---
license: cc-by-sa-4.0
task_categories:
- text-classification
language:
- en
tags:
- wikipedia
- scientific-text
- revision-classification
- multi-label
pretty_name: WikiSTAR-Bench
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
---

# WikiSTAR-Bench

**WikiSTAR-Bench** is a benchmark for multi-label classification of *scientifically
meaningful* edits to Wikipedia. Each example is a single section-level revision:
a pair of (previous text, edited text) drawn from the history of a science
article, annotated by human experts with one or more edit-type labels from a
10-category scientific taxonomy (plus a "non-scientific edit" catch-all).

## Columns

| # | Column | Description |
|---|--------|-------------|
| 1 | `Article` | Title of the Wikipedia article the revision comes from. |
| 2 | `Section` | Name of the article section that was edited (`(Top)` = the lead/intro section). |
| 3 | `Revision Id` | Wikipedia revision ID of the edited version. |
| 4 | `Timestamp` | UTC time the revision was made (ISO 8601). |
| 5 | `Author` | Wikipedia username (or IP) of the editor who made the revision. |
| 6 | `Previous Section Text` | The section's text *before* the edit; empty when the section appears for the first time (no previous revision to compare against). |
| 7 | `Edited Section Text` | The section's text *after* the edit — the revision being classified. |
| 8 | `Gold Labels` | Human-annotated list of taxonomy label IDs for this edit (e.g. `[1, 4, 9]`). |

## Dataset statistics

**1,387 examples** across **29 articles**, grouped into three scientific domains:

| Domain | Examples | Articles |
|--------|---------:|---------:|
| Biology | 821 | 10 |
| Computer Science | 288 | 10 |
| Neuroscience | 278 | 9 |
| **Total** | **1,387** | **29** |

- **Biology (821):** the *Circadian rhythm* article alone contributes 546 examples;
  the other 9 molecular-biology articles contribute 275.
- **Computer Science (288):** 9 core CS articles plus the *Artificial intelligence*
  article.
- **Neuroscience (278):** 9 articles.

## Taxonomy

Each edit is labeled with one or more of the following categories. Labels are
multi-label: an edit can carry several IDs at once (e.g. adding a new sentence
with a citation is `[1, 7]`).

| ID | Category | Definition |
|----|----------|------------|
| 1 | New Scientific Information | Addition of new scientifically relevant information to the current revision that does not appear in the previous revision. The new information should directly relate to the article topic and contributes to scientific understanding. |
| 2 | Scientific Information Removed | Removal of at least one complete sentence containing scientifically meaningful content, such as factual claims, research findings, or definitions, that was present in the previous revision but is no longer present in the current revision. This excludes the removal of vandalism, non-substantive wording, or irrelevant content. |
| 3 | Scientific Clarification Added | Current revision includes a modification of scientifically relevant information already existing in the previous revision. |
| 4 | Scientific Technical Terms Added | Addition or modification of technical jargon used by domain experts in the research field to the current revision that was not present in the previous revision. This refers to field-specific terms, concepts, or processes that carry a precise meaning recognized by experts and that would likely be unfamiliar to general audiences without specialized knowledge. |
| 5 | Researcher Names Added | Inclusion of researcher names in the current revision that were not present in the previous revision, but only if they appear directly in the article text outside of reference tags (`<ref>`) — e.g. "a study by [name]" or "[name] et al. showed", not names appearing only within a citation. |
| 6 | Change in Scientific Narrative | Change in scientific narrative or perspective regarding a specific fact, phenomenon, or theory present in both revisions. The change must be in how the fact is framed — its certainty, stance, interpretation, or temporal/causal direction (e.g. hypothesis→demonstrated finding, cause→correlation). Does not apply when the underlying fact itself changes, or when the same fact is merely rephrased with unchanged stance. |
| 7 | Academic References Added | Addition of new references to published academic papers not present in the previous revision. These typically include identifiers such as DOI, PMID, PMC, arXiv, or ISSN, usually inside `<ref>` tags with `{{cite journal}}`. Only new academic papers; excludes URLs, books, and edits to existing references. |
| 8 | Academic References Removed | Removal of references to published academic papers that were present in the previous revision but no longer appear in the current one. Same identifier/format conventions as Label 7. Only removals of academic papers; excludes removals of URLs, books, or modifications to existing references. |
| 9 | Wikilink Added | Addition of a new link to another Wikipedia page in the current revision that was not in the previous revision. Does not include edits or modifications of existing wikilinks. |
| 10 | Addition or Modification of Quantitative Information | Addition or modification of statistics or numeric experimental results not present in the previous revision — specific metrics, percentages, counts, ratios, confidence intervals, p-values, dosages, or physical measurements in the main article text. Excludes dates/years, non-numeric comparatives ("several", "most"), ordinal quantifiers, numeric metadata inside `<ref>`/`{{cite}}`, and removals of quantitative information. |
| 11 | Non-Scientific Edit | No scientifically meaningful modification between the revisions — e.g. template/tag changes, reference-formatting changes, non-scientific content or vandalism, URL additions outside `<ref>`, wikilink formatting changes, minor rephrasings. Used **alone**, never with other labels. |

> Labels 1–10 are the scientific taxonomy (`taxonomy.csv`). Label 11 is the
> "non-scientific edit" catch-all and is assigned on its own.