The paper goes into the methodology in some detail but it is the history of "mutual reversions" (where two editors are involved, X reverts Y and Y reverts X) that is used for precisely the reasons you mention.
"The sum is taken over mutual reverts rather than single reverts because reverting is very much part of the normal workflow, especially for defending articles from vandalism." Kerry _____ From: Kerry Raymond [mailto:kerry.raym...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 9 June 2013 8:06 AM To: 'WMAu members'; 'Wikimedia Australia Chapter' Subject: Most controversial articles on Wikipedia There has been an Hungarian research project into identifying controversial articles in Wikipedia, based on the history of reversions and edit wars. They have a website: http://wwm.phy.bme.hu/ with their datasets, programs, papers, etc. But the bit you are probably most itching to see "the top 100 controversial articles in English" (ranked from most controversial down) is: http://wwm.phy.bme.hu/Top100/top100_en_wiki.txt with good ol' "George W. Bush" heading up the list. If you want to know more about the methodology or see the top 10 across 10 languages (article titles translating in English for your viewing pleasure where a corresponding English article is available to provide a translated title), you can access the PDF for the paper via: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2269392 There is also this nifty real-time visualisation you can view (and play with) which enables you understand the relative controversial nature across up to 4 languages. It seems "Jesus" and "Homeopathy" are the most controversial across English, French, German and Spanish, while "George W Bush" is as controversial for English-speakers as "Falkland Islands" is for Spanish speakers and "Croatia" is for German speakers - the French meanwhile are fighting over the untranslatable "Segolene Royal" (for which no corresponding article exists on en.WP -- can any French speaker assist with the translation?). http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~aspoerri/searchCrystal/searchCrystal_editWars_A LL.html which is mentioned in the paper above but does not appear to be linked from the website. There is a "Tour" link in the top left hand corner if you want to know how to drive the visualisation. It looks like hours of fun! Kerry
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