[Wikipedia-l] The dangers of bots, and robustness of the system

Wed Mar 19 06:21:13 UTC 2003

Yet another reason why bots should always be cleared: the bot
from 12.246.100.201 that stomped on about 30 pages just now was me.
Even well-intentioned bots can cause significant damage if not
treated with care. This one was my Wiki software test suite, which
was supposed to be testing a new installation of the software on a
machine on my local LAN, not the live Wiki.

Anyway, another observation: after stopping it, I came to fix
the damage, and _I couldn't edit fast enough to catch up to the
other Wikipedians who had already reverted all my damage_.
It's nice to know the system is robust enough to recover from
damage done even by its own developers. :-)

-- 
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC