Open to suggestions for improved functionality

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The bot should be compelete and through approval in 1-2 weeks. Suggestions for functionality wanted in Version 1.00 are welcome. After the bot version 1.00 is live, suggestions for new functionality or improvement to output will be welcome also. - PocklingtonDan 16:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Why is PockBot a web spider? Isn't this against wikipedia policy?

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On the whole wikipedia asks users not to use web crawlers or web spiders for "large numbers of articles". This measure is of course arbitrary. However, I feel PockBot complies with this regulation in both spirit and detail:

  • PockBot warns users if they have chosen to run the bot at a bad time (times of heavy load for wikipedia) and advises them to run the bot at a quieter time instead.
  • The only alternative to provide this funcionality would be to download a 1.9GB (currently) copy of the database to my own server.
  • I don't have 1.9GB of webspace
  • PockBot would have to be run hundreds of times each day for the collective server load and bandwidth to be greater than the 1.9GB of downloading the entire database
  • PockBot complies with wikipedia policy for bots to only perform one read request per second. PockBot is set to not exceed this limit in its code. If necessary PockBot can be throttled back to only make one read request per 2 seconds, 5 seconds, or even per minute if necessary.

PocklingtonDan 13:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Function

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Would this effect PockBot's function if i have just changed the name of one of the stations it is yet to classify? Simply south 20:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Not at all, go ahead - PocklingtonDan 20:30, 11 December 2006 (UTC)