Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-25356303-20180124194156

Hi all, Atvelonis here. I'm here today with a quick proposal on the permissions needed to operate a bot account on the wiki. As you may or may not be aware, Flightmare and I currently operate two active bots for various editing or logging purposes: KINMUNE and AkulakhanBot. In order to edit protected pages, these accounts are given the "Content Moderator" usergroup, which we decided not to use for humans.

It is important to remember that the content moderator flag has the ability to protect and delete articles and files, and bots can edit pages very swiftly in general. Traditionally, to protect against bot abuse, administrators on the wiki have had exclusive access to bots, and have followed a vaguely-defined rule barring non-sysops from using their own (recently codified). For reference, here is our entire policy on bots at this time:

''Bots carry out tasks when instructed by their operators to do so. These tasks are generally very repetitive, and would normally not be done, due to their tedious nature. Only sysops and bureaucrats are permitted to use bot accounts to edit on the wiki, although anyone can use AutoWikiBrowser to simply locate pages fitting certain parameters.

Today, I would like to propose that we revise our policy on bot usage somewhat to suit the growing need for maintenance work as the wiki grows in size and complexity. If you glance through the contributions of AkulakhanBot, for instance, you'll see that he's made almost 58,000 automatic or semi-automatic edits since May 2017, and his task list is ever-growing.

It's clear, therefore, that something needs to be done. Perhaps another administrator could learn how to use AutoWikiBrowser or PyWikiBot; alternatively, if none have the time, we could promote another patroller to sysop just for this job. However, that's really just a short-term fix to a much wider problem.

Instead, the best way forward may be to scrap the "sysop-only" rule for bot operation and create a set of prerequisites for any trustworthy and competent user to become a bot operator.

If we set up an application process comparable to that of any other staff position, it will also give the community a chance to ratify bot operation requests. Now, what I'm not sure about is exactly what sort of prerequisites should exist in order to qualify for bot usage. Staff experience (here or elsewhere)? Previous bot experience, somewhere or other? A certain number of edits? A PhD in computer science? I'd love to hear your feedback!

Please do not vote at this time: this thread is for discussion only. Thanks. 