Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Toolset for enhancing automation in administrative work on rowiki (ID: 22975066)
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Applicant Details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Strainu
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
I'm a board member or president of a Wikimedia Affiliate or mission-allied organization., I'm a group leader of a Wikimedia User Group (submitted to the Affiliation Committee).
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Steering Committee member of the CEE Hub Contact Person of WMROMD
Main Proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Toolset for enhancing automation in administrative work on rowiki
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-04-21 - 2025-07-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
Romania
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
In the last 15 years, the number of monthly active administrators on Romanian Wikipedia has gone down, and the number of administrative actions decreased even more abruptly (see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Admin_activity_rowiki.png for details). Administrative work sees spikes during significant events (e.g. after the presidential elections in MD and RO late last year), but also some periods where few patrollers are present, causing backlogs that are hard to follow through.
In the past 3 years, administrative activity was supported by PatrocleBot, with automated reverts of the worst offending edits. As the Automoderator ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AutoModerator ) will take over this task, we came to consider other activities related to patrolling & administrative work that can be automated. This will allow admins and patrollers to spend even less time on such activities - in line with recommendation 2.1.3 from the recent Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention and Attrition study (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Administrator_Recruitment,_Retention,_and_Attrition/Report#2.1.3_If_the_WMF_improves_automation_of_repetitive_tasks_performed_by_administrators,_they_can_more_evenly_distribute,_and_even_reduce,_the_admin_workload for details).
The actions, described on question 7 below, were chosen based on feedback from fellow users since PatrocleBot was introduced. They are used to bring attention to administrative actions that might otherwise be lost in the list of changes. Only actions that have a relatively low risk of errors were chosen, as can be seen in the discussion linked from question 11.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
All activities are software development or testing activities, with a DevOps component needed to deploy the code to Wikimedia Toolforge.
The code will be publicly available on Github under a free license. Library code (e.g. pywikibot APIs) will be pushed to the respective projects for review.
- Generic research and development
- Research EventStreams for RecentChanges (RC) speed and filtering vs existing RC API - 4h
- Create on-wiki bot configuration that allows various tools from the toolset we build to be enabled as needed - 2h
- Introduce at least 4 high-level Wikidata APIs for PyWikiBot that will be used by the tools (such as getBestValueForClaim, getValueAtTimestamp etc.), including putting them up for review upstream - 12h
- Tool1: Managing templates for protected pages.
- Adding the relevant template when a page is protected by monitoring protection journals - 2h
- Removing/changing the protection template when a page is unprotected by monitoring protection journals - 2h
- Removing the protection template when a page’s protection expires - 2h
- Deployment and testing - 2h
- Tool2: Managing BLP templates
- Adding the relevant template(s) when a page of a living person (based on Wikidata) is created- 4h
- Removing the relevant template(s) when a person dies (based on Wikidata) - 2h
- Deployment and testing - 2h
- Tool3: Improved complaints on Administrator’s noticeboard
- Reduce duplicate complaints by remembering problematic users and avoiding further complaints for a set period of time - 4h
- Deployment and testing - 2h
- Tool4: Language identification and handling of articles in a foreign language
- The idea here is to check the language of new articles and nominate for speedy deletion articles in foreign languages
- Build a language identification module that uses the WMF-developed API to test newly created articles - 12h
- Backtest using this module and decide how aggressive we should be (e.g. what score should be used as threshold) - 8h
- Experiment using this module for other edits to existing articles (what text should be sent, what effect do foreign-language references has etc.) - 4h
- Deployment and testing - 2h
- Tool5: Proposing speedy deletions for bad new articles
Neither PatrocleBot nor Automoderator support reverting an article with a single author. However, we can mark them for deletion using speedy delete templates.
- Backtest whether using multiple edits as issue indicator is enough or we need to use a ML model - 2h
- Implement the chosen solution - 4h
- Deployment and testing - 2h
- Tool6: Enforce reverting based on abusefilter labels
- Study existing labels and make lists of labels that should cause the change and/or the user to be more closely scrutinized - 2h
- Implement module that includes the labeling information in revert decisions - 4h
- Deploy and test - 2h
- Documentation and outreach materials (e.g. slides, messages, bot pages etc.) - 8h
- Buffer for unforeseen issues- 8h
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
User:Strainu has more than 15 years of experience as software developer and team-lead and almost 20 years of Wiki experience. He has contributed to various open source projects both within and outside the Wikimedia movement is a variety of programming languages
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
The target participants are administrators and patrollers from Romanian projects, especially Romanian Wikipedia. I have exposed the project on wiki and requested feedback (see question 11) and will update the same section as development goes on. At the end of the project, the bot page will have all the features documented (see the documentation activity)
A secondary target is the PyWikiBot project users, for which I will propose a set of new APIs. Updates for this part will be done on the mailing list and phabricator.
I will also propose a presentation to the CEE Meeting 2025 in Thessaloniki (after the project ends)
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
For Romanian Wikipedia, I posted a proposal on https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sarcini_pentru_robo%C8%9Bi#Dezvolt%C4%83ri_noi_pentru_PatrocleBot
For PyWikiBot, I started a thread on the mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/pywikibot@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/TBSJHZUXVKGFYTWG5I4AAHQ25QPOJIAG/
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Not applicable
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Open Technology
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Not applicable
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement
Learning and metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | ||
| Number of editors | ||
| Number of organizers |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
Financial proposal
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
No
Endorsements and Feedback
[edit]Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).