Rowan Collins wrote:
I know there's been an absolute ton of discussion about metadata, key-value pairs, etc, but I wonder if it's not worth going for a fairly simple system of having a "metadata" text-box which is actually a magic interface to special fields in the DB - the user edits special markup like they do now (for translations, categories, etc), but it's parsed at save and not actually stored as text (except perhaps in some kind of cache if necessary). That way, a lot of 'bots' could be integrated and operate at the DB level, rather than sitting outside the software and pretending to be users.
Someone (was it me?) once proposed this two-step plan: 1. Take meta info out of the text on save and store it in special db fields, then paste it back at the end of the page on the next edit. 2. Once this works, split the edit box in two - one for article, one for meta data. Acceptance is everything here :-)
But I guess that's all just a pipe-dream, and there are plenty of things it doesn't solve. Maybe it would be better just to produce a special bot-friendly interface, instead (limitable to registered bot accounts); one that doesn't have to wait for and parse HTML responses, thus slowing down both it and the website...
How about editing like "...?title=xyz&action=edit&mode=bot"? That could remove the framework, and return a blank page with either "OK" or "EDIT_CONFLICT" after saving, thus letting the bot know what happened.
I'll shut up now.
No, please, by all means, stay with it :-)
Magnus