"I'm open to suggestions as to the setting of $delay. If anyone wants to see the rest of the code, I'll send it by private email.
-- Tim Starling."
What's up with this guy?
Fred
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, but the reason I'm sending it by private email is so that I control who gets it. As I said on User:Timbot:
:In keeping with Wikipedia policy, the source code is secret, :however, it will be made available via email to well-behaved :users if required
Fred, you've been here only since November, your first post to wikitech-l was in February. With those 224 edits, you've only managed to piss me off with a non-productive and persistent edit war over chiropractic medicine. In that short time, you've managed to form an impression in my mind of unilateralism and an aversion to real debate. You're not in a position to contribute to the approval process, so why do you want the bot code? That bot could be used very destructively if it fell into the hands of someone interested in enforcing partisan article names. With a minor modification, it could be made into an automated revert-bot.
Perhaps if The Cunctator or Lee have formed a better impression of you, you can convince one of them to give you the code.
-- Tim Starling.
_________________________________________________________________ MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp
Tim,
I noticed that when you applied to be a sysop you said you had never been in an edit war, that seemed kind of funny at the time. The thing is anyone who tries hard here to write NPOV articles will eventually bump up against someone like RK who wants to argue. That has nothing at all to do with the technical side. I have only a normal interest in looking at the code. If someone who has received it would send it I would appreciate it. Paranoia about a revert bot is really out of place.
Fred
From: "Tim Starling" ts4294967296@hotmail.com Reply-To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 12:07:20 +1000 To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Bot approval request
"I'm open to suggestions as to the setting of $delay. If anyone wants to see the rest of the code, I'll send it by private email.
-- Tim Starling."
What's up with this guy?
Fred
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, but the reason I'm sending it by private email is so that I control who gets it. As I said on User:Timbot:
:In keeping with Wikipedia policy, the source code is secret, :however, it will be made available via email to well-behaved :users if required
Fred, you've been here only since November, your first post to wikitech-l was in February. With those 224 edits, you've only managed to piss me off with a non-productive and persistent edit war over chiropractic medicine. In that short time, you've managed to form an impression in my mind of unilateralism and an aversion to real debate. You're not in a position to contribute to the approval process, so why do you want the bot code? That bot could be used very destructively if it fell into the hands of someone interested in enforcing partisan article names. With a minor modification, it could be made into an automated revert-bot.
Perhaps if The Cunctator or Lee have formed a better impression of you, you can convince one of them to give you the code.
-- Tim Starling.
MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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.
Thanks for your understanding, Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
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
- 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
--- Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Fred, you've been here only since November, your first post to wikitech-l was in February. With those 224 edits, you've only managed to piss me off with a non-productive and persistent edit war over chiropractic medicine. In that short time, you've managed to form an impression in my mind of unilateralism and an aversion to real debate. You're not in a position to contribute to the approval process, so why do you want the bot code?
Hello Tim,
what does that mean "you are not in a position to contribute to the approval process" ???
Cheers, ant
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
(Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com):
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, but the reason I'm sending it by private email is so that I control who gets it. As I said on User:Timbot:
:In keeping with Wikipedia policy, the source code is secret, :however, it will be made available via email to well-behaved :users if required ... Perhaps if The Cunctator or Lee have formed a better impression of you, you can convince one of them to give you the code.
I express no opinion about Fred, but the code is Tim's to give or not give to whomever he chooses, and I won't usurp his prerogative. However, I must say that I find no evidence at all of any "policy" that bot code should be private. Indeed, I see no reason at all why shy bots should not be as public as everything else here. Yes, they are potentially destructive, but so is all technology. Keeping things like that secret is just security through obscurity--if making the code free is a problem, then it's a problem we have now already and should think about ways to ameliorate.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org