[Foundation-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Bot policy for all wikis

[mike.lifeguard]

Wikibooks has the same problem - interwiki linking is rather more
complicated for the non-Wikipedia project. I think it would be acceptable to
give a global bot flag BUT bots are only to work where approved (ie not on
Wikibooks unless you ask first; not on Wikisource if you ask first). This
allows stewards to not waste time flagging a bot on all Wikipedias (use the
global flag) but the bot should then only work on Wikipedias (unless it is
allowed to work on the other families).
However, thoughts on this may differ. I know many don't agree that
people/bots are able to /not/ use rights they have, but that's just not
true. Just because a bot is globally flagged as such doesn't mean it must
work on all wikis - it is quite easy to restrict it to only one family.

Mike.lifeguard


-----Original Message-----
From: Birgitte SB [mailto:birgitte_sb at yahoo.com] 
Sent: May 29, 2008 3:23 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Bot policy for all wikis




--- On Wed, 5/28/08, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Bot policy for all wikis
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 10:51 PM
> On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 11:50 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter
> <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:
> > We do have a bot policy:
> >
> > [[:meta:Bot policy]]
> >
> > It is implemented in all small wikipedias I am active.
> Bot owners (in
> > theory) leave a request at a special bot page, if
> there are no objections
> > within a reasonable time (a week or so), the steward
> grants the bot
> > status. Once I had to report on meta and actually ask
> stewards to grant
> > the bot flag for some of the old requests on os.wp.
> >
> > You may be sure the small wikis suffer much more when
> a bot can not get
> > the status since the list of recent changes becomes
> unusable - this is for
> > instance what is right now happening with the newly
> created wikis.
> 
> This is one of the most problematic issues: Asking for bot
> flag on
> ~250 projects is really painful. There should be one place
> for asking
> the bot flag for interwiki bots.
> 
>

Please no global flag for interwiki bots.  An all Wikipedia flag would be
fine but not a global one.  Interwiki's to not work in a strait forward
fashion on Wikisource and bots using the code that works on Wikipedias
create a big mess on Wikisource.  Interwikis bots will probably only be able
to be work properly off of a "white-list" on Wikisources.  These white-list
have not yet been made so for right now interwikis need to be done by hand.
Please do not authorize any bots to do this task on Wikisources. 


Birgitte SB

Birgitte SB