[Commons-l] Pikiwiki project problems

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Dror Kamir<dqamir at bezeqint.net> wrote:
[snip]
> - Yes, but it still takes some time, and I don't see why the project should
> be halted in the meantime. Furthermore, if the administrators want to be
> cooperative about this project, they might as well provide the code for a
> template which will satisfy them. Why take the risk of further
> misunderstandings?

"What do I need to do to satisfy your request?" is a most reasonable response.

> And when this crisis is resolved, can we have a guarantee
> that sudden blocks will not happen again?

Of course not.  Your access to the site is provided without warranty.
:) Design your workflow accordingly.

If the software malfunctions it may be necessary to block it. It is
possible that it could get blocked as collateral damage in an attempt
to block a trouble maker. The site can go down. People can make
mistakes.

Increased understanding and awareness is justified, but that a tool is
automated is more justification to use blocking as an early remedy
rather than justification to avoid blocking it. After all, a
non-automated task can be almost instantly interrupted and corrected
with a polite talk page note. There is little point to warning
something that can't read. You shouldn't take offence at the blocking
of an automated process, it doesn't have the same significance as
blocking does against human accounts.

Generally when your bot is blocked the blocking actually saves you
work: Rather than finding yourself obligated to correct potentially
hundreds or thousands of problematic edits (often requiring the
creation of another automated task) you can usually just fix the
forward working behaviour and hand correct a couple problematic edits
that were made before the bot was stopped.