Nathan Russell wrote:
So, Jimbo, is there a policy against fully automated spell-checking bots?
Uhm, o.k., if we really need it. I'm open to counter-arguments, but I can't see that anyone has really said that such bots are a good idea. Automated assistance for human spellchecking, now that makes sense to me.
Actually, I don't see any reason for a specific policy, as this already seems to be well-covered by our existing bot policy. On http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABots we see that a robot must be (1) useful (2) harmless (3) not a server hog and (4) approved by someone.
It strikes me as fairly unlikely that a fully automated spell-checking bot could satisfy (2). It's actually a paradigm case of a bot that "sounds good at first" but which actually would be a disaster.
--Jimbo