Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:36 UTC
When editing with a user account which has the bot flag enabled, the edit is made without bot flag if not explicitly requested by adding the parameter bot to the request. In my opinion the default should be the normal use case and that is to make the edit with bot flag which is also the behaviour of the webinteface.
Created attachment 5298 [details] Fix
If you want your edit saved as bot, just set the bot parameter. If you don't have permission to mark edits as bot, it'll be silently ignored anyway.
Shouldn't editing via the API have the same defaults as editing via the web interface?
I disagree with the "WONTFIX". This behaviour of the API is reverse of what the webinterface does and contrary to intuition. I strongly feel that the API should by default behave in the way which makes the most sense / is the natural one and for a bot with flag this is to make the edit with bot flag. Having said that the flag should probably have been named "nobot".
Created attachment 5299 [details] That didn't help at all...
(In reply to comment #5) > Created an attachment (id=5299) [details] > That didn't help at all... > That patch makes it impossible *not* to mark edits as bot, so it's unacceptable. (In reply to comment #3) > Shouldn't editing via the API have the same defaults as editing via the web > interface? > Not necessarily. The point is that the API is aimed at bots, not users. A 'nobot' flag is counter-intuitive because everything in the API is in the opt-in style: nothing happens unless you say so (this also applies to e.g. the parameters for action=block: the UI enables some of those by default, but bots have to specify exactly what they want). By the way, adding a &bot flag to every request is no trouble at all if you're a bot.
I realized that it was broken right after I posted it.
Unless you're a lazy bot, but I see your point :)
