User:Helpful Pixie Bot/the real block log.

Sometimes a poor innocent bot, simply doing it's owners bidding gets into trouble. SmackBot is allowed - nay commanded - to stop any-time it gets a message, so that it doesn't get stressed out by Wikieditors. Sadly this facility had to be restricted to auto-confirmed or confirmed users, due to abuse.

Nonetheless, it is a nice facility, and one I am pleased to offer, for I don't beleive there is any intrinsic reason that Admins should be able to stop a bot, while a normal, responsible editor can't. And SmackBot, by and large, is not time sensitive and can be kicked off again after a quick tweak if needed. (End of month is a bit of an exception - I like to get all the maintenance tags dated, or at least into a list, before the end of the month, and picking up stray difficult items, can get a little ... complex.)

So.. it may come as a surprise to the Gentle Reader to know that SmackBot has been blocked, not once or twice but numerous times. Here's the history.

...