Visualizing the Wikipedia Power Struggle

todd450 pointed us to a nifty visualization of Wikipedia and controversial articles in it. The image started with a network of 650,000 articles color coded to indicate activity. The original image is apparently 5' square, but the sample image they have is still pretty neat.

"Steal"?

This word is not the word you think it is.

[John]

Nice editing

The original image is apparently 5' square, but the sample image they have is steal pretty neat.

It's still pretty colorful.

Yeeha!

but the sample image they have is steal pretty neat.When did Speedy Gonzales get a job at OSTG?

Mirror of Sorts

I am not sure if this is where the article originates from (or vice versa), but here is another example of visualizing Wikipedia:

http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/visual/projects/ chromogram.html [ibm.com]

Yet another example

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_4/spoerr i/index.html [firstmonday.org]

This one is less pretty with colours, but way more informative...

LOL!

/windowslivewritervisualizingthepowerstruggleinwik ipedia-f7c7wikivisenlargesection44.jpg

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Today on /.

We axe y we dont juzt speel foneticly!

A nice visualization of this article

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Wow...

So not only is the submitter shamelessly plugging his own site, but it:

A) Crashes before there are 9 comments and B) Doesn't know how to spell "still" Glad to see slashdot's standards are still so high, CmdrTaco. Thanks.

hmmmmm

So here's a site discussing the Wikipedia edit war. Slashdot has tried to remain a neutral power in the war. A link is posted to the slashdot front page and the server is destroyed. Slashdot has been drawn into the war! A sword-day, a red day, ere the Sun server reboots!

The Slashdotted Article

[abeautifulwww.com]A new visualization Bruce Herr and I recently completed is being featured in this weeks New Scientist Magazine (thearticle [newscientist.com]is free online, minus the viz). They did a good job jazzing up the language used to describe the vizpower struggle, bubbling mass, blitzed articlesbut they also dumbed down the technical accomplishments. I guess not everyone gets as excited about algorithms as I do.Before I talk anymore about the viz, though, let me mention its appearing at the NetSci 2007 Conference [indiana.edu]this week, and hopefully a varient will appear at Wikimania [wikimedia.org] later this summer as well. The viz is a huge 5 feet by 5 feet when printed, and I only include a low res, smaller version here. At some point high qualityart prints of it will appear at SciMaps [scimaps.org]for sale to fund further visualization research.

[abeautifulwww.com]Now for the good stuff. Much like my visualization of the netflix prize competition data [abeautifulwww.com], we began this piece byrepresenting the dataas a network. In this case the nodes in the network are wikipedia articles and theedges are thelinks between articles. We then (with some help from our friends at Sandia) used an algorithm to lay out all 650,000nodes (wikipedia articles) that had at least one link in such a way that similar articles are near one another. These are the yellow dots,which when viewed at low res give a yellow tint tothe whole picture.

The sizes of the nodes (circles, dots, whatever you want to call them), are based on a model of revision activity. So large circles indicate that an article might be controversial, or the subject of lots of vandalism, or just a topic whose content frequently changes. We labeled only the largest nodes, to keep it readable. Thereis an interactive version of this in the works based on the google maps platform which will change the labels and pictures used as the user zooms in or out. Stay tuned for that.

The image used for each tilewas selected automatically, simply by using the first imagein the most linked to article among all the articles inthat tile.We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the images that appeared.

Our hope for this visualization approach, which we continue to improve on,is that it could be updated in real time to give a macro sense of what is happeing in Wikipedia. I personally hope that some variation of it will end up in high schools as a teaching tool and for generating discussions.

Now all they need to visualize

is how many false charges of "sockpuppet" or "troll" are put in by the abusive administrators that run the place.

Whoops. Did I say something less then complimentary about the quantum fucking encyclopedia [penny-arcade.com], where info may or may not be correct based on which second of the day it is, and where you can be assured that the moment someone tries to fix it, they'll be beat down by an army of socially inept retards [artsjournal.com] who have nothing better to do than accumulate hundreds/thousands of edits per day in hopes that they, too, can become administrators and ban anyone they disagree with?

just like your link

I too have given up in helping Wikipedia through creating new articles or editting obviously bad ones. It just doesn't matter. If not for the idiots in some areas its the political slant in others that is just mind boggling. Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.

Re:just like your link

Wiki died the day that intrest groups found it and realized they could sway public opinion by marginalizing a site which supposedly has accurate information.

The problem with interest groups is not only do they typically have a lot of time and resources they also tend to have a strong tendency to monopolise the issue in question. Sometimes to the point where they appear incapable of actually rationally defending their position, whilst having almost stereotypical strawmen and ad hominum responses. (Zionists and Feminists must qualify as "textbook examples"...)

Similar effort

Last year, I did a similar indepth analysis of Wikipedia, generating a map describing the major components of the project with their interlinks:

http://www.hallert.net/images/mapofwikipedia.GIF [hallert.net]

Heh

In the style of Homestar Runner... 503'D!! I wonder how long it'll take for this to get tagged "slashdotted"

Interesting, but not too helpful

The visualization technique was intersting, but I found it easier to understand just by reading a simple list of the most vandalized topics. Jesus, Hitler, Britney Spears, Bush, Global Warming, etc... most anything to do with religon or politics.

Visualising the Wikipedia power strugles

Topic: "Visualizing the Wikipedia power struggles"

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R.I.P. Wikipedia lost the power struggle...

The two sides of Wikipedia

I began editing on Wikipedia in 2003 and used it a lot for a while until over time I began realizing that the problems with it were not going to go away, but seemed to be getting worse, so now I do not edit it any more.

One thing I learned is there are two sides of Wikipedia. In the upper right hand corner of the main page you can see what are called the "master categories". The categories such as Mathematics and Science highlight what is best about Wikipedia. The categories such as History and Society highlight what is worst about Wikipedia. You do not really have big battles over articles like "Pythagorean theorem", and they usually do a good job of explaining what that is. On the other hand, if you look at the top of an article like "Palestine" you will see that it is semi-protected, meaning new users can not edit the article. You can also see eight pages of discussion which really doesn't get anywhere. The article is garbage. The Wikipedia cabal likes to say things like cooler heads eventually prevail on such articles, but that is just a lot of bullshit. The cabal itself can often be the problem - if you look at the article's originator, it is Ed Poor, who has not only an admin but a bureaucrat at Wikipedia. He is also a Moonie, with some very strange beliefs, not only religious, which I could care less about, but politically. It's typical Wikipedia that he would create the article, and more so that he has held such high level positions.

Actually I antagonize in using the Wikipedia cabal phrase as these people are so paranoid they have replied to messages like this on Slashdot in the past with stuff like "AHA! YOU SAID CABAL! YOU ARE ONE OF 'THEM'! AN ENEMY! ONLY ENEMIES OF WIKIPEDIA USE THAT PHRASE". Or maybe I could say Wikipediareview.com has some good criticisms of Wikipedia, since they're fanatical about that site to where you are not allowed to mention it on the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article.

I spent a bit of time on Wikipedia and used to care more about this due to that time spent etc. Nowadays I just contribute to other wikis I like which I feel are more balanced. I should note that Jimbo Wales ran the Ayn Rand mailing list for years, has said "[F. A.] Hayek's work...is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project.", and I can give dozens of more examples of where Wales's somewhat far out political biases lay. This political bias starts at the top and works its way down, as one can see with his appointment of people who did not make the cut electorally such as JayJG to Arbcom.

My advice to people is to patronize other wikis - the concept of a wiki encyclopedia is a great idea, but their political views are so far out, that it fragmenting is a certainty.

Re:The two sides of Wikipedia

Mentioning Wikipedia Review is not, on it's own, terribly crazy. It's just the context you choose.

For example, Wikipediareview has made a policy of harassing editors and admins, the users coordinated attacks where they call people at their houses late at night and call their employers to complain about them to get them fired. Do you support that? Since you're probably not going to respond to this, it's probably fruitless to ask, but you opened the door with your line of comment. You REALLY want to use Wikipedia Review as a reference?

So mentioning that site to bolster your viewpoint (presumably, you're an editor who disagreed with a decision that applied to you, as in perhaps you tried to use Wikipedia as a MySpace site, or were pushing a point of view in contravention of the site policies, or were upset when the article your wrote about your math teacher was deleted as 'non-notable') is similar to starting a conversation with "Now, the Nazi medical experiments were terrible, but we _did_ learn some useful things from them..." (howdy Godwinists!)

So, your credibility is basically shot. The cabal reference underscores it. I'm an admin there, and we can't even agree on what to order for our pizzas, much less plot to push some sort of wacky political agenda.

Your bozo bit has been set, good day.

Re:The two sides of Wikipedia

Have you ever been to a soccer match? There's 11 guys on each team that desperately wants everything to be a call in their favor, and one referee that's supposed to be neutral. He gets hounded about 98% of the time. At times you'd think he was dumb, deaf, blind, bought and that his walking dog needs glasses from the sound of it.

Now imagine a match where the fans could overturn the referee's decision. Repeatedly, both sides. "Free kick for the red team" "No, free kick for the blue team" "No, free kick for the red team". Every so often a guy would run around and show all the players the red card, and you'd have to undo it.

You get the pleasure of being called partial by morons who are so far from being level it's a wonder they don't tip over. And you sure don't get paid for it, or have any league that'll slap the worst personal attacks. You've got zero authority except temporarily locking edits which is like getting between two NFL teams waiting for the play signal again.

That pretty much sums up the fun of trying to get a neutral and balanced article on a controversial topic in Wikipedia. I understand perfectly those who give up. I use Wikipedia for quick "what is that?" and simple facts. If I want to form an opinion on something, I'm not looking to wikipedia for a balanced view...

I got the page to load

I got the page to load and all I saw was a badly formatted page with ads before the actual content while content doesn't really seem worth anything. It had lots of dots on pictures representing articles. I couldn't really tell how much an editing war was happening, not anymore then simply seeing a list of recent edits for those pages. Were the pages selected on the fly (I'd take a closer look at the fucking article except its as slow as pushing out a large turd)? If not, how is it anymore "neat" or informative then simply looking at those pages?

Oblig xkcd reference:

http://xkcd.com/c195.html [xkcd.com] -- Map of the Internets
http://www.xkcd.com/c256.html [xkcd.com] -- Map of online communities

Steal pretty neat

Despite the power struggles, Slashdot and Wikipedia are steal pretty cool websites. You can still content from them and put it up on your own blog.

Network Mirror of the site

Mirror including the famed image [networkmirror.com]

"Citation Police" can be annoying

Rather than outright deletion, Wikipedia should allow "unofficial" opinions to exist somewhere. The "citation police" sometimes get carried away.

It's Like Modern Art in a Way

Well, that does a pretty good job of describing power struggles at Wikipedia after all. It's kind of like modern art in a way...

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Very Leftist

Personally, I'm not really "right" or "left." I just want to live my life as free as possible from government control -- the control constantly sought by both the left and right. I get called a leftist by those on the right, and a rightist by those on the left, so I guess that puts me in the middle somewhere.

Given that, I do see a serious ideological left bent in Wikipedia. I've tried to put hard facts (well-cited, thank you) to give a counter to obviously left-biased articles (or articles where the viewpoint is used to justify government intrusion), only to have them removed or edited to oblivion. It's often a hard fight to keep such facts in Wikipedia. Anti-American sentiment is definitely there, with wild, unsubstantiated rumors that keep popping up again after they're killed, and the editors will not keep them out. In that case the only recourse is to post the facts in opposition to the rumors (and hope they survive), but such things should not have to be done.

Yes, I abhor the pathetic conservapedia even more. Wikipedia's slant is more of an accident, a result of the populace and to some extent those Wales put in charge. But conservapedia was conceived as biased.

Re:Very Leftist

I considered it, but some things still rubbed me wrong. What I can't do is get into either of the main parties.

Democrat: Out of your bedroom and into your business.
Republican: Out of your business and into your bedroom.

But there's been some crossover, each inheriting the worst traits of the other.

They took the picture off

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That top 20 and evangelism

From the Top 20 Most Hotly Revised Articles (in the article):

1. Jesus
4. Nintendo revolution
10. Playstation 3

So Sony Playstations and Nintendo systems inspire almost as much evangelism as Jesus? Seems to me that both atheists and Christians ought to have a problem with that false idol worshipping.

wikipedia is a useful dynamic

and therefore, one distinct advantage it has over traditional encylopedias is in its ability to reflect changing beliefs and controversies

personally i'm tired of "either or" type thinking, in fact, I use each and every resource

So what are the -

RED dots? I understand the yellow ones - they are explained in the article - as are the pictures behind the yellow dots. The RED dot have no explaination. Anyone?

Re:Another one bites the dust...

Have you been stealing their bandwidth?

Re:Another one bites the dust...

Perhaps we can visualize the power struggle between Wikipedia and the Slashdot stampede?

Re:Another one bites the dust...

Yet another site goes down within minutes of being mentioned on /. -- gotta love it!

Well, I RTFA before the server crumbled (yes I'm new here), and I have to laugh that their server couldn't handle it, because at the bottom of the article are links to submit the story to Digg, Del.icio.us, Simpy, /., Technorati, and Reddit. They HAD to know this was coming.