Wikipedia bots

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

The first bot appeared in 2002.^[1]

Bots on Wikipedia must be approved before activation^[2]^[3] and adhere to a Bot Policy.^[4]^[5]

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.^[6]^[7]^[8] Additionally, there are bots designed to automatically notify editors when they make common editing errors (such as unmatched quotes or unmatched parentheses).^[9]

One prominent example of an internet bot used in Wikipedia is Lsjbot, which had created generated one million short 'barebones' articles across various language editions of Wikipedia by 2013.^[10]^[2]^[3] Bots have been most likely to tackle technical topics like space objects and chemical elements.^[2] According to Andrew Lih, the current expansion of Wikipedia to millions of articles would be difficult to envision without the use of such bots.^[11] The Cebuano, Swedish and Waray Wikipedias are known to have high numbers of bot-created content.^[12]

One notable development leading up to 2015 has been the use of bots to perform vandalism-fighting chores in place of human labor. According to estimates, 50% of all vandalism is already eliminated by bots. Human patrollers have congratulated the bots on their accuracy and speed in a number of remarks posted on their talk pages.^[13] Anti-vandalism bots like ClueBot NG, created in 2010 are programmed (in its case using an artificial neural network trained on past instances of vandalism) to detect and revert vandalism quickly.^[7]^[14] Bots are able to indicate edits from particular accounts or IP address 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.^[15]

Interactions

On Wikipedia, bots typically engage in more reciprocal and prolonged conversations than humans. However, bots in various cultural contexts may act differently, much like people. According to research on bots on Wikipedia from 2001-2010, even comparatively "dumb" bots have the potential to produce complex relationships, which the authors believe have important consequences for the study of artificial intelligence.^[16]^[5] Comprehending the factors that influence bot-bot interactions can be useful for improving their performance.^[17] Many of the conflicts between bots on Wikipedia ended in 2013 after an update to the way inter-language links worked.^[5]

Types of bots

Icon that typically represents the bot user right on Wikipedia

One way to sort bots is by what activities they perform:^[18]^[1]

content creation, such as by procedural generation (historically focused on short barebones articles about technical topics)^[2]
fixing errors, such as by copy editing or addressing link rot
adding connectors, such as with hyperlinks to content elsewhere
tagging content with labels
repairing vandalism, such as ClueBot NG^[14]
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
repairing broken external links, such as InternetArchiveBot

References

^ ^a ^b Dormehl, Luke (20 January 2020). "Meet the 9 Wikipedia bots that make the world's largest encyclopedia possible". Digital Trends.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Jervell, Ellen Emmerentze (July 13, 2014). "For This Author, 10,000 Wikipedia Articles Is a Good Day's Work". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 18, 2014.
^ ^a ^b Hern, Alex (2014-08-05). "Wikipedia: meet the man who has edited 3m articles". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-12-16.
^ Wikipedia:Bot policy
^ ^a ^b ^c Dvorsky, George (2017-02-23). "Bots on Wikipedia Wage Edit Wars Between Themselves That Last For Years". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2025-12-16.
^ "Wikipedia:Bots". English Wikipedia.
^ ^a ^b Nasaw, Daniel (July 24, 2012). "Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia". BBC News.
^ Halliday, Josh; Arthur, Charles (July 26, 2012). "Boot up: The Wikipedia vandalism police, Apple analysts, and more". The Guardian. Retrieved September 5, 2012.
^ Aube (March 23, 2009). "Abuse Filter is enabled". Wikipedia Signpost. Retrieved July 13, 2010.
^ Gulbrandsson, Lennart (17 June 2013). "Swedish Wikipedia surpasses 1 million articles with aid of article creation bot". Wikimedia Blog. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
^ Lih, Andrew (2009). The Wikipedia Revolution, chapter Then came the Bots, pp. 99–106.
^ Wilson, Kyle (11 February 2020). "The World's Second Largest Wikipedia Is Written Almost Entirely by One Bot". Vice.
^ de Laat, Paul B. (2015). "The use of software tools and autonomous bots against vandalism: eroding Wikipedia's moral order?". Ethics and Information Technology. 17 (3): 175–188. doi:10.1007/s10676-015-9366-9. ISSN 1388-1957.
^ ^a ^b "This machine kills trolls". The Verge. 18 February 2014.
^ Aljazeera, July 21, 2014, "MH17 Wikipedia entry edited from Russian Government IP Address". Negin (July 21, 2014). "MH17 Wikipedia entry edited from Russian government IP address". The Stream - Al Jazeera English. Archived from the original on November 16, 2016. Retrieved July 22, 2014.
^ Sample, Ian (2017-02-23). "Study reveals bot-on-bot editing wars raging on Wikipedia's pages". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-12-16.
^ Tsvetkova, Milena; García-Gavilanes, Ruth; Floridi, Luciano; Yasseri, Taha (2017-02-23). Gómez, Sergio (ed.). "Even good bots fight: The case of Wikipedia". PLOS ONE. 12 (2) e0171774. arXiv:1609.04285. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1271774T. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0171774. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5322977. PMID 28231323.
^ Zheng, Lei (Nico); Albano, Christopher M.; Vora, Neev M.; Mai, Feng; Nickerson, Jeffrey V. (7 November 2019). "The Roles Bots Play in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 3 (CSCW): 1–20. doi:10.1145/3359317.

External links

Wikipedia:Bots
Wikipedia:Bot policy
Wikipedia:History of Wikipedia bots
Wikidata item for Wikipedia:Bots, listing all Wikipedia:Bots project pages

[:3-1] Dormehl, Luke (20 January 2020). "Meet the 9 Wikipedia bots that make the world's largest encyclopedia possible". Digital Trends.

[:1-2] Jervell, Ellen Emmerentze (July 13, 2014). "For This Author, 10,000 Wikipedia Articles Is a Good Day's Work". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 18, 2014.

[:4-3] Hern, Alex (2014-08-05). "Wikipedia: meet the man who has edited 3m articles". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-12-16.

[BotPolicy-4] Wikipedia:Bot policy

[:2-5] Dvorsky, George (2017-02-23). "Bots on Wikipedia Wage Edit Wars Between Themselves That Last For Years". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2025-12-16.

[6] "Wikipedia:Bots". English Wikipedia.

[meetbots-7] Nasaw, Daniel (July 24, 2012). "Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia". BBC News.

[8] Halliday, Josh; Arthur, Charles (July 26, 2012). "Boot up: The Wikipedia vandalism police, Apple analysts, and more". The Guardian. Retrieved September 5, 2012.

[9] Aube (March 23, 2009). "Abuse Filter is enabled". Wikipedia Signpost. Retrieved July 13, 2010.

[lsj-10] Gulbrandsson, Lennart (17 June 2013). "Swedish Wikipedia surpasses 1 million articles with aid of article creation bot". Wikimedia Blog. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.

[11] Lih, Andrew (2009). The Wikipedia Revolution, chapter Then came the Bots, pp. 99–106.

[12] Wilson, Kyle (11 February 2020). "The World's Second Largest Wikipedia Is Written Almost Entirely by One Bot". Vice.

[13] Laat, Paul B. (2015). "The use of software tools and autonomous bots against vandalism: eroding Wikipedia's moral order?". Ethics and Information Technology. 17 (3): 175–188. doi:10.1007/s10676-015-9366-9. ISSN 1388-1957.

[:0-14] "This machine kills trolls". The Verge. 18 February 2014.

[15] Aljazeera, July 21, 2014, "MH17 Wikipedia entry edited from Russian Government IP Address". Negin (July 21, 2014). "MH17 Wikipedia entry edited from Russian government IP address". The Stream - Al Jazeera English. Archived from the original on November 16, 2016. Retrieved July 22, 2014.

[16] Sample, Ian (2017-02-23). "Study reveals bot-on-bot editing wars raging on Wikipedia's pages". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-12-16.

[17] Tsvetkova, Milena; García-Gavilanes, Ruth; Floridi, Luciano; Yasseri, Taha (2017-02-23). Gómez, Sergio (ed.). "Even good bots fight: The case of Wikipedia". PLOS ONE. 12 (2) e0171774. arXiv:1609.04285. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1271774T. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0171774. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5322977. PMID 28231323.

[Zheng_2019-18] Zheng, Lei (Nico); Albano, Christopher M.; Vora, Neev M.; Mai, Feng; Nickerson, Jeffrey V. (7 November 2019). "The Roles Bots Play in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 3 (CSCW): 1–20. doi:10.1145/3359317.

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