Dear Kerry,
Thank you for the comment and questions. Actually what comes in the
following is not published and completly proven, these are just some
preliminary results which are going to be completed soon.
My first question is whether or not you think this metric or some variant
can be used to detect current conflict in articles
(rather than the
existence of past conflict). My thinking is that if conflict can be
detected early, it may be possible for the peacemakers to guide the
conflict to a consensus rather than attempt to do so once hostilities are
well-established.
yes and no. Actually the metric is especially more sensitive to the bigger
wars, and assuming that wars are fairly small at the beginning, it makes it
a bit difficult to use the metric as a monitoring tool. However, as the
fights get a bit serious, the metric grows fast enough and in principle
could be used to monitor and detect medium size conflicts. As for
prediction (this is also often asked), unfortunately our efforts fail,
especially in the case of external-driven-conflicts. For instance when
something in real world happens and leads to a burst of aggressive
activities, since we are not able to predict that external event, all our
predictive modellings fail.
Another question relates to warring editors. If I read it right, you looked
for pairs (or groups) of editors that were reverting
one another’s changes
(i.e. an edit war) in an article. However, is conflict limited to just one
article? Is it possible that warring editors on one article may then engage
in conflicts over other articles simultaneously or later, either because of
the same issue that caused the earlier disagreements or because they had
developed a dislike for one another and were ready to find excuses to be
unpleasant to each other. That is, are we just looking at articles that are
controversial (in some way) or are we also looking at pairs (or groups) of
editors who are actively hostile to one another. It might be interesting to
know if editors who have been involved in edit wars go on to peacefully
co-exist with one another on other articles, go to war with them over other
articles, or simply never happen to encounter each other again (WP being a
big place). If they do go on to war again, was it because they are both
active on articles within similar categories (e.g. sexuality) or because
one/both is stalking the other (which you might suspect if they had
conflicts across a range of topics, especially where one of them had no
prior edit history in that category (e.g. start warring over Ben Franklin
and then continue it in Pumpkin).
Actually your suspicion is very much relevant! We started following active
warriors. We observed not only same people and same pairs appear in
articles topically related, but also they cause conflicts around the same
topics in other language Wikipedias! Actually it is difficult to determine
that the fighting pairs are more fighting because of their beliefs and
opinions or it has become more personal after a while of fighting. But I
think the first case is more likely, as we could see the same pairs more in
the rather related topics whereas if it is a personal fight it would spread
into completely different topics. Now our focus is mainly on users than
articles and we are trying to find activity patterns of trouble makers.
thanks again for the questions,
.taha
On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
** ** ** ** **
Thank you for sharing your paper. I found it very interesting that there
are good metrics that enable detection of articles with conflict. I have a
couple of questions, which might well go beyond your current study but I’d
welcome your thoughts.****
** **
My first question is whether or not you think this metric or some variant
can be used to detect current conflict in articles (rather than the
existence of past conflict). My thinking is that if conflict can be
detected early, it may be possible for the peacemakers to guide the
conflict to a consensus rather than attempt to do so once hostilities are
well-established.****
** **
Another question relates to warring editors. If I read it right, you
looked for pairs (or groups) of editors that were reverting one another’s
changes (i.e. an edit war) in an article. However, is conflict limited to
just one article? Is it possible that warring editors on one article may
then engage in conflicts over other articles simultaneously or later,
either because of the same issue that caused the earlier disagreements or
because they had developed a dislike for one another and were ready to find
excuses to be unpleasant to each other. That is, are we just looking at
articles that are controversial (in some way) or are we also looking at
pairs (or groups) of editors who are actively hostile to one another. It
might be interesting to know if editors who have been involved in edit wars
go on to peacefully co-exist with one another on other articles, go to war
with them over other articles, or simply never happen to encounter each
other again (WP being a big place). If they do go on to war again, was it
because they are both active on articles within similar categories (e.g.
sexuality) or because one/both is stalking the other (which you might
suspect if they had conflicts across a range of topics, especially where
one of them had no prior edit history in that category (e.g. start warring
over Ben Franklin and then continue it in Pumpkin).****
** **
Kerry****
** **
** **
** **
** **
** **
------------------------------
*From:* wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Taha Yasseri
*Sent:* Friday, 22 June 2012 8:15 AM
*To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities
*Subject:* [Wiki-research-l] Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia****
** **
Dear Wikipedia researchers!
Our manuscript on is now released by PLoS ONE and available at:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0038869
I would delightedly take your comments and remarks.
bests
.Taha
Dr. Taha Yasseri.
---------------------------------------------
www.phy.bme.hu/~yasseri <http://www.phy.bme.hu/%7Eyasseri>
Department of Theoretical Physics
****Institute** of **Physics****
****Budapest** **University**** of Technology and Economics
Budafoki út 8.
H-1111 ****Budapest**, **Hungary****
tel: +36 1 463 4110
fax: +36 1 463 3567
---------------------------------------------
--
Taha.****
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