Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Project Rastko bot

The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

[edit] Project Rastko bot

We intend to use the bot for our various projects on Wikipedia which are tedious to do manually. The first project will be upload of articles on municipalities in Serbia. Project Rastko bot 15:45, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

We're not sure whether the user or the bot should sign the request, so we're doing both. Project Rastko 19:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Upload from where? How will it parse those pages? Will it just be monitored or will each page creation have to be confirmed?Voice-of-All 22:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Second, where are these articles coming from, how many are there? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

The articles are automatically generated from the data from the Statistical Office of Serbia. The pages will be reviewed after they are made, and the bot will be monitored while uploading them. Serbia has 105 municipalities, so there will be as much articles. Project Rastko 22:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• Alpha test-10 articles only approved, post the difs here and (link to this page in their edit summaries) when done. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Mini trial still approved, but is this operator a PERSON or a GROUP OF EDITORS? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:27, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Who is this and where is the source of the uploads. The source is free I am taking it? Oh, and is the operator a person or a group? —— Eagle (ask me for help) 03:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I will start uploading as soon as some discussion regarding the articles is finished on Serbian Wikipedia. The account is controlled by one person at a time, but, say, some years from now it might be someone else... Project Rastko 22:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

That Might be a problem, when we authorize a bot we consider the operator, but you say that in gthe future the control may change that will be a problem.Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 16:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

This does get into a grey area. We approve accounts to run, we don't strictly approve people, because we can't. If my wife used my Wikipedia bot account to do whatever approved task, no one would know. Of course the spirit of the whole thing would suggest that you don't do that, but it is still possible. But I'd like some clarification on this issue before I approve. Since we'll be approving the task, it shouldn't be hard to approve other users doing the same task in the future anyway. -- RM 03:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me update my previous point. The official policy Wikipedia:Sock puppetry forbids "role accounts", that is, those with multiple users to a single account. If your account is to be used my multiple people, then it is likely to be blocked. DO NOT DO THIS. I won't approve this bot under the current assumption of more than one user, as this violates policy. -- RM 12:26, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have a couple of things to say:

1. I reviewed several articles about Serbian municipalities further, and found that various articles are written to various levels; so that it would be better to expand them manually than to use the bot. So, consider this request withdrawn.
2. The account does represent an organisation, but is always operated by a single person at any given time. In some years it might be someone else, but currently it's one and the same person. It will never be the case that one operator would lend the account to someone else for five minutes, which could cause the troubles you are referring to. Project Rastko 21:58, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Withdrawn by operator. -- RM 12:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.