Network analysis of collaboration structure in Wikipedia

In this paper we give models and algorithms to describe and analyze the collaboration among authors of Wikipedia from a network analytical perspective. The edit network encodes who interacts how with whom when editing an article; it significantly extends previous network models that code author communities in Wikipedia. Several characteristics summarizing some aspects of the organization process and allowing the analyst to identify certain types of authors can be obtained from the edit network. Moreover, we propose several indicators characterizing the global network structure and methods to visualize edit networks. It is shown that the structural network indicators are correlated with quality labels of the associated Wikipedia articles. Categories and Subject Descriptors E.1 [Data Structures]: Graphs and networks; H.3.5 [Online Information Services]: Web-based services General Terms Algorithms, Human Factors, Measurement Keywords Wikipedia, social network analysis, network visualizat...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: WWW
• Authors: Denise van Raaij, Jürgen Lerner, Patrick Kenis, Ulrik Brandes
• Keywords: Edit Network Encodes, Internet Technology, Network Analytical Perspective, Structural Network Indicators, WWW 2009