Wikipedia bots are

Internet bots An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity on the Internet, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet b ...

(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 Lsjbot is an automated Wikipedia article-creating program, or Wikipedia bot, developed by Sverker Johansson for the Swedish Wikipedia. The bot primarily focuses on articles about living organisms and geographical entities (such as rivers, dams ...

, which generated millions of short articles across various language editions of Wikipedia.

Activities

Computer programs, called bots, 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 degradin ...

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 ...

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 in a day. According to

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
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Cebuano, Swedish and Waray 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 In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In ...

* fixing errors, such as by copy editing or addressing

link rot Link rot (also called link death, link breaking, or reference rot) is the phenomenon of hyperlinks tending over time to cease to point to their originally targeted file, web page, or server due to that resource being relocated to a new address ...

* adding connectors, such as with

hyperlinks In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wi ...

to content elsewhere * tagging content with

labels A label (as distinct from signage) is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product, on which is written or printed information or symbols about the product or item. Information printed d ...

* repairing vandalism, such as

clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service ...

, updating reports *

archiving An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

old discussions or tasks *

moderation system On Internet websites that invite users to post comments, content moderation is the process of detecting contributions that are irrelevant, obscene, illegal, harmful, or insulting with regards to useful or informative contributions. The purpose of ...

s to combat against spam or misconduct *

recommender system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular ...

s to encourage users * notifications, such as with

push technology Push technology or server push is a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull/get, where the request for the transmission of informa ...

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 ...

References

{{Wikipedia, state=expanded Internet bots Bots

Activities

Types of bots

See also

References