Evolution of Wikipedia's Category Structure

Wikipedia, as a social phenomenon of collaborative knowledge creating, has been studied extensively from various points of views. The category system of Wikipedia, introduced in 2004, has attracted relatively little attention. In this study, we focus on the documentation of knowledge, and the transformation of this documentation with time. We take Wikipedia as a proxy for knowledge in general and its category system as an aspect of the structure of this knowledge. We investigate the evolution of the category structure of the English Wikipedia from its birth in 2004 to 2008. We treat the category system as if it is a hierarchical Knowledge Organization System, capturing the changes in the distributions of the top categories. We investigate how the clustering of articles, defined by the category system, matches the direct link network between the articles and show how it changes over time. We find the Wikipedia category network mostly stable, but with occasional reorganization. We show that the clustering matches the link structure quite well, except short periods preceding the reorganizations.Comment: Preprint of an article submitted for consideration in Advances in Complex Systems (2012) http://www.worldscinet.com/acs/, 19 pages, 7 figure

More on the Impact of Bankruptcy Reform in Canada

The0501n objective of the new Bankruptcy Act (Bill C-22) is to promote the use of financial reorganization in order to increase the chances of survival of businesses that are experiencing financial difficulties and, as a consequence, to save jobs. Data from a sample of 417 commercial bankruptcies and 393 financial reorganizations are used to determine whether or not this represents an improvement over the previous system and whether or not the objective to increase the proportion of reorganizations will be met. Results from the statistical and logit analyses suggest that (i) the new voting requirement will increase the number of accepted proposals by 1.5 percentage points, (ii) the change in Crown priority will raise the success and acceptance rate by 2.32 and 0.79 percent respectively and (iii) the changes relating to stay of proceedings are expected to raise the use of holding proposals and thus reduce the likelihood of acceptance of a proposal by unsecured creditors. Finally, that there are several reasons to believe that encouraging firms that would otherwise have opted for bankruptcy to reorganize will not be an efficiency gain for the Canadian economy. L'objectif principal poursuivi par la réforme à la Loi sur la faillite (Bill C-22) est de promouvoir la réorganisation au détriment de la faillite pour les entreprises en difficultés financières afin d'accroître leurs chances de survie et ainsi de sauver des emplois. Les résultats des analyses statistique et économétrique d'une banque de données originales comprenant 417 dossiers de faillite commerciale et 393 dossiers de réorganisation commerciale concluent que (i) l'introduction d'un nouveau critère d'acceptation d'une proposition de réorganisation augmentera la probabilité d'acceptation de 1.5 points de pourcentage ; (ii) les changements apportés à la priorité des créances du gouvernement entraîneront une augmentation de la probabilité de succès et d'acceptation d'une proposition de l'ordre de 2.32 et 0.79 pour-cent respectivement ; et (iii) les changements quant au gel des procédures des créanciers pourraient se traduire dans une augmentation de proposition de type provisoire ce qui devrait diminuer la probabilité d'acceptation de la part des créanciers. Finalement, tout laisse croire que la promotion de la réorganisation financière entraînera une augmentation des coûts de faillite au Canada.Bankruptcy; Reorganization; Bankruptcy law, Faillite ; Réorganisation ; Loi sur la faillite

Executive Orders: Promoting Democracy and Openness in New York State Government

This joint report outlines 11 executive actions Gov. Andrew Cuomo can take to open up New York State government, increase the accountability of state agencies and reduce barriers to voting. The orders are centered on the basic goal of empowering the citizenry with more and better information about what its government is doing, and how it is spending tax payer dollars

Unemployment Through Layoffs: What Are the Underlying Reasons?

CRS_April_2005_Unemployment_Through_Layoffs.pdf: 6598 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Labor Guide to Labor Law

[Excerpt] This book is a practical guide to labor law in the private sector. The first 8 chapters present a discussion of legal principles primarily based on the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), 1947, as amended, commonly referred to as the “Act.” The remaining chapters discuss principles based on the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, as well as on the LMRA