Social Networks of Wikipedia Paolo Massa SoNet @ Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy http://www.gnuband.org
Social networks of Wikipedia - Paolo Massa - Presentation at (2011). ACM Hypertext 2011: 22nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
Jan 20, 2015
The paper is at http://www.gnuband.org/papers/social_networks_of_wikipedia/
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit, is a live social experiment: millions of individuals volunteer their knowledge and time to collective create it. It is hence interesting trying to understand how they do it. While most of the attention concentrated on article pages, a less known share of activities happen on user talk pages, Wikipedia pages where a message can be left for the specific user. This public conversations can be studied from a Social Network Analysis perspective in order to highlight the structure of the “talk” network. In this paper we focus on this preliminary extraction step by proposing different algorithms. We then empirically validate the differences in the networks they generate on the Venetian Wikipedia with the real network of conversations extracted manually by coding every message left on all user talk pages. The comparisons show that both the algorithms and the manual process contain inaccuracies that are intrinsic in the freedom and unpredictability of Wikipedia growth. Nevertheless, a precise description of the involved issues allows to make informed decisions and to base empirical findings on reproducible evidence. Our goal is to lay the foundation for a solid computational sociology of wikis. For this reason we release the scripts encoding our algorithms as open source and also some datasets extracted out of Wikipedia conversations, in order to let other researchers replicate and improve our initial effort.
Scripts (Python) has been released as open source and networks datasets (in GraphML format) too. See http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/data/social_networks_of_wikipedia/
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit, is a live social experiment: millions of individuals volunteer their knowledge and time to collective create it. It is hence interesting trying to understand how they do it. While most of the attention concentrated on article pages, a less known share of activities happen on user talk pages, Wikipedia pages where a message can be left for the specific user. This public conversations can be studied from a Social Network Analysis perspective in order to highlight the structure of the “talk” network. In this paper we focus on this preliminary extraction step by proposing different algorithms. We then empirically validate the differences in the networks they generate on the Venetian Wikipedia with the real network of conversations extracted manually by coding every message left on all user talk pages. The comparisons show that both the algorithms and the manual process contain inaccuracies that are intrinsic in the freedom and unpredictability of Wikipedia growth. Nevertheless, a precise description of the involved issues allows to make informed decisions and to base empirical findings on reproducible evidence. Our goal is to lay the foundation for a solid computational sociology of wikis. For this reason we release the scripts encoding our algorithms as open source and also some datasets extracted out of Wikipedia conversations, in order to let other researchers replicate and improve our initial effort.
Scripts (Python) has been released as open source and networks datasets (in GraphML format) too. See http://sonetlab.fbk.eu/data/social_networks_of_wikipedia/
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- 1. Social Networks of WikipediaPaolo MassaSoNet @ Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italyhttp://www.gnuband.org
2. Contributions Methodological paper onAlgorithms for extracting a network of Who talks to whom on Wikipedia +Validation of quality by manual codingCode is open source and reusable =Basic step for Social Network Analysis 3. Outline Statistics on Wikipedia/wiki Algorithms for Extracting aSocial Network Manual Validation of Algorithms 4. English WikipediaStarted in 20013.500.000+ articles440.000.000+ edits 14.000.000+ registered users3.500.000+ at-least-1-edit users 5. Multi-lingual: 280+ Wikipedias50.000+ wikis on Wikia.com, some 1.000.000+ edits 6. Article Page 7. Article Page / Article Talk Page 8. User Page 9. User Page User Talk Page (UTP) 10. How to extract a network ofwho talk to whom from Usertalk pages? 11. User talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phauly 0.6 12. User talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phauly 0.6 13. User talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phauly 1 Shell Phauly0.6 14. User talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phauly 1 Shell Phauly0.6 15. User talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phauly 1 ShellPhauly 1 Martin 16. Broader scopeWe (SoNet) work on How UTPs are used (coordination) Characterize users of Wikipedia (basedon gender, interests, religion, ...) Formation of Collective memories ofevents in Wikipedia Goal: understand/model what users doin Wikipedia Wikisociology 17. Were hiring! ;)Call for researcher athttps://risorseumane.fbk.eu/it/node/234Info about SoNet groupat http://sonet.fbk.euIf interested, come to talkto me! 18. Other Wikipedia networks Few papers on User talk pages Node=User Edge=Coediting x articles Edge=Editing article after user A Edge=Reverted edit of user A Edge=Vote in elections for admins Node=Page / Edge=Link Node=Category / Edge=Inclusion 19. How to extract who talks to whom?3 ways:(1) Signatures (automated)(2) History of edits (automated)(3) Manual coding 20. Input: Wikipedia dumpsXML dump of every edit occured to everypage in time (10 years!)English Wikipedia dump =5,600 Gigabytes!(our scripts work on every wiki: 280+language Wikipedia, but also 50.000+wikia.com wikis ...) 21. How to extract who talks to whom?3 ways:(1) Signatures in text (automated)(2) History of edits (automated)(3) Manual coding 22. (1) Signature algorithm 23. (1) Signature algorithm 24. (1) Signature algorithmpagesmetacurrentXMLUsertalk:Phauly==Welcome!==Hello,{{BASEPAGENAME}},and[[Wikipedia:Welcome,newcomers|welcome]]tyourcontributions.Ihopeyouliketheplaceanddecidetostay.Heremightfindhelpful:*[[Wikipedia:Fivepillars|ThefivepillarsofWikipedia]]*[[Wikipedia:Howtoeditapage|Howtoeditapage]]*[[Help:Contents|Helppages]]*[[Wikipedia:Tutorial|Tutorial]]*[[Wikipedia:Articledevelopment|Howtowriteagreatarticle]]*[[Wikipedia:ManualofStyle|ManualofStyle]]Ihopeyouenjoyeditinghereandbeinga[[Wikipedia:Wikipedians|Wikip[[Wikipedia:Signyourpostsontalkpages|signyourname]]ontalkpage(~~~~);thiswillautomaticallyproduceyournameand 0.6checkout[[Wikipedia:Questions]],askmeonmytalkpage,orplace{{helpme}}onyourtalkpageandsomeoneansweryourquestions.Again,welcome!.[[User:Shell_Kinney|Shell[[User_talk:Shell_Kinney|babelfish]]15:29,7November2006=="Wikipediaendnoteassisstant"==Hi,sorrytotakesolongtoreplytoyourmessage.Itsconventionatmessagesatthebottomofthepage,andasIwasmovingcountryattheseeyourmessageuntilnow!HaveyoutriedtheupdatedURL,http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Scholar?LetmeknowifyoucontinuGladyoufindthetooluseful!Bestwishes,[[User:Smith609|Martin]]([[User:Smith609|S[[User_talk:Smith609|Talk]])01:19,7October2008==Testanonymousedit==Justatestdonebymyselfonsignatureformatting.[[Special:Contrib217.77.80.29]]([[Usertalk:217.77.80.29|talk]])12:08,8February2010 25. (1) Signature algorithm Consider pages with title Usertalk:PhaulyUser talk:T (or equivalent==Welcome!==in other languages) Hello,{{BASEPAGENAME}},and[[Wikipedia:Wyourcontributions.Ihopeyouliketheplmightfindhelpful: Search for signatures of*[[Wikipedia:Fivepillars|Thefivepillars*[[Wikipedia:Howtoeditapage|Howtoediuser S in text*[[Help:Contents|Helppages]]*[[Wikipedia:Tutorial|Tutorial]]*[[Wikipedia:Articledevelopment|Howtowr Consider them as*[[Wikipedia:ManualofStyle|ManualofStyIhopeyouenjoyeditinghereandbeingamessage from S to T [[Wikipedia:Signyourpostsontalkpages|0.6(~~~~);thiswillautomatcheckout[[Wikipedia:Questions]],askme{{helpme}}oansweryourquestions.Again,welcome!&nbsSignature of XXX if [[User:XXX| [[User_talk:Shell_Kinney|babelfish]]
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