Forum:AWB alternatives?

I am looking at making some custom code for our wikia so that we have a tool that helps raise the quality of our site without requiring a C.S. degree to run. I thought pywikipedia was pretty easy, and I left instructions how to do maintenance runs using it, but no one much used that while I was on extended wikia break. I am thinking AWB will be more accessible to our experienced contributors. I poked around the code and adding plugins or messing with the exe would be easy enough, but I would prefer something that worked with foxfire or some more open standard than the MS platform. I know this thing will work in a compatibility box on Mac, but I would hate for the development environment to go obsolete again the next time the wind blows. Is there anything I should be aware of regarding assisted editing tools, before I make the jump and go with AWB? - ~  Ph l o x  02:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I searched a long time for alternatives, but it doesn't seems there's any.
 * Maybe some of us could make one.
 * But my programming language is mainly Visual Basic .Net under SharpDevelop; the free and opensource IDE. Things can be compiled for the Mono Framework wich i know mean that the app will be able to run on Linux, but i'm not sure about OSX.
 * And it's not something we could get done fast. We would need to learn the mediawiki api (and me would have to learn a lot more than this but maybe i wouldn't have to care for part that other are doing, except for testing them).
 * But, the major problem might be to make an app that only sysop (and bot) account are able to use. Maybe like AutowikiBrowser, the bot should check for the central wikia authorization page.
 * Because, you know, making an easy to use software that anyone could use could be pretty harmfull.
 * I think this tell why PyWikipediaBot and AutowikiBrowser aren't easy to use. — TulipVorlax 09:44, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It is true that open source means that the AWB whitelist check could be defeated. I don't know if Andre put one into pywikipedia, but in any case most civilians don't know how to figure this out, so you basically deal with the misuse.  Anyone who does uses it for large scale controversial edits or as a bullying toy gets removed from the whitelist.  IMHO the net is that these assisted edit tools are good for overwhelmed regular contributors who want to add polish to their sites.  There is a windowing interface for python so I guess maybe a py thing could be built, but heck- I have 4 kids and two more on the way so I don't have a heckuva lot of time to build something a little bit more solidly in the open standards community.  - ~  Ph l o x   20:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)