Science Research Management ›› 2017, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (11): 18-26.

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A Model of Conflict Dynamics of Wikipedia Editing

Luo Shuangling1,2, Ma Pei2, Wang Ruixin2, Xia Haoxiang2   

  1. 1.College of Shipping Economy and Management & Collaborative Innovation Center for Transport Studies, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian 116026, Liaoning, China; 
    2. Faculty of Management and Economics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, Liaoning, China
  • Received:2016-11-09 Revised:2017-06-07 Online:2017-11-20 Published:2017-11-20

Abstract: The underlying mechanisms for the conflict and coordination in Wikipedia editing have attracted enormous research attention. Researches on this topic are of potential value for improving coordination in social innovation or innovation 2.0 projects. In this work, a variant of T?r?k et al.’s bounded-confidence-based model of conflict dynamics in the collective editing of Wikipedia articles is proposed, based on the hypothesis that the contingent-activation of zealots with extremist opinions is substitutable to the renewal of agents in generating controversies. The numerical simulations show that the transitions between the three regimes of “single conflict”, “plateaus of consensus”, and “uninterrupted controversy” can be reproduced by the proposed model. What’s more, richer dynamics are shown in the proposed model. This work provides an alternative explanation for the underlying mechanisms of the observed conflict modes; and it sheds some lights on studying the coordination of opinion conflicts in social innovation projects.