John, thank you for writing tis letter, and I agree almost entirely, except: "Also, ideally bots should link to the bot task approval page with every edit, either in the public edit summary or in the (invisible except by ops and check-users) user-agent."
On one hand, approval rules differ from wki ti wiki even within WMF empire, not to talk about other MW installations. There is no base to assume the existence of such a page for each bot and each task. On the other hand, edit summaries are too short and they are planned for human reading, and repeating a page title or any permission is not sign but noise for a human and prevents bot owner of filling in the summary with relevant information. The change of UA for every task is very difficult and I doubt it would be worth. 2014-07-11 15:34 GMT+02:00 John Mark Vandenberg <[email protected]>: > On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Antoine Musso <[email protected]> wrote: > > Le 11/07/2014 01:09, Amir Ladsgroup a écrit : > >> Hello, > >> As discussions in pywikipedia-l people are not sure whether is > necessary to > >> add username of bot operator in user agent or not. > >> > >> In user agent policy <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User-agent_policy > > > >> it's mentioned that people need to add contacting information, but it's > not > >> clear it's about contacting the tool-maker or tool-user. > >> > >> Can you clarify it? > > > > Hello, > > > > As K. Peachey said, the aim is for Wikimedia operators to be able to > > identify the user running the bot. The bot framework might be useful. > > > > A suitable user agent could be: > > > > HasharBot (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar; hashar at free fr) > > > > > > We most probably already have the username in our logs, doesn't harm to > > repeat it in the user-agent. IRC nickname and email would be nice > > additions and probably save time. > > Could ops confirm they have the username of each logged in edit at > their finger tips (i.e. roughly as easy to access as the user-agent)? > Pywikibot doesnt permit logged out edits. > > There is some talk that if pywikibot doesnt fix its user-agent string, > ops may need to block 'the toolserver' - could ops confirm that they > would usually block a bot account before killing a well known IP range > like 'the toolserver' (or 'the wmf labs') > > IMO it is pretty silly to put the username in the User-Agent for > logged in users who are running adhoc tasks using unmodified pywikibot > code, as they are the user, not its agent. In that scenario, a > distinct version of pywikibot is the agent. And an email address is > even worse in this scenario. > > I do appreciate the need to uniquely identify different user agents, > being any customised code. Pywikibot already detects which (git) > revision it is running, and includes that in the user agent. It also > checks versions of files, but I dont think it accurately detects "I am > a customised bot" and definately doesnt include that in the user > agent. It should. > > Also, ideally bots should link to the bot task approval page with > every edit, either in the public edit summary or in the (invisible > except by ops and check-users) user-agent. > > Rather than asking bot operators to put an email address in the user > agent, is it OK to have special:emailuser enabled on the bot and > operator? Or, have a master kill switch on the bot user (task) page? > There is talk of an RFC for 'standardising' how the community can > interact with pywikibot bots, such as disabling bot tasks or the bot > account. > https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/137980/ > Checking email is enabled, and ensuring the bot can be easily paused > by 'the community' (inc. ops) strikes me as what is needed, rather > than putting PII into the user *agent*. > > -- > John Vandenberg > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > -- Bináris _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
