There have been a few reports recently about the interwiki-bot changing text that has nothing to do with interwikis. Checking those cases, I can see that: * The bot has made two edits to the same page in those cases; the problematic edit is the second one, and * The text being changed is actually the reverting of the last edit before the first bot edit
I think that what is going on is this: Someone is running the interwiki bot twice for some reason, and both versions are working on the same page. Let's call the original text A, with B being some other edit and C the bot's edit.
* Bot (version 1) loads the page (text A) * Bot (version 2) loads the page (text A) * Someone else changes the page to A+B * Bot (version 1) submits the page (version A+C). The edit conflict is correctly resolved by the MediaWiki software, and the page is saved as A+B+C * Bot (version 2) submits the page (version A+C). For some reason the MediaWiki software does notice an edit conflict in this case, and the page is saved as A+C, inadvertently reverting B.
I will be submitting this at Bugzilla, but for the time being I want to issue the following warning:
Do NOT run the bot twice simultaneously UNLESS you are certain the two runs will not be editing the same page.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels