Wikipedia “editorial wars” on controversial articles tend to be concentrated in short bursts of activity amongst small groups of contributors, new research has revealed.
An editorial war is when two or more contributors repeatedly overwrite each other’s contributions on a (usually controversial) article.
The study, conducted by the Budapest University of Technology and Economics Department of Theoretical Physics, applied a theoretical physics algorithm to the edit history of both controversial and peaceful articles to analyse the dynamics at play in “editorial wars” on the online encyclopaedia.
The research is of particular interest to many businesses that actively monitor and edit Wikipedia articles on their businesses or products.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
COMMENTS
SmartCompany is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while it is being reviewed, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The SmartCompany comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.