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