The document presents a content analysis of Wikipedia talk pages, examining how different types of comments facilitate coordination and information exchange among users. It identifies 15 comment types and proposes a structured ontology to enhance the browsing experience of these pages using semantic web technologies. The study analyzes multiple categories of articles, revealing that 'coordination' is the most prevalent comment type, particularly on controversial pages.

1. A Content Analysis:
How Wikipedia Talk Pages Are Used
Jodi Schneider, Alexandre Passant & John G. Breslin
Motivation Content Analysis Semantic Web
Wikipedia’s coordination costs—the We used 15 comment types; Opportunities
number of Talk page edits for each a comment could have multiple types. We propose structured, meaningful
article edit—have increased We started with Viégas’ 11 types [2]: annotations: the type of comment.
dramatically [1]: 1. Requests for editing coordination Comment types could enable new
ways to browse Talk pages, using
2. Requests for information
Semantic Web technologies. We
3. References to vandalism could instantaneously gather and
4. References to guidelines/policies show all comments of a certain type.
5. References to internal resources
6. Off-topic remarks We have created a lightweight
ontology, based on SIOC, where
7. Polls classes in the ontology correspond
8. Requests for peer review to common comment types we
identified in the content analysis [4]:
9. Information boxes
http://rdfs.org/sioc/wikitalk
We are analyzing Talk pages to 10. Images
suggest how Semantic Web Users would tick checkboxes to
11. Other
technologies (like structured indicate a comment’s type(s).
annotations) could improve We added 4 new types:
coordination. 1. References to external sources
A JavaScript plugin could then
A typical discussion in a Wikipedia Talk page 2. Discussing reverts/removed highlight only certain comment types
material/controversial edits —for instance all “References to
3. Reference to edits made oneself external sources”. With SPARQL, we
could show all “help requests” from a
4. Recruiting help for another article/ group of pages.
portal
Talk page postings by type.
‘Coordination’ is the most
common type of comment.
Comment types depend on
the page type. Discussions
of ‘reverts/removed
material/controversial
edits’ are three times as
likely on Talk pages of
controversial articles.
Method ‘Guidelines’ and ‘sources’
are commonly discussed.
We are examining 100 Talk pages, 20
Info boxes are common in
from each of these categories:
“most views” and
1. Articles with the most contributors “controversial” samples.
2. Most-viewed articles
3. Controversial articles
4. Featured Articles
5. Random sample
This will help us to identify the types of
conversations and the variance between References Acknowledgements
pages. Existing studies focus on 1 or 2 [1] B. Stvilia, M.B. Twidale, L.C. Smith, and L. Gasser, “Information Quality Work
Organization in Wikipedia,” JASIST, vol. 59, 2008, pp. 983-1001. The work presented in this paper has
article types and use small sample [2] F.B. Viegas, M. Wattenberg, J. Kriss, and F.V. Ham, “Talk Before You Type:
been funded by Science Foundation
sizes of 6 to 60 articles. Coordination in Wikipedia,” HICSS 2007, pp. 78-87.
[3] J. Schneider, A. Passant, and Breslin, John G., “A Content Analysis: How
Wikipedia Talk Pages Are Used,” WebScience 2010, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Ireland under Grant No. SFI/08/CE/
[4] ibid, “Enhancing MediaWiki Talk pages with Semantics for Better Coordination I1380 (Líon-2).
- A Proposal,” The Fifth Workshop on Semantic Wikis: Linking Data and People at
the 7th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Crete, Greece: 2010.