--- On Thu, 5/29/08, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
From: White Cat
<wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Bot policy for all wikis
To: birgitte_sb(a)yahoo.com, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Thursday, May 29, 2008, 1:35 PM
There is no reason to panic. Just because a bot gets a
technical bot flag
does not mean we bot operators will go out of our way to
wreck projects. We
are reasonable people. A note on the global bot fag request
page or a
general "global bot noticeboard page" can do
wonders in such a case.
As for the problems experienced on wikisource, they are not
technical ones.
The problems there are purely cultural and often
consequences of centuries
old disputes (such as the bible case). This however is not
the time and
place to discuss that.
I don' know why you read "panic" in my message, but it is not how I am
feeling about this.
You are incorrect about the problems being "cultural". Unless you understand
the fact that there are commonly multiple translations of a work in a single language
while the interwiki system only allows 1:1 links to be cultural. Personally I think the
developers will someday work out a technical solution to this problem, but for now we need
to avoid running the script built for Wikipedia on Wikisources.
I don't understand why an "interwiki" bot, whose script should not be
running on a Wikisource should be given a flag to operate there. While I do fully believe
bot operators will not go out of their way to wreck projects, I don't see any reason
to give such an easy opportunity for unintentional harm to be done.
Birgitte SB