User:ConMan/Dispute in corporation articles

On or around June 6, 2006, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales asked the #wikipedia IRC channel a question - 'is there a quick way to answer a question like "are articles about major corporations very often tagged as being in dispute?"'

So, in the interest of seeing if such a thing is possible, I decided to work out a method. Using a pseudo-random number generator (a calculator with a built-in "random" function), I selected 10 companies from the most recent Fortune 500. The companies were (listed in order of appearance on the list, not of drawing):

Now, to determine whether the articles were frequently in dispute. Problem: 6 of the 10 articles were marked as stubs, and another probably qualifies as one. Maybe it would have been better choosing from the top 100.

Deciding to make the best of a bad lot (for now), I took a quick look at the edit histories of each article to see whether there was much dispute over content. The results:

ExxonMobil[edit]

About 550 edits. A serving of vandalism, a tendency for anonymous IPs to make POV edits (especially to the 'Allegations against ExxonMobil' section) and registered users to revert them. Back in 2004, a few disputes including a large one on the NPOV insertion and deletion of certain allegations and comments, but not much recently. Currently tagged as being in need of copy editing. Moderate dispute.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.[edit]

Around 270 edits. A little spam, a little vandalism, no real dispute.

Cardinal Health[edit]

Long stub. About 30 non-bot edits, one minor vandalism, one small linkspam, no real dispute.

AT&T[edit]

Around 500 edits, most hidden in the history for AT&T Inc, to which AT&T was moved before the original article was restored (actually appear to be more edits lost to history, since it looks like the page was moved before and then back, deleting an old article in the process). Some dispute over the split/move, a little vandalism or disagreement over terms, but no real dispute.

Allstate[edit]

Around 100 edits, mainly constructive, but many changes in the External Links sections over advertising, promotional links, and the removal of apparently informative links, among other things. Small dispute.

Baxter International[edit]

Long stub. Less than 20 non-bot edits, mostly fairly dull. A Controversy section was added by one anonymous user on February 26, 2006, and removed by another on March 19. Minor dispute.

Coventry Health Care[edit]

Stub. Less than 10 non-bot edits, about the only ones of any interest being the addition and removal of a cleanup-importance tag. Minor, if any, dispute.

W.W. Grainger[edit]

Stub. Two edits, no dispute.

Pitney Bowes[edit]

Less than ten non-bot edits, two of which removed some POV and one added a template calling for expert assistance. Minor dispute, if any.

UGI Corporation[edit]

Six edits by two users, no dispute. Article stub length but with no template (will probably fix this).

Conclusions[edit]

Of course, this experiment is hampered by the stub nature of most of the articles, and the level of dispute was a fairly subjective one, but I think it shows the process works, and that a quick-and-dirty analysis shows the average large corporation doesn't spend more than its fair share of time in dispute. If anyone wants to refine the process, maybe selecting only from the top 100 corporations, or reselecting corporations that only have a stub article, and maybe creating a more objective form of measuring the amount of dispute, they are well welcome to it. Confusing Manifestation 12:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)