Talk:Viral phenomenon

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dcr1076.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:43, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 6 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jgodby2323, Gidget91, Rgarcia10. Peer reviewers: Rgarcia10.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:43, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

The mechanism of viral phenomenon
My suggestion is to add a section with title "The mechanism of viral phenomenon", to introduce the inner connection between viral phenomenon and a bunch of SNA theories and complex system theories. Since studies on complex network, information cascade and epidemic modeling have been quite active and productive for decades, There are bunch of theories can give vivid explanations on viral phenomenon (or so-called "social-epidemic" from Malcolm Gladwell "the Tipping Point"), e.g.: theories of information cascade, the classical SIR/SIS model, etc. BTW I agree with Magdalen23's point.

I'm planned to introduce some heavy-weighted research works (published by some shining guys like Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Duncan Watts and Jon Kleinberg ..) both in here as well as in Complex contagion and other related terms to reflect both the differences and connections between these concept.

Hope to get feedback from you guys.

Article is much better now. There are still links from medical articles here though (like Antibiotics). Maybe there should be a disambiguation page? I don't know enough about medicine to say. 80.203.115.12 00:51, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Snow Crash and mid-1990s seem odd
Using the term "viral" to discuss non-medical stuff goes back in time; this article implies, seemingly without citation, that the idea is mainly a post-mid-1990s phenomenon. To my knowledge, the thread stems from (if not earlier) William S. Burroughs in the early 1960s proclaiming that words are viral (see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs ) later popularized further by Laurie Anderson in the early 1980s with the song "Language is a Virus."

Snow Crash is one example of having fun with viral memes in the culture, but seems to have been given a great deal of prominence here. Is that appropriate?

I'm new to the "talk" function, apologies if I'm not using this correctly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magdalen23 (talk • contribs) 07:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

GPL example
I'm not sure the discussion of the GPL's "virality" is really necessary on this article - the GPL article already links to this article, and it contains a better overview of the controversy there. This article should probably be limited to actually describing viruses and viral behaviors. Any thoughts?

Update: nobody seems to have any objections, so I will trim the list entry. MFNickster 01:12, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Article title must change
This article title does not conform to Naming conventions (adjectives) and there is no good reason for it to be an exception to the convention. Should it be renamed to Viral phenomenon, viral behaviour/viral behavior, virality or something else? Nurg 22:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Moved. I'll make the other suggestions into redirects. —Pengo 15:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Needs attention
This article should be a broad encyclopedic article on the concept of "virality" as it applies to non-biologic concepts. There is a need for a central article to discuss what it is that makes viral videos, viral marketing, memes, etc. "the same". This article obviously needs lots of work, and many more citations. I've added one on the use of social networks in the Arab Spring (viral hashtags and Twitter as relevant to this topic). There is no reason to delete this article, as the core concept is a valid encyclopedic topic. Strip it to the bones if you must, but deleting it is inappropriate. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:39, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Definition problem
The initial definition, "Viral phenomena are objects or patterns able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them." Makes no sense it terms of the way I hear the term most commonly used: e.g., that someone's video, posted on the Web, has "gone viral".

The current definition implies that this means such videos are either self-replicating, or that they "convert other objects" into copies of themselves. What objects would those be? Certainly the videos don't apear to be self-replicating. I've viewed many of them online, and not a single one of them has replicated in any way that I can discern.

The current definition also makes "viral phenomena" sound like they are similar to malware, and I don't think this is accurate, either. It would seem that the true definition of the idiom would be something closer to the concept of information "spreading like (e.g., at the rate of) a virus." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 23:13, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, my name is Grace Morgan. I will be updating this article soon. The last time this article was updated was in 2014. Since then people have made huge strides in technological advancements having to do with social media and it's ability to reach millions of people instantly. I will research the tech advancements, the creation of niches and social media communities, and how algorithms have been developed to predict the success of a social media post and predict vitality.

Here are some sources I will use: Virality Prediction and Community Structure in Social Networks BY: Lilian Weng, Filippo Menczer & Yong-Yeol Ahn Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks BY: Tony D. Sampson Valuable Virality: Journal of Marketing Research BY: Ezgi Akpinar and Jonah Berger

Small Editing Plans
Hello! Over the next few weeks, I plan on trying to improve this article through a few organizational and copy-editing changes. I noticed this article is rated as Start-Class on Wikipedia's quality scale, so I am hoping to polish the content and jargon usage that comes off as either biased or is extra information that strays from the main topic of the article. The writing style is for the most part sound, but some copyedit choices could be made to allow it to have a more neutral point-of-view. As far as organizational edits, I plan on trimming down the lead description to be more concise and straight to the point. I will follow this course of action for the rest of the subsections as some of the information is coming from personal understandings instead of information that is backed up by other sources: (WP:NOR). If anyone has any additional thoughts, suggestions, or objections - please do not hesitate to let me know! I would love to get some other opinions as these are the few things I believe can be improved after reviewing the Talk page and the History section! Dcr1076 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:40, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Removal of examples from History of content sharing
I've removed the four examples listed under the heading "History of content sharing". None of these four examples are individually notable enough to be commemorated here, and certainly not in the context of an overview of the history of content sharing as a whole. Content sharing has not led from folk tales as a medium to a few individual internet memes. OK Boomer and Bhad Bhabie already have their own pages, while Woman Yelling At A Cat is on the List of internet phenomena. Shmuser (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Improper edits
I have just undone a series of edits to this article made in error by myself (imagining I was using my sandbox). I hope that my edits caused no inconvenience to users.Guy WF Loftus (talk) 18:19, 6 May 2023 (UTC)