User talk:ClueBot Commons

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Damian has been working hard to bring the Report and Review interfaces back. We are now happy to announce that all is ready!

Report Interface: We need Wikipedians to assist with clearing the backlog of false positive reports

Review Interface: This has a direct effect on the bot and what it knows about vandalism or constructive edits. We need Wikipedians to review edits to effect how the bot should be trained.

Please reply under this message if you want to get involved - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 19:43, 5 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

I'd love to get involved, as a new rollbacker, I wish to help out! Valorrr ^{(lets chat)} 03:07, 6 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Valorrr: I've added the relevant rights to you on both interfaces. You'll be able to review edits now - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 11:36, 6 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Rich Smith I would be interested in helping out. I just happened to stumble onto this today, as ClueBot kept beating me to several rollbacks I thought I caught instantly! Nubzor [T] [C] 20:19, 13 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Nubzor: You need to login to either Report or Review first before I can give you the relevant rights, although a new update may have you the rights straight away - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 21:57, 13 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Rich Smith Long time no speak! Been busy learning a new job which is why I didn't initially reply. I'm happy to help though. I just logged in and looks like I still have rights from last time 5 albert square (talk) 18:19, 9 October 2025 (UTC) Reply

@5 albert square: Good to hear from you! Perfect, glad to hear it :) - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 11:22, 13 October 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Rich Smith Sorry about that. I didn't even try to log in earlier. I (believe) I was successful at logging into both. I will look into this more tomorrow before I start tinkering. Seems like something more useful/helpful than just patrolling RC. I always chuckle when I am positive a rollback will be successful, only to see it was ClueBot that beat me to it :) Nubzor [T] [C] 00:44, 14 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

Quick question for you after taking a look--The Reviewer Interface & instructions provided there make perfect sense. But I'm not 100% certain on the Report Interface. Are we "defer[ing] to reviewer interface" regardless if it's a false positive or not, so that it can then be potentially incorporated into the dataset, either as vandalism or as constructive? Are we just filtering out bugged/invalid entries? Or am I misunderstanding. Nubzor [T] [C] 02:18, 14 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Nubzor: Essentially yes, if it's an edit that would be helpful for the bot to learn what is/isn't a FP, then defer. If the edit has been suppressed or deleted, then mark it as invalid - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 10:07, 14 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Rich Smith Perfect, thank you! Nubzor [T] [C] 14:40, 14 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

I'm relatively new to editing but I'd love to help out if I can.

Seantavius (talk) 21:40, 13 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

I see that I've been granted access to the review interface. Thanks

Seantavius (talk) Seantavius (talk) 13:12, 14 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

Sign me up. I'm busy this month but hopefully I'll have more time to dedicate in the coming months —⁠k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 19:38, 15 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@K6ka: You should be able to just sign in, your Wiki rights will give you instant access :) - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 19:43, 15 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

Snazzy snazzy! —⁠k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 21:25, 15 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

• @Rich Smith: I can help :-) —usernamekiran (talk) 21:16, 15 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

  @Usernamekiran: Your Wiki rights will automatically give you access upon login - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 11:08, 16 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

  Rich Smith, yes, I logged in, and reviewed some edits successfully. —usernamekiran (talk) 11:38, 16 August 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Rich Smith, I'm interested. However, when I go the review interface, my username shows as "Chessenjoyer", an account that doesn't exist, and it says it's "pending approval by one of the administrators." Is this a bug? Chess enjoyer (talk) 05:38, 20 November 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Chess enjoyer Thats a bit odd, either way, I've given you the relevant rights (I'm too lazy to log in to the Wikipedia app...) - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 09:09, 20 November 2025 (UTC) Reply

This is because the mediawiki social auth backend passes the username with a space (as returned by the API) and the default clean username function strips spaces out.

We have a scheduled job that updates usernames (in case they change), but this can be better during creation.

- Damian Zaremba ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:49, 26 November 2025 (UTC) Reply

This should be fixed for future accounts creations by , I just ran the username update script which fixed the existing entries for Chess enjoyer and Bowler the Carmine.

- Damian Zaremba ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:02, 26 November 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Rich Smith I'd love to help with this! AaronNealLucas (talk) 01:03, 26 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Aplucas0703: I have given you access on the Report interface, the Review interface gave you access automatically. - Rich ^{T |C |E-Mail} 02:00, 26 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

i want to get involved! ToTheLightmama (talk) 00:10, 9 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

The correct spelling is "affect", not "effect", unless there is some obscure meaning that makes it grammatically correct. SeaDragon1 (talk, contribs , happy birthday! ) 16:27, 17 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

@SeaDragon1: No, "effect" is the correct spelling. "Affect" is generally a verb, while "effect" can be both a verb and a noun. In this case, "effect" is a noun being "The result or outcome of a cause."—that is, work in the review interface produces a result in the bot. "Affect" used as a verb can include, "My work reviewing false positive reports affects the bot's performance", or "The work Wikipedians invest in reviewing false positive reports have positively affected the bot's performance". "Effect" is usually a noun (e.g. "Your work reviewing false positive reports has a positive effect on the bot's performance"), but it can also (confusingly) be used as a verb: "More accurate false positive reviewing effects better bot performance". I know, English is weird. My day job involves professional writing and sometimes the better option is to simply avoid using those two words. —⁠k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 17:28, 23 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

This has a direct effect on the bot and what it knows about vandalism or constructive edits. We need Wikipedians to review edits to affect how the bot should be trained. seems better than This has a direct effect on the bot and what it knows about vandalism or constructive edits. We need Wikipedians to review edits to effect how the bot should be trained., but I could be wrong. SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 17:33, 23 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Text diff:

−

This has a direct effect on the bot and what it knows about vandalism or constructive edits. We need Wikipedians to review edits to (削除) effect (削除ここまで)how the bot should be trained.

+

This has a direct effect on the bot and what it knows about vandalism or constructive edits. We need Wikipedians to review edits to (追記) affect (追記ここまで)how the bot should be trained.

SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 17:33, 23 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Ah, thought you meant the first use of "effect" in there. The second instance of "effect" should be "affect", yes. —⁠k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 18:23, 23 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Sorry, should've clarified. SeaDragon1 (talk, contributions) 18:34, 23 February 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hi, I've been active on the review and report interface lately, but I just have one question: What do all the buttons on the report interface mean? I understand refer to review interface and invalid but not the other ones. FantasticWikiUser _{(Ts and Cs)} 19:20, 4 March 2026 (UTC) Reply

I understand Y stands for year, but why F for months?? Why not Y/M when you want year/month format? CapnZapp (talk) 15:10, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

M is the short month name, F is the full month name (https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.format.php) - Damian Zaremba ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:51, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Could you please change Cluebot's edit summary formats so that it doesn't state the username of the account being reverted? This adds a lot of annoying extra steps for admins doing cleanup, especially when it's OSable material. Thanks. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 15:56, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I'm not opposed to changing this (and it is a minor edit to the code), however the current message has been the same for 5 years, so it would be good to ensure there is some consensus here.

Can you point to some examples/discussion where this has been raised? - I appreciate that might be difficult due to the nature of vandal cleanup.

Alternatively suggestions for an alternate message to https://github.com/cluebotng/bot/blob/main/action_functions.php#L182 - Damian Zaremba ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:03, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Removing the reverted username will affect a lot of editors who read page histories to scope out what happened recently to a page; I know I would be affected (which is why I never suppress "minor" edits in the history). Seems like hitting all those users for the very limited number of cases where a problematic username must be hidden is a very questionable choice. Doesn't dealing with the annoyances resulting from username vandalism just come with the OS territory? Do OSers need better tools? - R. S. Shaw (talk) 23:48, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

@R. S. Shaw, I certainly wouldn't call it a "very limited" number of cases. And there are many usernames that are never brought to the OS team, because they're simply revision-deleted, for example. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 00:43, 2 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I'm sure it has been, but offhand I don't recall where. I know @ScottishFinnishRadish has been banging a drum about this for some time - SFR, anything come to mind? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 00:43, 2 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

None that I could easily point to, but I have definitely bung this drum. I know the a lot of the anti-vandal scripts have trended towards not putting names in UAA reports for offensive names, which is a related issue. That might lead to some discussions about it ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:48, 2 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

As a datapoint, this year ~83% of reverts have been for temporary accounts.

~10k reverts are for named accounts, out of that there are less than 9k unique accounts, which is about 42 per day.

- Damian Zaremba ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:39, 2 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

One way I catch problematic accounts is to monitor CBNG's contributions page. Since those accounts often vandalize and are reverted by ClueBot, this can be a way of quickly seeing and blocking those accounts just by looking at the bot's edit summaries. Removing the reverted account's username from the bot's edit summary would make it harder to quickly spot these usernames.

Additionally, the default rollback summary also mentions the reverted account's username and would also need to be suppressed, so this isn't a problem exclusive to ClueBot (nor is it one that I think is best solved by removing the reverted account's username from CBNG's edit summary).

One solution that I think better solves the problem is to add a tool, preferably built into the OS toolkit, but also something that could be added to Twinkle, that goes through the user contributions of the account whose username is being suppressed and checks the next edit in the page history to see if the edit summary there mentions the username, and then automatically suppress it if it does. This would also address the issue when users use rollback to revert the edits and end up with the problematic username in their own edit summaries. I don't think we should fault such users for inadvertently having an OSable username in their revert summary—the edit was likely vandalism and needed immediate reversion, and they were doing what was best for the encyclopedia by removing it from immediate view right away. Having the tool automatically check for those edit summaries and then automatically suppressing them would solve the problem regardless of who or what reverted the edit, bot or human, regular rollback or Huggle. —⁠k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 00:10, 3 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I agree with Damian: It is a trivial change to make technically, but it's also a larger change socially. If there's consensus, we definitely can make the change. I also agree with k6ka in that it seems like it may be just a partial solution to a bigger problem that may be better solved in other ways? One other option would be to preserve usernames for temp accounts, but that may not make a meaningful difference. — Naomi Amethyst 02:40, 3 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

There's no real reason to not include TA names in the edit summaries, so if anyone at all finds them useful, I'd say they ought to stay. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 04:07, 3 August 2026 (UTC) Reply