I think we have a serious problem with this. When the interwiki bot issue
was last discussed there only was a handful of wikis. I think it is time to
bring some attention to this.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix displays quite a large
number of wikis (I was told this is around 700). Wikipedia alone has 253
language editions according to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
I was told only 60 of these 700ish wikis have an actual local bot policy of
which most are just translations or mis-translations of en.wiki.
Why is this a problem? Well, if a user decides to operate an interiwki bot
on all wikis. He or she (or it?) would have to make about 700 edits on the
individual wikis. Aside form the 60 most of these wikis do not even have a
bot request page IIRC. Those individual 700 edits would have to be listed on
[[m:Requests for bot status]]. A steward will have to process these 700 -
wikis with active bcrats. Thats just one person. As we are a growing
community, now imagine just 10 people who seek such interwiki bot operation.
Thats a workload of 7000. Wikimedia is a growing community. There are far
more than 700 languages on earth - 7000 according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language#Native_language_learning thats
ultimately 7000 * (number of sister projects) wikis per individual bot. With
the calculation of ten bots thats 70,000 requests.
There are a couple of CPU demanding but mindless bot tasks. All these tasks
are handled by the use of same code. Tasks that come to my mind are:
* Commons delinking
* Double redirect fixes
* Interwiki linking
* Perhaps even anti-spam bots
Currently we already have people who make bot like alterations to individual
such as mediawiki developers wikis without even considering the opinions of
local wikis. I do not believe anyone finds this problematic. Also we elect
stewards from a central location. We do not ask the opinion of individual
wikis. Actions a steward has access to is vast but the permission they have
is quite limited. So the concept of centralized decisions isn't a new
concept. If mediawiki is a very large family we should be able to make
certain decisions family wide.
I think the process on bots operating inter-wiki should be simplified
fundamentally. Asking every wiki for permission may seem like the nice thing
to do but it is a serious waste of time, both for the bot operator and for
the stewards as well as the local communities actually. There is no real
reason to repetitively approve "different" bots operating the same code.
My suggestion for a solution to the problem is as follows:
A foundation/meta bot policy should be drafted prompting a centralized bot
request for a number of very spesific tasks (not everything). All these need
to be mindless activities such as interwiki linking or double redirect
fixing. The foundation will not be interfering with the "local" affairs, but
instead regulating inter-wiki affairs. All policies on wikis with a bot
policy should be compatible or should be made compatible with this
foundation policy. Bot requests of this nature would be processed in meta
alone saving every one time. The idea fundamentally is "one nom per bot"
rather than "one nom per wiki" basically.
If a bot breaks, it can simply be blocked. Else the community should not
have any problem with it. How much supervision do interwiki bots really need
anyways?
Perhaps an interface update is necessary allowing stewards to grant bot
flags in bulk rather than individually if this hasn't been implemented
already.
- White Cat