2013/1/2 Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen(a)wikimedia.org>
He may have misspoke on the "we" part. However, for wikis with bot
approval processes (e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_Approvals_Group ), there is
tracking on what bots work on (due to the potentially disruptive nature
of an active bot on a large wiki).
Before generalizing it will be very useful to overview various wikis.
According to the interwikis, very few wikis have an explicit bot policy
like enwiki and even less have BAG. Definition of a bot may vary, too: in
the bot policy of enwiki only automatic processes are called bots, while in
other projects the so-called "assisted edits" may also qualify as botwork.
Enwiki!=Wikipedia.
A bot approval group could certainly encourage people to participate in
this dashboard. For the bot writer, all it should take is a HTTP POST
to the dashboard every few edits to check in (which could be a simple as
"350 edits for task XYZ in the last hour", in appropriate format).
This "all it should take" is not so trivial for everybody, and may
require
rewriting a plenty of running bots.
--
Bináris