On 31.01.2011, 22:06 Raymond wrote:

I'm involved in a project that would like to contact Wikipedia users via email. I'm wondering whether I will need to get approval from the Bot Approval Group (BAG) to run a script that will contact up to several thousand emailable users via the Wikipedia API (to ask users to participate in a research study.) I'm under the impression that 1) since I can email users using the API without special privileges and 2) I wouldn't be making any edits to the Wikipedia, I wouldn't need approval from BAG. However, is the possibility that my emails will be construed as spam and my script and account be blocked as a result? Should I run this scenario by BAG before running my email script?

Mass-mailing IS EXTREMELY frowned upon, your account will be blocked with 100% certainty (and I'm NOT exaggerating). There are public ways if you want to inform many people, by emailing you will create nothing but problems for yourself, there were precendents before.