Help:Bots

Bots, or Robots are software applications that perform automated or semi-automated tasks on the internet. Most often, they run tasks that are simple and structurally repetitive, much quicker than a human could do alone. Bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required. Bots are able to make edits very rapidly and can disrupt if they are incorrectly designed or operated. Bots will leave messages on user talk pages if the action the bot has carried out is of interest to that editor. For these reasons, a bot policy has been developed.

Policy
Personal bot provisions require prior consent from FamilySearch management.

Running your own bot
Some programming experience is needed to create a bot and knowledge of regular expressions is useful for many editing tasks.

The Python wikipediabot is a collection of tools that automate work on MediaWiki sites. Originally designed for Wikipedia, it is now used throughout the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and on many other MediaWiki wikis. It is written in Python which is a free, cross-platform programming language. This page provides links to general information for people who want to use the bot software.

Frameworks and interfaces for bot development

 * See API Client Code

MediaWiki API is for convenient access to machine-readable data.