iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

Ben Phillips @benphillips1989.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 22/01/2026

We had a blast hosting Sarah @craicexeter.bsky.social . We should be having more of these much needed discussions as scholars - Sarah’s talk featured a great mix of critical edge and openness to dialogue

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 15/01/2026

Happy 25th birthday to Wikipedia! 🥳 A fitting moment to share 1. Their great site to mark the occasion: wikipedia25.org 2. A paper in Big Data & Society, published over the winter break, where we develop Wikipedia as a “Refractive Dataset”, led by @beeeeeers.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1177/2053...

$A paper screenshot: Refractive datasets as a sensemaking methodology in closed data ecosystems Anna Beers, Viviane Ito, Agustin Orozco, Patrick Gildersleve, Pablo Aragón, and Francesca Tripodi Abstract As digital platforms restrict their APIs, researchers face diminishing options for studying social phenomena in digital environments. During what has been called the post-API era, researchers have found themselves looking for reliable data sources in an unreliable and frequently changing platform data ecosystem. In this context, we propose analyzing refractive datasets as a methodology for researchers to understand the dynamics of closed data platforms. Refractive datasets come from platforms with relatively more open data policies, and their analysis sheds light on platforms with more restrictive data policies. Like a prism, refractive datasets reflect but also transform data-based phenomena unfolding on closed platforms. Using refractive datasets from Wikipedia and Google Trends, we present three studies to demonstrate our methodology. We first show how refractive data from Wikipedia's multiple language editions can be used to understand a fractured global platform ecosystem in a case study of hydroxychloroquine, a purported COVID-19 medicine. Second, we use Google Trends to show how similar refractive analyses can be used to understand information lost to platform deletion, in a profile of an online panic over the drug brand Galaxy Gas. Finally, we show how Wikipedia data can be used as a grounding point for a refractive analysis of how new generative algorithms reproduce and distort data across the social web. We discuss how refractive datasets can be a way for researchers to “sensemake” in increasingly opaque big data environments, enabling interpretivist analyses which aim to generate new hypotheses rather than verify existing claims.$

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 09/12/2025

I’m chuffed to share that I’ve been awarded this grant with @ftripodi.bsky.social and Brett Zehner 🥳 We’ll be studying how AI systems may reproduce or reinforce biases in Wikipedia, whether by extracting knowledge from the platform or by contributing content back to it. Excited to get started!

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

LSE Blogs @lseblogs.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Launched as a competitor to Wikipedia, Elon Musk's #Grokipedia is one of the first LLM-based attempts to create an encyclopaedia. @gildersleve.uk finds it compares poorly to Wikipedia, but the latter faces challenges as AI tools cannibalise its content and audiences. @lseimpactblog.bsky.social

blogs.lse.ac.uk

Grokipedia falls flat, but AI is already rewriting Wikipedia’s future - Impact of Social Sciences

Launched as a competitor to Wikipedia, Grokipedia is one of the first LLM based encyclopaedias, but how does it compare to the last best place on the internet?

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 17/11/2025

I enjoyed writing this piece for the LSE Impact Blog on Musk's latest swing at Wikipedia, and its future in a hostile AI-skewed political landscape 👇

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/10/2025

It was a great experience organising this workshop with colleagues - looking forward to more good CrAIC!

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 25/09/2025

Super excited for the launch workshop for our research centre. Sign up below for the public roundtable!

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 04/09/2025

A really great read overall on how Wikipedia has survived the Internet, and the challenges it still faces. Going straight on my students' reading lists!

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 03/09/2025

I’m hardly a fan of much of the UK’s speech laws (especially regarding protest, Palestine recently), and cannot imagine what Esther Ghey has gone through. But what on earth are we doing here???

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 03/09/2025

A depressing juxtaposition of news stories, there is such a disconnect in the national conversation. A public figure directly calling for violence against trans people is met with police sympathy and instead we get phone ban campaigns to tackle online harms 🙃.

A screenshot of the BBC news app showing two stories. The first “Met chief calls for law change after Graham Linehan arrest”, with a photo of Graham Linehan. The second “Watch: Mother of Brianna Ghey calls for smartphone ban in schools”, with an image showing Brianna and Esther Ghey.

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 11/08/2025

A glimmer of hope - the judge issued a warning shot towards Ofcom and the govt on protecting Wikipedia's operation in the UK. Wikimedia have focused on this in their response. We expect to find out more on Wikipedia's categorisation and obligations later this summer. This will rumble on...

wikimediafoundation.org

Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations – Wikimedia Foundation

UPDATE: On Monday, 11 August, the High Court of Justice dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) Categorisation Regulations. While the decision does not provi...

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 11/08/2025

Troubling news as Wikimedia's claim against the OSA is dismissed. This opens the door for onerous new requirements such as ID verification and stricter content moderation. These measures run antithetical to Wikipedia's practical operation and core principles as the encyclopaedia anyone can edit.

reuters.com

Wikipedia operator loses court challenge to UK Online Safety Act regulations

The operator of Wikipedia on Monday lost a legal challenge to parts of Britain's Online Safety Act, which sets tough new requirements for online platforms and has been criticised for potentially curtailing free speech.

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 22/07/2025

For even more WikiResearch at #IC2S2, I'm presenting our work on WikiReddit on Wednesday 14:30 in 'Social Media II' 🧑‍💻 I'll explain how these complementary platforms are powered by the magic of ✨𝐩𝐞𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲✨, and how our dataset can be used to study cross-platform flows of information and attention 🔀

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 22/07/2025

Great session on Wikipedia at #IC2S2 with some very cool research. Strong themes of multilingual analysis and coordination dynamics @smfsamir.bsky.social @feloe.bsky.social

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

Steve Jankowski @textaural.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

I am pleased to announce the launch of the Manifesto for Wikimedia Research manifesto.wiki. As my co-authored Big Data & Society commentary explains, the manifesto is dedicated to a humanist and critical tradition of taking Wikipedia's importance seriously. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

manifesto.wiki

A manifesto for Wikimedia research: Critically studying Wikimedia as infrastructure

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 26/06/2025

Had a great time meeting everyone and seeing all the interesting work @icwsm.bsky.social. I presented our study on the Wikireddit dataset - exploring Wikipedia’s role in fact-checking, discussion, and cross-platform attention on the web. Thank you to the organisers! 📄: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/IC...

Presenter (Patrick Gildersleve) in front of a screen summarising the WikiReddit Dataset project. The slide describes it as "Every Wikipedia mention and link on Reddit, 2020-2023", includes some example usage, describes the scale of the dataset, and offers suggested use cases.

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 24/06/2025

Important starter pack research in action! I received lots of follow notifications during this talk - hopefully this work prompts more ICWSM activity here!

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 24/06/2025

Very cool work at #ICWSM tracking information manipulation in response to national regulation on the Russian Wikipedia fork From Mykola Trokhymovych, @elaragon.bsky.social, @e-migrante.bsky.social & others

Presenter in front of screen at ICWSM.

Slide content:

Summary

First study of how original Wikipedia content has been forked and manipulated to meet the requirements of a national regulation.
• RWFork edits target top visited and controversial pages
• Editors follow office-hour activity patterns
• Changes are systematic, mostly focused on the Russo-Ukrainian War

RWFork dataset is available for further study:
https://zenodo.org/records/15073728

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

Leo Balduf @leobalduf.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I'll be at #ICWSM 2025 next week to present our paper about Bluesky Starter Packs. For the occasion, I've created a Starter Pack with all the organizers, speakers, and authors of this year I could find on Bluesky! Link: go.bsky.app/GDkQ3y7 Let me know if I missed anyone!

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

LSE Methodology @lsemethodology.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

You can still sign up for our My580 Methods Short Course 👉 Modern Text Analysis and NLP with Python, by @gildersleve.uk 📆 Tuesday 27 May, from 10am - 3pm 🖱️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/modern-tex...

eventbrite.co.uk

Modern Text Analysis and NLP with Python

Training for PhD and MSc students in the design of social research, quantitative and qualitative analysis.

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

LSE Methodology @lsemethodology.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Next up on our My580 Methods Short Courses 👉 Modern Text Analysis and NLP with Python, by @gildersleve.uk 📆 Tuesday 27 May, from 10am - 3pm 🖱️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/modern-tex...

eventbrite.co.uk

Modern Text Analysis and NLP with Python

Training for PhD and MSc students in the design of social research, quantitative and qualitative analysis.

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

Wikimedia Foundation @wikimediafoundation.org · 08/05/2025

We are challenging the lawfulness of the UK’s Online Safety Act Categorisation Regulations, which determine our obligations under UK laws. These rules create unacceptable risks for Wikipedia’s volunteer users, such as disempowering those who wish to keep their identity private. Read ➡️ w.wiki/E3XD

The Royal Courts of Justice main gate. Text says "Wikimedia Foundation brings legal challenge to new UK Online Safety Act requirements".

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

Milena Tsvetkova @mtsvetkova.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I have two postdoc positions for a computer scientist and a social scientist to work on my ERC-funded project HUMANET Human-Machine Social Systems at LSE. Please read more and apply at jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/.... More information about the project is available at humanet.science.

jobs.lse.ac.uk

Research Officer in Computational Social Science (2 Posts)

Research Officer in Computational Social Science (2 Posts), , LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university ...

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

LSE Methodology @lsemethodology.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

📣Call for papers! 1️⃣ week left to send your 250-word abstract for @audreyalejandro.bsky.social and ‪@dandekadt.bsky.social‬'s two-day workshop on "Computational Social Science meets Qualitative Research" Learn more➡️ www.lse.ac.uk/Methodology/... @lsedatascience.bsky.social

AI generated photograph featuring a group of people sat around a table and code overlayed

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

🙏 Thank you to @wikiresearch.bsky.social and the reddit4researchers programme for the data access. I spoke more about this and other projects as part of the January Wikimedia research showcase, which you can watch here: www.youtube.com/live/gvF8p4r...

youtube.com

Wikimedia Research Showcase - January 2025

YouTube video by Wikimedia Foundation

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

On exploratory analysis, we find: 📉 Declining activity in posts, but stable performance of Wikipedia content on Reddit 🔗 Strong correlations between Wikipedia and Reddit activity 🌍 Intriguing asymmetric patterns of cross-lingual linking, dominated by English

Plot showing the daily count of posts and comments that mention Wikipedia (in text or as a link) over 2020-2023. The number of comments is steady at around 6000-7000, whereas the number of posts steadily decreases from around 300 to 200.

Figure showing the daily page views to Wikipedia articles on the day of posting and in the week after posting relative to the week before posting as a KDE plot. A small number of points in the extremes of the distributions are cut for visual clarity. We find that for links in Reddit posts, we observe a 45% increase in page views on the day of posting, and a 6% increase in the week after posting, as compared to the week
before posting. For links in Reddit comments, we observe a 45% increase in page views on the day of posting, and a 5% increase in the week after posting, as compared to the week before posting.

Figure showing the proportion of links to English Wikipedia from non-English Reddit posts vs the total number of links in that post language. Larger languages such as Chinese, German, French link to English Wikipedia around 20% of the time, whereas for smaller languages, English is used a majority of the time.

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

👷 Care has been taken to omit and anonymise any potentially personally identifiable information. Future researchers with access to the Reddit and Wikipedia APIs can enrich their analyses by pulling extra data (e.g. post content) and linking to the processed cross-platform information provided here.

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

📂 The SQL database contains: - All Reddit posts and comments mentioning Wikipedia 2020-23, including hyperlinks, hashed IDs, and metadata. - Edit history and page view activity for Wikipedia articles at the time of posting, page IDs, and redirects.

A table from the paper detailing a summary of all Wikipedia mentions, those including links, and those that map to Wikipedia articles by
Reddit format.

| Posts | Comments | Total
# mentioning Wikipedia | 335,897 | 10,264,340 | 10,600,237
# with Wikipedia links | 286,359 | 9,465,316 | 9,751,675
Total # of Wikipedia links | 658,493 | 11,573,36 | 12,231,860
# unique Wikipedia links | 295,439 | 1,890,497 | 1,954,003
# unique Wikipedia articles | 252,846 | 1,196,494 | 1,260,479

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

Our dataset enables further research on: 📰 How Reddit drives attention to Wikipedia 🎭 Wikipedia’s (mis)use as a trusted source in online discourse ⚖️ How different communities engage with Wikipedia, revealing knowledge gaps 🔄 The interplay of demographic and platform biases on Reddit and Wikipedia

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

📊 We introduce a new dataset of 12.2M Wikipedia links shared on Reddit over four years, offering a new lens on how two of the web’s most influential platforms interact. 📄 Preprint: doi.org/10.48550/arX... 💽 Dataset: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

doi.org

WikiReddit: Tracing Information and Attention Flows Between Online Platforms

The World Wide Web is a complex interconnected digital ecosystem, where information and attention flow between platforms and communities throughout the globe. These interactions co-construct how we un...

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 10/02/2025

📄 Excited to share a new dataset preprint! WikiReddit: Tracing Information and Attention Flows Between Online Platforms A collaboration with @beeeeeers.bsky.social, Viviane Ito, Agustin Orozco, and @ftripodi.bsky.social at @citap.bsky.social .

A screenshot of the start of the paper "WikiReddit: Tracing Information and Attention Flows Between Online Platforms"

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

LSE Methodology @lsemethodology.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

📣Call for papers! Dr Daniel de Kadt and @audreyalejandro.bsky.social are hosting a two-day workshop on "Computational Social Science meets Qualitative Research" Learn more➡️ www.lse.ac.uk/Methodology/... @lsedatascience.bsky.social

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Reposted by Patrick Gildersleve

Stephen Harrison @stephenharrison.com · 05/02/2025

I wrote for Slate about how a conservative think tank plans to "identify and target" Wikipedia editors who it claims are abusing their position—a dangerous escalation that shifts the fight from debating edits to going after the editors themselves. slate.com/technology/2...

slate.com

A Powerful Conservative Think Tank Is Targeting One of the Last Good Things on the Internet

The Heritage Foundation plans to “identify and target” Wikipedia editors it accuses of antisemitism.

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

📖To find out more, check out the following: 🔗Preprint link: arxiv.org/abs/2408.07052 🐍Try FORUM in Python: github.com/pgilders/pyf... 🌟Finally, big thanks to Flora this project came out of her prizewinning work at LSE Methodology!

arxiv.org

The News Comment Gap and Algorithmic Agenda Setting in Online Forums

The disparity between news stories valued by journalists and those preferred by readers, known as the "News Gap", is well-documented. However, the difference in expectations regarding news related...

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

🗣️Understanding these preferences and algorithmic consequences is vital in fostering healthy discussion online and of clear interest to journalists presenting their stories This is especially important given the increasing scrutiny of online speech and how it is hosted/moderated

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

💪We thus argue editors can exercise agenda setting power in comment sections through curational and algorithmic means The effects on how audience reception to an article is represented by ranking algorithms are larger than those from more traditional measures (e.g. Editor Picks)

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

🔍With FORUM, we find dramatic differences in how different, even simple, algorithms prioritise different kinds of comments, as measured by their sentiment, readability, lexical diversity, and similarity to the article

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

🛠️FORUM is a versatile, interpretable tool that can be applied to any task of scoring how well a set of items are sorted, far more than just news comments!

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

📈We develop the Feature-Oriented Ranking Utility Metric (FORUM 🥁) to evaluate how well a ranking algorithm (most upvoted, chronological, etc) returns comments by a certain feature (sentiment, readability, etc) compared to best/worst-possible and random baseline

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

🕵️With data from @derStandardat, we find, compared to readers, journalists prefer more positive, timely, complex, direct responses, while readers favour comments similar to article content from elite authors

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 14/08/2024

🚨New preprint! 📰The News Comment Gap and Algorithmic Agenda Setting in Online Forums w/ Flora Böwing We study: 1) The differences in comment preferences between journalists and readers 2) How comment ranking algorithms prioritise different kinds of comments to display to users 🧵

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Patrick Gildersleve @gildersleve.uk · 18/07/2024

Also, I’m not a big poster, but would love to help build more of a CSS community here on BlueSky - make yourself known if you’re here!

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