Why the bot is adding the wrong links again & again?
- Well, inter-wiki bots cannot judge whether the links are right are wrong, they only judge whether the links are properly on a page or not. So, if the problem is, that you found wrong inter-wiki links on page(s) added by bot, then most probably it is not the bot's fault. That is because someone added wrong inter-wiki on any of the linked articles. The bot just followed that link (maybe you've already seen that other bots were doing the same). The best solution to get rid of this problem is to use
{{nobots}}in all of the linked articles, so no inter-wiki bot will edit those pages. Then fix the wrong links from all articles, and afterwards remove that tag from all articles as well. Alternatively, you can put the bad inter-wiki within HTML comment tag<!-- -->(like,<!-- [[de:Foo]] -->). Everything will be fine.
{{nobots}}is more like a mark. Like you and me, bots read the pages as well, and If bots find{{nobots}}tag in any page, it will skip that page and will not edit. If your wiki does not have this template, then you can simply create one and save the page with nothing in it.
- Why the bot is warring with other bots or users?
- Sometime you may see that bots are adding, removing, or modifying inter-wiki links so fast. It may not be a bot war or edit war. The scenario can be like, an article was created on a wiki, and inter-wiki links were added to another wiki page by a bot, then the that article was moved, so the bot updated to the new link. Later an admin deleted that article, so bot removed the link(s) from all of the linked pages. Maybe that article has re-created sometime later. so bot added inter-wiki link(s) again. That's it. It's just impact of their rush updating, nothing else. No war. :)
- However, it can be a bot war or edit war, and if you find this adding, removing, or modifying as wrong, then see the answer of the fist question, and use
{{nobots}}in involved page(s) or put the bad inter-wiki in comment tag.
- Can this bot be configured not to edit a particular page?
- I cannot, because interwiki.py does not have this option. But you can! Just put
{{nobots}}in anywhere of the article(s). Using{{nobots}}tag is very useful. It's a much better option than protecting involved page(s), and far more better than blocking the bots, unless they are malfunctioning.
- What is its inter-wiki sorting order?
- I don't decide that. It uses interwiki.py's sorting order. You can find out more about this here. Also, if you want to use a different sorting order for your wiki, you can contact to Pywikipediabot developers here. They will implement the change in the Pywikipedia trunk if it's valid and doable. And my bot will be updated with its very next update (see next question).
- What is the technical specification of this bot?
- This bot uses Pywikipediabot framework. It uses interwiki.py, which is a standard script. The editing rate of this bot is 2/3 edits per minute (4 at most). It patrols recent changes and add, modify, or remove inter-wiki links whenever it is applicable. To remove inter-wiki links it uses
-cleanupparameter instead of-force, which is more safe and recommended. It edits on article and category namespaces only. The bot is running from Toolserver in 24 hours basis, and edits autonomously. It runs in all Wikipedias except Icelandic Wikipedia, and also on many Wiktionaries.
- The bot is being updated from Pywikipedia SVN everyday automatically.
- Which version of Python does it use?
- It uses the Python used in Toolserver by default. Currently it is Python 2.7.1, which has marked as safe as far as I know.