Towards the end of each year, I gather statistics on the most viewed Wikipedia articles of the year. This helps me understand what topics captured the largest collective attention and gives me a chance to reflect on the major public events of the past year. Without further ado, here is the list of the mostContinue reading “Most Viewed Wikipedia Articles in 2022”
Tag Archives: Wikipedia
2020 through the global lens of Wikipedia
This Friday, Wikipedia turns 20 and I thought I should do something about it! I didn’t want to write about how useful Wikipedia is and how it has revolutionised the way we acquire information, or yet again write about edit wars among Wikipedia editors, or perhaps, how we can use Wikipedia to study collective attentionContinue reading “2020 through the global lens of Wikipedia”
The Internet and your inner English Tea Merchant
Earlier this year I had the honour of being invited to give a TEDx talk in Thessaloniki. That was an amazing experience, I had never talked to 800+ people, being filmed by 4 cameras, and live broadcasted all at the same time! It was kind of pushing it to limit for me but it wasContinue reading “The Internet and your inner English Tea Merchant”
The curious patterns of Wikipedia growth
Wikipedia is arguably the number one source of information online for the speakers of many languages. But not all the different language editions are developed equally. The English edition is by far the largest and the most complete one, and the other 280 language editions have many fewer articles. The coverage of different language editionsContinue reading “The curious patterns of Wikipedia growth”
The interplay between extremism and communication in a collaborative project
Collaboration is among the most fundamental social behaviours. The Internet and particularly the Web have been originally developed to foster large scale collaboration among scientists and technicians. The more recent emergence of Web 2.0 and ubiquity of user-generated content on social web, has provided us with even more potentials and capacities for large scale collaborativeContinue reading “The interplay between extremism and communication in a collaborative project”
Even good bots fight and a typology of Internet bots
Our new paper titled “Even good bots fight: The case of Wikipedia” has finally appeared on PLOS One. There are two things that I particularly find worth-highlighting about this work. First, this is the first time that someone looks at an ecosystem of the Internet bots at scale using hard data and tries to come upContinue reading “Even good bots fight and a typology of Internet bots”
New Paper: Personal Clashes and Status in Wikipedia Edit Wars
Originally posted on HUMANE blog by Milena Tsvetkova. Our study on disagreement in Wikipedia was just published in Scientific Reports (impact factor 5.2). In this study, we find that disagreement and conflict in Wikipedia follow specific patterns. We use complex network methods to identify three kinds of typical negative interactions: an editor confronts another editorContinue reading “New Paper: Personal Clashes and Status in Wikipedia Edit Wars”
Biases in Online Attention; Whose life matters more
This has become a common knowledge that certain lives matter more, when it comes to media coverage and public attention to natural or manmade disasters. Among many papers and articles that report on such biases, my favourite is this one by William C. Adams, titled “Whose Lives Count?”, and dated back to 1986. In this paper, it’sContinue reading “Biases in Online Attention; Whose life matters more”
Wikipedia readership around the UK general election
I already have written about the Wikipedia-Shapps story. So, that is not the main topic of this post! But when that topic was still hot, some people asked me whether I think anyone ever actually reads the Wikipedia articles about politicians? Why should it be important at all what is written in those articles? This post tackles thatContinue reading “Wikipedia readership around the UK general election”
Elections and Social Media Presence of the Candidates
Some have called the forthcoming UK general election a Social Media Election. It might be a bit of exaggeration, but there is no doubt that both candidates and voters are very active on social media these days and take them seriously. The Wikipedia-Shapps story of last week is a good example showing how important online presence is for candidates,Continue reading “Elections and Social Media Presence of the Candidates”
Wikipedia sockpuppetry: linking accounts to real people is pure speculation
You must have heard about the recent accusation of Grant Shapps by the Guardian. Basically, the Guardian claims that Shapps has been editing his own Wikipedia page and “Wikipedia has blocked a user account on suspicions that it is being used by the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, or someone acting on his behalf”. In aContinue reading “Wikipedia sockpuppetry: linking accounts to real people is pure speculation”
How much Wikipedia could tell us about elections
IMPORTANT NOTE: this post does not aim at predicting the results of any election. This is just a report on some publicly available data and does not draw any conclusion on it. In few hours, vote casting for Iranian presidential election, 2013 starts. And within few days (may be one or two) the next president of Iran for theContinue reading “How much Wikipedia could tell us about elections”
Wikipedia; modern platform, ancient debates on Land and Gods
What are the most controversial topics in Wikipedia? What articles have been subject to edit wars more than others? We now have a tool to explore what topics are most controversial in different languages and different parts of the world. Wikipedia is great! There is no doubt about it. You may argue that it’s notContinue reading “Wikipedia; modern platform, ancient debates on Land and Gods”
What can Wikipedia tell us about the Cannes Festival just before the closing
Among all the interesting events taking place today, one is the Closing Ceremony of 2013 Cannes Film Festival. If you already have seen our recent paper on Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success based on Wikipedia Activity Big Data, you already know that I’m a big fan of movies. In that paper we investigated theContinue reading “What can Wikipedia tell us about the Cannes Festival just before the closing”
The coverage of a tragedy
“The Newtown School shooting is a school shooting that occurred on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, Connecticut. 24 persons are reported to have been killed, including 17 children.” This is the whole content of the first revision of Wikipedia article on Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The tragedy happened at around 9.35 am inContinue reading “The coverage of a tragedy”
Taha Yasseri 