On Monday 20 October 2003 19:06, Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
Now, I could
just start an open source project at sourceforge to
collaboratively develop it further. BUT: I am afraid of the power of
this software, and the damage it could do if it ends up in the wrong
hands (vandals).
My two cents:
1. Change your bot so that it adds a User-agent header to the HTTP
requests that identifies the request as coming from a bot (unless you've
already done this).
2. Ask Brion or someone to add a check for the "User-agent: Bot" and
then check the already-exising "bot" flag in the user record, and toss
out the edit if it is made from other than a "bot" user.
3. Once this is done, release your source.
Quick and easy. Now, to be sure, anyone with software skills can change
the source so that it doesn't produce the header. But then, anyone with
software skills can write their own bot.
Yes, but one is much easier then other.
I propose that critical part of source (one that reads and writes data on
Wikipedia), with the enhancements that Louis proposed, should be stored in a
library which would be freely distributable but closed source. Then the rest
of the bot code could be released open source.