Making sense of the evolution of Wikipedia is a daunting task, comprising over 4 million pages, 70 million revisions, and 800 gigabytes of information. The graphics below visualize surface hidden structural trends from the entire history of Wikipedia such as the increase in coordination costs, the mapping of conflict by subject area, and the evolution of user participation. Underneath the surface these visualizations are enabled by an infrastructure including distributed computing and machine learning.

 

Decrease in direct work to articles over time, increase in indirect work.

 

Categories in Wikipedia with largest number of controversial articles.

 

Change in percentage of direct article work as a function of total participation time, broken down by year.

 

Visualization of user groups in Wikipedia for the Terry Schiavo page, with groups differering on religious and conservative views.