“Wikipedia discussions can thus be seen as a mirror of a stream of public consciousness, where those elements which are still not part of a shared consolidated heritage are object of a continuous negotiation among different points of view.”
There is No Deadline – Time Evolution of Wikipedia Discussions. (2012) Andreas Kaltenbrunner, David Laniado. arXiv:1204.3453v1
via summarizing it for Wikipedia Signpost, longer summary space on AcaWiki
Tags: points of view, Talk pages, Wikipedia
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Long discussions cause challenges for Wikipedians. That’s great motivation from some of my work.
Such discussions can often present a challenge to the editor who steps up to close them; “no consensus” is a common outcome for convoluted debates, a lack of resolution that opens the possibility of discussion starting all over again as the same issues continue to arise.
- Wikipedia Signpost, 2012-03-19
The report also links to Wikipedia’s essay on Too long; didn’t read; image from KnowYourMeme’s coverage of tl;dr.
Tags: coordination on Wikipedia, quotes, tl;dr, Wikipedia
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“The only constant is change.” – Heraclitis
How well do you know Wikipedia? Get to know it a little better by looking at how your favorite article changes over time. To inspire you, here are two examples.
Jon Udell’s screencast about ‘Heavy Metal Umlaut’ is a classic, looking back (in 2005) at the first two years of that article. It points out the accumulation of information, vandalism (and its swift reversion), formatting changes, and issues around the verifiability of facts.
In a recent article for the Awl, Emily Morris sifts through 2,303 edits of ‘Lolita’ to pull out nitpicking revision comments, interesting diffs, and statistics.
Tags: change, Wikipedia
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