Dominance, deference, and hierarchy formation in Wikipedia edit-networks

Abstract

Does co-editing of Wikipedia articles reveal users dominating others? Do these dyadic dominance orderings (if any) lead to a global linear hierarchy among contributing users? In this article we claim that dominance (respectively deference) is revealed by users undoing (respectively redoing) edits of others. We propose methods to turn the history of Wikipedia pages into a dynamic multiplex network resulting from three types of interaction events: dyadic dominance, dyadic deference, and third-party assigned dominance ties. We analyze various local temporal patterns for the different types of ties on a sample of page histories comprising 12,719 revisions by 7,657 unique users. On the dyad level we analyze whether two users tend to agree on a dominance order among them or whether dominated users tend to fight back. On the neighborhood level we analyze various degree effects including whether dominant users tend to dominate in the future and whether subordinate users tend to get dominated. On the triad level we analyze whether users have a preference for transitive closure over cyclic closure of dominance ties. These dynamic patterns shed light on the micro processes that can foster or impede the emergence of a global linear hierarchy.