Presentation of Contropedia with article "Donald Trump" as a use case. Presented at Universitat Pompeu Fabra - DigiDoc seminar, on November 16, 2016.

1. Contropedia: a Visual Tool to
Explore Controversies in Wikipedia
david.laniado@eurecat.org
DigiDoc Seminar - UPF - November 16, 2016

2. Wikipedia
● largest repository of human
knowledge
● first result for web queries
on many topics
● anyone may edit it
● conditions and reflects
public opinion

3. Wikipedia’s most visible side

4. Behind the scenes: talk pages (>10k comments, 32 archived pages)

5. Complete edit history log (>17k revisions)

6. Contropedia aims to:
● make this huge volume of information easily
accessible
● unveil negotiations behind encyclopaedic
content
● allow users to follow the development of
individual topics

7. Layer view
● which are the most disputed concepts?
● where are controversies located in the article?
● wiki links as focal points
○ the hotter the color, the more controversial
the element (wiki link)

8. Contropedia layer view
<2MB image of Global Warming overlay

9. Controversiality measure
● count edits to sentences including a wiki link
● only consider substantive disagreeing edits:
○ substantive -> no vandalism or anti-vandalism
○ disagreeing -> delete some content
● language agnostic approach
○ based only on user activity

10. Dashboard view
● ranking of the most controversial elements within
the article
● timeline shows when each element was most
disputed
● elements that are not present (as wiki links) in the
current version of the article are struck through

12. Detailed view
● all the edits involving a specific element
○ edits in chronological order
○ content added and deleted in each edit
● Optionally shown also related comments from
the talk page

15. How would you word the 2005 audio recording
controversy?
Trump ...
● “was overheard sharing a number of vulgar sexual remarks over the
course of a private conversation”
● “bragged about forcibly kissing women and being permitted to grab
women's genitals”
● “talked about kissing and groping women without their consent”
● “jokingly brags to companions that as a celebrity he can and does kiss or
groping any woman he's attracted to”
● “appeared to brag about committing sexual assault.”

16. Consensus in current version (November 13th, 2016)

17. Disagreement network view

18. Comparison of different periods
● which are the most controversial elements in different
moments?
○ selecting specific time windows
● before and after Trump announced his candidacy

22. Summing up
● what is most controversial?
○ count disagreeing, substantive, edits to a wiki link
○ visualize with layer view and dashboard
● when is it most controversial?
○ controversy timeline
● what is the controversy about?
○ edit history around a specific wiki link

23. Contropedia can:
● increase transparency in Wikipedia
● lower barriers to participation
● foster critical digital literacy

24. Users and Uses
● Social researchers
● Wikipedians
● Teachers and students
● Journalists
● Citizens

25. Cross-language analysis
● what (and when) is controversial about a
topic in different language versions?
● example for article “Homosexuality”
○ Catholic church appears only in Italy among the
most controversial elements
○ USSR and USA are controversial in the Russian
Wikipedia

31. Wikipedia as cultural heritage gateway and site

35. Work in progress
● integrating talk pages
● beyond wiki links: templates, references, images
● edit networks, editor camps
● cross-language visualizations
● networks of articles and external references

36. References
E. Borra, E. Weltevrede, P. Ciuccarelli, A. Kaltenbrunner, D. Laniado, G. Magni, M. Mauri, R. Rogers, and T. Venturini. Societal
Controversies in Wikipedia Articles,
CHI ’15 - Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2015.
E. Borra, D. Laniado, E. Weltevrede, M. Mauri, G. Magni, T. Venturini, P. Ciuccarelli, R. Rogers, and A. Kaltenbrunner.
A Platform for Visually Exploring the Development of Wikipedia Articles,
ICWSM '15 - Proceedings of the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2015.
F Flöck, D Laniado, F Stadthaus, M Acosta
Towards Better Visual Tools for Exploring Wikipedia Article Development – The Use Case of Gamergate Controversy
Wikipedia, a Social Pedia: Research Challenges and Opportunities, 2015.
Pentzold, C., Weltevrede E., Mauri M., Laniado D., Kaltenbrunner A., Borra E. (2017)
Digging Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia as digital cultural heritage gateway and site
ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), (in press)
and more material at: http://contropedia.net/

37. Play with the Contropedia demo!
http://www.contropedia.net/demo
It already contains hundreds of articles. Feel free to ask, we can add specific
articles you would like to play with
david.laniado@eurecat.org