Summary
These programs asked hundreds of thousands of questions, which slowed the system.
A few programs tried to change a citation tool without permission.
The encyclopedia’s team is working with the program makers to find out what happened.
Key Points
4 points1
Heavy traffic from many computer programs overloaded the system.
2
The data query service experienced a temporary partial outage.
3
Unauthorized edits were made to some tools on the site.
4
Collaboration is ongoing to investigate and prevent future issues.
New Words to Learn
9 wordsdisruption
a break or problem that stops something from working
partial outage
only part of a service stopped working
queries
questions asked by a computer to get information
unauthorized
not allowed or not given permission
malicious
doing something bad on purpose
citation tool
a feature that helps show where information comes from
analyze
look closely to understand
scope
the whole amount or size of something
scrambling
trying quickly to fix or understand something
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