WikiApiary:FAQ

What is auditing?
WikiApiary collects a variety of information from websites it monitors. Some websites however cannot report all information. For example, only recent versions of MediaWiki will report the skins that are installed. Additionally, only sites that have the Extension:Semantic MediaWiki extension should be queried for semantic statistics.

Auditing is the process that turns these flags on and off. All sites on WikiApiary are periodically audited. During the audit process collection flags are turned on and off. For example, if a wiki is upgraded and now it can report skin data, this will be automatically activated by Audit Bee on the next audit. If a website disables their API, Audit Bee will detect that and turn the collection flags off.

Auditing is the oversight process that keeps the other bees (bots) running healthy. User:Bumble Bee doesn't bother checking these things and instead just does what it is told to do.

Multiproperties
WikiApiary treats the database information given by MediaWiki as a multiproperty value. This means that even though a single value is only ever given for this, WikiApiary will allow multiple values to be given over time and handle them gracefully. WikiApiary records every answer the website returns for multiproperty values, and then aggregates all answers that have been given in the last 2 weeks ordered by the first time that answer was given. This feature is most notable on large Wikifarms that have multiple database versions in production for long periods of time. On each request, WikiApiary might see a different database and update the values repeatedly causing the value to flap between multiple values. One notable side affect of this is that is that if a wiki that only uses a single database upgrades or changes the database, both the new and old value will be reported for two weeks until the old one expires.

You can read the background on this at this thread.

Audit
The audit flag and associated timestamp is used by User:Audit Bee to determine what work he needs to do. These two fields are used to generate Concept:Websites never audited and Concept:Websites expired audit which are the two pools that Audit Bee does work out of. The boolean lets Audit Bee know if this is a new audit or not. The timestamp is used to indicate an expired audit.

Note, at anytime you can uncheck the audit flag which will trigger Audit Bee to re-audit the website as soon as possible.

Curate
The curated flag is a flag just used by curators on WikiApiary to indicate that all information for that site has been collected. There is a logo, description, tags, etc. If a flag is curated, it is considered complete.

Demote
This flag is used to mark that a website should not be highlighted in lists of popular websites. It also serves as a flag to indicate that a website shouldn't be shared to the @WikiApiary Twitter account. It will be used generally to not highlight that site going forward. Typically this would be used for sites that are overtaken by spam, or sites that contain objectionable content. see property