Dynamics of conflicts in Wikipedia

TL;DR

This paper investigates the temporal dynamics of conflicts in Wikipedia, revealing how controversy correlates with activity burstiness, memory effects, and distinct developmental patterns, with conflicts mainly driven by a few editors.

Contribution

It introduces an algorithm to classify controversial articles and analyzes their temporal and network dynamics, distinguishing patterns leading to consensus or persistent conflict.

Findings

Conflict correlates with bursty activity patterns.

Memory effects influence controversy dynamics.

Few editors predominantly engage in edit wars.

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.