[Foundation-l] stewards and bot flagging

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthere wrote:

>Please see
>http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-October/032025.html
>
>Why could not bureaucrat set bot flags on their
>projects. 
>They know the rules better than any steward. Would not
>that make sense ?
>
Speaking as a bureaucrat who could end up with this awesome 
responsibility I admit that I favour a conservative approach to the use 
of bots and templates.  The templates are relatively easy to identify 
and deal with, but I often wonder about those bots quietly carrying on 
their job in the background.  There are probably also those bots that 
were set up a long time ago, and that should probably be deleted for 
lack of activity.  All bots should be periodically reviewed to see if we 
still need them. 

Bots are apparently now treated as some kind of special user in the user 
namespace, but I wonder whether they might be managed better if they had 
their own namespace.  Any existing bot could also be moved there.

Ec