[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

[Stirling Newberry]

>
> "The swarm does the bukl of the writing..." hints at a testable 
> hypothesis.
>
> My own research indicates the opposite, but let me be perfectly NPOV
> about my own research: it is completely amateurish and driven by my 
> need
> to make interesting public talks that get the world excited and 
> thinking
> about wikipedia. :-)  I can hardly be considered an unbiased scientific
> researcher.
>
> My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by 
> logged
> in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely
> interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
> old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
> trafficked articles, etc.
>
> A deeper understanding of all these issues can have some interesting
> implications for us in terms of understanding certain policy issues.
>
> --Jimbo
> ________________________

A key number to make available is not just the number of edits, but the 
size of the deltas. This would filter different editing styles - some 
people are multiple edits in a session, others are one edit and then 
perhaps a proof. This will also give an indication of who does the bulk 
of the writing and who does the bulk of the editting and who does the 
bulk of the proofing - which are separate catagories of contribution. 
All of which are important - turning raw material into a formatted 
article is a crucial part of the process - but they are different 
activities.