Bot detection in Wikidata using behavioral and other informal cues

Bots have been important to peer production’s success. Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and Wikidata all have taken advantage of automation to perform work at a rate and scale exceeding that of human contributors. Understanding the ways in which humans and bots behave in these communities is an important topic, and one that relies on accurate bot recognition. Yet, in many cases, bot activities are not explicitly flagged and could be mistaken for human contributions. We develop a machine classifier to detect previously unidentified bots using implicit behavioral and other informal editing characteristics. We show that this method yields a high level of fitness under both formal evaluation (PR-AUC: 0.845, ROC-AUC: 0.985) and a qualitative analysis of “anonymous” contributor edit sessions. We also show that, in some cases, unflagged bot activities can significantly misrepresent human behavior in analyses. Our model has the potential to support future research and community patrolling activities.