It is not one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of
consensus and
vetting.
This is a small guide to
bot-related
terms of art on Wikipedia. For convenience, links to other definitions on this page are italicized.
Each definition has an
anchor, which can then be used to create links to that definition. For example, to link to the definition of a bot op, you can use [[WP:BOTDICT#bot op]] to create
WP:BOTDICT#bot op, which will take you directly to the definition. Each listed variant (e.g. bot operator) has a corresponding anchor (e.g. #bot operator).
Definitions
2FA / two-factor authentication
Two-factor authentication (2FA), here using a
TOTP token supplied by an app on a phone or other personal device. This increases account security, but interferes with automated login by a bot, so a bot passwords or OAuth is normally used to allow the bot to authenticate.
An API can refer to any
application programming interfaces, but usually refers to MediaWiki's
action API, which is a way for bots to communicate with websites (such as Wikipedia) and perform operations on them. See also
mw:API.
assert / assertion
Usually refers to
mw:API:Assert, used to ensure a bot only edits while logged in.
assisted editing / semi-automated editing
Refers to editing that is assisted by various scripts and tools (such as AutoWikiBrowser). Typically, a human editor is presented with each edit and must individually approve it before it is submitted. It can also refer to edits made via scripts such as Twinkle, which uses pre-filled boilerplate forms for 'standard' nominations and notices. See also
automated editing.
automated editing
Refers to editing that is done automatically, without human review, i.e. editing done by bots. See also
assisted editing.
An automated tool that carries out repetitive and mundane tasks to maintain Wikipedia's articles and other pages. Short for
robot. Many
types of bots exist. Also commonly used to refer to a bot account. See also
WP:BOTS.
bot account
A bot's user account. It should typically have the word BOT in its account name, or otherwise be descriptive of the task, and clearly indicate who the bot operator running the account is. See also
WP:BOTACC.
Members of the BAG. BAG members are trusted to understand Wikipedia's bot policy and to offer sound bot-related advice to bot operators, admins, bureaucrats, and editors alike. While some BAG members are also
admins or
bureaucrats, the role of BAG members should not be confused with that of bureaucrats or admins. See also the
BAG member list.
bot flag
The term has two distinct but related meanings:
Membership in the bot group, which raises some limits in the API and grants some additional rights, including the right to use the bot flag as in sense 2. See also
WP:BOTFLAG.
Used to flag individual edits as "bot" edits, which causes them to be hidden by default on
RecentChanges and allows them to be hidden on
watchlists. Some bot edits are not marked with the bot flag, such as bots designed to notify users of ongoing discussions.
bot coder / bot maintainer
A user who writes and maintains the code of the bot. Bot coders will often, but not always, be the bot op for the bot they code.
bot op / bot operator / bot owner
A user who operates and is responsible for the bot's edits. Will often, but not always, be the same person as the bot coder.
BotPasswords / bot password
An alternative username and password that can be used to log into an account via the API action=login with restricted user rights available. See
mw:Manual:Bot passwords for details. If possible, OAuth should be used instead.
BRFA / (Bot) Requests for Approval
Refers to the
process by which bots are approved. Bot operators will detail the task for which they request approval, along with technical information about the bot. The process is open and all editors (including unregistered users) are welcomed to comment. BRFAs evaluate both whether consensus exists for the task, and if the bot's technical implementation is sound. See also
WP:BOTAPPROVAL,
WP:BRFA, and
WP:BAGG § Guide to BRFAs.
bot policy
The English Wikipedia
bot policy. Other
editions of Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia projects have their own bot policies, which may significantly differ from the English Wikipedia's policy. See also
WP:BOTPOL.
A user with the ability to flag accounts as belonging to admins or bots, among other things. BAG members will advise bureaucrats on whether proposed bots and adminbots should be flagged as such. Bureaucrats technically make the final determination of whether the proper process was followed, or if consensus supports such a task, but will usually defer to BAG's judgement. See also
WP:BUREAUCRAT.
Checkwiki
Checkwiki is a project that helps clean up wikicode and other errors in the source code of Wikipedia. See also
WP:CHECKWIKI.
cluttering / flooding
Edits made on Wikipedia appear on several special pages so they can be monitored and reviewed. Editing on a large scale will cause multiple pages to appear in
Special:RecentChanges and
Special:Watchlist in a short amount of time, and the changes will also be present in
page histories. This is known as flooding or cluttering, and is one of the main reasons for the existence of
WP:COSMETICBOT. The bot flag is designed to reduce the impact of flooding on
Special:RecentChanges and
Special:Watchlist, but will never completely eliminate it. Meat bots do not have access to such a flag.
A context-sensitive edit is one that could be either valid or invalid, depending on the situation. For instance, changing "Dr. Suess" to "Dr. Seuss" by bot would be a bad idea – while "Dr. Suess" is a likely typo for
Dr. Seuss, it could also be a correct reference to
Dr. Hans Eduard Suess. See also
WP:CONTEXTBOT.
cosmetic bot
A bot which makes cosmetic edits. Purely cosmetic bots are typically forbidden per
WP:COSMETICBOT, but bots can be allowed to make certain cosmetic changes by consensus or in addition to their primary task.
cosmetic edit / substantive edit
A cosmetic edit is one that doesn't change the output HTML or readable text of a page. By contrast, a substantive edit is one that does change the output HTML or readable text of a page. Cosmetic edits will almost always be minor edits. They may improve the friendliness and consistency of the wikitext, although
edit warring on presentation (e.g. changing |parameter=value to | parameter = value, or changing templates from
single line to
multiline, and vice versa) is generally not acceptable in a bot edit.
The term cosmetic refers to changing the appearance of the
wikitext without changing the appearance of the output page. See also
WP:COSMETICBOT.
cron
A
cron is a Unix program used for scheduling a bot task to be automatically run in periodic intervals, even if the bot operator is asleep.
Editor-hostile wikitext refers to wikitext that is technically correct, and does not on its own cause errors, but which causes either a) code readability issues, b) poor interactions with common tools, or c)unpleasant surprises when edited. For example
a)prêt-à-porter renders as prêt-à-porter, but is very hard to quickly understand while reading the edit window.
b) A citation template formatted like
{{citejournal|issue=21|last=Smith|year=2008|title=Article of Things|journal=Journal of Things|volume=20|first=John|pages=156|doi=10.12345/654456}}
is harder to understand than one formatted like
{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=John |year=2008 |title=Article of Things |journal=Journal of Things |volume=20 |issue=21 |pages=156 |doi=10.12345/654456}}
due to the poor parameter order and lack of whitespace structure, even if they render the same. The improved parameter order makes it easier to see what information is present (or missing), and the improved |parameter=value whitespace structure creates an easily recognizable visual pattern while also improving
line wrapping in the edit window.
c)<br> and <br /> render the same. However, while wikicode-highlighting scripts will correctly recognize
"well-formed" elements like <br />, they will often not understand that <br> means the same thing.
d) If [[Category:Physicists|Sir Isaac Newton]] is present twice on the same page, this is treated exactly as if it was present only once. However someone may decide to change the
sortkey for the article to something like [[Category:Physicists|Newton, Isaac]] and forget about the other sortkey present on the page, and cause a sortkey
collision.
Fixing editor-hostile wikitext constitutes a cosmetic edit and is typically not allowed by bots, although some cases (such as collisions) may be deemed editor-hostile enough to be treated by bot if they cross the threshold of usefulness.
A human (made of
meat, unlike a robot) editor that makes a large amount of repetitive edits from their own account, often with semi-automated tools, much like a bot would. For the purpose of dispute resolution, it is irrelevant if edits are made by actual bots or by meatbots. See also
WP:MEATBOT.
A minor edit is one where only small and superficial differences are made. Examples include typographical corrections, fixes to formatting, and adding dates to maintenance categories. Minor edits should require no review and be uncontroversial. See also
WP:MINOR.Cosmetic edits will almost always be minor edits.
null bot
A bot that makes null edits. Bots typically don't need approval for this, unless making null edits in large numbers that would affect server performance, or requiring access to special bot-onlyAPI features.
null edit
A
null edit is an edit where the page is saved without changes. This is sometimes done to force a server-side cache purge and force the page to be re-rendered from scratch. This causes category sorting, "what links here" results, how templates are rendered, and so on to be updated. See also
WP:NULL.
OAuth
OAuth is a mechanism for a bot to take action as if it were a different user (or on behalf of different user) without having to know the user's password. For example,
OAbot will
ask users to allow OAuth access, so it can make edits
as the user. It also provides the ability to restrict the user rights available to the bot when logged in in this manner. See
mw:Help:OAuth and
mw:OAuth/For Developers for details specific to OAuth on Wikipedia. A bot will typically use an
owner-only consumer to simplify the process.
PAWS
PAWS is a WMF service that allows bot operators to execute Python code in a
Jupyter Notebook setup.
Pywikibot
Pywikibot is a
Python library for developing bot applications. It also contains a number of standard
built-in scripts. It is arguably the most used bot framework.
spectrum / threshold of usefulness
The "spectrum of usefulness" is a general concept useful in evaluating bot tasks. A proposed bot task will typically involve improvements to articles (even if only from a technical perspective), such as improving
HTML5 compliance, making cosmetic improvements, fixing obvious mistakes, fixing editor-hostile wikitext, adding missing information, or improving the
machine-readability of an article. However, the
bot policy requires that bots are considered useful while not consuming resources unnecessarily. Each proposed task falls somewhere on the spectrum, and must cross a certain "threshold" to be deemed useful enough to the community. While cosmetic edits are typically on the lower end of usefulness, they will sometimes be useful enough to have community consensus to be done on their own. Likewise, while substantive edits are typically on the higher end of usefulness, doing them with a bot will sometimes create more problems than it solves.
Toolforge is WMF-hosted server environment commonly used for hosting automatic bots.
Twinkle
Twinkle is one of the most popular JavaScript gadgets that helps
autoconfirmed users and
admins with common maintenance tasks and in dealing with vandalism and other problematic behaviour. See also
WP:TWINKLE.
user script / script
JavaScript and/or
CSS that alters the MediaWiki user interface. They might be as simple as changing colors or something very complex such as Twinkle. Most user scripts are enabled by adding loading code to
your common.js, while gadgets are user scripts that may be enabled in
Special:Preferences. Some can be used to perform assisted editing.
WPCleaner is a tool designed to help with various maintenance tasks, especially repairing links to disambiguation pages, checking Wikipedia, fixing spelling and typography, and helping with translation of articles coming from other wikis. See also
WP:WPCLEANER.
It is not one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of
consensus and
vetting.
This is a small guide to
bot-related
terms of art on Wikipedia. For convenience, links to other definitions on this page are italicized.
Each definition has an
anchor, which can then be used to create links to that definition. For example, to link to the definition of a bot op, you can use [[WP:BOTDICT#bot op]] to create
WP:BOTDICT#bot op, which will take you directly to the definition. Each listed variant (e.g. bot operator) has a corresponding anchor (e.g. #bot operator).
Definitions
2FA / two-factor authentication
Two-factor authentication (2FA), here using a
TOTP token supplied by an app on a phone or other personal device. This increases account security, but interferes with automated login by a bot, so a bot passwords or OAuth is normally used to allow the bot to authenticate.
An API can refer to any
application programming interfaces, but usually refers to MediaWiki's
action API, which is a way for bots to communicate with websites (such as Wikipedia) and perform operations on them. See also
mw:API.
assert / assertion
Usually refers to
mw:API:Assert, used to ensure a bot only edits while logged in.
assisted editing / semi-automated editing
Refers to editing that is assisted by various scripts and tools (such as AutoWikiBrowser). Typically, a human editor is presented with each edit and must individually approve it before it is submitted. It can also refer to edits made via scripts such as Twinkle, which uses pre-filled boilerplate forms for 'standard' nominations and notices. See also
automated editing.
automated editing
Refers to editing that is done automatically, without human review, i.e. editing done by bots. See also
assisted editing.
An automated tool that carries out repetitive and mundane tasks to maintain Wikipedia's articles and other pages. Short for
robot. Many
types of bots exist. Also commonly used to refer to a bot account. See also
WP:BOTS.
bot account
A bot's user account. It should typically have the word BOT in its account name, or otherwise be descriptive of the task, and clearly indicate who the bot operator running the account is. See also
WP:BOTACC.
Members of the BAG. BAG members are trusted to understand Wikipedia's bot policy and to offer sound bot-related advice to bot operators, admins, bureaucrats, and editors alike. While some BAG members are also
admins or
bureaucrats, the role of BAG members should not be confused with that of bureaucrats or admins. See also the
BAG member list.
bot flag
The term has two distinct but related meanings:
Membership in the bot group, which raises some limits in the API and grants some additional rights, including the right to use the bot flag as in sense 2. See also
WP:BOTFLAG.
Used to flag individual edits as "bot" edits, which causes them to be hidden by default on
RecentChanges and allows them to be hidden on
watchlists. Some bot edits are not marked with the bot flag, such as bots designed to notify users of ongoing discussions.
bot coder / bot maintainer
A user who writes and maintains the code of the bot. Bot coders will often, but not always, be the bot op for the bot they code.
bot op / bot operator / bot owner
A user who operates and is responsible for the bot's edits. Will often, but not always, be the same person as the bot coder.
BotPasswords / bot password
An alternative username and password that can be used to log into an account via the API action=login with restricted user rights available. See
mw:Manual:Bot passwords for details. If possible, OAuth should be used instead.
BRFA / (Bot) Requests for Approval
Refers to the
process by which bots are approved. Bot operators will detail the task for which they request approval, along with technical information about the bot. The process is open and all editors (including unregistered users) are welcomed to comment. BRFAs evaluate both whether consensus exists for the task, and if the bot's technical implementation is sound. See also
WP:BOTAPPROVAL,
WP:BRFA, and
WP:BAGG § Guide to BRFAs.
bot policy
The English Wikipedia
bot policy. Other
editions of Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia projects have their own bot policies, which may significantly differ from the English Wikipedia's policy. See also
WP:BOTPOL.
A user with the ability to flag accounts as belonging to admins or bots, among other things. BAG members will advise bureaucrats on whether proposed bots and adminbots should be flagged as such. Bureaucrats technically make the final determination of whether the proper process was followed, or if consensus supports such a task, but will usually defer to BAG's judgement. See also
WP:BUREAUCRAT.
Checkwiki
Checkwiki is a project that helps clean up wikicode and other errors in the source code of Wikipedia. See also
WP:CHECKWIKI.
cluttering / flooding
Edits made on Wikipedia appear on several special pages so they can be monitored and reviewed. Editing on a large scale will cause multiple pages to appear in
Special:RecentChanges and
Special:Watchlist in a short amount of time, and the changes will also be present in
page histories. This is known as flooding or cluttering, and is one of the main reasons for the existence of
WP:COSMETICBOT. The bot flag is designed to reduce the impact of flooding on
Special:RecentChanges and
Special:Watchlist, but will never completely eliminate it. Meat bots do not have access to such a flag.
A context-sensitive edit is one that could be either valid or invalid, depending on the situation. For instance, changing "Dr. Suess" to "Dr. Seuss" by bot would be a bad idea – while "Dr. Suess" is a likely typo for
Dr. Seuss, it could also be a correct reference to
Dr. Hans Eduard Suess. See also
WP:CONTEXTBOT.
cosmetic bot
A bot which makes cosmetic edits. Purely cosmetic bots are typically forbidden per
WP:COSMETICBOT, but bots can be allowed to make certain cosmetic changes by consensus or in addition to their primary task.
cosmetic edit / substantive edit
A cosmetic edit is one that doesn't change the output HTML or readable text of a page. By contrast, a substantive edit is one that does change the output HTML or readable text of a page. Cosmetic edits will almost always be minor edits. They may improve the friendliness and consistency of the wikitext, although
edit warring on presentation (e.g. changing |parameter=value to | parameter = value, or changing templates from
single line to
multiline, and vice versa) is generally not acceptable in a bot edit.
The term cosmetic refers to changing the appearance of the
wikitext without changing the appearance of the output page. See also
WP:COSMETICBOT.
cron
A
cron is a Unix program used for scheduling a bot task to be automatically run in periodic intervals, even if the bot operator is asleep.
Editor-hostile wikitext refers to wikitext that is technically correct, and does not on its own cause errors, but which causes either a) code readability issues, b) poor interactions with common tools, or c)unpleasant surprises when edited. For example
a)prêt-à-porter renders as prêt-à-porter, but is very hard to quickly understand while reading the edit window.
b) A citation template formatted like
{{citejournal|issue=21|last=Smith|year=2008|title=Article of Things|journal=Journal of Things|volume=20|first=John|pages=156|doi=10.12345/654456}}
is harder to understand than one formatted like
{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=John |year=2008 |title=Article of Things |journal=Journal of Things |volume=20 |issue=21 |pages=156 |doi=10.12345/654456}}
due to the poor parameter order and lack of whitespace structure, even if they render the same. The improved parameter order makes it easier to see what information is present (or missing), and the improved |parameter=value whitespace structure creates an easily recognizable visual pattern while also improving
line wrapping in the edit window.
c)<br> and <br /> render the same. However, while wikicode-highlighting scripts will correctly recognize
"well-formed" elements like <br />, they will often not understand that <br> means the same thing.
d) If [[Category:Physicists|Sir Isaac Newton]] is present twice on the same page, this is treated exactly as if it was present only once. However someone may decide to change the
sortkey for the article to something like [[Category:Physicists|Newton, Isaac]] and forget about the other sortkey present on the page, and cause a sortkey
collision.
Fixing editor-hostile wikitext constitutes a cosmetic edit and is typically not allowed by bots, although some cases (such as collisions) may be deemed editor-hostile enough to be treated by bot if they cross the threshold of usefulness.
A human (made of
meat, unlike a robot) editor that makes a large amount of repetitive edits from their own account, often with semi-automated tools, much like a bot would. For the purpose of dispute resolution, it is irrelevant if edits are made by actual bots or by meatbots. See also
WP:MEATBOT.
A minor edit is one where only small and superficial differences are made. Examples include typographical corrections, fixes to formatting, and adding dates to maintenance categories. Minor edits should require no review and be uncontroversial. See also
WP:MINOR.Cosmetic edits will almost always be minor edits.
null bot
A bot that makes null edits. Bots typically don't need approval for this, unless making null edits in large numbers that would affect server performance, or requiring access to special bot-onlyAPI features.
null edit
A
null edit is an edit where the page is saved without changes. This is sometimes done to force a server-side cache purge and force the page to be re-rendered from scratch. This causes category sorting, "what links here" results, how templates are rendered, and so on to be updated. See also
WP:NULL.
OAuth
OAuth is a mechanism for a bot to take action as if it were a different user (or on behalf of different user) without having to know the user's password. For example,
OAbot will
ask users to allow OAuth access, so it can make edits
as the user. It also provides the ability to restrict the user rights available to the bot when logged in in this manner. See
mw:Help:OAuth and
mw:OAuth/For Developers for details specific to OAuth on Wikipedia. A bot will typically use an
owner-only consumer to simplify the process.
PAWS
PAWS is a WMF service that allows bot operators to execute Python code in a
Jupyter Notebook setup.
Pywikibot
Pywikibot is a
Python library for developing bot applications. It also contains a number of standard
built-in scripts. It is arguably the most used bot framework.
spectrum / threshold of usefulness
The "spectrum of usefulness" is a general concept useful in evaluating bot tasks. A proposed bot task will typically involve improvements to articles (even if only from a technical perspective), such as improving
HTML5 compliance, making cosmetic improvements, fixing obvious mistakes, fixing editor-hostile wikitext, adding missing information, or improving the
machine-readability of an article. However, the
bot policy requires that bots are considered useful while not consuming resources unnecessarily. Each proposed task falls somewhere on the spectrum, and must cross a certain "threshold" to be deemed useful enough to the community. While cosmetic edits are typically on the lower end of usefulness, they will sometimes be useful enough to have community consensus to be done on their own. Likewise, while substantive edits are typically on the higher end of usefulness, doing them with a bot will sometimes create more problems than it solves.
Toolforge is WMF-hosted server environment commonly used for hosting automatic bots.
Twinkle
Twinkle is one of the most popular JavaScript gadgets that helps
autoconfirmed users and
admins with common maintenance tasks and in dealing with vandalism and other problematic behaviour. See also
WP:TWINKLE.
user script / script
JavaScript and/or
CSS that alters the MediaWiki user interface. They might be as simple as changing colors or something very complex such as Twinkle. Most user scripts are enabled by adding loading code to
your common.js, while gadgets are user scripts that may be enabled in
Special:Preferences. Some can be used to perform assisted editing.
WPCleaner is a tool designed to help with various maintenance tasks, especially repairing links to disambiguation pages, checking Wikipedia, fixing spelling and typography, and helping with translation of articles coming from other wikis. See also
WP:WPCLEANER.