Lsjbot

Lsjbot
	A typical article generated by Lsjbot
Developer(s)	Sverker Johansson
Type	Internet bot
Website	Lsjbot on Swedish Wikipedia

Last updated November 04, 2024

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, and mountains).

History

The program was responsible for 2.7 million articles as of 2014 (at a rate of 10,000 articles per day),^[4] and 9.5 million articles as of January 2019 (at a rate of 4,000 per day),^[2] two-thirds of which appear in the Cebuano language Wikipedia (the native language of Johansson's wife); the other third appear in the Swedish Wikipedia.

On 15 June 2013, the Swedish Wikipedia hit one million articles, the eighth language on Wikipedia to reach that goal. The millionth article was created by Lsjbot – which at that point had created 454,000 articles, almost half of the entire article count of the Swedish Wikipedia.^[5] Lsjbot was also responsible for helping the Swedish Wikipedia become the second edition of Wikipedia to reach 2 million articles, which as of 2024 is the fifth largest edition of Wikipedia behind English, Cebuano, German and French.

In February 2020, Vice reported that Lsjbot was responsible for over 24 million of 29.5 million edits at Cebuano Wikipedia, now the world's second largest Wikipedia,^[6] with bots comprising all but five of the site's top 35 editors and no human editors in the top 10. However, Lsjbot is no longer creating new articles at the Swedish and Waray-Waray Wikipedias. Sverker Johansson explained that "opinions shifted" within the Swedish Wikipedia community and Waray-Waray editors were unable to form a consensus about the automatic creation of articles.^[3]

On the Swedish Wikipedia, since early 2017, around 900,000 articles written by Lsjbot have been deleted, due to a lack of adequate documentation or because of other reasons.^{[ citation needed ]} Apart from these already-deleted articles, as of 26 December 2021, a further number of approximately 200,000 articles await deletion. Overall, starting in 2017, there was an initial pace of approximately 20,000 to 40,000 deletions of Lsjbot-made articles per year, but since July 2020 the pace of deletions has greatly accelerated. In just one year, from July 2020 to December 2021, Swedish Wikipedia fell from 3.72 million articles to 2.79 million articles. Furthermore, since July 2020, the deletion rate has occasionally exceeded 5,000 per day.

Media coverage

Its operation has generated some criticism, from those who suggest the stub articles lack meaningful content and a human touch.^[7] The Sydney Morning Herald compared the bot to Phil Parker, allegedly the most published author in human history, who has published over 200,000 books,^[8]^[9] each of which is completed in less than an hour using computers.^[10] Popular Science compared the bot to the announcement in July 2014 by the Associated Press that it planned to use bots to write articles.^[4] Johansson countered attacks on his methods by appealing to problems of gender bias on Wikipedia, noting that if the bot does not write articles, "otherwise they're mainly written by young, white, male nerds and reflect male interests."^[11]

Related Research Articles

Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.

The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.

The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia.

The Dutch Wikipedia is the Dutch-language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It was founded on 19 June 2001.

The Italian Wikipedia is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was created on 10 May 2001, and first edited on 11 June 2001. As of 26 October 2024, it has 1,888,328 articles and more than 2,566,246 registered accounts. It is the 9th-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles.

The Romanian Wikipedia is the Romanian language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Started on 12 July 2003, as of 14 October 2024 this edition has 493,890 articles and is the 31st largest Wikipedia edition. In December 2004, users on the Romanian Wikipedia started to talk about founding a local chapter of Wikimedia, Asociația Wikimedia România.

The Ukrainian Wikipedia is the Ukrainian language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The first article was written on 30 January 2004. As of October 2024, the Ukrainian Wikipedia has 1,350,461 articles and is the 14th largest Wikipedia edition.

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The Russian Wikipedia is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of November 2024, it has 2,007,804 articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles. It has the sixth-largest number of edits (141 million). In June 2020, it was the world's sixth most visited language Wikipedia. As of September 2024, it is the third most viewed Wikipedia, after the English and Japanese editions.

The Greek Wikipedia is the Greek-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. It was started on 1 December 2002. It surpassed the 10,000 article mark on 16 May 2006, the 100,000 article mark on 9 April 2014, and the 200,000 article mark on 27 November 2021. As of October 26, 2024, it is the 48th largest Wikipedia, behind South Azerbaijani Wikipedia and ahead of Kazakh Wikipedia.

The Latvian Wikipedia is the Latvian-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was created on 6 June 2003. With more than 131,000 articles, it is currently the 68th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles and the second-largest Wikipedia in a Baltic language after the Lithuanian Wikipedia.

The Tagalog Wikipedia is the Tagalog language edition of Wikipedia, which was launched on 1 December 2003. It has 47,586 articles and is the 104th largest Wikipedia according to the number of articles as of 14 October 2024.

The Swedish Wikipedia is the Swedish-language edition of Wikipedia, started in 2001. A free content online encyclopedia, it is the largest reference work in Swedish history, while consistently ranked as the most visited, or one of the most visited Swedish language websites.

The Uzbek Wikipedia is the Uzbek-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was founded in December 2003. Articles in the Uzbek-language edition are written in the Latin script. In August 2012, a Latin-to-Cyrillic converter was added to allow users to view Uzbek Wikipedia's pages in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.

The Waray Wikipedia is the Waray language edition of Wikipedia. It is hosted on servers run by the Wikimedia Foundation since September 25, 2005. As of October 14, 2024, this edition has 1,266,603 articles and is the 16th largest Wikipedia edition. The Waray Wikipedia has very few active users (77), and instead owes its large size to automatically generated articles created by bots, most of them by Sverker Johansson's Lsjbot.

The Volapük Wikipedia is the Volapük-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It was created in February 2003, but launched in January 2004. As of 26 October 2024, it is the 109th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, with about 38,000 articles, and the third-largest Wikipedia in a constructed language after the Esperanto Wikipedia and the Ido Wikipedia.

Sverker Johansson is a Swedish physicist, linguist, textbook author and university professor. He created Lsjbot, a Wikipedia bot.

Waray is an Austronesian language and the fifth-most-spoken native regional language of the Philippines, native to Eastern Visayas. It is the native language of the Waray people and second language of the Abaknon people of Capul, Northern Samar, and some Cebuano-speaking peoples of western and southern parts of Leyte island. It is the third most spoken language among the Bisayan languages, only behind Cebuano and Hiligaynon.

The Cebuano Wikipedia is the Cebuano-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Despite being the second-largest Wikipedia in numbers of articles, it has a small community of only 181 active users; nearly all of the 6,116,932 articles were initially created through automatic programs, most notably Sverker Johansson's Lsjbot.

Wikipedia bots are Internet bots that perform simple, repetitive tasks on Wikipedia. One prominent example of an internet bot used in Wikipedia is Lsjbot, which has generated millions of short articles across various language editions of Wikipedia.

References

↑ The bot’s user page on the Swedish Wikipedia, translated to English using Google Translate.
1 2 "Wikipedia Statistics, Bot article creations only". 31 January 2019.
1 2 Wilson, Kyle (11 February 2020). "The World's Second Largest Wikipedia Is Written Almost Entirely by One Bot". Vice.com. Retrieved 8 February 2021.
1 2 Main, Douglas (14 July 2014). "This Bot Has Written More Wikipedia Articles Than Anybody". Popular Science. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
↑ 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.
↑ "List of Wikipedias". 22 October 2021.
↑ Jervell, Ellen Emmerentze (13 July 2014). "For This Author, 10,000 Wikipedia Articles Is a Good Day's Work" . Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
↑ Cohen, Noam (14 April 2008). "He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 23 March 2023. Retrieved 3 August 2010.
↑ Ein Mann sieht Code Archived 11 February 2013 at archive.today , Financial Times Deutschland, 9 May 2008. (in German).
↑ Bagshaw, Eryk (16 July 2014). "This is how Sverker Johansson wrote 8.5 per cent of everything published on Wikipedia". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
↑ "Swedish Wiki vet sets new content record". The Local . 18 July 2014. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.

External links

Source code of Lsjbot
Official website

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] The bot’s user page on the Swedish Wikipedia, translated to English using Google Translate.

[botact-2] 1 2 "Wikipedia Statistics, Bot article creations only". 31 January 2019.

[Wilson-3] 1 2 Wilson, Kyle (11 February 2020). "The World's Second Largest Wikipedia Is Written Almost Entirely by One Bot". Vice.com. Retrieved 8 February 2021.

[Main-4] 1 2 Main, Douglas (14 July 2014). "This Bot Has Written More Wikipedia Articles Than Anybody". Popular Science. Retrieved 13 December 2020.

[one-5] 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.

[6] "List of Wikipedias". 22 October 2021.

[7] Jervell, Ellen Emmerentze (13 July 2014). "For This Author, 10,000 Wikipedia Articles Is a Good Day's Work" . Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.

[8] Cohen, Noam (14 April 2008). "He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 23 March 2023. Retrieved 3 August 2010.

[9] Ein Mann sieht Code Archived 11 February 2013 at archive.today , Financial Times Deutschland, 9 May 2008. (in German).

[parker-10] Bagshaw, Eryk (16 July 2014). "This is how Sverker Johansson wrote 8.5 per cent of everything published on Wikipedia". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.

[local-11] "Swedish Wiki vet sets new content record". The Local . 18 July 2014. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.

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