I stopped running the bot when people started to question the algorithm used by the bot. As I run it as a service, I was interested in changing it only when good arguments were provided why it should be changed. These arguments were never forthcoming, the reason why I stopped the running of the bot was because I was told that it is now ran from the tool server.
Yesterday, I learned that the tool server functionality although maybe really clever and efficient is only used to update the English language Wiktionary. Yesterday I was asked by Spacebirdy to run the bot again because there is a need for it. So I asked on IRC if there was a problem and I was told there was not.
Today I was told to change the algorithm because the English Wiktionary wants to create interwiki links to redirect pages and as it is a "community policy" I was told to abide by it. I asked for arguments why this made sense and no good arguments were forthcomming. It was even conceded that it would be best to discuss this in the village pump.
There are good reasons why a redirect should not be referred to by interwiki links:
- Wiktionary aims to include all words in all languages. A word spelled incorrectly in one language can be correct in another
- The specific word does not exist yet in the other project
- The notion of homonymy is ignored
- There are a substantial number of redirects that exist as a result of a conversion
What I find disappointing is that the quality of service that I provided is no longer there. It is another fine problem that a community / project council could deal with.
Thanks,
GerardM
2 comments:
I am sorry but I have to say I am quite shocked that because of some people apparently from en.wiktionary the interwiki-linking for all Wiktionaries was stalled. IMHO to ask a interwiki-bot operator to stop his bot indirectly and to say that there is a more efficient version that will take care of the linking and then only updating links on en.wikt and nowhere else is, sorry to say, egoistic.
I was always naivly thinking we are helping each other wherever we can as we are working towards the same goal. If I see an error in another Wiktionary it does not hurt me to correct it, if I delete an entry because it is wrong written and see interwiki-links I notify the other languages too.
Because of the lack of RobotGMwikts interwiki-linking some Wiktionaries started interwikibots themselves, Volkov helped a lot but he is not as efficient and lots of entries were not linked. Therefore I also tried to help out a bit, but also not as efficient, and I did not have the time to register it everywhere yet. On de.wikt we were thinking that Gerard simply had left Wiktionary and lost any interest in interwiki-linking. People come and go, that is normal on Wikis, so we respected that.
I am very dissappointed about what had happened and hope that Gerard understands my point of view and continues his bot on all other Wiktionaries as there he is still very welcomed.
For me, the frustrating thing about some of the interwiki bots was that, whereas one wiki would use straight apostrophes (') and the like, another wiki would use curled apostrophes (’), and the bot would take care to delete the interwiki links regularly.
Since RobotGMwikt stopped servicing the Vietnamese Wiktionary, a number of other bots have taken over (running on a subset of wikis), particularly VolkovBot.
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