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

[White Cat]

Yes, but that has nothing to do with the "local approval" issue I mentioned.
Such a fix would require interwiki attention. And if there are no bots
operating on all wikis a fix on that would take a lot of time. All the
reason more we should have more interwiki bots operating on all wikis.

    - White Cat

On 9/7/07, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
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