[WikiEN-l] New bot up for RFA

[Luna]

On 1/8/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> If the bot starts doing things out of spec I don't think we will need
> the code to know that. No the paranoid arugment fails.
>


My thought exactly -- the bot is intended for one very narrow task, and if
it does anything malicious or outside of that, it seems easy enough to spot.
I can respect the opinions of those wanting open source code, it seems like
an important discussion to have, but I'm not sure that freely open source is
needed; "half-open" might be preferred, if anything. There's a longshot
difference between giving the code to 20 or even 200 people, and giving it
to the entire internet.

But all else aside, RfAs like this are tricky, because it mixes all sorts of
concerns and issues. In addition to the usual pressures of RfA, we have a
large number of people trying to write out the beginnings of an adminbotting
policy on the fly; such a policy doesn't make too much sense, before we have
any adminbots, but getting an adminbot through will be difficult until
there's some consensus as to the exact requirements, guidelines, and such
involved.

Security concerns, trust concerns, accountability concerns, those who don't
want adminbots at all, those who don't want this particular adminbot, all
sorts of opinions. Very complex discussion.

Tally was 146/28/9, last I checked, but it's got a lot longer to go before
the discussion closes. The more community input, the better, I think.

-Luna