http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Bot_edit_ra...
This has been discussed on wikitech-l a bit in the last few days. Tim Starling says there's no technical reason for a limit, the current limit's to allow workable human review; so it's a matter for local policy. Further discussion at above URL.
- d.
Bots are problematic enough as is, we have any number that malfunction or do things based on an ill-considered script already.
The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably get into a war as well.
Parker
On 2/21/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Bot_edit_ra...
This has been discussed on wikitech-l a bit in the last few days. Tim Starling says there's no technical reason for a limit, the current limit's to allow workable human review; so it's a matter for local policy. Further discussion at above URL.
- d.
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On 2/21/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably get into a war as well.
I don't know what freaky bots you work with, but as far as I know, Skynet does not edit wikipedia (yet...)
--Oskar
On 22/02/07, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/21/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably get into a war as well.
I don't know what freaky bots you work with, but as far as I know, Skynet does not edit wikipedia (yet...)
I think I've seen interwiki bots warring, though over a long and diffuse timescale; one rationalises a dozen links and drops one; the other adds it back in and resorts; repeat.
Actual edit-warring, though, between bots shouldn't be too hard to prevent with a bit of code, surely? "If you have edited this page in the last n hours, don't".
On 2/22/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Actual edit-warring, though, between bots shouldn't be too hard to prevent with a bit of code, surely? "If you have edited this page in the last n hours, don't".
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Bot edit warring would not increase by this raise in edit rate. The bots that are going to be editing faster are the bots who have 1500 articles to tag, or something of that sort; those that run through a predetermined list. Bots who edit in reaction to events on-wiki, such as anti-vandal bots, HangermanBot, etc, will be editing at the same rate anyway (already they mostly just edit when they need to, which varies greatly from minute-to-minute).
Asking bots who respond to events to wait a few seconds before making an edit is a different story than allowing a running bot to edit 6 or 15 times a minute. --Mets501
On 2/21/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
Bots are problematic enough as is, we have any number that malfunction or do things based on an ill-considered script already.
The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably get into a war as well.
I'd agree we should be careful about this -- bots have the potential to be very helpful, but rogue or malfunctioning bots likewise have a potential to do some pretty nasty damage. Not so much to pages; sure, it'll be a chore, but we can revert all of that easily enough. I'd be especially concerned about bots that deal with newer users, and how a buggy bot can influence their first experiences on the wiki.
Always good to watch the bots. Some of them have been going for some time with only a few problems, and could do more with more freedom to edit. Giving out this freedom blindly is probably bad, and I didn't see people proposing we should do that (I think) -- the bots we trust and know, and which could obviously benefit from the boost, though, not sure if I see the harm.
HagermanBot would be my specific example of a bot that doesn't need an artificial limit. Some people have suggested it should wait a little longer before signing (no idea where overall consensus on this is, just pointing out), but even "wait x seconds before signing" is just a delay for each edit, rather than a limit on the overall editing rate.
Bots getting into edit wars? Merf. That'd be bad, but a responsible botop will avoid that problem with a few extra lines of code. It really wouldn't be too difficult. Long-term things like the interwiki bots arguing, that's a little trickier, but a high-speed end-of-the-world botwar isn't something I expect to see any time soon.
Just my take, probably a bit of a ramble. -Luna
On 2/22/07, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/21/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
Bots are problematic enough as is, we have any number that malfunction
or
do things based on an ill-considered script already.
The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably get into a war as well.
I'd agree we should be careful about this -- bots have the potential to be very helpful, but rogue or malfunctioning bots likewise have a potential to do some pretty nasty damage. Not so much to pages; sure, it'll be a chore, but we can revert all of that easily enough. I'd be especially concerned about bots that deal with newer users, and how a buggy bot can influence their first experiences on the wiki.
That's one of my concerns, but I'm also concerned about what happens when two bots start making the same change in slightly different ways; say someone writes a bot to make all date codes uniform, for example, and another bot starts thinking it's vandalizing something or it starts "datecoding" things that are in external links?
Always good to watch the bots. Some of them have been going for some time
with only a few problems, and could do more with more freedom to edit. Giving out this freedom blindly is probably bad, and I didn't see people proposing we should do that (I think) -- the bots we trust and know, and which could obviously benefit from the boost, though, not sure if I see the harm.
The potential harm is there... a bot with a specifically limited purpose is fine, but even so, letting it run a bit slower doesn't hurt anything.
HagermanBot would be my specific example of a bot that doesn't need an
artificial limit. Some people have suggested it should wait a little longer before signing (no idea where overall consensus on this is, just pointing out), but even "wait x seconds before signing" is just a delay for each edit, rather than a limit on the overall editing rate.
HagermanBot is a special case because its usage is overly specialized. It still makes mistakes sometimes (such as when someone "signs" but then adds a P.S. or something after, or manually signs rather than using tildes).
Having it wait X seconds before an edit - I'd suggest 60, to allow for time for a user to realize, go back, sign it themselves, then make the bot re-check - is a good thing.
Bots getting into edit wars? Merf. That'd be bad, but a responsible botop
will avoid that problem with a few extra lines of code. It really wouldn't be too difficult.
That's relying on everyone to be "responsible" from the get-go; without a limiter on bots, someone fixing a bot or tweaking code could easily goof up and cause a major issue.
Long-term things like the interwiki bots arguing, that's a
little trickier, but a high-speed end-of-the-world botwar isn't something I expect to see any time soon.
Just my take, probably a bit of a ramble. -Luna
I agree it's not a high-high likelihood, but the danger it poses warrants some serious consideration and conservativeness.
On 22/02/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
I'd agree we should be careful about this -- bots have the potential to be very helpful, but rogue or malfunctioning bots likewise have a potential to do some pretty nasty damage. Not so much to pages; sure, it'll be a chore, but we can revert all of that easily enough. I'd be especially concerned about bots that deal with newer users, and how a buggy bot can influence their first experiences on the wiki.
That's one of my concerns, but I'm also concerned about what happens when two bots start making the same change in slightly different ways; say someone writes a bot to make all date codes uniform, for example, and another bot starts thinking it's vandalizing something or it starts "datecoding" things that are in external links?
To be fair, these are issues pretty much independent of editing speed - doubling the speed just changes the amount of cleanup needing done, it doesn't prevent it - and are one of the main reasons we have a bot approval system. You want to do something nonstandard, they're going to go over it with a fine-toothed comb... and hopefully conflicts with other bots, or the potential to do Really Stupid Things (like altering source titles) will be spotted.
(In the example given, the obvious questions would be "why are you mass-changing date codes?" and "why this final version?", and if they both get approved with conflicting answers, the system's dropped the ball)
HagermanBot would be my specific example of a bot that doesn't need an
artificial limit. Some people have suggested it should wait a little longer before signing (no idea where overall consensus on this is, just pointing out), but even "wait x seconds before signing" is just a delay for each edit, rather than a limit on the overall editing rate.
HagermanBot is a special case because its usage is overly specialized. It still makes mistakes sometimes (such as when someone "signs" but then adds a P.S. or something after, or manually signs rather than using tildes).
Having it wait X seconds before an edit - I'd suggest 60, to allow for time for a user to realize, go back, sign it themselves, then make the bot re-check - is a good thing.
An elegant though computationally tricky one would be to log all such changes and then do a mass-update of them in batches - every hour or half-hour on a heavily trafficked page, say.
On 2/22/07, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
Long-term things like the interwiki bots arguing, that's a little trickier, but a high-speed end-of-the-world botwar isn't something I expect to see any time soon.
IT's been seen with various vandle bots.
On 22/02/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/22/07, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
Long-term things like the interwiki bots arguing, that's a little trickier, but a high-speed end-of-the-world botwar isn't something I expect to see any time soon.
IT's been seen with various vandle bots.
If only we could limit vandalbots to six edits a minute ...
- d.
On 2/22/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
If only we could limit vandalbots to six edits a minute ...
- d.
I disagree. I would say the exact opposite, but force vandalbots to put the other vandalbots on their whitelists. I assume you're talking about vandalism-reverting bots, not vandalism-creating bots, by the way. Anonymous vandalism-creating bots are already limited to eight edits per minute technically, and logged-in vandalbots are easily blocked. --Mets501
On 2/21/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Bot_edit_ra...
This has been discussed on wikitech-l a bit in the last few days. Tim Starling says there's no technical reason for a limit, the current limit's to allow workable human review; so it's a matter for local policy. Further discussion at above URL.
Ah but there is a limit :
"However I found the constant bombardment with messages from those damned bots the last straw." - Jtdirl
stvrtg wrote:
Ah but there is a limit :
"However I found the constant bombardment with messages from those damned bots the last straw." - Jtdirl
Last night I put a comment on a talk page and realized at the exact moment I clicked "save" that I hadn't signed it. Rather than frantically try to abort the save, I moved the mouse pointer to where the "edit" link was to appear after the save finished and I clicked it the moment it came up. [[User:HagermanBot]] had already managed to slip in and put an "unsigned comment" signature in there for me.
Both impressive and mildy annoying, IMO. A bot that's intended to help the forgetful and ignorant should wait to make sure an editor is actually being forgetful or ignorant. A minor matter, though.