Wikipedia bots are Internet bots (computer programs) that perform simple, repetitive tasks on Wikipedia. One prominent example of an internet bot used in Wikipedia is Lsjbot, which generated millions of short articles across various language editions of Wikipedia. [1]
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. [2] [3] [4] Additionally, there are bots designed to automatically notify editors when they make common editing errors (such as unmatched quotes or unmatched parentheses). [5]
Anti-vandalism bots like ClueBot NG, created in 2010 are programmed to detect and revert vandalism quickly. [3] 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. [6]
Bots on Wikipedia must be approved before activation. [7]
A bot once created up to 10,000 articles on the Swedish Wikipedia in a day. [8] According to Andrew Lih, the current expansion of Wikipedia to millions of articles would be difficult to envision without the use of such bots. [9] The Cebuano, Swedish and Waray Wikipedias are known to have high numbers of bot-created content. [10]
One way to sort bots is by what activities they perform: [11] [12]
A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.
Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com. Although the term was not actually used in the body text of Leonard's article, the headline encapsulated a collaboration between users of the internet technology blog Slashdot and a writer for Jane's Intelligence Review. The writer, Johan J. Ingles-le Nobel, had solicited feedback on a story about cyberterrorism from Slashdot readers, and then re-wrote his story based on that feedback and compensated the Slashdot writers whose information and words he used.
The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia.
The Russian Wikipedia is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of April 2024, it has 1,973,302 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 (137 million). In June 2020, it was the world's sixth most visited language Wikipedia.
Some edits to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia by staff of the United States Congress have created controversy, notably in early to mid-2006. Several such instances, such as those involving Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, and Joe Biden, received significant media attention. Others, such as those involving Gil Gutknecht, were reported but received less widespread coverage.
Wikipedia is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the use of the wiki-based editing system MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. It is consistently ranked as one of the ten most popular websites in the world, and as of 2024 is ranked the fifth most visited website on the Internet by Semrush. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization that employs a staff of over 700 people.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Russian web brigades, also called Russian trolls, Russian bots, Kremlinbots, or Kremlin trolls are state-sponsored anonymous Internet political commentators and trolls linked to the Government of Russia. Participants report that they are organized into teams and groups of commentators that participate in Russian and international political blogs and Internet forums using sockpuppets, social bots, and large-scale orchestrated trolling and disinformation campaigns to promote pro-Vladimir Putin and pro-Russian propaganda.
WikiScanner was a publicly searchable database that linked anonymous edits on Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits apparently originated. It did this by cross-referencing the edits with data on the owners of the associated block of IP addresses, though it did not investigate edits made under a username. It was created by Virgil Griffith and released on August 13, 2007.
The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. It has 1,944,005 articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006, and 1,000,000 articles on May 16, 2013. It is the 8th-largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles and has the 4th-most edits. It also ranks 12th in terms of article depth among Wikipedias.
On 5 December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a British watchdog group, blacklisted content on the English Wikipedia related to Scorpions' 1976 studio album Virgin Killer, due to the presence of its controversial cover artwork, depicting a young girl posing nude, with a faux shattered-glass effect obscuring her genitalia. The image was deemed to be "potentially illegal content" under English law which forbids the possession or creation of indecent photographs of children. The IWF's blacklist are used in web filtering systems such as Cleanfeed.
A series of incidents in 2009 led to Church of Scientology–owned networks being blocked from making edits to Wikipedia articles relating to Scientology. The Church of Scientology has long had a controversial history on the Internet and had initiated campaigns to manipulate material and remove information critical of itself from the web. From early in Wikipedia's history, conflict arose regarding the website's coverage of Scientology. Disputes began in earnest in 2005, with users disagreeing about whether or not to describe Scientology as an abusive cult or religion, and continued through the decade.
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 in any way.
Censorship of Wikipedia by governments has occurred widely in countries including China, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Some instances are examples of widespread Internet censorship in general that includes Wikipedia content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The duration of different blocks has varied from hours to years.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
The Hillsborough disaster Wikipedia posts refers to vandalism edits on various Wikipedia articles, yet mostly the Hillsborough disaster article, via the use of British Government computers, causing a British Government scandal. On 24 April 2014, Oliver Duggan, in the Liverpool Echo, reported that users of computers that used IP addresses registered to the Government Secure Intranet had added derogatory and offensive material to Wikipedia articles, particularly the article about the Hillsborough disaster. The vandalism was quickly re-reported by other media, and subsequent reports highlighted other acts of vandalism, on various articles, originated by computers using those IP addresses. After an investigation by The Daily Telegraph and Wikipediocracy, the person behind the edits was identified as a "junior civil servant" within the UK government and was dismissed.
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.
Various publications and commentators have predicted the end of Wikipedia since it rose to prominence. Multiple potential dangers have been proposed, such as poor quality control and inconsistent editors/administrators.
