Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Monday February 13 2017, @06:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the sounds-familiar dept.

A joint study carried out by researchers from Alphabet's Jigsaw and the Wikimedia Foundation has analyzed all user comments left on Wikipedia in 2015 in order to identify how and why users launch in personal attacks, one of the many faces of online abuse. To analyze the gigantic trove of sample comments, researchers developed a machine learning algorithm that was able to identify and distinguish different forms of online abuse and personal attacks. In order for the algorithm to work, it had to be trained beforehand. For this, researchers used human users to classify a small batch of 100,000 comments, with each of the test comments passing through the hands of ten different humans. The resulted data classification allowed the algorithm to accurately distinguish between direct personal attacks (statements like "You suck!"), third-party personal attacks (statements like "Bob sucks!"), and indirect personal attacks (statements like "Henry said Bob sucks").

After training the algorithm and unleashing it on all Wikipedia 2015 user comments, researchers were able to identify personal attacks, and then collect data on the users that launched them. Their findings reveal that around 43% of all comments left on Wikipedia came from anonymous users, but most of these were one-time commenters, and the number of comments they left was 20 times smaller than comments left by registered users. Despite this, researchers discovered that anonymous users were six times more active in posting personal attacks, but in the end, they contributed to less than half of personal attacks, meaning a large number of personal attacks came from users with a registered identity on the site.

Of all personal attacks, researchers noted that about a tenth came from extremely active users, who had an activity level of 20+, the highest on the site. A closer look at the data revealed that 34 "highly toxic users" from this 20+ category were responsible for almost 9% of all personal attacks on the site. "By comparing these figures, we see that almost 80% of attacks come from the over 9000 users who have made fewer than 5 attacking comments," the research team noted, something that's somewhat normal, as everybody tends to get mad at one point or another. "However, the 34 users with a toxicity level of more than 20 are responsible for almost 9% of attacks," researchers noted.

Source:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wikipedia-comments-destroyed-by-a-few-highly-toxic-users/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @03:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @03:25PM (#466617)

    Indeed, that's why nobody takes Aristarchus seriously. He's a huge fool that contributes nothing of value while making vague remarks and not even bothering to state what his issue is. Dude's probably one of those Aspie folks that just needs to get laid.

    I don't really care who the fuck he is in real life as I'm not going to go out of my way to go wherever he is and give him the ass kicking he deserves.