The 53-year-old Swede Svecker Johansson, who has been a Wikipedia for seven years, and his bot program, which is responsible for writing 2.7 million articles (8.5% of the total, according to Wikimedia analytics) of the online encyclopedia, are at the center of a Wall Street Journal article.
Johansson holds degrees in linguistics, civil engineering, economics and molecular physics, and says his interests include “the origins of things, everything.” The bulk of his entries, however, are generated by a bot he has created, which has drawn criticism from some who believe that the use of such tools is not in the spirit of encyclopedias, as this work requires “human creativity.”.
“Lsjbot” searches for information in databases and other digital sources, then compiles it into articles. On a “good” day, according to Johansson, the program can create 10,000 new entries. On Wikipedia, any registered user can create an entry. Johansson finds reliable databases, creates “templates,” and then launches the program, which searches for information and publishes it in the encyclopedia.
Bots have long been used to write and edit articles on Wikipedia, and their operation is regulated by the so-called "Bot Approvals Group".
As Johansson notes, who speaks of an “active” minority opposing his project, his goal is to achieve “complete democracy online.” According to him, Wikipedia should eventually be able to tell everyone everything about everything. His bot, which took two months of planning to create, is, he argues, a step towards achieving that goal more quickly—even if the entries it creates are small “stubs” containing only basic information. He acknowledges that Lsjbot’s entries can be boring, but he believes there is value in them, as they allow other Wikipedia contributors/members to expand on the topics later, while he believes the bot could be an inspiration for future contributors who possess knowledge beyond the interests of current contributors.
Source: secnews.gr
