Hello all,
since the begin of 2011 the number of new interwiki-bots is slow down because
of a change in the approval-policy. So step 1 of the improvment of the
interwiki-bots-situation is done.
The next step (I call it "step 2") I would like to discuss with you is the
following:
*Creation of a multi-maintaincer-project (MMP),
*Creation of a database for this MMP,
*Adding of all new interwiki-bots after 1. February,
*Adding of all old interwiki-bots until 1. May.
The idea behind this is that all interwiki-bots have a common database to
access at the end. That should help to avoid a common problem with interwiki-
bots: They don't know about each other.
I quite often find discussions about the following problem in the wiki-
projects:
"I read the article de:foo 2 weeks ago and found that it has a interwiki-link
to en:foo in it – but this was wrong so I corrected it to en:bar. Last week I
found that a bot deleted en:bar and put en:foo back – and that is still wrong
and I corrected it back. I also contacted the bot-owner. Today I found that
ANOTHER bot removed en:bar AGAIN and put en:foo back – and it is STILL wrong!!
I don't like to speak with every bot-owner and corrected 200 wikimedia-
projects!"
If all interwiki-bots would have a common database, this problem would vanish
very soon I guess (at least for the toolserver-interwiki-bots, but non-
toolserver-interwiki-bots are not our business and the wikimedia-project
should handle that problem). Just having a table with "wrong" interwiki-links.
What step 2 is NOT:
-All interwiki-bots will run from the MMP,
-There is only 1 interwiki-bot for everything.
Every bot will still run from the account (ts-account AND wikimedia-project-
account) of its owner and in his/her responsibility. But the owner (and the
bot) will have access to the common-database of the MMP, which he/she can use
to improve his/her bot.
I'm sure that the pywikipedia-bot-developer (and the other bot-framework-
developer) will support this sooner or later too.
I would like to read feedback about step 2 from you (if there is no feedback,
I will proceed ;-) )
Sincerly,
DaB.
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