wiki bots

I didn't take your suggestions in any negative way , Simon, I take them in the positive spirit that they are meant; we are just sharing our mutual perspectives from where we stand , and that is unavoidably not always the same place. Full agree that if dating an be added, that is a good thing.

Very good idea for the bio pages as well, is that solvable through semantic wiki ...

just to make my own position clear, I very much look forward to improvements, including automatic routines, as long as they are introduced one by one and with care, to see always what can go wrong as well,

would be great for example to have a 'improvement of the month; that way we can have 12 improvements per year .... and we would have time to digest and integrate them,

Michel

I agree that we don't want to give bots edit powers, but if they can be used to flag things that might need fixing (eg dead links), that does seems useful. Particularly if there are volunteers who want to put in some regular hours to help improve the wiki, but don't know where to start.

Agreed. And I suspect that the way we will build up the set of volunteers is to be respectful, yes, but also genuinely welcoming, friendly, and good at appreciating each other's work.

yes, I agree with that approach, by the way, Simon Grant has recently become a super-contributor, shaming me in producing much more than the 10-30 I add daily ...

He can certainly help others in knowing how to contribute to our wiki, and has a feeling of what needs to be done,

Michel