WikiArabia 2026/Submissions/En/Building Wikimedia Bots: From Community Needs to Working Code
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Building Wikimedia Bots: From Community Needs to Working Code | ||
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| Facilitators : Gopavasanth | Time block : | Start : | |
| Location : | Duration : 30 mins | ||
| Description :
Wikimedia bots are among the most powerful yet underutilized tools available to language communities. They automate repetitive tasks, enforce quality standards, flag vandalism, fix broken links, and can do in seconds what would take a human editor hours. Yet for many Wikimedia communities bots remain a mystery: something that "other" communities build and use, not something that feels within reach. This session changes that. Will talk about some of our community-built bots (IndicBot, a bot developed by the Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group) to serve Wikipedia projects across Indian languages. I will walk through what Wikimedia bots actually are, how they work, and how any community member with basic technical curiosity can start building one. The session will begin with a practical overview of the Wikimedia bot ecosystem: what bots can and cannot do, how they are approved and deployed, and how to read existing bot code to understand its logic. We will then look at real unmet needs submitted by the global Wikimedia community through the Community Wishlist Survey including requests for an edit-war-detecting bot, a Twitter/social media ID retrieval bot, and a category replacement bot as concrete examples of problems that bots can solve. Using IndicBot as a live case study, participants will see the full journey from identifying a community need to writing, testing, and deploying a working bot. The session will close with an open discussion about what bots Arabic Wikipedia and sister projects need most and who in the room might want to build them. No prior programming experience is required to attend. Basic familiarity with Wikipedia editing is enough to follow along and contribute ideas. |
Theme :
Future | ||
| Key words : Bots | |||
| Notes : | |||
| Intended outcomes :
This session will help Arabic community members understand how Wikimedia bots work and how they get approved. Participants will explore simple bot ideas for Arabic Wikipedia and learn about some existing bots and the Community Wishlist. By the end, at least one practical bot idea will be drafted. | |||
Interested participants
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