I don't believe that users would actually use it if this permission was so hard to obtain as bot flag is (on english wiki). If there was such a huge complex bureaucratic process for this, most of users would just keep doing semi-automated edits as regular edits. The summary of differences between flags:
* Bot edits are usually more trusted and are evaluated and reviewed by different people. That means bot edits can be safely ignored by most of users. This wouldn't really apply for semi-automated edits made by users. They are still humans and they make mistakes, they should be reviewed by admins, other users etc at some point. But most of regular users can safely ignore them. * Bot flags is hard to obtain, usually a matter of weeks. "Tool flag" shouldn't be any harder than getting rollback permissions. * Bot flag applies for all edits, tool flag should be used only for some edits. * Bots are robots (non-thinking processes) that work fully automatically. Tool edits would be made by people. There is a difference between these 2 BUT should this difference be visible? (this is actually a question) In case that there is no need to differentiate between bot edits and automated edits made by users, let's rename "bot" to "automated edit" in bot flag (and rename whole bot flag) using different letter (b -> a) and let's make it possible for trusted users to flag their edits as "automated edit" even without requirement to be in "bot group". Eg. bots would still have higher API limits, regular users not, but both trusted and bots could mark their edits as "automated". IMHO I don't think we need to be make a distinction between bots and people. Bots should have "bot" in their username which makes it simple to see if edit was made by robot or human and in both cases the edits are automated. On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 11:23 AM, Bináris <wikipo...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2015-02-11 14:02 GMT+01:00 Ricordisamoa <ricordisa...@openmailbox.org>: > >> Keep in mind that it isn't always easy to tell 'tool' and 'bot' edits >> apart. Several scripts can perform actions whose degree of automation >> varies widely. >> For my part, I make most of my semi-automated edits using my bot's >> account, but many users also have separate 'flood' accounts for use with >> Wikidata Game <https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/> and similar >> tools. >> > > Definitely this is the point. In enwiki's environment the word "bot" is > usually meant as a fully automated tool, while other communities treat it > differently. Let's see a major utility of Pywikibot, replace.py. This is > equally prepared for automatic and semiautomatic mode, and some tasks may > be solved automatically, while others -- above all spelling corrections -- > manually. This still means a very high speed rate of editing but it is > human-controlled. > If I use it in manual mode, it is a tool, and when I see it working well, > and at a given point I choose "a" (replace all) instead of "y" (yes, > replace actual occurance), it suddenly becomes a bot? > > I think these tool-assisted edits like AWB are essentially bot edits with > human contribution: high speed, huge amount of edits in a short time that > may be misused before anybody notices. Either they flood recent changes or > if they are hidden, they are very hard to notice in case of a mistake and > even harder to undo. Therefore the right of using AWB is equal to the right > of using PWB and should require a highly trusted user in my opinion. > > That does not mean I am against a new group (which still means that every > community may use or not use it); that means I don't see any important > difference between "bot" and "tool" account. > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
