Bot

A bot (derived from the word "robot") is an tool that carries out repetitive and mundane automated edits on a regular basis to help maintain OpenStreetMap.

Bots are able to make edits very rapidly and can disrupt OpenStreetMap if they are incorrectly designed or operated.

List of bots

Note that this list is far from complete. Please create an entry in the list if you operate a bot or come across one not documented here.

Bot name	Description	Active / Last used	OSM data submitting account	Owner / operator contact	Language(s)
czechreg	Makes automatic corrections (and updates) of Czech administrative boundaries and places.	Very active	czechreg (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	xificurk (on osm)	English
Mateusz Konieczny - bot account	numerous worldwide changes, see documentation	Very active	Mateusz Konieczny - bot account (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Mateusz Konieczny (on osm)	English, Polish
SearchAroundBot	Lets Telegram users insert new nodes in OSM via the Telegram bot @SearchAroundBot. Currently limited to drinking_water and toilets amenities.	Rarely active/ August 2018	SearchAroundBot (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	@Kercos	English
M!dgardAutomated	Automated changes mostly in Belgium, automatic reverting of changesets by vandals	March 2018	M!dgardAutomated (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Midgard Wiki: User:M!dgard	English, Dutch, French
SafwatHalaby_bot	Performs various tasks related to name tags, bus stops, and brands/chain stores (for now in Israel).	January 2018	SafwatHalaby_bot (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	SafwatHalaby (on osm)	English, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian
mechanischer Basstoelpel	Search and replace operations in Germany.	October 2016	mechanischer_Basstoepel (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Basstoelpel (on osm)	English, German
xybot	Cleanup of tags, removing null tags, trimming leading and trailing spaces, correcting common typos.	March 2016	xybot (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	xylome (on osm)	English, German
Streetkeysmv	Adds official German street keys to ways in province Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.	February 2016	streetkeysmv (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	KVLA-HRO (on osm)	English, German
Wall-E	Carries out automatic corrections of specific errors in Germany and Austria.	August 2015	Wall·E (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Oli-Wan (on osm)	English
botika	Used to repair street names in Colombia.	May 2013	botika (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	ikks (on osm)	English, Spanish
General Dreedle	Automatically reverts edits by blacklisted contributors.	January 2013	General Dreedle (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Richard (on osm)	English
MS BOT	Makes adjustments to tags within French speaking community.	November 2012	MS BOT (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Marcussacapuces91 (on osm)	French
BugBuster	Splits long ways, removes duplicate nodes (worldwide activity).	October 2012	BugBuster (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Bürste (on osm)	English
Fixbot	Algorithmic changes can be made within a defined geographical areas (mostly in the United States).	March 2012	woodpeck_fixbot (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Frederik Ramm (on osm)	English, German
Hotbot	Expands abbreviations in tags in Dominican Republic and Haiti.	May 2011	hotbot (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	Humanitarian OSM Team	English
is_in-bot	Adds is_in=* tags to places in Germany.	November 2008	is_in-bot (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)	flohoff (on osm)	English, German

Some bots are documented in the wiki following either the schema Automated edits/<Username> or Mechanical Edits/<Username> [<Description>]. Category:Automated edits log might be helpful as well.

Wiki bots

There are also bots operating in this wiki. Some of them are in the user group "bot" (Special:ListUsers) meaning that the user accounts have special user rights. Apart from that, ordinary user accounts used by bots exist, notably TigerfellBot and ToniE osm wiki bot. Some bot accounts are listed in Category:Bots.

Wiki bureaucrats can grant the bot's user rights to user accounts upon request. This enables higher query limits and disables CAPTCHA for them.

The use of bots has been discussed on the talk mailing list in February 2019.

See also

Organised editing

Read more about teams editing OSM

Automated edits

referring to the broader concept of changing data without reviewing every change individually