On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 05:42:45 +0100, Lars Aronsson <l...@aronsson.se> wrote:
On 01/02/2013 06:11 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Every wiki has a different approach to bots. But for English Wikipedia,
that is not how the approval process
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOTAPPROVAL) works:
"Small changes, for example to fix problems or improve the operation of
a particular task, are unlikely to be an issue, but larger changes
should not be implemented without some discussion. Completely new tasks
usually require a separate approval request. Bot operators may wish to
create a separate bot account for each task."
That is what the rules say, but do you have any science
to back up that this is also how it works in practice?
How many bot accounts are revoked each month
because their owners were naughty and used their bots
in a different manner from what they applied for?
The idea with a bot account, after all, is that nobody
bothers to watch your edits in the Recent Changes.
I think you can go forward if you accept that there are
some bots that run like a machinery, according to the
rules, and other bot accounts that are used like a more
advanced browser for a creative and spontaneous user.
You are both assuming that there are no other wikis except for the English
Wikipedia.
For example, on pl.wiki, there are basically only two kinds of bots:
interwiki-only and multipurpose. As long as you're not breaking anything using
the bot and not doing anycontroversial changes, if you've gotten the flag, you
can do any task you deem necessary. A bot control in this case simply wouldn't
work.
Not to mention that I think *most* of the bots n pl.wiki are ran from users'
home computers, most often on AWB or a local pywikipedia install, but there are
at least three people who use their own libraries, including myself.
And if this is an en.wiki-only matter, this isn't really the right list to
discuss it.
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