Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/OntologyBot
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Operator: Sholom.keller (talk · contribs · SUL · edit count · logs · page moves · block log · rights log · ANI search)
Time filed: 14:53, Wednesday, April 2, 2025 (UTC)
Function overview: OntologyBot is a read-only bot designed to retrieve backlinks to specific Wikipedia articles using the MediaWiki API. It collects and processes backlink data for research purposes, ensuring all requests comply with Wikipedia’s rate limits and guidelines. Results are stored locally and will be freely shared with the Wikimedia Foundation upon request
Automatic, Supervised, or Manual: Manual. OntologyBot is a read-only bot that does not perform any edits. It only retrieves backlink data from Wikipedia using the MediaWiki API. All actions are manually initiated and monitored to ensure compliance with Wikipedia’s guidelines.
Programming language(s): Python
Source code available: Raise any issues with bot at this repo https://github.com/shalombear/OntologyBot Source code in private repository here: https://github.com/shalombear/Ontology
Links to relevant discussions (where appropriate):
Edit period(s): No edits. Read only. The bot will operate during off-peak hours to minimize server load and ensure compliance with Wikipedia’s rate limits. Requests will be spaced out with appropriate delays.
Estimated number of pages affected: Zero. OntologyBot is a read-only bot that will not perform any edits or modifications to Wikipedia pages. It will only retrieve backlinks from all pages using the MediaWiki API.
Namespace(s): Articles
Exclusion compliant (Yes/No):Yes
Function details: OntologyBot is a read-only bot that retrieves backlinks from all articles in the main namespace (0) using the MediaWiki API. It does not perform any edits, modifications, or writes to Wikipedia pages. Its sole purpose is to gather backlink data for analysis, which will be shared with the Wikimedia Foundation upon request.
OntologyBot accesses pages by making requests to the list=backlinks API endpoint with the bllimit=500 parameter for efficient data retrieval. Pagination is handled using the continue mechanism provided by the API. All requests are spaced with a delay of at least time.sleep(0.05) to comply with Wikipedia's rate limits and prevent server overload.
The bot's operation will take place at night to reduce server impact. It exclusively targets the main namespace (0) and does not access other namespaces. No changes are made to any Wikipedia pages.
OntologyBot is written in Python and uses the requests and MediaWiki libraries for making authenticated requests. The bot is not bundled with frameworks like AWB or pywikipedia genfixes, as it is a standalone Python program specifically designed for backlink retrieval.