IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0038869.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia

Author

Listed:
  • Taha Yasseri
  • Robert Sumi
  • András Rung
  • András Kornai
  • János Kertész

Abstract

In this work we study the dynamical features of editorial wars in Wikipedia (WP). Based on our previously established algorithm, we build up samples of controversial and peaceful articles and analyze the temporal characteristics of the activity in these samples. On short time scales, we show that there is a clear correspondence between conflict and burstiness of activity patterns, and that memory effects play an important role in controversies. On long time scales, we identify three distinct developmental patterns for the overall behavior of the articles. We are able to distinguish cases eventually leading to consensus from those cases where a compromise is far from achievable. Finally, we analyze discussion networks and conclude that edit wars are mainly fought by few editors only.

Suggested Citation

  • Taha Yasseri & Robert Sumi & András Rung & András Kornai & János Kertész, 2012. "Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-12, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0038869
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038869
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0038869
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0038869&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0038869?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Gowers & Michael Nielsen, 2009. "Massively collaborative mathematics," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7266), pages 879-881, October.
    2. Jim Giles, 2005. "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head," Nature, Nature, vol. 438(7070), pages 900-901, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antoci, Angelo & Bonelli, Laura & Paglieri, Fabio & Reggiani, Tommaso & Sabatini, Fabio, 2019. "Civility and trust in social media," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 83-99.
    2. Young-Ho Eom & Pablo Aragón & David Laniado & Andreas Kaltenbrunner & Sebastiano Vigna & Dima L Shepelyansky, 2015. "Interactions of Cultures and Top People of Wikipedia from Ranking of 24 Language Editions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-27, March.
    3. Situngkir, Hokky & Maulana, Ardian, 2013. "Dynamics of the Corruption Eradication in Indonesia," MPRA Paper 49843, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Antonio, Fernando J. & Itami, Andreia S. & Dalmedico, Jônatas F. & Mendes, Renio S., 2022. "On the dynamics of reporting data: A case study of UFO sightings," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 603(C).
    5. Michael Szell & Stefan Thurner, 2012. "Social Dynamics In A Large-Scale Online Game," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(06), pages 1-18.
    6. Picoli, Sergio & Bombo, Giorgio & Santos, Edenize S.D. & Deprá, Pedro P. & Mendes, Renio S., 2022. "Characterizing postural sway signals by the analysis of zero-crossing patterns," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 596(C).
    7. Hosseiny, Ali & Absalan, Mohammadreza & Sherafati, Mohammad & Gallegati, Mauro, 2019. "Hysteresis of economic networks in an XY model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 513(C), pages 644-652.
    8. Letchford, Adrian & Preis, Tobias & Moat, Helen Susannah, 2016. "The advantage of simple paper abstracts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8.
    9. Simon DeDeo, 2016. "Conflict and Computation on Wikipedia: A Finite-State Machine Analysis of Editor Interactions," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-23, July.
    10. Hosseiny, Ali & Gallegati, Mauro, 2017. "Role of intensive and extensive variables in a soup of firms in economy to address long run prices and aggregate data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 470(C), pages 51-59.
    11. Shimada, Takashi & Ogushi, Fumiko & Török, János & Kertész, János & Kaski, Kimmo, 2023. "A simple model of edit activity in Wikipedia," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 630(C).
    12. Merve Alanyali & Tobias Preis & Helen Susannah Moat, 2016. "Tracking Protests Using Geotagged Flickr Photographs," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-8, March.
    13. Philipp Singer & Emilio Ferrara & Farshad Kooti & Markus Strohmaier & Kristina Lerman, 2016. "Evidence of Online Performance Deterioration in User Sessions on Reddit," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(8), pages 1-16, August.
    14. Yoon, Jisung & Park, Jinseo & Yun, Jinhyuk & Jung, Woo-Sung, 2023. "Quantifying knowledge synchronization with the network-driven approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    15. Pankaj Dey, 2023. "On the Structure of the Intermittency of Rainfall," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 37(3), pages 1461-1472, February.
    16. Agnieszka Geras & Grzegorz Siudem & Marek Gagolewski, 2022. "Time to vote: Temporal clustering of user activity on Stack Overflow," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(12), pages 1681-1691, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wei Luo & Julia Adams & Hannah Brueckner, 2018. "The Ladies Vanish? American Sociology and the Genealogy of its Missing Women on Wikipedia," Working Papers 20180012, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Jan 2018.
    2. Aaltonen, Aleksi Ville & Seiler, Stephan, 2014. "Quantifying spillovers in open source content production: evidence from Wikipedia," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60284, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Charles Ayoubi & Boris Thurm, 2023. "Knowledge diffusion and morality: Why do we freely share valuable information with Strangers?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 75-99, January.
    4. Demidov, Denis & Frahm, Klaus M. & Shepelyansky, Dima L., 2020. "What is the central bank of Wikipedia?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 542(C).
    5. Suddaby, Roy & Ganzin, Max & Minkus, Alison, 2017. "Craft, magic and the re-enchantment of the world," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 285-296.
    6. Hervé, Fabrice & Zouaoui, Mohamed & Belvaux, Bertrand, 2019. "Noise traders and smart money: Evidence from online searches," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 141-149.
    7. Nicolas Jullien, 2012. "What We Know About Wikipedia: A Review of the Literature Analyzing the Project(s)," Post-Print hal-00857208, HAL.
    8. Ewa S. Callahan & Susan C. Herring, 2011. "Cultural bias in Wikipedia content on famous persons," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1899-1915, October.
    9. Philipp Poschmann & Jan Goldenstein, 2022. "Disambiguating and Specifying Social Actors in Big Data: Using Wikipedia as a Data Source for Demographic Information," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 51(2), pages 887-925, May.
    10. Daniel Mietchen, 2014. "The Transformative Nature of Transparency in Research Funding," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-3, December.
    11. Sheen S. Levine & Michael J. Prietula, 2014. "Open Collaboration for Innovation: Principles and Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(5), pages 1414-1433, October.
    12. Ethan Mollick & Ramana Nanda, 2016. "Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1533-1553, June.
    13. Loris Gaio & Alessandro Rossi & Matthijs den Besten & Jean-Michel Dalle, 2009. "Coordination, Division of Labor, and Open Content Communities: Template Messages in Wiki-Based Collections," DISA Working Papers 0903, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 29 Jul 2009.
    14. Erik Brynjolfsson & Avinash Collis & Felix Eggers, 2019. "Using massive online choice experiments to measure changes in well-being," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(15), pages 7250-7255, April.
    15. Safner, Ryan, 2016. "Institutional entrepreneurship, wikipedia, and the opportunity of the commons," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 743-771, December.
    16. Shimada, Takashi & Ogushi, Fumiko & Török, János & Kertész, János & Kaski, Kimmo, 2023. "A simple model of edit activity in Wikipedia," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 630(C).
    17. Besiki Stvilia & Shuheng Wu & Dong Joon Lee, 2018. "Researchers’ participation in and motivations for engaging with research information management systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-24, February.
    18. Sascha Friesike & Bastian Widenmayer & Oliver Gassmann & Thomas Schildhauer, 2015. "Opening science: towards an agenda of open science in academia and industry," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 581-601, August.
    19. Didier Sornette & Thomas Maillart & Giacomo Ghezzi, 2014. "How Much Is the Whole Really More than the Sum of Its Parts? 1 ⊞ 1 = 2.5: Superlinear Productivity in Collective Group Actions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-15, August.
    20. Benedikt Fecher & Sascha Friesike, 2013. "Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought," RatSWD Working Papers 218, German Data Forum (RatSWD).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0038869. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.