Voting Behavior Analysis in the Election of Wikipedia Admins

Past work analyzing elections in online domains has largely ignored the underlying social networks present in such environments. Here, we study the Wikipedia Request for Adminship (RfA) process within the context of a social network and pinpoint several factors influencing different stages of the voting process. The facets explored are: election participation, decision making in elections, and election outcome. We find that voters tend to participate in elections that their contacts have participated in. Furthermore, there is evidence showing that an individual's decision-making is influenced by his contacts' actions. The properties of voters within the social graph were also studied, results reveal that candidates who gain the support of an influential coalition tend to succeed in elections.