I am working on a script to load and update Vanderbilt researcher records in Wikidata via the API (see https://github.com/HeardLibrary/linked-data/tree/master/publications for information and https://github.com/HeardLibrary/linked-data/blob/master/publications/proces… for the relevant script). The script is working adequately; however after about 25 writes, I get blocked with an actionthrottledtext error with the message " As an anti-abuse measure, you are limited from performing this action too many times in a short space of time, and you have exceeded this limit.\nPlease try again in a few minutes." I am able to avoid being blocked if I delay three seconds between writes, but a delay of only one second results in me still being blocked. I am observing maxlag (lines 282-313) and am sending a User-Agent header, VanderBot/0.1 (steve.baskauf(a)vanderbilt.edu). I'm making the API calls using the bot account https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:VanderBot, which does not have a bot flag. I've been talking to another user who is running a script from paws.wmflabs.org using Pywikibot without a bot flag and he has not encountered this error. So I am wondering what I am doing wrong that is causing this error and what I can do to stop being blocked. The possible causes I can imagine are: 1. The bot account doesn't have a bot flag. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Requests_for_permissions/Bot/Danmich… implies that the lack of a bot flag might be the problem. But the script is not an autonomous bot and is still under development, so I didn't think a bot flag was necessary under those circumstances. 2. I'm not running the script from paws.wmflabs.org . Is it a problem that the API calls are coming from an unknown IP address? Does that matter? 3. I'm not using Pywikibot. But that shouldn't be necessary. The other thing that is different about what I'm doing and what is being done by the other user who is not encountering this problem is that I'm authenticating directly by establishing a session when the script starts (lines 347-349). The other user apparently somehow doesn't have to authenticate when using Pywikibot as long as he's logged in to paws.wmflabs.org . But I haven't dug in to find out how Pywikibot works, so I don't really understand how that is possible or whether that's important in establishing that the bot is legitimate and not a vandal/spam bot. Any advice you can give about how to stop being blocked would be appreciated. Eventually I will probably apply for a bot flag, but I doubt that this bot will ever be autonomous, so is that really necessary? Would it matter if I used my own account instead of a separate bot account? Steve -- Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D. Data Science and Data Curation Specialist Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries, Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37235, USA Office: Eskind Biomedical Library, EMB 111 Phone: (615) 343-4582 https://my.vanderbilt.edu/baskauf/