Wookieepedia:Bots

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WP:BOT

The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. References or links to this page should not describe it as "policy".

**This is not a page to request a droid.**

This page contains information pertinent to running a droid *yourself*. To *request* that someone write a droid to do something, please see Wookieepedia:Bot requests instead.

**Bots**, also known as **droids**, are automatic processes interacting with a wiki. As Wookieepedia policy discourages the use of droids, please read the guidelines below before designing and implementing any droids on Wookieepedia.

We almost always prefer to rely on human input for editing, and only carefully designed droids are allowed. While droids are capable of doing a lot of work, they strain the system's ability to keep up, both technically and intellectually. Droids could be used to add to or generate articles, while others could be used to edit or even destroy articles: see the **types of bots** and **history of Wikipedia bots** pages on Wikipedia. Well-designed bots can provide concrete benefits to the Wookieepedia project, but even good bots have some drawbacks.

To see the benefits and drawbacks of using droids, refer to Wikipedia:Bots.

The exact terms of running droids are currently being elaborated. Please discuss the matter on the talk page.

## Current policy on running droids

Before running a droid, you must get approval on Wookieepedia talk:Bots. There, state precisely what the droid will do. Get a rough consensus on the talk page that agrees that creating said droid is a good idea. Wait a week to see if there are any objections, and if there are not, go ahead and run it for a short period so it can be monitored. After this period, you should ask that the user be marked as a droid at Wookieepedia talk:Bots. When naming your bot, please make sure that it does not look exactly like your username, and that a person can immediately determine that it is a droid.

When getting approval on the talk page, please state the following:

1. Whether the droid is manually assisted (run by a human) or automatic scheduled to run
2. The period, if any, we should expect it to run
3. What language or program it is running
4. The purpose of your droid
	* Why do you need it?
	* Is it important enough for the Wookieepedia to allow your droid?

Make certain to create a user page for your droid before getting approval on the droid talk page:

1. Describe the droid's purpose, language it uses, what program(s) it uses (Pywikipedia framework, etc)
2. Describe whether it is manually assisted or automatically scheduled to run
3. The period, if any, we should expect it to run
4. Describe who the maintainer is
5. Add the droid's user page to Category:Wookieepedia bots
6. Sysops are able to block droids, without hesitation if they are unapproved, doing something the operator did not say they would do, messing up articles, or editing too rapidly.
7. New droids should run without a bot flag so people can check what it's doing.
8. Until new droids are accepted as OK they should wait 30-60 seconds between edits. After being accepted and a wikia staff member has marked them as a droid, they should delay approximately 5-10 seconds between edits. It is *recommended* that droids run with larger delays during peak hours and peak days such as Monday. Ideally, droids should run on off-peak hours and on typically low traffic days such as Friday and Saturday to avoid strain on the database servers. Running during off-peak times *may* permit faster editing than suggested.
9. The operator should be at, or logged into, the machine the droid is running on to terminate it if necessary during the debugging phase, or the droid is liable to be blocked without notice.
10. If you are planning to use a "spider", recursive wget, or similar software to get a local copy of Wookieepedia, please download the database dumps instead.
11. Dynamic loading of Wookieepedia pages may also be unacceptable. Please see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.
12. Operators should separate their edits from their droids. This means that you should not be logged in as your droid replying to people. Questions or concerns can be addressed at a droid's talk page or the operator's talk page, but the one who is responsible for replying is the **operator**, *not* the **droid**.

The burden of proof is on the droid-maker to demonstrate the following:

1. The droid is **harmless**.
2. The droid is **useful**.
3. The droid is not a **server hog**.
4. The droid has been **approved**.

Note that according to Wikipedia:Categorization of people, certain types of person categories should not be filled/emptied using a droid. Before adding sensitive categories to articles by droid, the input should be manually checked article by article, rather than uploaded from an existing list in Wookieepedia.

In the assistance to prove the bot is **harmless** and **useful**, a trial period may be asked to demonstrate the droid. Complaints made about the droid during the trial period requires the droid to be immediately stopped, and the issue should be resolved at Wookieepedia talk:Bots. If the trial period passes with no problems, then a bot flag may be requested at m:requests for permissions.

If you **plan to make any modifications** to your droid, which expand the scope of its original purpose, please leave a note on the talk page regarding the nature of the change. This is to assert that no one has any problems with your droid, and such additions still make the bot **harmless**, **useful**, and not a **server hog**.

### Spell-checking droids

There should be no droids that attempt to fix spelling mistakes in an unattended fashion. It is not technically possible to create such a droid which would not make mistakes. Manually-assisted spell droids are perfectly acceptable, so long as they include international spellchecking and not US-only English spellchecking. Statistic generating spell-checking droids are also perfectly acceptable (droids that generate statistics on common misspellings).

Wookieepedia:Maintenance reports which list possible misspellings are welcome. See Wikipedia:Typo for existing efforts and a list of existing interactive spell-checking tools.

## Droids and recent changes

There have been general complaints about interference with normal contributor operations, esp. Special:RecentChanges.

In response to popular demand, a feature has been added to hide edits by registered droids from display in Recentchanges; see the list below for active droids. To include droid edits in RecentChanges, manually add hidebots=0 to your query string, or click "show bot edits" at the top of RecentChanges.

## Good form

Droid operators are encouraged, but not required to:

* Publish the source code of their droid (unless it's a clone)
* Program their droid 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.

## Currently running droids

This is a list of currently running droids. These are alternate accounts of actual users that have been flagged as bots.

* KillerRoboLeia3000 – random acts of ~~destruction~~ housekeeping.
* Dr. Ball, M.D. – random acts of maintenance.
* HotCat – adds and maintains interwiki links.
* RoboCade – whatever Cade Calrayn or other users need. Contact Cade if you want something done.
* AJTD6 – Daily, makes sure expired {{Verify}} tags get moved to the CSD category, archives old forum threads, and clears the sandbox. Also performs one-off tasks on request, and occasionally produces a category maintenance report.
* AL-BRT – redirect and category-related maintenance. Contact Exiledjedi with any requests for this bot.

## See also

* Wikipedia:Types of bots
* Wikipedia:History of Wikipedia bots
* Wikipedia:Wikibot
* Using the python wikipediabot