest rank. Currently the bot update the prize money when it changes over $10,000, to not update for unsignificant earnings. But I can change to minimum $10,000 AND 5% of wikipedia data current prize money. It means for valuable player already reach $1 million, it represents $50,000 difference before edit. --Sisyph (talk) 23:35, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Anomie, it would be better for the bot to edit one page, as is done with Module:ATP rankings. Can the bot be modified to do this? Primefac (talk) 12:50, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given the previous concerns about the bot making selective edits (I agree that statistics are likely viewed holistically, so only editing prize money could cause discrepancies), maybe it's worthwhile to consider the bot to update multiple statistics (beyond prize money) in one comprehensive template on Wikidata? asoundd 14:35, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AydoBot

Operator: Aydoh8 (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 04:28, Sunday, October 19, 2025 (UTC)

Function overview: Replacing DMY formatted dates on articles with {{use MDY dates}} tags, and vice versa.

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Supervised

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: [3]

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): Daily

Estimated number of pages affected: Will check one page approximately every 3-5 seconds. If that page does include dates needing to be changed, it will take approximately 7 seconds (in testing) to complete before checking the next page.

Namespace(s): Mainspace

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: This bot will run through pages in mainspace. It will check the page for any {{use dmy dates}} or {{use mdy dates}} templates, and if exactly one of those is found, it will check for any dates (both in plaintext and in certain date templates) to ensure they are correctly formatted, otherwise it will correct them. I have conducted testing in the bot's userspace (see the bot's contribs) and have fixed any of the bugs discovered in testing. As a side note, I have added an exception for references to the January 6 United States Capitol attack by blocking the change of January 6 on any article to 6 January (may lead to false negatives but I would rather false negatives over false positives).

Discussion

This seems very liable to run into WP:CONTEXTBOT issues. How will your bot avoid editing direct quotes, things besides "January 6", and so on? Glancing at your linked code, it looks like it would even break links and filenames if they happen to contain something that resembles a month and year. Anomie⚔ 00:57, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. If I were this editor, I would plan to make at least 1,000 supervised edits at a reasonable pace using the intended script, checking each of the script's proposed changes before and after publishing. I think I would find that the script has some shortcomings. If you can address them, this bot process may be worth pursuing. Note that editing in this manner does not violate the bot policy, although you may find it tedious. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:51, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that editing in this manner does not violate the bot policy Agreed. It would fall under Wikipedia:Bot policy#Assisted editing guidelines, which has some useful information. Anomie⚔ 15:05, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bots in a trial period

RustyBot 4

Operator: Rusty Cat (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 01:17, Monday, December 15, 2025 (UTC)

Function overview: Tag pages at User:Alex 21/sandbox/No episode table with {{convert to Episode table}}

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Automatic

Programming language(s): Python (Pywikibot)

Source code available: [4]

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):

Edit period(s): OTR

Estimated number of pages affected: User:Alex 21/sandbox/No episode table currently has 4463 pages listed

Namespace(s): Mainspace

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: This bot uses PyWikiBot to iterate through the linked pages of User:Alex 21/sandbox/No episode table, then uses mwparserfromhell to insert the maintenance tag onto them.

This task was previously approved as RustyBot 3, but Gonnym (courtesy ping) requested a rerun.

Discussion

Scaledbot

Operator: Scaledish (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 12:58, Tuesday, September 16, 2025 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available: GitHub

Function overview: Update US settlement census data

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Request 1 · Request 2

Edit period(s): Yearly; new estimates released yearly

Estimated number of pages affected: Unknown, likely low 10 thousands

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): Yes

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): No

Function details:

  • Doesn't add to a template if it sees there are multiple of it on the same page
  • Doesn't overwrite info if it is same age or newer

Discussion

Supervised Test 1 & Supervised Test 2 Scaledish! Talkish? Statish. 13:06, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Since this is your first bot task, I am treating this as a one-off task. For future years, a new BRFA will be needed, and then we can see if it can be approved to run annually. – DreamRimmer ■ 13:58, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{Operator assistance needed}} Anything on the trial? Tenshi! (Talk page) 11:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, the trial is not yet concluded.
As part of the trial, the bot was ran twice, both times being stopped due to eventually forming a false association between the database and the article. This lead to the conclusion that the match script needs to be improved significantly, which I will do but haven't yet had the time. I still believe a reasonable fix is possible. Likely, as part of this, a semi-supervised confidence approach will be adopted where, if confidence isn't overwhelmingly high, the association is sent for manual review.
Also as part of the trial, an additional issue was identified. If the infobox population is from <2010, is cited using a named reference, and elsewhere in the body that reference is referenced, a cite error is caused because those references are now dangling. This may be a simple fix, but needs to be implemented.
When both of these fixes are implemented, I plan to resume the bot for the remaining ~25 trial edits. Afterwards, I will request an additional 50 trial edits. Scaledish! Talkish? Statish. 17:16, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{Operator assistance needed}} Any progress on the fixes? Tenshi! (Talk page) 12:32, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for the delay, my real life workload is roughly cyclical—you can see that reflected in my xtools stats. I expect to be able to work on it again within a week or two. Scaledish! Talkish? Statish. 19:55, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bots that have completed the trial period

DreamRimmer bot II 7

Operator: DreamRimmer (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)

Time filed: 14:20, Friday, December 12, 2025 (UTC)

Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: automatic

Programming language(s): Python

Source code available:

Function overview: Tamil cinema taskforce tagging

Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate): Special:Permalink/1327079758#Tamil cinema taskforce tagging

Edit period(s): one time

Estimated number of pages affected: ~4200

Exclusion compliant (Yes/No): No

Already has a bot flag (Yes/No): Yes

Function details: Bot will process Category:Tamil-language Indian films to tag the corresponding talk pages for the Tamil cinema taskforce.


Discussion

  Approved for trial (50 edits). Please provide a link to the relevant contributions and/or diffs when the trial is complete. Primefac (talk) 20:49, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Trial complete. Edits – DreamRimmer ■ 16:57, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Approved requests

Bots that have been approved for operations after a successful BRFA will be listed here for informational purposes. No other approval action is required for these bots. Recently approved requests can be found here (edit), while old requests can be found in the archives.


Denied requests

Bots that have been denied for operations will be listed here for informational purposes for at least 7 days before being archived. No other action is required for these bots. Older requests can be found in the Archive.

Expired/withdrawn requests

These requests have either expired, as information required by the operator was not provided, or been withdrawn. These tasks are not authorized to run, but such lack of authorization does not necessarily follow from a finding as to merit. A bot that, having been approved for testing, was not tested by an editor, or one for which the results of testing were not posted, for example, would appear here. Bot requests should not be placed here if there is an active discussion ongoing above. Operators whose requests have expired may reactivate their requests at any time. The following list shows recent requests (if any) that have expired, listed here for informational purposes for at least 7 days before being archived. Older requests can be found in the respective archives: Expired, Withdrawn.

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