[Foundation-l] Fwd: [foundation-l] Bot policy on bots operating interwiki

Fri Sep 7 07:25:23 UTC 2007

Hi,

I would like to turn this also in a technical issue. Interwiki/Interlanguage
(there is a difference between interwiki and interlanguage, most people mean
interlanguage when talking about interwiki) organized as it is
(decentralized), is becoming more and more a problem, because:
* amount of edits needed, growing exponentially with growth of languages
* multiplying the mistakes (wrong interlanguages) through bot actions.
* bots are set to automatic, which means that only the easy interwiki's are
done. The difficult interwiki's, requiring handmade changes language
knowledge and investigations, are not done.

There is only one real solution imho: organize it centrally: which means
something like a central database hosted by commons.

Over the years there have been several proposals about that, also on this
list but until now it was apparently not seen as a huge problem. Maybe that
still is the case or maybe it is time to plan for a solution?

Talking about interlanguage some feature requests come into my mind:
* a possibility to limit the shown interwikis, set in the preferences
* a possibility to set the order of interwikis, also set in the preferences.

I would be interested in a comment from the devs if they see this as a
potential problem and if they would see some solutions to interlanguage.

Kind regards, Peter van Londen/Londenp

2007/9/7, teun spaans <teun.spaans op gmail.com>:
>
> interwiki bots occasionally need serious attention, interwiki bots spread
> interwiki links but not always in the right fashion. When one wiki has a
> link to the wrong article, interwiki bots tend to spread this errror to
> all
> wikis.
>
>
> On 9/6/07, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko op gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think we have a serious problem with this. When the interwiki bot
> issue
> > was last discussed there only was a handful of wikis. I think it is time
> > to
> > bring some attention to this.
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix displays quite a large
> > number of wikis (I was told this is around 700). Wikipedia alone has 253
> > language editions according to
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
> >
> > I was told only 60 of these 700ish wikis have an actual local bot policy
> > of
> > which most are just translations or mis-translations of en.wiki.
> >
> > Why is this a problem? Well, if a user decides to operate an interiwki
> bot
> > on all wikis. He or she (or it?) would have to make about 700 edits on
> the
> > individual wikis. Aside form the 60 most of these wikis do not even have
> a
> > bot request page IIRC. Those individual 700 edits would have to be
> listed
> > on
> > [[m:Requests for bot status]]. A steward will have to process these 700
> -
> > wikis with active bcrats. Thats just one person. As we are a growing
> > community, now imagine just 10 people who seek such interwiki bot
> > operation.
> > Thats a workload of 7000. Wikimedia is a growing community. There are
> far
> > more than 700 languages on earth - 7000 according to
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language#Native_language_learningthats
> > ultimately 7000 * (number of sister projects) wikis per individual bot.
> > With
> > the calculation of ten bots thats 70,000 requests.
> >
> > There are a couple of CPU demanding but mindless bot tasks. All these
> > tasks
> > are handled by the use of same code. Tasks that come to my mind are:
> >
> >    * Commons delinking
> >    * Double redirect fixes
> >    * Interwiki linking
> >    * Perhaps even anti-spam bots
> >
> >
> > Currently we already have people who make bot like alterations to
> > individual
> > such as mediawiki developers wikis without even considering the opinions
> > of
> > local wikis. I do not believe anyone finds this problematic. Also we
> elect
> > stewards from a central location. We do not ask the opinion of
> individual
> > wikis. Actions a steward has access to is vast but the permission they
> > have
> > is quite limited. So the concept of centralized decisions isn't a new
> > concept. If mediawiki is a very large family we should be able to make
> > certain decisions family wide.
> >
> > I think the process on bots operating inter-wiki should be simplified
> > fundamentally. Asking every wiki for permission may seem like the nice
> > thing
> > to do but it is a serious waste of time, both for the bot operator and
> for
> > the stewards as well as the local communities actually. There is no real
> > reason to repetitively approve "different" bots operating the same code.
> >
> > My suggestion for a solution to the problem is as follows:
> >
> > A foundation/meta bot policy should be drafted prompting a centralized
> bot
> > request for a number of very spesific tasks (not everything). All these
> > need
> > to be mindless activities such as interwiki linking or double redirect
> > fixing. The foundation will not be interfering with the "local" affairs,
> > but
> > instead regulating inter-wiki affairs. All policies on wikis with a bot
> > policy should be compatible or should be made compatible with this
> > foundation policy. Bot requests of this nature would be processed in
> meta
> > alone saving every one time. The idea fundamentally is "one nom per bot"
> > rather than "one nom per wiki" basically.
> >
> > If a bot breaks, it can simply be blocked. Else the community should not
> > have any problem with it. How much supervision do interwiki bots really
> > need
> > anyways?
> >
> > Perhaps an interface update is necessary allowing stewards to grant bot
> > flags in bulk rather than individually if this hasn't been implemented
> > already.
> >
> >
> >   - White Cat
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>