Circadian patterns of Wikipedia editorial activity: a demographic analysis

Abstract

Wikipedia (WP) as a collaborative, dynamical system of humans is an appropriate subject of social studies. Each single action of the members of this society, i.e., editors, is well recorded and accessible. Using the cumulative data of 34 Wikipedias in different languages, we try to characterize and find the universalities and differences in temporal activity patterns of editors. Based on this data, we estimate the geographical distribution of editors for each WP in the globe. Furthermore we also clarify the differences among different groups of WPs, which originate in the variance of cultural and social features of the communities of editors.

Figure 1. Normalized activity of editors.

For (a) all WPs listed in Table 1 excluding English, simple English, Spanish and Portuguese, (b) the average curve extracted from curves in (a) and standard curve extracted from 10 most localized WPs along with the activity curve of unregistered users, whose IP-addresses are known and therefore one is able to locate them and obtain the local time zone precisely (c) activity pattern of Spanish (red) and Portuguese (green) WPs, and (d) activity pattern of English (red) and simple English (green) WPs.

Figure 2. Deviation of activity patterns from the average curve, leading to 4 different categories of WPs.

The gray dotted line is the average deviation of each category. The sleep depth (for the definition, see the text) of for categories a–d are 4.50.2, 4.30.2, 4.90.1 and 2.80.2 respectively.

Figure 3. Decomposition of activity pattern of English WP into 5 shifted standard curves with different weights.

The blue line is the empirical data, the yellow curve is the standard curve (see the text for the definition), the thin dotted lines are shifted and weighted standard curves, and the red dotted line is the linear superposition of them which models the empirical data properly.

Figure 4. Estimation of users contribution from different regions.

By precisely combining the outputs of the optimization process, described in the text, and demographic data of each language, the share of each region to each WP is estimated. For the sake of accuracy in reporting the results, in some cases the contributions of regions closely located, are unified.

Figure 5. Activity of editors on different days of the week, categorized in 4 subcategories.

There are two major categories of weekend, (b)–(d) and weekdays (a) activity. Please note that WPs in (d) are languages spoken mostly in Muslim countries, which have either ThursdayFriday weekend (Saudi Arabia,Oman and Yemen), or FridaySaturday weekend (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Sudan,Syria, United Arab Emirates), or, SaturdaySunday weekend (Morocco, Tunisia). In Iran and Afghanistan, Persian spoken countries, only Friday is considered as weekend.