Project:Pywikibot/interwiki.py/Wiktionary functionality discussion/2007

How should the Interwiki Bot work across Wiktionary projects?
This space has been set up so that folks from the various Wiktionary projects can discuss their vision for the behavior of the Interwiki Bot (currently known as RobotGMwikt). This was the result of a discussion on the #wiktionary channel between GerardM, Connel MacKenzie, DmcDevit, hippietrail, and ArielGlenn.

This is primarily a policy dicussion and only secondarily a technical dicussion.

Tentative topics of discussion

 * 1) Background/overview
 * Since January 2005, wikt:User:RobotGMwikt has been providing Wiktionaries with his interwiki bot's services. Having a single person coordinate interwiki activities across all language Wiktionaries has provided considerable efficiency.  To date, the bot has been running with the flags set to match on exact spelling only, and set to treat redirects as invalid pages.  Editors of some of the independent language Wiktionaries have expressed concerns with these choices for the bot's behavior .  It is our hope that this discussion will provide an avenue of discussion so that concerns about functionality can be heard, voted on, and addressed to everyone's mutual satisfaction.
 * 1) Translation concerns (for this individual discussion)
 * It is hoped that the meta Tower of Babel will be able to assist translating this page.
 * 1) Notification concerns (for this individual discussion)
 * All Wiktionaries are partisan to their language's concerns. No single Wiktionary should be forcing others to accept certain functionalities that are technologically avoidable and inappropriate for a particular language.  We hope to get representative participation from at least the top 27 Wikitionaries (those with over 10,000 valid entries) and at least partial representation from as many more of the smaller Wiktionaries.  Accounts will be set up on each of the 143 Wiktionaries in order to post a message linking to this page on their wikt:Wiktionary:Beer parlour equivalent page.
 * Notified: el, en
 * Not yet notified: (list) zh, fr, io, ru, tr, vi, bg, nl, et, fi, gl, de, hu, is, id, it, ja, ko, ku, fa, pl, pt, sr, es, sv, plus all smaller Wiktionaries.
 * 1) How RobotGMwikt currently operates
 * The Pywikipediabot's interwiki.py python program/script is used to link pages that have the exact same title on different language Wiktionaries. Currently it has the "Wiktionary" flag which does non-Wikipedia functions, in particular, forces the "-noredirects" behavior.  For some languages this is appropriate, for others, it is unacceptable.  Part of the outcome of this discussion is to provide an arena for languages to request the behavior they desire in a central location.  Currently, the perception exists that the interwiki bot cannot "follow" redirects on some languages without breaking the perceived consistency (of interwiki links) on nl.wiktionary.org.  If the nl.wikt: community confirms this behavior is desired and is perceived as correct (for the Dutch language) then every effort will be made to modify the interwiki bot code to prevent "incorrect" reflexive links on nl.wiktionary.org (and perhaps any other languages with the same concern) when providing other languages the ability to recognize redirect pages as valid interwiki link targets.
 * 1) Problems with or limits of current operation
 * 2) Short-term feature requests (broken down by language for per-language requirements)
 * 3) Technical and logistical considerations
 * 4) Specific detailed scenarios and explanations
 * 5) Other versions of this bot currently running

Operational goals

 * Technical note: Do not use pipe-syntax link hiding anywhere in this discussion. Use en:wikt:dog for clarity, never dog .


 * 1) What do all Wiktionaries want as a result of allowing interwiki links
 * Simple example
 * On en.wikt, there are entries for both en:wikt:dog and en:wikt:chien. The lemmas on the 'dog' page should point to corresponding lemmas on the fr:wikt:dog page.  The lemmas on the 'chien' page should point to corresponding lemmas on the fr:wikt:chien page.  Currently this is impossible.  Instead, only the pages themselves (not the lemmas) are linked.
 * 1) What Wiktionaries have other (language-specific) requirements
 * 2) What uses besides human navigation use interwiki links?
 * 3) What technical concerns will arise from changing interwiki operation?

Goals of the discussion

 * 1) Determine what changes, if any, would benefit the various Wiktionary projects (broken down per-language)
 * 2) Rank desired changes by priority
 * 3) Create a plan for implementation
 * 4) (Possibly) move the bot to toolserver
 * 5) (Possibly) find additional maintainers and administrators of the bot

Please check that these topics make sense, add descriptive paragraphs, wikify... and generally turn this into a useful introduction. Thanks.