This just occurred to me. I'm probably wrong, but there you go...
This bot is on RfA. So surely, whatever it does, it needs sysop
privileges. Therefore, releasing the code does nothing to help vandals
as vandals don't have sysop accounts...
Or is that just misguided?
On 1/9/07, dmehkeri(a)swi.com <dmehkeri(a)swi.com> wrote:
> >I'm sure if you asked the guy he'll give you the code, but keeping
the
code
concealed
may be a good thing because it'll stave off the bot being
compromised for some time.
Yup. You really think that Wiki folks would keep it quiet if there
wasn't a plausible reason? Come on!
We already have several open bot frameworks, it's purportedly an easy
task
to
whip up a vandalbot. There's even a similar transclusion-checking bot
that
was
made open source. And surely making MediaWiki itself open source was
even
more
dangerous, and yet, there you go.
And finally of course there's argumentum ad Jimbo.
Dan
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--
Gary Kirk
No, see the answer to question 11 on the RfA. The function adding the
protection tags can be easily changed to vandalize articles instead. The
code to actually do the protection would be unused.