If you screen-scrape an HTML *user interface form* for
your bot, YOU
WILL GET BROKEN BY CHANGES, especially if you don't bother to even TRY
to behave like an actual client (which would load all the required form
variables from the edit page in the first place).
Look, I understand your frustration, but there wasn't an API for
people to use. So lots of stuff (LOTS) was built on the GUI.
(And anyone who used query.php got burned in August; took a bit of
time for some of those things to get fixed.)
People wrote code to submit forms with the parameters that were
required; they didn't parse the whole effing HTML page.
No matter how awful that is; that was all they could do; there was no
API. So the reality is, you are going to have to consider the effects
of GUI changes on the very large existing set of code out there.
best,
Robert