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Fanhistory.com:Bots

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“ A "bot" is a computer-controlled process that interacts with and edits the wiki, much like human users do, but in an automated fashion, typically in order to perform repetitive editing tasks. A bot's editing happens much faster, and can easily flood the Special:Recentchanges page. A bot that runs amok could badly damage the wiki. For these reasons, bot usage is regulated. A new bot must be approved by the community, and should be run under a separate account, which should have the "bot flag" set. This flag enables users to hide the bot's edits from Recent Changes. „

— Wiktionary:Bots , http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Bots


Contents

Policy

Fan History's bot policy is largely based on up Wiktionary's bot policy.

Fan History Wiki requires that bots be approved in advance by an administrator. This approval is for three reasons:

  1. That the bot will add to the wiki by adding or improving existing content;
  2. That the bot functions properly and will not interfere with normal processes for the wiki; and
  3. To insure that there is some one behind a bot who can be held accountable.

There are several facets of point 2. Fan History expects that a bot owner will run a bot carefully so that it does not run amok. We expect that a bot owner will clean up after the bot if it does run amok or if it has made edits which administrators feel were unwarranted.

Because a bot can make so many difficult-to-undo changes in such a short time, it is important to be far more cautious when running a bot to perform edits than it is when performing ordinary edits manually. When you request permission to run a bot, you are effectively making several promises:

  1. I will use the bot to perform only such edits as I would, in good conscience, perform manually myself, except that they would take too much time;
  2. I will seek approval from a Fan History administrator for a bot to accomplish certain tasks before I make more than 50 edits with a test version of the bot;
  3. I will stop the bot at once if any objections are raised by administrators to a task it's performing, and not restart it until an administrator has cleared it;
  4. I will un-do (perhaps with the same or another bot) any and all damage inadvertently caused by my bot, and any edits which an administrator decides were unwanted.

Please be sure you are willing to work with administrators, and to undo changes performed by your bot if necessary, before embarking on a plan to set up a new bot.

Process

If you think you have a task likely to be done much more easily by a bot, try using the python wikipediabot under your own account and see if it helps. Only if you've made sure that it will significantly help getting the task done, create an additional account for your bot tasks. The bot account's name should contain an indication of the kind of tasks the bot will be performing. Create links from the bot account's user page to your own user page, and preferably vice versa as well. Then, do a test run (under the bot account) on some 10-50 entries until you're certain everything goes well. If the edits are minor (as most bot-performed tasks should be), please mark the edits as minor so that they do not swamp the Recent Changes list.

If all goes well, post a request for bot status on Bots or e-mail laura[@]fanhistory[.]com. Clearly state:

  1. Your user name,
  2. The proposed bot user name,
  3. The bot software you'll be using, with pointers to its source and documentation if it's not standard, and
  4. An indication of the task or tasks you'll be performing with the bot.

Bots will be approved based on an administrator determination as to how they will improve the wiki and trust that the bot maintainer will behave responsibly. Please be as specific as possible in your indication of the task(s) which the bot will be performing. You will be notified either via e-mail, on Fanhistory.com talk:Bots or your talk page if your bot has been approved.

Technical advice

Commonly accepted 'bot functions from pywikipediabot:

  • pagesfromfile.py
  • redirect.py
  • interwiki.py
  • replace.py
  • template.py
  • category.py

Sample user-config.py file: 

mylang='en'
family='fanhistory'
usernames['fanhistory']['en']='SpellCheckBot'
console_encoding = 'utf-8'

Remember that a well-run bot is careful to:

  • limit its edits to a rate of one or just a few per minute;
  • slow or stop its editing if it receives a Fan History server overload page; and
  • stop its editing if it is blocked by an administrator.

Bots requested

Generally, people are not paid for creating bots that do clean up tasks on Fan History. For more advanced bots which create large numbers of pages or regularly add statistical data to Fan History, we are willing to negotiate some sort of payment for such a bot. This generally is conditional the bot being run based on a pywikipedia script from our server so that we can start and stop it on our own. We also require that the person being paid for the work be willing to support the bot for at least one month. To give an idea of bots that meet those conditions, the following are bots that we have commissioned:

If you are interested in creating a bot on commission, please e-mail laura[@]fanhistory[.]com with a proposed bot based on our existing bots or ask what bots we may be willing to pay for at this time.

Current accounts with the bot flag

Active bots

Inactive bots

Retrieved from "http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Fanhistory.com:Bots"
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