[WikiEN-l] I want a bot too

Wed Sep 24 06:15:47 UTC 2003

--- John <Flockmeal at cox.net> wrote:
> There are certain things simply taken
> as 
> facts that should be included in the Wikipedia. To wait for someone
> to 
> enter all these things by hand would take forever. A bot can enter
> the 
> data much more quickly and with a constantly consistent format for
> easy 
> reading. Sure, someone should go back and look at all these bot
> entrys 
> to add more information they might have from personal experience
> but to 
> not let bots seed the 'pedia with factual stubs first would lessen 
> Wikipedia's content.

I agree that bots can serve a good purpose.

However, the problem I see is that they can insert a lot of trivial
information into the W. (For example, who needs the *exact* number of
residents in any particular town?)

I think bots can be used to do busywork (for this is why compter
programs (and computers) were created in the first place)) but that
they must mark their passage and make it easy to re-bot the info. For
example, they might segregate the botted info like <bot id="120">
some data in xhml or xml</bot>

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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