Investigating the evolution of Wikipedia articles through underlying triggering networks

In collaborative environments, the contribution made by each user is perceived to set the stage for the manifestation of more contribution by other users, termed as the phenomenon of triggering . Although literature points to theories supporting the prevalence of this phenomenon, these theories have hardly been investigated in real collaborative settings, hence restricting their use for improving collaboration in practical settings. In this work, we analyse the revision history of Wikipedia articles to examine the traces of triggering present in them. We also build and analyse triggering networks for these articles that capture the association among different pieces of the articles. The analysis of the structural properties of these networks provides useful insights on how the existing knowledge leads to the introduction of more knowledge in these articles, thus helping in understanding their evolution. These insights may be useful for portal designers to build improved interfaces and policies for collaborative portals.