Bot
A bot is a robot designed for performin certain repetitive tasks on a wiki. Bots typically require permission tae be ane, an are occasionally uised bi negative editors (such as vandals) tae damage a wiki's content.
Local and global bots
On Wikimedia wikis, most bots are active on just one or a few wikis, and are subject to the approval of that wiki's community (see local bot policy). Approved bots are added to the local “Bots” user group. The list of all accounts which are bots on any particular wiki is shown at Special:ListUsers/bot.
Bots which can operate on every Wikimedia wiki may be approved as global bots (see global bot policy). Bots approved this way are added to the “Global bots” global user group. The list of them is shown at Special:GlobalUsers/global-bot.
Local and global bots alike are granted the “bot” user right (this is sometimes called a “bot flag”), which permits them higher rate limits for MediaWiki actions such as editing pages, and allows their edits to not show up in recent changes by default.
Additionally, they are both exempt from some rate limits used to slow down web scrapers running against Wikimedia sites (see Wikimedia robot policy). As these exemptions can only be applied to global groups, a “Local bots” global group exists, which is automatically synchronized with the local bot groups on every wiki.
Runnin yer ain bot
See Manual:Creating a bot on mediawiki.org for full instructions.
- Uisin the python wikipediabot
- Inglis Wikipedie bot policy
- Steward requests/Bot status — tae request an accoont be marked wi a bot flag (for wikis wioot ony active bureaucrat)
- Settin bot access — information for fowk runnin thair ain MediaWiki installation. Can be chynged at Special:UserRights
Miscellaneous bot pages
- Bot policy
- Lists of bots - whaur tae find bots uised bi Wikipedie an ither Wikimedie foondation bot faimilies.
- Vandalbot – advice on dealin wi malicious bots
- robots.txt — file which tells wab robots hou tae index yer steid.
- Rollback — includes instructions for uisin "bot rollback" tae hide vandalism frae recent chynges
- Botopedia internaitional project for generatin Wikipedie airticles frae statistical data.
Framewirks an interfaces for bot development
See mw:Manual:Creating a bot#Programming languages and libraries for lists.