Bot-Generated Wikipedias

[God of Kings]

Let's discuss Wikipedias generated by automated computer programs called bots.

The Cebuano Wikipedia just reached the 5-million mark and needs only 400,000 or so more articles to exceed the English Wikipedia to become the largest Wikipedia. The Cebuano Wikipedia reached the 4-million mark only six months ago!

The Cebuano Wikipedia is primarily written by a bot called Lsjbot authored by a Swedish physics professor who has a Cebuano-speaking wife and much of the articles consist of extremely short stubs. This Wikipedia has thousands of articles about intermittent shoals and islets in Nunavut for example.

Note that Cebuano is a Filipino language (and interesting enough, is also Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte's mother tongue).

I once joked about the Cebuano Wikipedia being Rodrigo Duterte's Leader Unique Ability in Civ VI (as a hypothetical Filipino civ), in which upon researching the Social Media civic, the Philippines under Duterte would receive a huge one-time science boost.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, stubs aren't real articles. They tend to consist of a few lines and no verification links..

 

[God of Kings]

Well, stubs aren't real articles. They tend to consist of a few lines and no verification links..

There's a reason why I consider ranking Wikipedia editions by article count a complete joke. However, re-ranking Wikipedia article count by excluding stubs (for example under the 1kB mark) would cause the English Wikipedia to have more articles than all other Wikipedia editions combined.

The vast majority of Cebuano articles read like this:

[Article Topic] is a/an [Geographic Feature] located in [Location].

It has a simple infobox and citing only the World Geodatabase as well.

Instead, I prefer to measure the size of various Wikipedia editions by database size. The English Wikipedia is 26 times larger than the Cebuano Wikipedia when it comes to actual substance.