I would like to suggest two scenarios that may shed additional insight into the behaviours examined in this study.

1. The water hole.

The mingling and mixing you are observing in Wikipedia is akin to the way different species come to share and interact at a water hole. Like the water hole, the Wikipedia article is a unique and vital resource – presenting, in this case, a powerful means to influence public opinion on a given topic. Animals of different species that would not usually socialise congregate here out of necessity, because they all want to access the same unique resource, and are deprived of alternatives. People of different persuasions engage each other in Wikipedia because they have to.

You have noted this point yourselves in your study, but I think have undervalued it in your conclusions. Political opponents do not talk to each other in Wikipedia because they share a common Wikipedian identity that takes precedence over their political identity, but because they have to. If they could edit the article – use the water hole – by themselves, without their opponents' competing presence, they would generally much prefer that.

2. The police state.

In a state with an authoritarian and ideologically driven government, where law enforcement has wide-ranging, inconsistently exercised powers – as admins have in Wikipedia – most citizens figure out that party membership and flying the national flag make their lives easier. It is for this reason that Wikipedians of various persuasions display Wikipedian user boxes: they want to blend in, be considered part of the in-crowd, and receive favourable treatment from those in power, rather than be seen as outsiders, because it's the outsiders on whose doors admins knock in the night.

The role of identity and the way people *affect* certain behaviours in order to succeed in Wikipedia is well discussed in John Wallis' insightful "Destructive Editing and Habitus in the Imaginative Construction of Wikipedia", available here:

http://www.academia.edu/2...

As some of the other commenters have indicated, practical experience editing Wikipedia, and navigating conflict in Wikipedia, is invaluable in contextualising data.

Regards,