Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia

Meet the 'bots' that edit Wikipedia: If printed and bound, it would contain more than 1,700 volumes 32,760 contributors making more than five edits per month, about 10-15% of whom are women More than 700 active bots All Wikipedias: 22.8m articles in all languages 285 language editions Smallest edition is Kashmiri, with 131 articles Source: Wikipedia It is one of several hundred bots patrolling Wikipedia at any given time. Its role in repairing the Supreme Court article illustrates how bots have quietly become an indispensable - if virtually invisible - part of the Wikipedia project. "Wikipedia would be a shambles without bots," a Wikipedia administrator known on the site as Hersfold writes in an email. "We had a joke that one day all the bots should go on strike just to make everyone appreciate how much work they do," says Chris Grant, a 19-year-old student in Perth, Australia who is on the Wikipedia committee that supervises the bots.

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