Tim-
:In keeping with Wikipedia policy, the source code
is secret,
:however, it will be made available via email to well-behaved
:users if required
Can you elaborate a bit on the destructive potential of the bot? I'm not
fully sure if
1) You do not want people to use the bot for things which you don't want
to happen, but which nobody else cares to stop; or
2) You do consider it, if modified, unstoppable.
Please note that we can block whole IP ranges if necessary or switch the
wiki to read-only, so I'm not sure what a dedicated bot attack could
accomplish? If you are basically telling Fred "I don't like you, you have
opinions I disagree with, you won't get to use my code", that is certainly
your decision to make.
But if that is your logic, I do not think your bot should be approved for
running on Wikipedia at all.
I've had some serious concerns about this bot. On the surface it has to
do with changing [[Brisbane, Queensland]] to simply [[Brisbane]] with
the possibility that it could also be used for other city names. This
is a questionable use of a bot to impose a naming convention that may
not have unanimous support. If it is used in the course of an edit war,
it makes for an unequal fight between those who use a bot and those who
don't.
I'm not too sure of the solution. Perhaps such a bot should be
generally available to everybody so that someone who disagreed with the
naming convention change could just as easily revert it. Perhaps we
need to have bot generated changes appear on "Recent changes" again so
that everybody can see what is happening. Or perhaps we need to review
the bot approval process so that some vote would be needed for each
separate use of a bot.
Eclecticology