-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 5:34 PM To: Wikimedia developers Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Access Denied from Wikipedia's proxies
If we find you doing this, you will be blocked from access to Wikipedia. Falsifying user-agents is a fraudulent tool used by leeches trying to evade blocks.
*Always* use a real user-agent string which identifies you, including enough contact information (e-mail address or URL) that you can be reached in case you're running a legitimate bot of some sort that's causing problems by accident.
Ah, apologies. I actually read one of Jimbo's quotes wrong; It said: "You could give it a User-Agent string that's exactly the same as any popular browser, and we'd never know the difference." I missed the next sentence, "So it's good of you to ask." Oops.
The same list thread (archived) seemed to imply that bots were allowed on a bot-by-bot basis (with each user agent being allowed at a time). This is obviously not the case. I will certainly have my bot use a proper User-Agent string; it was before I changed it to see if that was the problem.
Might be, but we can't tell if you won't say what it is.
I was leery about doing so on a public mailing list, but it's a host, I suppose, so no harm done. I figured it probably wasn't a block and was something simple I was overlooking, so the IP address wouldn't really be needed
I believe it is 64.202.163.79.
If you are grabbing pages live from Wikipedia and displaying them on your site with ads attached, or some other such, you will indeed be permanently blocked when you're discovered.
Not at all what I'm doing. I'll release the source code if you'd prefer when I'm done; I'd just like it to pull up a basic page first. :P
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Thank you for your help,
-HoodedMan "Wind to thy wings. Light to thy path. Dreams to thy heart."