Wikipedia bots are Internet bots (computer programs) that perform simple, repetitive tasks in

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

. One prominent example of an internet bot used in Wikipedia is Lsjbot, which generated millions of short articles across various language editions of Wikipedia.

Activities

Computer programs, called

bots The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...

, have often been used to automate simple and repetitive tasks, such as correcting common misspellings and stylistic issues, or to start articles, such as geography entries, in a standard format from statistical data. Additionally, there are bots designed to automatically notify editors when they make common editing errors (such as unmatched quotes or unmatched parentheses). Anti-vandalism bots like

ClueBot NG On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading ...

are programmed to detect and revert

vandalism Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property. The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The term f ...

quickly. Bots are able to indicate edits from particular accounts or

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

ranges, as occurred at the time of the shooting down of the MH17 jet incident in July 2014 when it was reported edits were made via IPs controlled by the Russian government. Bots on Wikipedia must be approved before activation. A bot once created up to 10,000 articles on the

Swedish Wikipedia The Swedish Wikipedia ( sv, Svenskspråkiga Wikipedia) is the Swedish-language edition of Wikipedia and was started on the 23 of May 2001. It is currently the largest Wikipedia by article count with its current articles, it has a ''Wikipedia ...

in a day. According to

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

Cebuano, Swedish and

Waray Waray may refer to: * Waray people of the Philippines * Waray language, the fifth most spoken native language of the Philippines, spoken by the Waray people * Waray literature * Warray language Warray (Waray) was an Australian language spoken ...

Wikipedias are known to have high numbers of bot-created content.

Types of bots

One way to sort bots is by what activities they perform: * content creation, such as by procedural generation * fixing errors, such as by

copy editing Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material ( copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that text is free of grammatical and factual errors. ''The Chicago Manual o ...

or addressing link rot * adding connectors, such as with hyperlinks to content elsewhere * tagging content with labels * repairing vandalism, such as

* clerk, updating reports * archiving old discussions or tasks * moderation systems to combat against spam or misconduct * recommender systems to encourage users * notifications, such as with push technology and

pull technology Pull coding or client pull is a style of network communication where the initial request for data originates from the client, and then is responded to by the server. The reverse is known as push technology, where the server ''pushes'' data to c ...

References

{{Wikipedia, state=expanded Internet bots

Bots The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...

Activities

Types of bots

See also

References