Bot edits tend to be things like mass template or parameter renames, automated typo fixes, whitespace adjustments, and the like - high-volume, low-impact, low-interest edits that someone who wants to stay current with the wiki’s “actual” changes is likely to consider to be “irrelevant spam.” The first filter in particular is of interest: “Human (not bot).” In other words, we’re filtering out edits that are tagged as “bot” edits. Let’s take a look at the recent changes filters on Wikipedia: In the introduction, I mentioned that the name “bot passwords” is derived from the practice of using bot accounts to perform automated edits - but why even bother doing this? It’s all about avoiding spamming recent changes. After you see this screen one time, you’re unable to get it back if you lose the password part, you have to recreate it. The actually secret part, the token part, is available when you create the password on a visible-only-once screen that you can copy-paste it from. Here’s a current screenshot of all my bot password names on Leaguepedia:Īs you can see, there is no sensitive information here. So there’s the bot password name (aka the bot password) and the bot password…password. Each “bot password” has both a “name” part and a “password” part. The terminology gets even more confusing here. Later on we’ll elaborate on the last point extensively. Unique - you can have MULTIPLE bot passwords per account.An account (it’s tied to your existing account).A bot (it’s not software, it’s just a string).A password (you can’t use it to log into the site) - but you should TREAT IT LIKE ONE because someone CAN use it to GAIN ACCESS TO YOUR ACCOUNT.If you go to Special:BotPasswords while logged into any wiki on a version of MediaWiki at least as recent as 1.27, you will be given the opportunity to create, edit, or delete any bot passwords you might want. Thus, a bot password is a way to tell the MediaWiki API who you are without using your actual account’s credentials. Your human (personal) account can have one or more bot passwords as well. So what actually is a bot password?įirst of all, the name “bot password” exists for historical reasons and not because the name is descriptive non-human accounts that perform edits are called “bot accounts,” and so when humans make automated edits from their own accounts those are also referred to as “bot edits.” How do you log in to perform automated edits? Why, with a “bot password,” of course! Note that the logic is not bot account -> bot password the logic is automated edit -> bot password. Note: I’ve previously contributed to the Gamepedia help wiki page about bot passwords, and some of the content here will overlap with content there (at least at the time of publication). Also, a deep understanding is the best way to remove a need for easily-forgotten memorization, so I think the detail here is appropriate. This article is rather indepth for what should maybe be a very brief and simple concept, but I think the terms are so poorly named in MediaWiki that a full explanation is warranted to prevent any lingering confusion that could lead to mistaken beliefs. If this is a non-technical article, but also not a brief tutorial, then who is it for? This is intended for anyone who has to work with bot passwords frequently and occasionally feels like they are just reciting the components of working with one, rather than really understanding each part, or falters when trying to explain it to someone else. If you want to read technical manuals, read those three links instead of this blog post I’m going to take a non-technical approach here (!). A “ bot password” is a method of authentication that you can use to log into the MediaWiki API.
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