[Toolserver-l] Interwiki-Bots

[Platonides]

Andre Engels wrote:
>> It just seems silly to run several interwiki-bots on the
>> toolserver, instead of cooperating to run one.
> 
> Still, there's the matter of what it means to 'cooperate to run one'.
> Would that mean that there's only a single interwiki bot process
> running? That can only work if it is fast enough to go through _all_
> pages on _all_ languages in a reasonable time. 

There may be several instances, but they would be the same bot.

> And even then you have
> only replaced the autonomous bots. Running with hints would be hard to
> get in; interactively running the bot would not be possible at all
> under such a scheme. 
That's a valid concern.


> I think better results could be reached by putting the emphasis on the
> "cooperating" part rather than the "running one" part. Get some
> database or such where the bots notify when they have either updated a
> page or found that it did not need updating, then have the bots
> (except when running with hints or such) request this database before
> doing interwiki on a page and skip it if its last notification was
> less than so-and-so-much time ago (for example one week).

Several cooperating instances of the same bot running from the
toolserver can do a lot of magic sharing information and using the
tables replicated at the toolserver.