On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 05:42:45 +0100, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
On 01/02/2013 06:11 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
Every wiki has a different approach to bots. But for English Wikipedia, that is not how the approval process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOTAPPROVAL) works:
"Small changes, for example to fix problems or improve the operation of a particular task, are unlikely to be an issue, but larger changes should not be implemented without some discussion. Completely new tasks usually require a separate approval request. Bot operators may wish to create a separate bot account for each task."
That is what the rules say, but do you have any science to back up that this is also how it works in practice? How many bot accounts are revoked each month because their owners were naughty and used their bots in a different manner from what they applied for? The idea with a bot account, after all, is that nobody bothers to watch your edits in the Recent Changes.
I think you can go forward if you accept that there are some bots that run like a machinery, according to the rules, and other bot accounts that are used like a more advanced browser for a creative and spontaneous user.
You are both assuming that there are no other wikis except for the English Wikipedia.
For example, on pl.wiki, there are basically only two kinds of bots: interwiki-only and multipurpose. As long as you're not breaking anything using the bot and not doing anycontroversial changes, if you've gotten the flag, you can do any task you deem necessary. A bot control in this case simply wouldn't work.
Not to mention that I think *most* of the bots n pl.wiki are ran from users' home computers, most often on AWB or a local pywikipedia install, but there are at least three people who use their own libraries, including myself.
And if this is an en.wiki-only matter, this isn't really the right list to discuss it.