This page is kept for historical interest. Any policies mentioned may be obsolete. If you want to revive the topic, you can use the talk page or start a discussion on the community forum.
pgkbot was an IRC recent changes bot developed by pgk in python, and was the primary such bot in use for several years. It was designed for use in one channel, and included a number of customization options such as plugin support, complex event routers, individual lists, individual user name and article title watchlists, detection of page move vandalism, and IP address categories (like open proxies). However, configuration is difficult, it is relatively resource-intensive, the package has not been maintained for several years; it is no longer widely used.
Commands are issued to the bot by appending their name or "computer" to the beginning of the line. If you append the name, the command will only be recognized by the bot named. If you append "computer", all bots present will recognize the command. For example, if you want to add a user to pgkbot's blacklist, you would say pgkbot bl add username. Alternately, you could add the user to the blacklist of every bot in the channel. This is recommended, as it synchronises the backup bots. To do this, you would say computer bl add username.
Which commands a user can issue depends on which list they are in.
The bots maintain several lists of users, which can be reported, formatted, and treated differently from each other.
Admins: this is a list of admins on the project. The relevant command is computer al add|del username.
Whitelist: this is the list of trusted users. The relevant command is computer wl add|del username.
Greylist: this is a temporary blacklist which the bot automatically populates with users that have recently been reverted, or matched one of the bnu list expression. Entries can be removed from the list, but cannot be added manually.
Blacklist: this is a list of suspicious users. All edits by blacklisted users are reported. The relevant command is computer bl add|del username.
Bots: this is a list of bots on the project. The relevant command is computer bot add|del user.
This table is a quick overview of commands. For additional help, address the following command to pgkbot on IRC: pgkbot help <command>. There are two optional flags which can be used with most commands. These can be used by appending them to the end of the command (expiry must be stated before the reason, if both are used).
"r=value" provides a reason. This is useful for other users, who may not know why something has been added to the list without.
"x=value" provides an expiry time in hours. After the specified number of hours, the command will be automatically undone.
Note that the symbols "[|]" are used in the table; these symbols should not be used with the bot (for example, use "pgk add blah" and not "pgk [add] blah"). Multiple possible actions are denoted as [option 1|option 2]; only one can be used at a time. Values are designated as <value>; all strings accept regex.
These settings affect the way the bot filters the raw recent changes to the reported events. They are viewed with the command computer config list and modified with the command computer config <option> <new value>.
These options toggle which events are reported to the channel. They are accessed with the command computer dest list and computer dest [add|del] #<channel name> <event>. The events are listed below. Each event will only be reported to a channel once, irrespective of fitting into several of these categories.
"Actions" in the tables below refer to all visible changes to the database, including edits, page moves, and deletions.
Python: The bot requires the python environment to run, which is freely available from the python.org download page. It is recommended that you install for all users to C:\Python with all options enabled.
Twisted: Also required is the Twisted python library, available from the official website.
Note - Pgkbot can only work with Python version 2.4 or 2.5 and will not work with older versions.
