Submissions:2025/Tracing the Social Footprint of Wikipedia
This submission has been noted and is pending review for WikiConference North America 2025.
Title:
- Tracing the Social Footprint of Wikipedia
Type of session:
- Lecture (15-30 min)
Session theme(s):
- Credibility, Future of Wikipedia
Abstract:
We present a social footprint tracer for understanding who cites Wikipedia articles in online communities so that we can better understand the external impact of the free encyclopedia. In particular we investigate this so that we understand how communities use it to provide credible information in an age of agentic AI where 'data voids' lead to hallucination. Most of the content on Wikipedia is extensively shared to online audiences with over 300B visitors annually so we present data that quantifies which articles get shared on social platforms and of these, the subset that get engagement. We also discuss correlations in page views received and social media virality by looking at Wikipedia articles shared on Reddit, Truth Social, Twitter/X, Bluesky, Telegram, and other platforms. The data we gather allows us to uniquely present a comparison of Wikipedia article sharing by communities as well as platform considering mainstream, alternative, and decentralized social platform dynamics. Our analysis also provides examples to understand how AI agents can be used to present the content in meaningful ways to online audiences. And we encapsulate our analysis into an online analytics platform for social transparency that the community can use in order to expand their understanding of the impact of Wikipedia and interest it garners from varied online communities. Ultimately we provide a set of suggestions towards better aligning the content to reduce data voids, better explaining it to avoid misinterpretations, limiting their employment in promoting malinformation, and reducing the manipulation of factual information to sow discord online. Our work has resulted in prior reports of networks of bot accounts through https://parrot.simppl.org and a corresponding investigation by X/Twitter. Subsequent work into networked harassment on Meta also resulted in network takedowns for online accounts promoting harm. We present this platform to advance social transparency and trace the flow of Wikipedia articles and credible information from perennial news sources across the social internet in an age of agentic AI. Preliminary Slides are available here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_I0adjPbFuertxGPdjAIF5Kp-pB3xbVsUQ3oyqu17ao/edit?usp=sharing
Author name(s):
Wikimedia username(s):
- SwapneelM
Affiliated organization(s):
- SimPPL
Estimated length of session
- 15-20
Will you be presenting remotely?
- I will present in-person
Okay to livestream?
- Livestreaming is okay
Previously presented?
- WikiCred Conference 2025 (lightning talk 5 min); Truth and Trust Online (30 min)
Special requests: