Dear list members,

Last week, a plan to do the interwiki links more efficiently started to grow, and I am posting it here to see if anyone of you can find a flaw in it, or want to add more ideas to it.

Here's my plan:

In the current situation, a warning file has to be produced from each language, and run on each other language. This requires n * ( n - 1) steps for n languages for one complete interwiki update.

If all warnfiles would be merged before splitting, n * 2 steps would be enough to do the job, and each run will be shorter than before.

By merging all warnfiles, all required and broken links are gathered for all languages. After removal of inconsistencies and double entries, the file is ready to be split into n warnfiles. Each warnfile will contain practically *all* needed changes, instead of just a subset of it. By merging, all pages have to be opened just once, even if the changes are collected from different warnfiles.

If bot operators on every language will upload their most recent - complete - warnfile to a specific location for that language, overwriting the previous one, this location will contain the most recent warnfile from that language. Suppose they do this between the first and 15th of each month, and inform all other bot users via the interwiki robot page when they did it.

One of the operators can download all warnfiles, merge them, split them and upload them to a different location as soon as all warnfiles of the month are ready, or on the 15th - whichever comes first. This operator sends an e-mail and makes a note on the interwiki bot page on commons as soon as the new warnfiles are ready. After that, all operators have the time until the 1st of the next month to process the warnfile for their own language. Whenever a warnfile is processed, the bot operator will report it on the interwiki bot page. At the end of the month, there is time for other bot operators to process files that have not been processed previously on their language.

This ensures maximum effectiveness of interwiki bot operation.

I'll try to write the merger-script (if an experienced bot writer wants to help, please contact me as I haven't programmed in Python for more than a year now), and I'll include a filter to eliminate all no/nb stuff. That will be sorted out as soon as a page has to be updated anyway.

Regards Anton