New toys from the MIT Media Lab! This nifty picture is a "history-flow" visualization of edits to the Wikipedia entry for "Capitalism." Each parallelogram represents a unique sentence or paragraph. The 'Y' axis represents time. Therefore, the "wavy" lines represent periods where a particular claim was heavily contested by users, or-- sadly-- the U.S. government. The program uses Wikipedia "meta" data, which can be easily downloaded here.
Upon further investigation I discovered a lively literature on the social production of knowledge in Wikipedia. Needless to say, these folks couldn't spot A.N.T. in a pile of T.P.S. Reports. But should we sociologists care? After all, about 5% of Wikipedia users write 95% of the entries. Moreover, much of the edit history is coordinated by a cadre of computer scientists with an uncommon obsession with punctuation and grammar. Still, a quick glimpse at the data yielded a few promising controversies (including a four week battle about the proper definition of "terrorism."). In the end, this may be further evidence of my ongoing obsession with pretty pictures of social science.
Monday, February 18, 2008
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