An international study in which scientists from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) have participated has developed a mathematical model that describes the dynamics of conflicts in the editing of articles on Wikipedia. The results, published in the journal Physical Review Letters , represent a step towards understanding the mechanisms of collective opinion formation .
It is said that there is a conflict when “an unusually high number of editions and corrections appear in articles referring to subjects or characters on which there are very diverse or polarized opinions,” according to the CSIC researcher Maxi San Miguel, director of the Institute of Physics. Interdisciplinary and Complex Systems (mixed center of the CSIC and the University of the Balearic Islands). His model identifies the different types of behaviors based on two main parameters: the replacement rate of editors as time passes and the tolerance measure , that is, how different your opinion has to be from what is written for someone to decide to intervene.
The study describes the generic behaviors observed in a statistical analysis of a large number of articles. Representative examples of these behaviors are those observed in articles on the bombing of Dresden, Japan, and anarchism. Detailed analysis of these three entries reveals how editors interact and influence each other both directly (on the article’s talk page), and indirectly (through alternate interactions in the text).
The simplest type of behavior is one in which a conflict of opinion arises and a large number of edits occur, but an agreement is reached in a relatively short time. Another typical behavior is one in which three groups of editors interact: one with a fixed number of individuals who follow the majority trend and two more radical. In this case, consensus is only reached after a long time and the result may not coincide with the majority point of view. In the case of a dynamic scenario in which new editors are replacing those who started the conflict, the researchers detected alternate periods of consensus and discord, depending on the rate of incorporation and the degree of controversy of the subject, which were repeated indefinitely in time.
“In spite of everything, the model shows that even the most opposed positions end up converging with the passage of time , even when there has not been a direct interaction between the publishers participating in the dispute,” concludes San Miguel. According to the researcher, the article itself participates in this process, since it brings together the opposing opinions and helps in the convergence process.
