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I have an idea that may be unpopular, but I suggest that bots operated by blocked users should not just be blocked, but should instead be "adopted" to a new owner who will then refurbish it, rename it, and make it do new tasks. I see no reason to block innocent bots that have not done anything wrong because their owners have been blocked, instead it just slows down the project's productivity. 2003LN6 19:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)reply
We have plenty of bots, inactive or otherwise, who have had their tasks taken over by someone else. If the code is available there is no reason to take over the bot; just copy over the code.
Primefac (
talk) 19:40, 8 April 2024 (UTC)reply
It takes a lot of work to adopt (on Toolforge) or fork a bot. The idea of blocking first due to the bot operator losing trust, then other folks taking their time and adopting or forking the bot if the bot is important and if it is hosted in our ecosystem and/or has open source code, is already practiced. The idea of usurping an existing Wikipedia bot account of a blocked user seems unnecessary since a new account can be created to run the same program code as the original bot. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 19:40, 8 April 2024 (UTC)reply
That is not a good idea because bots are just an extension of their operator, so the account should certainly not be just handed over. Of course the task can be replaced by anyone that wants to under a different bot account if it is still needed. —
xaosfluxTalk 10:29, 1 May 2024 (UTC)reply