[Foundation-l] Fwd: [foundation-l] Bot policy on bots operating interwiki

[teun spaans]

interwiki bots occasionally need serious attention, interwiki bots spread
interwiki links but not always in the right fashion. When one wiki has a
link to the wrong article, interwiki bots tend to spread this errror to all
wikis.


On 9/6/07, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think we have a serious problem with this. When the interwiki bot issue
> was last discussed there only was a handful of wikis. I think it is time
> to
> bring some attention to this.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix displays quite a large
> number of wikis (I was told this is around 700). Wikipedia alone has 253
> language editions according to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
>
> I was told only 60 of these 700ish wikis have an actual local bot policy
> of
> which most are just translations or mis-translations of en.wiki.
>
> Why is this a problem? Well, if a user decides to operate an interiwki bot
> on all wikis. He or she (or it?) would have to make about 700 edits on the
> individual wikis. Aside form the 60 most of these wikis do not even have a
> bot request page IIRC. Those individual 700 edits would have to be listed
> on
> [[m:Requests for bot status]]. A steward will have to process these 700 -
> wikis with active bcrats. Thats just one person. As we are a growing
> community, now imagine just 10 people who seek such interwiki bot
> operation.
> Thats a workload of 7000. Wikimedia is a growing community. There are far
> more than 700 languages on earth - 7000 according to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language#Native_language_learningthats
> ultimately 7000 * (number of sister projects) wikis per individual bot.
> With
> the calculation of ten bots thats 70,000 requests.
>
> There are a couple of CPU demanding but mindless bot tasks. All these
> tasks
> are handled by the use of same code. Tasks that come to my mind are:
>
>    * Commons delinking
>    * Double redirect fixes
>    * Interwiki linking
>    * Perhaps even anti-spam bots
>
>
> Currently we already have people who make bot like alterations to
> individual
> such as mediawiki developers wikis without even considering the opinions
> of
> local wikis. I do not believe anyone finds this problematic. Also we elect
> stewards from a central location. We do not ask the opinion of individual
> wikis. Actions a steward has access to is vast but the permission they
> have
> is quite limited. So the concept of centralized decisions isn't a new
> concept. If mediawiki is a very large family we should be able to make
> certain decisions family wide.
>
> I think the process on bots operating inter-wiki should be simplified
> fundamentally. Asking every wiki for permission may seem like the nice
> thing
> to do but it is a serious waste of time, both for the bot operator and for
> the stewards as well as the local communities actually. There is no real
> reason to repetitively approve "different" bots operating the same code.
>
> My suggestion for a solution to the problem is as follows:
>
> A foundation/meta bot policy should be drafted prompting a centralized bot
> request for a number of very spesific tasks (not everything). All these
> need
> to be mindless activities such as interwiki linking or double redirect
> fixing. The foundation will not be interfering with the "local" affairs,
> but
> instead regulating inter-wiki affairs. All policies on wikis with a bot
> policy should be compatible or should be made compatible with this
> foundation policy. Bot requests of this nature would be processed in meta
> alone saving every one time. The idea fundamentally is "one nom per bot"
> rather than "one nom per wiki" basically.
>
> If a bot breaks, it can simply be blocked. Else the community should not
> have any problem with it. How much supervision do interwiki bots really
> need
> anyways?
>
> Perhaps an interface update is necessary allowing stewards to grant bot
> flags in bulk rather than individually if this hasn't been implemented
> already.
>
>
>   - White Cat
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