I think this study of the "collaborative" dynamics is interesting, but I have
some questions.
Do we have any evidence that collaboration is actually occurring? With breaking news like
this, it may just be many individuals operating independently? Collaboration pretty much
requires a communication channel, but internal to WP the only visible communication is the
talk page (and perhaps user talk pages). We might infer that editors participating in a
consensus-building thread in the talk page (or user talk pages) are acting collaboratively
in relation to the issue under discussion (but not necessarily more widely. However, if
editors are disagreeing in a talk page thread, it is hard to say whether their edits in
relation to that issue are collaborative or "warring" (deliberating seeking to
undo another) or simply independent (using their best judgement at that moment). Nor can
we readily judge if editors not writing on the talk page might still be reading it and
thus informing their actions based on those discussions - that is, might be acting in
"silent collaboration". Nor can we tell if any of the editors are having private
conversations via email or other means . As communication takes time, in a breaking news
situation editors might prefer to just "be bold" and keep the page as up-to-date
as possible, using their own "best judgement" rather than "waste" time
arguing on the talk page.
Can we consider reversions and mutual reversions in a "breaking news" situation
as revealing an "edit war"? With many editors simultaneously active, I think you
have to consider that it is just a stampede that is taking place. It's a bit like
"walking together". If just two people walk down a street, we can say pretty
clearly if they are walking together (they will remain in close alignment most of the
time). But if a crowd of people are walking down the street, it's hard to say that two
people are walking together - they might just be forced into that alignment by the crowd.
I think we have the same situation with reversions with simultaneous editors operating in
a breaking news situation; many individuals acting independently and reversions might not
be intentional.
From a research perspective, doing a survey or
interview of some of the editors on their perspective of what was going on might be
informative to provide better interpretation of the data. Given the
protection/semi-protection of the page means it is probably possible to contact many of
them via their user talk page. It would be very interesting to know if those who appear to
be involved in an edit war saw it as an edit war, and to what extent they thought they
were acting collaboratively and by what means was that collaboration fostered (e.g.
explicit discussions on talk page, or more implicit, e.g. adopting a consistent style
established by other editors).
Kerry
From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Taha Yasseri
Sent: Monday, 23 July 2012 3:20 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia's response to 2012 Aurora shooting
I resend my previous message that is not delivered yet. Sorry for potential duplicate
receiving .
Now, after two days, there are 30 Wikipedia language editions who have covered the event
(have an article on it).
Here:
http://wwm.phy.bme.hu/blog.html, see the dynamics, i.e. number of covering WPs
versus time, measured in minutes and counted from the event time (t=0).
For those who are familiar with spreading phenomena, the curve comes as no surprise. What
is surprising, is the fast reaction of Latvian (3rd place) and rather late reaction of
Japanese Wikipedia (the latter is most likely related to time zone effects).
As I did this in a very unprofessional way, errors and miscalculations are expected,
please notify if find.
bests,
.taha
On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 7:06 PM, Dario Taraborelli
<dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org<mailto:dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
Nice (and timely) work as usual, Brian. I was going to enable AFTv5 on this article but
decided to hold off for a number of reason (most importantly the fact that we're
slowly ramping up AFTv5 to enwiki and we're mostly focused on scalability at the
moment). It'd be interesting to study how enabling reader feedback affects the
collaborative dynamics of breaking news articles, especially semi-protected ones on which
anonymous contributors don't have a voice.
Dario
On Jul 21, 2012, at 5:06 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
It is currently semiprotected, there were IP edits when it was first created. But
according to the logs it was fully protected for a while due to IP vandalism. However the
edit history only shows it going to semi protection, but there were some moves which have
complicated things
WSC
On 21 July 2012 22:46, Taha Yasseri
<taha.yaseri@gmail.com<mailto:taha.yaseri@gmail.com>> wrote:
Ok! the page is protected. Sorry!
On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 11:43 PM, Taha Yasseri
<taha.yaseri@gmail.com<mailto:taha.yaseri@gmail.com>> wrote:
Thank you Brian,
Could you also plot the absolute number of edits, and editors, (instead of the ratio)?
Though, since the data is ready I could do it on my own too!
Surprisingly I see no IP contribution to the article (or may be only few), not in accord
with my expectation for such a topic.
cheers,
.Taha
On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 9:05 PM, Brian Keegan
<bkeegan@northwestern.edu<mailto:bkeegan@northwestern.edu>> wrote:
My preliminary analysis of (English) Wikipedia's response to the 2012 Aurora
shootings. Data is available at the bottom:
http://www.brianckeegan.com/2012/07/2012-aurora-shootings/
--
Brian C. Keegan
Ph.D. Student - Media, Technology, & Society
School of Communication, Northwestern University
Science of Networks in Communities, Laboratory for Collaborative Technology
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