SF Edits: Wikipedia Edit Bot
A bot that monitors 180+ Wikipedia articles about San Francisco politics across 40+ languages
What it is
SF Edits monitors Wikipedia for edits to articles about San Francisco politics and posts screenshots of the changes to Bluesky and Mastodon. It watches 180+ articles across 40+ language editions of Wikipedia, covering the Board of Supervisors, current and former mayors, the police department, the district attorney, and political figures like Pelosi and Feinstein.
What I did
I forked the original code from @congressedits, which tracked anonymous edits from congressional IP addresses before Twitter shut it down in 2018. I launched my version as @FriscoEdits on Twitter in 2022, then rebuilt it for Bluesky and Mastodon in 2025. The current version is a four-service Docker Compose setup: the bot, a PII screening service, a web admin console, and a geolocation database updater.
How it works
The bot listens to Wikipedia's real-time IRC feed. When it detects an edit to a watched article, it fetches the diff, sends the text through a PII screening service (Microsoft Presidio), and if clean, takes a screenshot with Puppeteer and posts to both platforms. Anonymous edits get enriched with a country flag using MaxMind geolocation.
If the PII service detects personal information like email addresses, phone numbers, or SSNs, the post is blocked and a draft is saved. I get a DM alert on both platforms and can review and manually post from an admin console.
Why it matters
Wikipedia is one of the most-read sources of information about public figures. If someone edits an article about the mayor or the Board of Supervisors, this bot will post about it. The PII screening means it can do this without accidentally amplifying doxxing.