90 lines
3.9 KiB
Text
90 lines
3.9 KiB
Text
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[%# site/bot.tt
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Dreamwidth Bot Policy.
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Authors:
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Denise Paolucci <denise@dreamwidth.org>
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Mark Smith <mark@dreamwidth.org>
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Copyright (c) 2009-2016 by Dreamwidth Studios, LLC.
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This program is NOT free software or open-source; you can use it as an
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example of how to implement your own site-specific extensions to the
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Dreamwidth Studios open-source code, but you cannot use it on your site
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or redistribute it, with or without modifications.
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%][%-
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sections.title='Dreamwidth Bot Policy'
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-%]
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[%- CALL dw.active_resource_group( "foundation" ) -%]
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<p>We welcome people writing bots and clients that make use of our APIs and do
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cool things with our data! In order to balance the needs of client/bot authors
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and the needs of our users, though, we've set forth some general guidelines
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that bot authors should keep in mind.</p>
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<p>If you have a question that isn't covered here, please
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<a href='https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/submit'>contact us</a> with details
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about your planned use. We're happy to work with you to do neat projects,
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including fixing problems on our end and making more public data available
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through our APIs. Just ask.</p>
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<h2>General Guidelines</h2>
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<p>The overall guidelines for bot/tool authors are pretty simple:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>Good clients send a proper user-agent (or other info string) that
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includes a contact email address. That will let us contact you if
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there are any problems.</li>
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<li>Be kind to the system! Rate-limit your requests, and try to cache
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data whenever possible.</li>
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<li>Don't screen-scrape the HTML/BML output of the site. If you can't
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do something you want to do through an API, let us know, and we'll
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try to add an API for it.</li>
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<li>Try to avoid asking for users' passwords. If there's something you can't
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do through the protocol or through our APIs, let us know, and we'll add
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it. If you have to ask for users' passwords, you should tell people what
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you'll do with them, and warn users to change their passwords before and
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after they access your client if they're worried.</li>
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</ul>
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<h2>Client Applications</h2>
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<p>A client application is defined as a tool that runs under the control of an
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end user (whether as a downloadable program or an in-browser object).</p>
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<p>Generally, we don't restrict these tools. From time to time, we may need to
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restrict some of the API methods they use, if there's too much load on the
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site. We won't do this unless it's absolutely necessary to preserve the proper
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functioning of the site, and only on a temporary basis.</p>
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<h2>Third Party Sites/Utilities</h2>
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<p>We place more restrictions on things that fall into this category, since
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they have the potential to seriously impact site load. We're here to serve our
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users (which includes client applications), but third-party sites that scrape
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data sources aren't our primary audience.</p>
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<p>Generally speaking, if your site is going to be small and access Dreamwidth
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infrequently, you can go right ahead and do it. (Yes, these terms are
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purposefully vague -- use your best judgement, and contact us with any
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questions.) If your use becomes a problem, we'll contact you and let you know
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that your particular tool is turning out to be a load problem. This is one of
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the reasons why it's so critical to include contact information in your user
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agent.</p>
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<p>If you intend to run a service (or your service gets popular), and you're
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making frequent requests, contact us and let us know. This will let us examine
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your tool and see what changes we can make on our end to better support your
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use, and what changes we can suggest in your tool to be gentler on the
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site.</p>
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<h2>IP Rate Limiting</h2>
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<p>From time to time, you may find your IP address temporarily banned, if we
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determine that your site is hitting our servers too frequently or causing too
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much of a traffic or load spike. In this case, please contact us and let us
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know the IP that's been banned so we can work out a solution.</p>
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