User talk:Mu301Bot/Requests for unblock

This page is for discussing the requests for unblock watcher bot that is being run by User:Mu301.

User:Mu301Bot uses category.py to get the pages in Category:Requests for unblock and then updates User:Mu301Bot/Requests for unblock so that it contains links to the pages that are currently in that category. The bots checks at 7 minutes past the hour. Custodians are asked to watchlist the page so that they can be alerted to new requests. Here is an example from my watchlist:

(diff | hist). . mb User:Mu301Bot/Requests for unblock‎; 19:07. . (-25)‎ . . ‎Mu301Bot (discuss | contribs | block)‎ (Bot: Listifying from Category:Requests for unblock (0 entries)) [rollback]

The (0 entries) above indicate that a page has been removed from the category since the last time that the bot checked. This could indicates that a custodian has reviewed the request and accepted or declined it. It could also indicate that someone has manually removed a page from the cat. An entry that includes an edit summary of (# entries) where # is greater than 0 indicates that there are pages in the cat, and custodians should check for outstanding requests.

See here for an example of what the page looks like when there is a request.

Please note that the bot only checks once per hour. If an Unblock request were to be added to a talk page, and then Unblock denied between checks, the bot would not notice and there would be no edits to the page. The bot is not able to continuously monitor the cat and this is not a substitute for other means of noticing unblock requests.

We also need to make sure that blocked users are aware of how to use Unblock so we should review the templates and instructions.

Feel free to ask questions here or contact me on my talk page if you have any suggestions about the request watcher. --mikeu talk 16:02, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Slight update. There are now two subcategories which causes the default to be (2 entries) if there are no outstanding requests. --mikeu talk 18:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)