I'll just note that both API:Etiquette and the Robot Policy have been
incorporated by reference into the Terms of Use:
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use/en#12._API_Terms
Undiscussed changes to the Terms of Use should be avoided.
On Wed, Apr 9, 2025, at 12:06 PM, Bryan Davis wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 9, 2025 at 5:12 AM Sohom Datta <dattasoh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> What the WMF infrastructure does, OTOH, is different. So maybe it's a good
>>> idea to add a {{Note}} at the top of the etiquette page clarifying that
>>> these are general MW-related rules, and that for the Foundation
>>> infrastructure people should refer to the Robot policy.
>>
>> In my opinion, that is not how that page is perceived within the community.
>> API:Etiquette is what a majority of community pages link to and has been
>> used to build bot policies on individual wikis and make assumptions about
>> how requests to the API should be made (adding user agents and checking
>> against the max lag parameter).
>
> I haven't tried to bisect the history to see when they were
> introduced, but there currently are a number of statements on the page
> pointing out that [[API:Etiquette]] is a description of recommended
> best practices and also not definitive. I'm referring to things like
> this which all appear in the lead of the article:
>
> * "On Wikimedia wikis, there may be faster ways to get bulk data. See
> m:Research:Data and wikitech:Portal:Data Services for more details."
> * "See also the official guidelines about API usage on Wikimedia
> Foundation Governance wiki."
> * "See also the official guidelines about API usage on Wikimedia
> Foundation Governance wiki."
>
> It can be easily overlooked at times, but MediaWiki is not just the
> software behind the Wikimedia movement wikis. Much of the content on
> www.mediawiki.org tries to balance the importance of the documentation
> supporting use of MediaWiki by the Wikimedia movement and usage of
> MediaWiki as a general purpose wiki platform. I think
> [[API:Etiquette]] is doing a reasonable job of maintaining balance,
> but like any article there are likely good ideas out there about how
> to improve the coverage. Talk page discussions and [[WP:BOLD]] actions
> as appropriate would be good ways for any of us to try to help improve
> the docs for everyone.
>
> Bryan
> --
> Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation
> Principal Software Engineer Boise, ID USA
> [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] irc: bd808
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