AN AGENT-BASED MODEL OF EDIT WARS IN WIKIPEDIA: HOW AND WHEN IS CONSENSUS REACHED

Edit wars are conflicts among editors of Wikipedia, when editors repeatedly overwrite each other’s content. Edit wars can last from a few days to several years before reaching consensus often leading to a loss of content quality. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to create an agent-based model of edit wars in order to study the influence of various factors involved in consensus formation. We model the behavior of agents using theories of group stability and reinforcement learning. We show that increasing the number of credible or trustworthy agents and agents with a neutral point of view decreases the time taken to reach consensus, whereas the duration is longest when agents with opposing views are in equal proportion. Our model can be used to study the behavior of members in online communities, and to inform policies and guidelines for participation.