[WikiEN-l] Proposal: increased bot edit rates on en:wp

[Parker Peters]

On 2/22/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/21/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Bots are problematic enough as is, we have any number that malfunction
> or
> > do
> > things based on an ill-considered script already.
> >
> > The faster you allow them to edit, the faster two bots could conceivably
> > get
> > into a war as well.
>
>
> I'd agree we should be careful about this -- bots have the potential to be
> very helpful, but rogue or malfunctioning bots likewise have a potential
> to
> do some pretty nasty damage. Not so much to pages; sure, it'll be a chore,
> but we can revert all of that easily enough. I'd be especially concerned
> about bots that deal with newer users, and how a buggy bot can influence
> their first experiences on the wiki.


That's one of my concerns, but I'm also concerned about what happens when
two bots start making the same change in slightly different ways; say
someone writes a bot to make all date codes uniform, for example, and
another bot starts thinking it's vandalizing something or it starts
"datecoding" things that are in external links?


Always good to watch the bots. Some of them have been going for some time
> with only a few problems, and could do more with more freedom to edit.
> Giving out this freedom blindly is probably bad, and I didn't see people
> proposing we should do that (I think) -- the bots we trust and know, and
> which could obviously benefit from the boost, though, not sure if I see
> the
> harm.


The potential harm is there... a bot with a specifically limited purpose is
fine, but even so, letting it run a bit slower doesn't hurt anything.


HagermanBot would be my specific example of a bot that doesn't need an
> artificial limit. Some people have suggested it should wait a little
> longer
> before signing (no idea where overall consensus on this is, just pointing
> out), but even "wait x seconds before signing" is just a delay for each
> edit, rather than a limit on the overall editing rate.


HagermanBot is a special case because its usage is overly specialized. It
still makes mistakes sometimes (such as when someone "signs" but then adds a
P.S. or something after, or manually signs rather than using tildes).

Having it wait X seconds before an edit - I'd suggest 60, to allow for time
for a user to realize, go back, sign it themselves, then make the bot
re-check - is a good thing.


Bots getting into edit wars? Merf. That'd be bad, but a responsible botop
> will avoid that problem with a few extra lines of code. It really wouldn't
> be too difficult.


That's relying on everyone to be "responsible" from the get-go; without a
limiter on bots, someone fixing a bot or tweaking code could easily goof up
and cause a major issue.

Long-term things like the interwiki bots arguing, that's a
> little trickier, but a high-speed end-of-the-world botwar isn't something
> I
> expect to see any time soon.
>
> Just my take, probably a bit of a ramble.
> -Luna


I agree it's not a high-high likelihood, but the danger it poses warrants
some serious consideration and conservativeness.

-- 
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com