Maniphest T202638

Mobile editor should set bot field on all edits so bot edits are marked as bots
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Authored By

	Jdlrobson
	Aug 23 2018, 3:47 PM

Description

Edits by editors operating in a bot like mode should be marked as edits.

Counterintuitively, the bot field when set to true will be ignored if the user making the edit is not a bot.

Thus the mobile editor when making edits should set the bot field when hitting the API.

acceptance criteria / testing

set bot field on all edits
check edits by standard editor are not marked with "b" (bot) in recent changes
using special:userrights make user a bot and edit with that account
Check edits by user with bot right are marked as bot in Special:RecentChanges

sign off steps

Check in on T200089 to see if problem is solved.

= developer notes
per T202638#4530181 we should send the bot parameter in edits for the mobile editor to behave like the normal editor.

Related Objects
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		Status	Subtype	Assigned	Task
		Declined		None	T200089 Edits with API by users with "flood" user right are always set with rc_bot=0 in table recent changes if bot field not set
		Open		None	T202638 Mobile editor should set bot field on all edits so bot edits are marked as bots

Event Timeline

Jdlrobson renamed this task from Mobile editor should set bot field on all editsth to Mobile editor should set bot field on all edits so bot edits are marked as bots.Aug 23 2018, 3:47 PM

Jdlrobson triaged this task as Medium priority.

Jdlrobson created this task.

Jdlrobson moved this task from Incoming to Triaged but Future on the Web-Team-Backlog board.

Jdlrobson updated the task description. (Show Details)

The task description does a good job specifying "what", but leaves out the "why". Feel free to copy this background information into the task description if you find it useful:

The bot user right affects edits differently depending on whether they're made via the API's action=edit or via the web UI (EditPage) form. Specifically, the API does not apply the 'bot' flag to the edit unless a parameter is passed to instruct it to, while EditPage will apply the 'bot' flag to the edit unless a parameter is passed to instruct it not to.

For the most part this makes no difference, since almost all edits intended to be flagged with 'bot' are made via the API and almost all edits via the web UI are made by users without the bot user right. But there are a few wikis where a human making bot-like edits via the web UI is granted the bot user right so their web UI edits will be flagged as 'bot'. When such a human uses the mobile editor (which submits edits via the API) instead of EditPage, their edits don't get flagged as 'bot' as intended.

Since the mobile editor is intended to behave equivalently to the EditPage web UI, at least in this respect, it should set the bot parameter in its API action=edit requests. There is no need for the mobile editor to check whether the user has the bot user right before setting this parameter, since the bot parameter is silently ignored if the user lacks that right.

Stalling per main thread. Whether users with flood/bot permissions should be using the mobile editor directly is not clear to me. It's possible there is an error in a maintenance script if not.

Anomie mentioned this in T200089: Edits with API by users with "flood" user right are always set with rc_bot=0 in table recent changes if bot field not set .Aug 27 2018, 6:14 PM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Triaged but Future to Needs Prioritization on the Web-Team-Backlog board.Sep 18 2018, 4:49 PM