Mailing List Archive

Wikidata API rate limits for newbies
I have a script for writing to the Wikidata API that respects the rate limit of 50 edits per minute for bots without a bot flag. However, when that script was used by somebody else, she received the error "As an anti-abuse measure, you are limited from performing this action too many times in a short space of time, and you have exceeded this limit.\nPlease try again in a few minutes". I think it is because she is a "newbie" who is subjected to a slower rate (i.e. as in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgRateLimits).

Questions:
1. Is there a newbie rate limit that is slower than the rate for "normal" registered users?
2. If so, what is that limit?
3. How many edits must a newbie user make before they are no longer considered a "newbie" (or is number of edits not the criterion for being considered a newbie)?

Thanks!
Steve Baskauf

--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D. he/him/his
Data Science and Data Curation Specialist / Librarian III
Jean & Alexander Heard Libraries, Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235, USA

Office: Eskind Biomedical Library, EMB 111
Phone: (615) 343-4582
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/baskauf/
Re: Wikidata API rate limits for newbies [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 2021-08-03 at 13:16 +0000, Baskauf, Steven James wrote:
> I have a script for writing to the Wikidata API that respects the rate
> limit of 50 edits per minute for bots without a bot flag. However, when
> that script was used by somebody else, she received the error "As an
> anti-abuse measure, you are limited from performing this action too
> many times in a short space of time, and you have exceeded this
> limit.\nPlease try again in a few minutes". I think it is because she
> is a "newbie" who is subjected to a slower rate (i.e. as in
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgRateLimits).
>  
> Questions:
> 1. Is there a newbie rate limit that is slower than the rate for
> "normal" registered users?
> 2. If so, what is that limit?

https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/InitialiseSettings.php.txt under
'wgRateLimits' lists 8 edits per minute for a 'newbie' under 'edit'.

> 3. How many edits must a newbie user make before they are no longer
> considered a "newbie" (or is number of edits not the criterion for
> being considered a newbie)?

That link mentions "4 days to pass isNewbie()" as 'default'; plus a
'wgAutoConfirmCount' for 'wikidata' => 50

In general, a user could query their ratelimits via
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Userinfo

HTH,
andre

--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
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