On 11/14/06, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Perform what exactly? The point of auto-expiry is that
the protecting
sysop would be able to set the term of protection. How would you
achieve the same flexibility with a simple bot? Not to mention that
deployment -- both in the Wikimedia family and outside -- would be
much easier if it is a regular MediaWiki feature.
Just mention the time in the protection log entry. No detectable time
mentioned, default to 1 week. Adjust the protection screen message to
describe the syntax.
A no frills implementation of this would only take about a half hour
from idea to tested completion, and wouldn't burden the mediawiki code
base with more code which we do not yet have solid evidence of
needing.
Later enhancements could include sophisticated features which we would
never expect in mediawiki proper... For example, it could contact the
top contributors or the protecting admin at the time of
unprotection... or auto-adapt the default unprotection log based on
the history of protection and edits.
Core developer and testing resources will only scale so far... so we
need to distribute tasks like this when we can and when it makes
sense.. and certainly when we don't even have proof that a feature is
really needed or when the solution just isn't well defined.
This is also why a bot API that does more than just facilitate editing
with external editors is quite important. :)