On Jul 11, 2014 1:08 AM, "Bináris" <wikiposta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If it turns out that a user identification is really
an expectation,
Well, not identification exactly. But it should be unique per bot and offer
a way to contact the operator. (not just identify the operator; a single
operator may operate both misbehaving and compliant bots)
It's beyond a doubt that this is part of the guidelines.
If you don't comply and you're causing problems then you may find your IP
blocked from *reading* (or maybe just writing to) the wikis. Imagine if
that IP is the toolserver? (I know it's dead, pretend it's 2012 for a
second)
If you have a good UA string then roots can block narrowly just the problem
and not everyone else on your server and also can initiate contact with the
operator to get the bot fixed. Instead of waiting for the operator to find
the roots and ask why the bot is blocked.
Also, if the bot is somehow logged out, the bot/operator should still be
identified in UA string.
then urlencoding or base64 may be a good solution for
non-ASCII names.
However, in this case there is still a point that it is only
expected in
Foundation's wikis and not neccessary in other MW installations.And once
any personal data is not neccessary, it is not desirable and reasonable.
What exactly is the objection to bots using unique UA strings?
So we should then introduce a WMF switch in
user-config.py for each
account the bot uses and personalize the UA only for those
accounts where
this switch is on.
IMO, it should have nothing to do with which wiki you're using. If users
want to turn it off for a given wiki, fine. Default to enabled.
-Jeremy