Wikiversity:Bots

The page documents an official English Wikiversity policy with wide acceptance by participants as a standard you should follow. Please propose and discuss changes to ensure your revisions reflects consensus.

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Robots or bots are semi-automatic or automatic processes that interact with Wikiversity as though they were a human editor. They are used to manage systematic or boring tasks. Please read the guidelines below before designing and implementing any bot on Wikiversity.

Summary

Simply put, a bot is something that can do repetitive tasks in a predictable fashion, and it can be done in such a way as to be healthy for the community.

Expectations

The operation of a bot requires approval. Any user can submit a request at Wikiversity:Bots/Status to obtain bot status, which prevents cluttering recent changes. Bot status is given by Bureaucrats about seven days after the request has been made, provided there has been no objection to the request by another user. The decision lies with the bureaucrats.

The burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate that the bot:

• is harmless
• is useful
• is not a server hog
• has been approved

Bot operators must:

1. create a separate account for bot operation
2. indicate on their bot's user page:
   • which program / language is used (Pywikipedia, Ruby, javascript...)
   • who the owner is
3. discuss with other Wikiversity editors before running their bot. Any bot request has to reach consensus to be fulfilled.
4. log in with their own user account when talking to other users.

Bot operators should:

• choose a name containing the word "bot" so that editors realize they are dealing with an automaton

Bot operators may:

• run their bot without the bot status only during its request for approval and if asked so by another editor to check how the bot works. When testing, bot operators must delay 60 seconds between edits.

Bot operators are encouraged to:

• Release their bot's source code.
• Program their bot to stop editing if someone leaves a message on its talk page. This can be checked by looking for the "You have new messages..." banner in the HTML for the edit form.
• Program their bot to stop editing if they detect that they have logged out. This can be checked by looking for bot's name in the HTML for the edit form. If the bot is not logged in, then the bot's name won't be listed in the HTML. Bots running anonymously may be blocked.

Edit rate guidelines

Bots running without a bot flag should edit at intervals of over 1 minute. Once they have been authorised and appropriately flagged, they should operate at an absolute minimum interval of 5 seconds (12 edits per minute). Bots should try to avoid running during the busiest hours, as they rapidly use server resources that should be reserved for human readers and editors. During these hours, they should operate at intervals of 20 seconds (3 edits per minute) to conserve resources.

Bots' editing speeds can be automatically adjusted based on server load (slave database server lag) by appending an extra parameter to the query string of each requested URL; see mw:Manual:Maxlag parameter.

Bot functionalities

Although a bot can be assigned a sysop flag, these requests are discouraged.

Currently flagged bots

Name of the bot	Contributions	Operator	Functions
User:AdambroBot	Contribs	Adambro	Re-categorisation, other similar maintenance tasks as required
User:ArchiveBot	Contribs	Sebmol	automatic archiving
User:ArthurBot	Contribs	Mercy	adding/correcting interwiki links
User:CommonsDelinker	Contribs	Siebrand	prevention of broken image links
User:Crochet.david.bot	Contribs	Crochet.david	interwiki links
User:DraiconeBot	Contribs	Draicone	Simplify common tasks, fetch data, update counts, remove categories etc.
User:AvocatoBot	Contribs	Avocato	interwiki links
User:HagermanBot	Contribs	Hagerman	Adds {{unsigned}} to unsigned posts automatically.
User:JackBot	Contribs	JackPotte	Double redirects
User:MediaWiki default	Contribs	MediaWiki default	setup edits in MediaWiki: namespace
User:MichaelBillingtonBot	Contribs	MichaelBillington	open proxy project
User:MichaelFreyTool	Contribs	MichaelFrey	simple cleanup task, like resolve redirects
User:Mike's bot account	Contribs	Mike.lifeguard	Many things; mostly manipulation of templates. Other tasks by request.
User:Mu301Bot	Contribs	Mu301	maintenance tasks
User:RussBot	Contribs	R'n'B	double redirects
User:Sebbot	Contribs	Sebmol	Recategorization, search-and-replace, link updates, general fixes.
User:Wherebot	Contribs	Where	Detecting copyright violation.
User:タチコマ robot	Contribs	White Cat	Interwiki linking, double redirect fixing, commons delinking

The manually updated list above may not be current. You can also check the bots group user list which is complete.

The bot status log contains older entries of granting bot status. Newer entries will appear in the user rights log.

Request help from a bot

Please see Wikiversity:Bots/Requests

Requests for bot status

Please see Wikiversity:Bots/Status

See also

• Wikimedia Bot policy

Official policies

Assume Good Faith - Be bold - Bots - Civility - Community Review - Exemption Doctrine Policy - Privacy Policy - Privacy Policy (Meta) - Reliable sources - Research guidelines - Rollback - Verifiability - What is Wikiversity

Proposed policies

Academic freedom - Blocking policy - Bureaucratship - Chat channel policy - CheckUser policy - Child protection policy - Cite sources - Course Titles and Numbers - Course protection policy - Deletions - Disclosures - External links - Make no assumptions - Manual of Style - Naming conventions - Network naming conventions - Original research - Page protection templates - Polls - Respect people - Productive Forking and Tailoring is Encouraged - Real world schools - Scholarly ethics - Subpages - Username - User page - Vandalism - What Wikiversity is not - Catalyst