A bot (a common nickname for software robot) is an automated or semi-automated tool that carries out repetitive and mundane tasks to maintain the 60,726,109 pages of the English Wikipedia. Bots are able to make edits very rapidly and can disrupt Wikipedia if they are incorrectly designed or operated. For these reasons, a bot policy has been developed.

There are currently 2,690 bot tasks approved for use on the English Wikipedia; however, not all approved tasks involve actively carrying out edits. Bots will leave messages on user talk pages if the action that the bot has carried out is of interest to that editor. Some bots can be excluded from leaving these messages by using the {{bots}} tags. There are 211 exclusion-compliant bots, which are listed in this category. There are 295 bots flagged with the "bot" flag right now. There is also a range of tools that allow semi-automated editing of large numbers of articles.

Bots have been used in the past to create large numbers of articles that were uploaded to Wikipedia within a short timeframe. Some technical problems were experienced and this led to the formulation of a bot policy, as well as a restriction on the automated, large-scale, creation of articles.

Wikipedia policy requires that bots be harmless and useful, have approval, use separate user accounts, and be operated responsibly.

The Bot Approvals Group (BAG) supervises and approves all bot-related activity from a technical and quality-control perspective on behalf of the English Wikipedia community. On the English Wikipedia, the right to flag a bot is limited to bureaucrats.

Running an automated bot on a separate account requires approval, which may be requested at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval.

Some programming experience is needed to create a bot and knowledge of regular expressions is useful for many editing tasks.

The Chicken Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, Java, Microsoft .NET, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby programming languages all have libraries available for creating bots. Pywikipedia (Python Wikipediabot Framework) is a collection of tools developed specifically for creating bots.

While it is easy to hide all bots from your watchlist, there is no way of hiding specific bots through user preferences or default watchlist settings. However, it is possible with a user script by following these simple steps.

Main steps

1. Go to your Special:MyPage/common.js page, and add importScript('User:UncleDouggie/smart_watchlist.js'); (diff)
2. Remember to bypass your browser's cache.
3. Go to your watchlist. There should be a box with several options. Tick the 'Enable hide user buttons' box. This will let you hide specific bots (and users) from your watchlist.

   Note: You might want to untick the 'Enable hide user buttons' box after you ignore a bot to ensure that you don't accidentally click 'hide user' when browsing your watchlist.

Optional steps

1. If you find this box annoying, go to your Special:MyPage/common.css page and add #SmartWatchlistOptions {display:none ! important;} (diff)
2. Remember to bypass your browser's cache.
3. If you want to show the box again, for example to reset your ignore list, go to your Special:MyPage/common.css page and remove #SmartWatchlistOptions {display:none ! important;} and remember to bypass your browser's cache. Redoing optional steps #1 and #2 will hide the box again.

While you are completely free to ignore any bots (or users) you want, it is a good idea to only ignore bots with well-defined tasks, which you trust to not make any mistakes.

There is no way of hiding AWB edits through user preferences or default watchlist settings. However, it is possible with a user script by following these simple steps.

Main steps

1. Go to your Special:MyPage/common.js page, and add the following two lines (diff):

   importScript( 'User:Evad37/Watchlist-hideAWB.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:Evad37/Watchlist-hideAWB]]

   var awbHiddenByDefault = true;

2. Remember to bypass your browser's cache.

Declared AWB edits will now be hidden by default. You may display them by clicking on the "show AWB" tab at the top of your watchlist (next to "Special page" for Monobook skin, or in the "More" dropdown for Vector skin).

Notes:

• If you leave out var awbHiddenByDefault = true;, AWB edits will be shown by default, but you will have the option of hiding AWB edits by clicking on the "hide AWB" tab at the top of your watchlist.
• While you are completely free to ignore AWB edits, remember that many of them will contain substantial changes from human editors, not just minor edits from bots or meatbots.
• When hiding edits with a script, earlier edits can be forced to appear. Using the Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent preference option is necessary to see other non-hidden watchlist hits for a page.

Some examples of bots are:

• User:AAlertBot – delivering article alerts to WikiProjects about ongoing discussions.
• User:AnomieBOT – large variety of tasks, most well known for adding dates to amboxes.
• User:BracketBot – notifies users of mismatched brackets in recently edited articles.
• User:ClueBot NG – reverts vandalism.
• User:Cydebot – generally carries out tasks associated with deletion.
• User:DatBot – patrols the edit filters and resizes non-free images.
• User:DumbBOT – often removes protection templates from recently unprotected pages.
• User:ListeriaBot – Experimental bot by Magnus Manske. It generates and updates lists on Wikipedia.
• User:Lowercase sigmabot III – archives talk pages.
• User:ProcseeBot – automatically blocks proxies due to both the local policy against open proxies.
• User:SineBot – signs comments left on talk pages.
• User:TheMagikBOT – often adds protection templates to articles without them.
• User:WP 1.0 bot – works with the Version 1.0 Editorial Team.
• User:Yobot – syntax fixes and tagging.

• Internet bot

Wikipedia space

• Wikipedia:Bots/Status (this page will need updating)
• Wikipedia:Types of bots

Help

• Help:MakeBot (inactive)

Meta

• meta:bot
• meta:Bot policy
• meta:Countervandalism Network/Bots