Wikipedia:Bots/Frequently denied bots
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Aside from the general considerations facing bots, such as demonstrating that the bot is harmless, useful, and not a server hog, there are some bot requests which have always been, and will be, denied, barring a change in consensus.
[edit] Welcome bot
Perhaps the most frequently rejected proposal is a bot which would place {{welcome}} on the talk pages of all new users. Several variations have been proposed, such as only welcoming users who have made an edit, or a certain number of edits, but these requests are still denied. The idea is that a bot welcoming new users is much less personal than being welcomed by a real user.
[edit] Spell-checking bots
- From Wikipedia:Bot policy:
There should be no bots that attempt to fix spelling mistakes in an unattended fashion. It is not technically possible to create such a bot that would not make mistakes, as there will always be places where non-standard spellings are in fact intended (Quotes, for example). Manually-assisted spell-checking bots are acceptable, so long as they include international spell checking and not only country-specific spell checking. Statistic-generating spell-checking bots, which generate statistics on common misspellings, are also acceptable.
Wikipedia:Maintenance reports that list possible misspellings are welcome. See Wikipedia:Typo for existing efforts and a list of existing interactive spell-checking tools.
[edit] Admin bots
Bots with sysop rights are most often denied, except on very specific cases, where they would prove invaluable. One example was User:ProtectionBot, which would have made sure all pages that were transcluded onto the Main Page were fully protected, but this bot never actually ran due to the implementation of cascading protection (see the Signpost story for more information). Currently the only bot account with sysop rights is User:RedirectCleanupBot.
