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Wikipedia, the fifth most popular website on the internet according to Wikipedia has amassed an amazing 40 million entries since its launch in 2001, but underneath all that free information, a cold cyber war has been waging.

A new analysis of the first 10 years of Wikipedia has found that huge numbers of automated software 'bots' editing algorithms powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are embroiled in epic, ongoing disputes over articles, continually reverting each others' edits in a desperate bid to have the last word.

"The fights between bots can be far more persistent than the ones we see between people," researcher Taha Yasseri from the University of Oxford in the UK told The Guardian.

"Humans usually cool down after a few days, but the bots might continue for years."

In their study, Yasseri and fellow researchers tracked edits on Wikipedia in between 2001 and 2010.

While the amount of bot activity in the website's early years was low, it skyrocketed as the platform and bot technology matured, with bots responsible for about 15 percent of all edits across all language editions of the encyclopaedia in 2014 even though these algorithms only make up about 0.1 percent of Wikipedia editors.

Editing bots perform a number of roles on the site to do with modifying Wikipedia content, including undoing vandalism, enforcing bans, checking spelling, creating links, and importing new content automatically.

These bots are designed to be benevolent, supporting human Wikipedia users and cooperating with them but that benevolence doesn't always respond to their own kind.

Two bots in particular, Xqbot and Darknessbot, clashed on over 3,600 articles on a range of topics, from Alexander of Greece to Aston Villa football club.

Between 2009 and 2010, Xqbot reverted more than 2,000 of Darknessbot's edits with Darknessbot returning the favour with some 1,700 of its own changes to Xqbot's edits.

Another epic clash, between bots called Tachikoma and Russbot, saw each undo more than 1,000 edits made by the other.

These kind of stoushes came as a shock to the researchers, given the bots aren't intended to conflict with one another but were accidentally caught in loops where their programming made editorial combat inevitable.

"We had very low expectations to see anything interesting. When you think about them they are very boring," Yasseri told Ian Sample at The Guardian.

"The very fact that we saw a lot of conflict among bots was a big surprise to us. They are good bots, they are based on good intentions, and they are based on same open source technology."

Another surprise for the researchers was how bot conflict played out differently over the range of foreign language versions of the site.

The German edition of Wikipedia had the fewest bot conflicts with 24 reversions per bot on average over the 10-year study period. The Portuguese Wikipedia had the most clashes an average of 185 reversions per bot while the English language page fell in the middle, with bots altering each other's edits 105 times on average in 10 years.

"We find that bots behave differently in different cultural environments and their conflicts are also very different to the ones between human editors," explains one of the team, Milena Tsvetkova, in a press release.

"This has implications not only for how we design artificial agents but also for how we study them. We need more research into the sociology of bots."

As automated AI becomes increasingly prevalent and more powerful, considering the cultural (and potentially combative) dispositions of their programming is something we'll have to pay a lot more attention too.

Otherwise, the future is going to end up looking way too much like this:

The findings are reported in PLOS ONE.

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Investigation Reveals That Wikipedia's Bots Are in a Silent, Never-Ending War With Each Other - ScienceAlert

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How Wikipedia Is Making Kids Dumber Than Ever Forbes Crowdsourcing is great for helping NASA organize photos or raising money for your band, but not for everything. Cartoon by Shannon Wheeler. See more cartoons: Why Bathrooms With Motion-Activated Lights Is The Worst Idea · Gallery ...

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How Wikipedia Is Making Kids Dumber Than Ever - Forbes

The New York Public Libraryorganized a mass Black Power Wikipedia editing event on Saturday to add and correct content in the online encyclopedia.

The event, called Black Power! Wikipedia Edit-a-thonis organized for the third time and invites people to come and learn how to work with Wikipedia and edit the pages. The particular focus of the eventis black history and culture.

At this event, you will learn how Wikipedia works and how to add content to it. Take advantage of the rich resources of the Schomburg library to write and edit entries on black history and culture,claims the event page.

Passion for black history and culture is highly recommended! it added.

Wikipedia Edit-a-thons are becoming increasingly more popular. Last year, New Yorker wrote about a feminist edit-a-thon focused on feminist art. As the article recalled:

One table over, Corinne Vizzacchero and Andrew Sloat, friends in their late thirties, were collaborating on an article about the Madame Binh Graphics Collective, the all-women propaganda arm of a Communist organization that was founded by members of the Weather Underground.

On March 1, another event is being held called Womens Herstory editathon inviting people ofall gender identities expressions, transgender cisgender and gender nonconforming women tocorrect skewed content on Wikipedia.

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New York Public Library Holds Celebratory 'Black Power' Editing Marathon - Heat Street

Women who travel abroad have to deal with a range of issues that most men dont have to consider, like where to buy tampons or whether or not the morning after pill is available in specific countries. And any woman whos moved abroad can tell you that finding a gynecologist in another country is not always as easy as it should be.

Its from these kinds of challenges that Lani Fried came up with the idea for Gynopedia, the new Wikipedia of womens reproductive and sexual health.

Gynopedia, launched in September 2016, is an open-source health care database that includes information on womens health around the world. Specifically,the sitecurrently covers 67 cities in 48 countries on four continents, but Fried wants to have a Gynopedia page for as many cities as possible.

Each page contains information on a country or city and covers critical topics like contraception, STDs, medication and vaccines and menstruation. These topics are broken down into subsections about laws and stigmas, where to find what you need and how much it costs.

For example, if youre traveling Sri Lanka and your birth control is lost or stolen, you can visit the countrys Gynopedia page and discover that birth control is available at pharmacies without a prescription.

Or maybe you just moved to Chicago and need information about abortion laws and costs. You dont have to sift through sources and waste your time. Now, you can just go straight to the abortion section on theChicago pageto find a list womens health clinics and an idea of average costs.

Lets say you need a low-cost clinic in New York, or an LGBT-friendly gynecologist in Bangkok, or the morning after pill in Lima. Well, Gynopedia is the resource for you, asserts the Gynopedia homepage.

The idea for the site was more or less born of necessity. Fried was living in New York and planning a long trip through Asia.

I suddenly realized that I was completely clueless on how I would deal with things like birth control in the dozen countries I would visit, if I had the need to, she told Broadly. Or a pap smear. Or any access to sexual health care.

Fried started with the New York page and then expanded to include the larger destinations she was visiting in Southeast Asia.

Its crazy to me how you can find a gazillion sites on the top ten things to do or see when you visit a new place, but nothing about critical aspects of every womans life, she says. I want Gynopedia to change that.

Fried began contacting local womens health organizations to make connections and gather more information. One of the first respondents was the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership (ASAP), an organization which advocates for womens safe access to abortion throughout Asia. They were able to connect Fried with organizations in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

While such a resource is invaluable for women traveling or living abroad, it could also help women living in the U.S. to navigate rapidly changing reproductive lawsassuming Fried and other contributors are able to keep up.

Fried is actively seeking contributors and anyone who wants to create a page on Gynopedia can check out theGynopedia guidelines page.

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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The Wikipedia Of Women's Health Has Arrived | Care2 Causes - Care2.com

For many it is no more than the first port of call when a niggling question raises its head. Found on its pages are answers to mysteries from the fate of male anglerfish, the joys of dorodango, and the improbable death of Aeschylus.

But beneath the surface of Wikipedia lies a murky world of enduring conflict. A new study from computer scientists has found that the online encyclopedia is a battleground where silent wars have raged for years.

Since Wikipedia launched in 2001, its millions of articles have been ranged over by software robots, or simply bots, that are built to mend errors, add links to other pages, and perform other basic housekeeping tasks.

In the early days, the bots were so rare they worked in isolation. But over time, the number deployed on the encyclopedia exploded with unexpected consequences. The more the bots came into contact with one another, the more they became locked in combat, undoing each others edits and changing the links they had added to other pages. Some conflicts only ended when one or other bot was taken out of action.

The fights between bots can be far more persistent than the ones we see between people, said Taha Yasseri, who worked on the study at the Oxford Internet Institute. Humans usually cool down after a few days, but the bots might continue for years.

The findings emerged from a study that looked at bot-on-bot conflict in the first ten years of Wikipedias existence. The researchers at Oxford and the Alan Turing Institute in London examined the editing histories of pages in 13 different language editions and recorded when bots undid other bots changes.

They did not expect to find much. The bots are simple computer programs that are written to make the encyclopedia better. They are not intended to work against each other. We had very low expectations to see anything interesting. When you think about them they are very boring, said Yasseri. The very fact that we saw a lot of conflict among bots was a big surprise to us. They are good bots, they are based on good intentions, and they are based on same open source technology.

While some conflicts mirrored those found in society, such as the best names to use for contested territories, others were more intriguing. Describing their research in a paper entitled Even Good Bots Fight in the journal Plos One, the scientists reveal that among the most contested articles were pages on former president of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf, the Arabic language, Niels Bohr and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

One of the most intense battles played out between Xqbot and Darknessbot which fought over 3,629 different articles between 2009 and 2010. Over the period, Xqbot undid more than 2,000 edits made by Darknessbot, with Darknessbot retaliating by undoing more than 1,700 of Xqbots changes. The two clashed over pages on all sorts of topics, from Alexander of Greece and Banqiao district in Taiwan to Aston Villa football club.

Another bot named after Tachikoma, the artificial intelligence in the Japanese science fiction series Ghost in the Shell, had a two year running battle with Russbot. The two undid more than a thousand edits by the other on more than 3,000 articles ranging from Hillary Clinton s 2008 presidential campaign to the demography of the UK.

The study found striking differences in the bot wars that played out on the various language editions of Wikipedia. German editions had the fewest bot fights, with bots undoing others edits on average only 24 times in a decade. But the story was different on the Portuguese Wikipedia, where bots undid the work of other bots on average 185 times in ten years. The English version saw bots meddling with each others changes on average 105 times a decade.

The findings show that even simple algorithms that are let loose on the internet can interact in unpredictable ways. In many cases, the bots came into conflict because they followed slightly different rules to one another.

Yasseri believes the work serves as an early warning to companies developing bots and more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools. An AI that works well in the lab might behave unpredictably in the wild. Take self-driving cars. A very simple thing thats often overlooked is that these will be used in different cultures and environments, said Yasseri. An automated car will behave differently on the German autobahn to how it will on the roads in Italy. The regulations are different, the laws are different, and the driving culture is very different, he said.

As more decisions, options and services come to depend on bots working properly together, harmonious cooperation will become increasingly important. As the authors note in their latest study: We know very little about the life and evolution of our digital minions.

Earlier this month, researchers at Googles DeepMind set AIs against one another to see if they would cooperate or fight. When the AIs were released on an apple-collecting game, the scientists found that the AIs cooperated while apples were plentiful, but as soon as supplies got short, they turned nasty. It is not the first time that AIs have run into trouble. In 2011, scientists in the US recorded a conversation between two chatbots. They bickered from the start and ended up arguing about God.

2017 Guardian Web under contract with NewsEdge/Acquire Media. All rights reserved.

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Study: Bot-on-Bot Editing Wars Raging on Wikipedia's pages - NewsFactor Network