The sysadmin with whom I have been corresponding recommended that I post my
situation and query here. I should say that while I am not quite illiterate
technically, neither am I an expert.
I established, quite some months ago, a web site that has been operating as
a combination of Wikipedia articles and the corresponding dmoz links lists.
I have been punctilious in observing the terms of use of both
organizations. I have, however, now--after all these months--discovered
that I am apparently not using the resource itself in a preferred manner.
I have been fetching individual articles from the wikipedia site as
visitors request them (once fetched, they are given some php-based
processing, and the rest of the page built around them). Apparently that
is a no-no, owing, I am told, to the server load, especially from
searchbots that may follow out the pages.
I was, after some months of operation, suddenly hit with a 403 block; on
inquiry, I discovered the facts above. I then asked whether using instead
the Special:Export XML access would be an acceptable way of fetching
articles individually on demand. The sysadmin wrote that he felt it would,
but that I would be best to post here to see if others agree or disagree.
I realize that there is no easy way to convert the marked-up text to HTML,
but I am prepared to cobble up some php to essay the task--but, before
going to that nontrivial effort, I would like to be sure that I will not
again be blocked even if I am accessing individual articles via
Special:Export XML. (At present, I seem to be getting perhaps 20,000
visitors a day.)
This site is very important to me, and I need to act extremely quickly if
it is not all to just go down the drain, so please help me out here.