Research:Are the bots really fighting
Duration: 2017-02 – 2017-04
A paper was recently published that asserted some interesting dynamics about bots in Wikipedia.
- Even good bots fight: The case of Wikipedia
- M Tsvetkova, R García-Gavilanes, L Floridi, T Yasseri
- PloS one 12 (2), e0171774
- http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0171774
In this work, the authors make a basic assertion in their title "Even good bots fight". We are extremely skeptical of the assertion that the bots on our wikis "fight" or engage in any other type of substantial "conflict" at all. In this study, we'll explore what, exactly, the bots are doing when they revert each other.
Methods
[edit]We'll use a combined strategy of quantiative analysis (for discovering bot edits) and content analysis for coding the types of activities that bots engage in. In order to discover the basic classes of bot reverting activities, we'll apply en:grounded theory.
Results
[edit]To be announced. See the the talk page for our work log.