WikiScanner’s flair for uncovering unseemly and biased edits will very likely make it the most discussed Wikipedia-related tool of the year. But check out WikiDashboard, another project that sheds light on the encyclopedia’s editing process.
The tool, designed by a research group at the Palo Alto Research Center, is basically an overlay of Wikipedia, as techPresident points out. For every article, WikiDashboard generates a series of graphs detailing peaks and valleys in editing frequency and showing which contributors have returned, time and time again, to make changes.
The charts are not easy to read, at least at first glance. But the researchers who created WikiDashboard have written a guide, and as techPresident notes, there’s plenty of useful data to be had: “The cues provided by the visualization might tell us to be skeptical of the article if a new editor is currently contributing lots of edits.”
WikiDashboard might not provide many startling revelations, but it offers an interesting glimpse into the organic evolution of entries on Wikipedia. —Brock Read
