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Humour

Bots

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No bots were harmed in the writing of this article.

There are a startling 1,862 bots at large on Wikipedia.[2] If the world has any fear of AI, then the robo-cide should probably begin here. There is suspicion that a few of these bots are included in the count of the 5,000 most active editors. It's uncertain whether this is true or not, but it does make you wonder – who are they and what do they do? (In plain English, please.) Scripts are somewhat comprehensible, HTML makes sense – bot but why so many? Do they ever have their own bot-like edit-wars? Has a bot ever become a sock of another bot? Who needs administrators or ArbCom when bots could do the same things (without mercy)? Many bots possess human qualities and foibles. Short descriptions of the most interesting ones include:

  • Botnet – the scary, big, and bad, bot boss.
  • BotTheBuilder – created with a child-like personality. This bot will automatically leave a message on all the talk pages of articles on heavy machinery that optimistically states: "Yes we can!"
  • Bots n Panz – assembles topics for a new WikiProject: Domestication of Men. Two articles have been tagged for assessment for this project so far. These are What women want men to do in the kitchen and You never listen.
The KISS script in an intimate moment
  • orangeBot – has the tedious job of sorting through the Knock-knock joke articles, assessing their humor, and adding the speedy deletion template to tag the article page: pointless since every knock-knock joke get the speedy deletion tag. Orange you glad this bot is around? This bot was created by the self-identified German participants on the talk page.
  • Bots!! – is a massively multiplayer bot and "uses nProtect GameGuard but because of its method of actuation, similar to a rootkit, it is criticized for being extremely invasive."[3] It was created in March 2006, so its a little slow and pixelated. This bot was licensed to Playdom. Then Disney purchased it[4] from Playdom for $763 million. The Korean version is called BOUT!!
  • Bots – easily confused with the former bot. Though named after a band, it is able to translate Dutch articles into English.
Many bots 'wanna' retire to southern Africa
  • Botswana – A place where bots 'wanna' retire.
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Jack-in-the-bots

Snide remarks and dubious addenda

  1. ^ attributed to Baby Sinclair from the TV series Dinosaurs
  2. ^ https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/BotActivityMatrixEdits.htm
  3. ^ this should be assessed by ProjMed
  4. ^ of course they did, they own Wikimedia, too.
  5. ^ the ball is black and white
  6. ^ involves broken bones and a sled
  7. ^ the balls are red and white
  8. ^ the ball is brown
  9. ^ Wang, T.; Collet, J.-P.; Shapiro, S.; Ware, M. A. (2008). "Adverse effects of medical cannabinoids: A systematic review". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 178 (13): 1669–78. doi:10.1503/cmaj.071178. PMC 2413308. PMID 18559804.
  10. ^ Cannabis. "Erowid Cannabis (Marijuana) Vault : Effects". Erowid.org. Retrieved 17 February 2011.[not a WP:MEDRS citation]