Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-07-07/News and notes

Drawing discussion this week are a request for comment regarding administrative bots, and a discussion regarding a proposed MediaWiki extension that could allow administrators to add specific restrictions against actions made on-wiki.

A request for comment is currently ongoing regarding the use of administrative bots. Bot accounts have historically been denied adminship in most cases, even where the task is relatively non-controversial. As a result, some administrators have resorted to running automated bots on their main account, where they can access the administrative tools. Discussion centers mainly around what process should be used to approve such bots as a community.

Another discussion centers around a new, powerful extension (AbuseFilter) that could allow administrators to add specific restrictions regarding specific types of edits, page moves or other actions; these restrictions range from denying the user the right to make such edits, to blocking the user in obvious cases of vandalism. The actions could be different based on edit count, account age, and other variables relating to the user making the action in question.

After vacating a controversial case last week (see archived story), the Arbitration Committee issued a final report on the matter on July 4. It reads:

Meanwhile, a request for comment on the Committee and its role has received an unprecedented 650KB of discussion, and nearly 2,000 edits.

• A project to redesign the Main Page has been suggested, and is currently accepting design proposals. The page was last revamped in March 2006.
• The Polish Wikibooks has reached 3000 articles.