⚓ T306593 Small wiki toolkits: How to set up popular bots on a wiki?

Bot sessions scheduled so far are listed below:

1. What is SuggestBot and How to Get It, Saturday, May 21st, 17:00 UTC
2. Yobot and CHECKWIKI: How you can fix tiny errors? Sunday, May 22nd, 18:00 UTC

You can find these sessions listed under "Localization and Small Wikis Room" on the schedule page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2022/Schedule

Session Details

“Oh, I like that bot! I want it on my wiki. How do I go about it?”.

Bots play a crucial role in the Wikimedia ecosystem. They are of different types and help automate various tasks such as fixing links, identifying spam edits, archiving pages, generating redirects, etc. Then there are bots with widespread impact on Wikipedia that are in great demand, such as Internet Archive (fixes dead links), Citation Bot (fixes citation), CommonsDelinker (removes deleted files at Wikimedia Commons). Unless one is a friend of the owner, the process to enable bots on a wiki is daunting for most non-bot owners 😀 Let’s hear from the authors how to set up their bots on a language wiki. This session will address some of the commonly asked questions about setting up a bot:

• What different features does the bot offer?
• How to enable it on a wiki?
• What configuration steps would one need to make in a bot to accommodate a local wiki’s needs?
• What additional procedure would a community need to get internal approval to run the bot?
• How to host the bot on Wikimedia Toolforge?
• What will it take to monitor the bot and ensure it is working as expected?
• What does the bot’s emergency response procedure look like?

Key takeaways: Participants will learn about a few popular bots in the Wikimedia ecosystem, how to set them up on their wiki, and how to tackle problems concerning the setup.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with one or two programming languages, using command-line tools, and technical knowledge of bots.

Session mentors: TBD

Session facilitators: @srishakatux, @komla

Language of session: English

Good for newcomers?: Yes

Additional notes:

• This session is connected to the “Bots development workshop series” offered as part of the Small wiki toolkits initiative: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Workshops#How_to_run_a_popular_bot_on_your_wiki
• We hope to run a few sessions (depending on interest from potential session leaders) as part of this umbrella session, each covering a specific bot.

Additional resources:

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_wiki_toolkits/Starter_kit/Bots_and_Tools#Bots

• Task Graph

Event Timeline