back to article People built AI bots to improve Wikipedia. Then they started squabbling in petty edit wars, sigh

An investigation into Wikipedia bots has confirmed the automated editing software can be just as pedantic and petty as humans are – often engaging in online spats that can continue for years. What's interesting is that bots behave differently depending on which language version of Wikipedia they work on: some become more …

  1. BillG
    Devil

    The Wikipedia Contradiction

    If someone is an expert in their field, they are too busy to fanatically edit Wikipedia every day.

    And if someone has the time to fanatically edit Wikipedia every day, then they cannot be an expert in their field.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Re: The Wikipedia Contradiction

      If someone is an expert in their field, they are too busy to fanatically edit Wikipedia every day.

      If someone is an expert in their field, they are also too busy to engage in edit wars with cretins. You could have a PhD and thirty years experience researching the subject, but you'll be up against Bobby Joe who knows fuck all except that he is right and you are wrong, and he's got nothing else to do all day.

      1. Paul Kinsler

        Re: You could have a PhD and thirty years experience researching the subject

        I don't have quite thirty years yet, but I do have a PhD, and I keep an eye on the rss feeds for several electromagnetism-related wikipedia pages. Mostly the changes are benign, or random vandalism which is reverted by bot, or dealt with by somebody else, so the net workload is almost vanishingly small, ... unless I have a burst of enthusiasm for improving something.

        However, I dare say it might be different if I were to take an interest in more controversial subjects.

  2. Eddy Ito

    Just published today? Why do I have this sense of déjà vu?

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Eddy

      Great memory. Well, this time round the paper's been officially published, and we've got more details and quotes - such as the pages most argued over. Enjoy!

      C.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    Whenever I despair about our future genocidal AI overlords...

    I remember that people are writing that AI, so it will be at least as screwed-up as we are.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whenever I despair about our future genocidal AI overlords...

      And that makes the despair better or worse?

  4. frank ly

    Niels Bohr

    I'd like to know why they fight about him.

    1. Pliny the Whiner

      Re: Niels Bohr

      "I'd like to know why they fight about him."

      Because he's Niels Bohr, of course. What an odd question.

  5. Notas Badoff

    Bot are not people, people are sometimes their bots

    There is a portion of people writing/guiding bots that are attracted to it for reasons that also should disqualify them from actually running them. Excessively precise and sure of themselves, they can easily maul texts and overrun anyone's ability to oversee exactly what they are doing.

    In any collective exercise, the people who can not play well with others simply must be excused from having to do so. I've seen at least two obsessive bot drivers banned from WP in the last 2 years. In spite of all good they had done the project, they finally convinced everyone that they couldn't be trusted to listen to *anyone* else.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "AI bots were driven by competition and had no qualms resorting to violence."

    Competition is easy, qualms are hard.

  7. Winkypop Silver badge
    Terminator

    I like big bots and I cannot lie

    See title

  8. Baldy50

    Reading this a week ago....

    http://www.sciencealert.com/google-s-new-ai-has-learned-to-become-highly-aggressive-in-stressful-situations

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wiki bots aren’t the only semi-intelligent agents...

    That's right. There are also the human ones.

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