CMS, Wikis, and
Wikipedia
Ahmed Sameh
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Wikis
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Original vision / implementation
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Ward Cunningham: 1994/1995
See /c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb
Idea: open editing of web content
Lots of instances, lots of tools
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software
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Wikipedia
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Anyone can edit
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Well...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions
Interesting read: http://www.independent.co.uk/lifestyle/gadgets-and-tech/features/is-wikipedia-crackingup-1543527.html
Recent changes
Watchlists
Massive amounts of discussion and massive
social conventions
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Wikipedia stats
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One of the 10 most visited web sites
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
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Over 2.7 million articles (English)
Users have made over 282 million edits, with an
average of 17.86 per page, since July 2002.
User statistics
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Over 8.8 million registered user accounts
 Over 162 thousand active in the last thirty days
 About 1600 administrators
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Interesting wikipedia urls
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bob_Dylan
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bob
_Dylan&action=history
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 Studying
Cooperation and Conflict
between Authors with history flow
Visualizations
 Fernanda Viegas, Martin
Wattenberg, and Kushal Dave
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Summary
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Developed history flow visualization
Applied it to a (presumably) hand-selected
sample of 70 or so Wikipedia pages
Identified some interesting patterns
Contribution of different authors
 Vandalism + repair
 Edit wars
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Did some statistical analysis
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Mean/median time to repair one type of vandalism
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history flow
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http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/
history_flow/
http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/
history_flow/gallery.htm
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Interlude...
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From Priedhorsky et al, GROUP 2007
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Rapidity of damage repair
i.e., 42% had no impact
Persistence
# incidents
≥ 1 view
58%
≥ 10 views
31%
≥ 100
11%
≥ 1,000
0.75% - 16k
≥ 10,000
0.06% - 1.3k
Discussion
The impact of damage is low but nonzero
... and rising (?)
1. n humans review each revision quickly
2. ensure each article is on n watchlists
n × 28k humans at 5 mins daily work
More quantitative research on
Wikipedia
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Coordination and conflict
kittur.org/research.html
 Aaron Halfaker
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Quantifying value of edits, impact of damage
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Wikipedians are born, not made
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Ried Preidhorsky
Katie Panciera
Edit quality
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Michael Ekstrand, Jilin Chen
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SeeSoft
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The Seesoft software visualization system allows one to analyze up to 50000 lines of code
simultaneously by mapping each line of code into a thin row. The color of each row indicates a
statistic of interest, e.g., red rows are those most recently changed, and blue are those least
recently changed. Seesoft displays data derived from a variety of sources, such as version control
systems that track the age, programmer, and purpose of the code (e.g., control ISDN lamps,
fix bug in call forwarding); static analyses, (e.g., locations where functions are called); and
dynamic analyses (e.g., profiling). By means of direct manipulation and high interaction
graphics, the user can manipulate this reduced representation of the code in order to find
interesting patterns. Further insight is obtained by using additional windows to display the
actual code. Potential applications for Seesoft include discovery, project management, code
tuning, and analysis of development methodologies.
SeeSoft
WikiScanner
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiScanner
Issues
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history flow visualizations – useful?
 How confident are you in the results?
 “this visualization helps identify patterns, not explain
them; and it is not clear how it extends onto a larger
scope than just one page at a time”
Does the paper tell us just about controversial topics?
 “My only questions revolve around the articles
chosen for inspection”
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Issues
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What do we know about fixing “vandalism” on
Wikipedia after reading this article?
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Why do users watch?
How many users have to be watching?
How many users have to be beneficent?
Metrics? (see Reid’s work)
Computational definitions of “edit wars”, “vandalism”,
etc.?
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See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AntiVandalBot
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Issues
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Coordination and conflict
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See kittur.org/research.html
How to achieve consensus
Limited privileges vs. open privileges + social
conventions
 Note: Flagged Revisions
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How to avoid “vandalism”
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Technical approaches vs. limited privileges vs. social
norms (aided by mechanisms)
Social approaches require scale to work?
Large vs. small wikis
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Issues
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Tyranny of the first (editor)
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Do the history flows give any evidence about this?
Wikipedia and adversarial collaboration
NPOV == POV-X + POV-Y?
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Issues
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Other mechanisms
Slashdot mass moderation
 ???
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Scenarios – what high-level tool would you
choose for…
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Content Management Systems
and Drupal
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_manage
ment_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_c
ontent_management_systems
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CMS
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“Publish” web sites without (much) programming
(required)
Content separated from presentation
Templates
Workflow
Administrative interfaces
Database backend
Modular architecture
Can program as necessary
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Drupal – a powerful CMS
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Blogging
Syndication: RSS
Forums
“Books”
News + comments
Polls
User roles + permissions
Web-based administration
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Drupal requirements
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Web server (Apache)
PHP
Database server (MySQL)
Installation not trivial(?)
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Already installed on ITLabs machines
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Drupal information
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal
http://drupal.org/
http://drupal.org/about (etc.)
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Drupal examples
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Communitylab.org
Grouplens.org
glaros.dtc.umn.edu/
volunteermatch.com
civicrm.org
www.defectivebydesign.org/en/node
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