Trolls, bans and reverts: Simulating Wikipedia - Sorbonne Université
Journal Articles Synthese Year : 2018

Trolls, bans and reverts: Simulating Wikipedia

Abstract

The surprisingly high reliability of Wikipedia has often been seen as a beneficial effect of the aggregation of diverse contributors, or as an instance of the wisdom of crowds phenomenon; additional factors such as elite contributors, Wikipedia's policy or its administration have also been mentioned. We adjudicate between such explanations by modelling and simulating the evolution of a Wikipedia entry. The main threat to Wikipedia's reliability, namely the presence of epistemically disruptive agents such as disinformers and trolls, turns out to be offset only by a combination of factors: Wikipedia's administration and the possibility to instantly revert entries, both of which are insufficient when considered in isolation. Our results suggest that the reliability of Wikipedia should receive a pluralist explanation, involving factors of different kinds. * The simulations were programmed and run by Valentin Lageard.

Domains

Philosophy
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Dates and versions

hal-03181465 , version 1 (25-03-2021)

Identifiers

Cite

Valentin Lageard, Cédric Paternotte. Trolls, bans and reverts: Simulating Wikipedia. Synthese, 2018, 198 (1), pp.451-470. ⟨10.1007/s11229-018-02029-0⟩. ⟨hal-03181465⟩
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