Even Good Bots Fight: The Case of Wikipedia

TL;DR

This study analyzes interactions between Wikipedia bots from 2001 to 2010, revealing that despite their simplicity, bots can engage in complex, long-term, and reciprocal conflicts, impacting online collaboration and AI research.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of bot-bot interactions on Wikipedia, modeling their behaviors and identifying different interaction trajectories over a decade.

Findings

Bots frequently undo each other's edits, leading to prolonged conflicts.

Interactions between bots are more reciprocal and longer-lasting than human interactions.

Cultural differences influence bot behavior patterns.

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the number of bots online, varying from Web crawlers for search engines, to chatbots for online customer service, spambots on social media, and content-editing bots in online collaboration communities. The online world has turned into an ecosystem of bots. However, our knowledge of how these automated agents are interacting with each other is rather poor. Bots are predictable automatons that do not have the capacity for emotions, meaning-making, creativity, and sociality and it is hence natural to expect interactions between bots to be relatively predictable and uneventful. In this article, we analyze the interactions between bots that edit articles on Wikipedia. We track the extent to which bots undid each other's edits over the period 2001-2010, model how pairs of bots interact over time, and identify different types of interaction trajectories. We find that, although Wikipedia bots are intended to support the encyclopedia, they often undo each other's edits and these sterile "fights" may sometimes continue for years. Unlike humans on Wikipedia, bots' interactions tend to occur over longer periods of time and to be more reciprocated. Yet, just like humans, bots in different cultural environments may behave differently. Our research suggests that even relatively "dumb" bots may give rise to complex interactions, and this carries important implications for Artificial Intelligence research. Understanding what affects bot-bot interactions is crucial for managing social media well, providing adequate cyber-security, and designing well functioning autonomous vehicles.