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A wiki '''bot''' is a software program that interacts with a [[wiki]] as if it was a real human editor; the most common case is editing wiki pages. It typically must be coded very specifically to a [[content management system]], e.g. [[wiki code]], so it is not usually possible to simply use a generic bot against a new wiki. For instance, a '''Mediawiki bot''' is specific to [[MediaWiki]] (and possibly [[GetWiki]], which is largely compatible). | A wiki '''bot''' is a software program that interacts with a [[wiki]] as if it was a real human editor; the most common case is editing wiki pages. It typically must be coded very specifically to a [[content management system]], e.g. [[wiki code]], so it is not usually possible to simply use a generic bot against a new wiki. For instance, a '''Mediawiki bot''' is specific to [[MediaWiki]] (and possibly [[GetWiki]], which is largely compatible). | ||
Harmless and approved wiki bots have been employed on [[Wikipedia]] and other [[large public wiki]]s, mainly for maintainance and data-importing tasks. See e.g. [[w:Wikipedia:History of Wikipedia bots]]. | |||
It was a Wikipedia policy at some point that bot code should be kept secret [http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-March/003250.html]. As of 2004, there is at least one publicly available "Wikipedia robot framework" [http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/]. | It was a Wikipedia policy at some point that bot code should be kept secret [http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-March/003250.html]. As of 2004, there is at least one publicly available "Wikipedia robot framework" [http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/]. | ||
A '''vandalbot''' is a malicious wiki bot that acts like a human [[vandal]], to [[blank]], [[revert]] or [[garble]] page titles and content. Vandalbots may cause [[denial of service attack|denial of service]] and heavy server load. | A '''vandalbot''' is a malicious wiki bot that acts like a human [[vandal]], to [[blank]], [[revert]] or [[garble]] page titles and content. Vandalbots may cause [[denial of service attack|denial of service]] and heavy server load. | ||