Last modified: 2012-12-30 20:48:03 UTC
API action=edit currently has 'bot' parameter, which allows programmer to choose whether to hide an edit from RecentChanges or not. However, action=upload provides no way to do so. Uploads from bot account are always hidden. This feature is needed by bots which upload files by request of the users (e.g., autogenerated screenshots of web pages, graphs, cropped existing images etc.). These bots do few edits, and yet these edits must be visible in RecentChanges (because who knows what user will do with this tool). The only alternative is to ask users' passwords instead of using bot account (for obvious reasons this is unpreferrable).
This feature is does not require a urgent developers work. Obiously path to resolve this issue is creating new account without "bot" rights but with "writeapi" right. In Wikimedia wikis one editor can use many bot accounts. This is not a notable issue, only small nice enhancement.
Well, seriously... public static function newLogEntry( $timestamp, &$title, &$user, $actionComment, $ip, $type, $action, $target, $logComment, $params, $newId=0, $actionCommentIRC='' ) { [...] 'rc_bot' => $user->isAllowed( 'bot' ) ? $wgRequest->getBool( 'bot', true ) : 0, [...] I thought this was easy to fix, but apparently RecentChange needs some fixing first.
