Notabilia: Visualizing Deletion Discussions on Wikipedia (2010)

Like a garden, an online encyclopedia needs constant weeding. Unlike a garden, an online encyclopedia has thousands of potential gardeners. Over years Wikipedia has developed guidelines and policies to help editors collectively decide whether topics are suitable for inclusion or not. All articles, especially new ones, are reviewed by the community to determine if they meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Any editor can nominate an article for deletion and, if this nomination is legitimate, a community discussion takes place where any fellow gardeners editors have the opportunity to make their voices heard. The usual process is to have a week-long discussion during which community members can discuss in favor or against keeping the article. At the end of this period an administrator reviews the discussion and speaks the final verdict.

We analyzed and visualized Article for Deletion (AfD) discussions in the English Wikipedia. The visualization above represents the 100 longest discussions that resulted in the deletion of the respective article. AfD discussions are represented by a thread starting at the bottom center. Each time a user joins an AfD discussion and recommends to keep, merge, or redirect the article a green segment leaning towards the left is added. Each time a user recommends to delete the article a red segment leaning towards the right is added. As the discussion progresses, the length of the segments as well as the angle slowly decay.


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This project is a collaboration between Dario Taraborelli, Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia (data and analysis), and Moritz Stefaner (visualization).