Visualizing the Wikipedia Power Struggle

todd450 pointed us to a nifty visualization of Wikipedia and controversial articles in it. The image started with a network of 650,000 articles color coded to indicate activity. The original image is apparently 5' square, but the sample image they have is still pretty neat.

Comments

Re:The two sides of Wikipedia

[Kjella]

Have you ever been to a soccer match? There's 11 guys on each team that desperately wants everything to be a call in their favor, and one referee that's supposed to be neutral. He gets hounded about 98% of the time. At times you'd think he was dumb, deaf, blind, bought and that his walking dog needs glasses from the sound of it.

Now imagine a match where the fans could overturn the referee's decision. Repeatedly, both sides. "Free kick for the red team" "No, free kick for the blue team" "No, free kick for the red team". Every so often a guy would run around and show all the players the red card, and you'd have to undo it.

You get the pleasure of being called partial by morons who are so far from being level it's a wonder they don't tip over. And you sure don't get paid for it, or have any league that'll slap the worst personal attacks. You've got zero authority except temporarily locking edits which is like getting between two NFL teams waiting for the play signal again.

That pretty much sums up the fun of trying to get a neutral and balanced article on a controversial topic in Wikipedia. I understand perfectly those who give up. I use Wikipedia for quick "what is that?" and simple facts. If I want to form an opinion on something, I'm not looking to wikipedia for a balanced view...