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On the Relation of Edit Behavior, Link Structure, and Article Quality on Wikipedia

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Complex Networks and Their Applications VIII (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2019)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 882))

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Abstract

When editing articles on Wikipedia, arguments between editors frequently occur. These conflicts occasionally lead to destructive behavior and diminish article quality. Currently, the relation between editing behavior, link structure, and article quality is not well-understood in our community, notwithstanding that this relation may facilitate editing processes and article quality on Wikipedia. To shed light on this complex relation, we classify edits for 13,045 articles and perform an in-depth analysis of a 4,800 article subsample. Additionally, we build a network of wikilinks (internal Wikipedia hyperlinks) between articles. Using this data, we compute parsimonious metrics to quantify editing and linking behavior. Our analysis unveils that controversial articles differ considerably from others for almost all metrics, while slight trends are also detectable for higher-quality articles. With our work, we assist online collaboration communities, especially Wikipedia, in long-term improvement of article quality by identifying deviant behavior via simple sequence-based edit and network-based article metrics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution.

  2. 2.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla.

  3. 3.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Huggle.

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/ruptho/editlinkquality-wikipedia.

  5. 5.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Labels/Edit_types/Taxonomy.

  6. 6.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_assessment.

  7. 7.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject.

  8. 8.

    https://github.com/wikimedia/revscoring.

  9. 9.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial_issues.

  10. 10.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars.

  11. 11.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ClueBot_NG.

  12. 12.

    https://scikit-learn.org.

  13. 13.

    https://networkx.github.io.

  14. 14.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ASCII_art.

  15. 15.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy#semi.

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Acknowledgments

Tiago Santos is a recipient of a DOC Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science of the Graz University of Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Thorsten Ruprechter, Tiago Santos & Denis Helic

Authors
  1. Thorsten Ruprechter
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  2. Tiago Santos
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  3. Denis Helic
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thorsten Ruprechter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Burgundy, Dijon Cedex, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  2. Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Sabrina Gaito

  3. University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    José Fernendo Mendes

  4. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Madrid, Spain

    Esteban Moro

  5. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Luis Mateus Rocha

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Ruprechter, T., Santos, T., Helic, D. (2020). On the Relation of Edit Behavior, Link Structure, and Article Quality on Wikipedia. In: Cherifi, H., Gaito, S., Mendes, J., Moro, E., Rocha, L. (eds) Complex Networks and Their Applications VIII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2019. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 882. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36683-4_20

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