For instance, this ugly, inefficient query gets all non-bot and non-IP edits to the project pages of WikiProject Medicine from 2007-2012 (19,097 edits). It runs in about 2 seconds on stat1.
select count(rev_id) from enwiki.revision as r, enwiki.page as p where p.page_id = r.rev_page and p.page_namespace in (4,5) and p.page_title like "WikiProject_Medicine%" and r.rev_timestamp between "20070101000000" and "20080101000000" and r.rev_user != 0 and r.rev_user_text not like "%Bot" and r.rev_user_text not like "%bot" AND r.rev_user NOT IN (SELECT ug_user FROM enwiki.user_groups WHERE ug_group = 'bot');
The user_groups table tracks registered bots, and the string matching excludes bots* that are being run on the DL (which are more common than you might expect).
I always exclude bots** from any analysis I do, since they grossly inflate activity counts in unpredictable ways.
I definitely think it would be useful to make bot-filtered data available in wikistats and/or Limn.
- J
*also unfortunately excludes the odd user with 'bot' in their username, like User:I_Jethrobot :(
**unless, of course, I'm studying bots specifically