[WikiEN-l] An interesting study on bad edits and their impact

[Anthony]

On 10/4/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/4/07, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Wouldn't the impact of a deletion be measured by the number of times
> > "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name." is viewed?
>
> The negative impact, perhaps... but even that incompletely: Web
> searches don't normally take people to non-existent pages.
>
It only measures the impact according to the definition given by the
researchers.  That definition is what is incomplete.  To be complete
it'd have to measure how many people would have viewed the page would
the edit not have been made.  In the case of deletion which lasts a
long time that's significant, but it's there in every edit, especially
ones that remove information.

> There is also a positive impact from some deletion, but thats harder to measure.
>
I think the impact has to be measured separately from whether or not
the edit was positive.

If "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name" is better
than the previous text, then it's a positive deletion, and anyone who
viewed that page would be impacted by it.  The impact is the same
whether the deletion was positive or negative.  Whether a deletion is
positive or negative is usually subjective, but then again so is
whether or not most edits are positive or negative.