StrategyWiki talk:Guide/Bots

I have a few questions on this topic. First, what exactly is a bot? How is one created and operated? 0-172 ^{Talk to me} 1:48, 10 February 2007 (CST)

WP:Wikipedia:Bot_policy. -- Prod (Talk) 20:05, 9 February 2007 (CST)

Incomplete listing

The current list seems to be missing:

• User:File Upload Bot (Kernigh)
• User:Garrbot
• User:HAL (bot)

Didn't just want to outright add these in, but they appear to have been forgotten to be added to the list. :) --Charitwo^Talk 11:40, 7 October 2007 (CDT)

Wording change

I propose that we change the wording on the bot policy from "not request pages from StrategyWiki more than once every 10 seconds." to "not perform edits or other actions that modify the database more than once every 10 seconds." and "not request pages from StrategyWiki more than once every 2 seconds." This would allow bots that need to fetch multiple pages for statistical reasons (for example, to see how many pages contain broken links) the ability to work faster, while still restricting editing and moving to a sane number that won't break the database. --Skizzerz 17:25, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

The values seem arbitrary to me, but I assume that the AWB and Wiki botting community has come up with the 10 second rule. For us, I think we should be using generous numbers, as traffic variance has affected the site in the past. I don't mind changing it, but whoever is confident at running bots should be taking notes on their performance and SW's performance so we can revise this document. --Notmyhandle (talk • contribs) 23:55, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It would help to explain what kind of bot you're talking about. I know on AWB I can go much faster than 10 seconds per edit, and faster by hand as well, if it's a simple copy/paste change (like on category fixes). I'm assuming the bots this is meant for are the unattended ones that are doing purely automated tasks, where user boredom isn't an issue. For jobs done with AWB, the user is supposed to be there ensuring accurate edits before clicking the save button, so I'm not sure if you want this type of bot activity included in the database modification limit. — najzere^T 17:54, 31 August 2009 (UTC)