On Tue, 01 May 2012 18:27:07 -0600, Richard Jensen wrote:
I am looking at the edit history of a number of major
articles on
historical topics (in the English Wikipedia)
I find that most of the important writing was done in 2006-8.
Typically, the article reached maturity about 2008 and since then the
rate of editing has plunged. In most cases I see only minor or
maintenance editing since then. The new material since 2008 is
mostly
cosmetic: illustrations still get added, lots of links are made, new
categories added, new lists are appended, vandalism is removed. The
citations are increasingly out of date. The articles are long in
tooth.
Wiki is now resembling the old paper encyclopedias--they would get
old fast and need constant updating either through yearbooks or new
editions.
Richard Jensen
Well, obviously there are several classes of articles:
- Those of primary importance were indeed completed before 2008. They
are sometimes referred to in discussions as "low-hanging fruit" and the
fact that they are more or less look complete (or , to reformulate it,
an improvement is possible but sometimes is associated with advanced
knowledge a typical editor does not have) is used as the most obvious
explanation of the flattening of the number of active editors;
- Those which require constant attention (BLP, sports BLP in the first
instance, as Laura correctly noticed, events, prizes etc); in
particular, those which need to be created on the regular basis (like
new events or new BLPs). Sometimes they are taken care of properly, but
more often they get neglected and indeed remain at the 2008 or whatever
level;
- Articles on less notable subjects (but still pretty much notable on
encyclopedic standards): BLP articles of persons who did not make it to
the school textbooks, geographic objects, events not exactly known for
everybody etc. Most of these are in a pitiful state (for instance, many
of the geographical aricles were bot created and remain stubs for years;
as another example I recently discovered that an article on en.wp on
Bernat Martorell, by far the most famous Catalan medieval painter, was
one line, and I started to improve it). Most of the work is actually in
this class of articles; I personally only work on these and see
whatsoever no problems finding missing articles or stubs requiring
improvement, but most of this work can not be done with only the primary
school knowledge.
- Articles prone to POV and edit warring. They typically remain in a
pitiful state, and there is nothing which can be done about it.
Cheers
Yaroslav