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

[White Cat]

I think it is beyond silly to demand people to make over 700 individual
human edits just so they can run an interwiki bot. It takes well over weeks
if not months of work to file all the requests. All these bots operate the
same code. I still need to see one logical explanation why communities
needto "approve" a spesific script repetitively. Bot A and B makes
identical
edits since they run the same code.

No I cannot write a script. Fundamentally bots are what you call, a
"script". What you suggest is the use of an unauthorized bot, something
exclusively banned. I can't believe you are even suggesting it.

If the local community is unhappy with a bot they can simply block it or ask
on meta to be removed from wikis that support interwiki bots. If the local
wiki does not have a single admin they they are not truly ready for a bot
request discussion. The bot's would make rare appearances in such wikis with
their article count anyways.

Wikipedia/Wikimedia isn't a democracy. If devs are allowed to "force"
software upgrades down the local communities throats, I truly do not see why
interwiki bot operators are not allwed to do the same.

    - White Cat

On 9/8/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think that above situations have described perfectly that bots are not
> perfect :) And although I think that the advantages outweight the
> disadvantages, that doesn't mean that every community (with 0-bizillioin
> members) agrees to that conclusion. I think that it is of the uttermost
> importance that communities are independant, and are at least able to
> protest to another new bot user. I know this is a pain in the ass, I know
> this means more work to you guys, and I know that you don't like this. But
> when determining this kind of things, I think that you should not only
> look
> from the point of view of the bot owner, but even more to the pov of the
> community (yes, even is there is only half a person there). Put the
> request
> on the appropriate page (that is either a bot request page either some
> much
> visited community page or even possibly the talk:Main_Page in the extreme
> case) and give those folks the ability to protest to the new bots. if they
> don't want them, well, it's their wiki, their choise. If that is because
> of
> wrong information, well, either inform them well, either leave it there. I
> think it is totally wrong if stewards are forcing bots up their throat.
>
> And btw, I am confident that you are able to write some script to make
> that
> making the requests somewhat easier in the first place... For the stewards
> it makes no difference btw, because we have to grant hte rights seperately
> anyways...
>
> Effeietsanders
>
> 2007/9/8, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com>:
> >
> > Yes, whats breaking the bot is human error. and as a fellow
> interwiki-bot
> > operator I think it would be of great help if we were given some slack
> on
> > bot flag bureaucracy. You could just use the bot to fix the bad
> > interwikilink rather than fixing them manually. The policy would not
> solve
> > everything but would be a good step in the right direction.
> >
> >       - White Cat
> >
> > On 9/7/07, Tuvic <tuvic.tuvic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Indeed, that's right. Just remember that interwiki-bots just spread
> > > the bad link, they don't make it: it are human users who make the bad
> > > link.
> > >
> > > It happened to me on several occasions: I had just spend 20 minutes to
> > > untangle an web of interwiki-linked articles, and some user just puts
> > > a bad link back, because he/she thinks that the link should be there.
> > > Very annoying, and not always revertable: after all, I'm just an
> > > interwiki-bot-operator, while it's their home wiki most of the time.
> > >
> > > So, not all problems would be avoided when having a general bot
> policy.
> > >
> > > Greetings, Tuvic
> > >
> > > 2007/9/7, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com>:
> > > > Bots aren't sentient so they can act stupidly. There are situations
> > > where
> > > > you have a bad interwiki link. Unless that is removed from every
> > single
> > > > instance where it forms a chain it will eventually return to the
> list
> > > (which
> > > > makes sense, the bots think the wrong link as a new member to the
> > > chain).
> > > > However if all interwiki bots were able to operate on all wikis such
> > > > problems could be very easily avoided.
> > > >
> > > >    - White Cat
> > > >
> > >
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