--- El vie, 14/11/08, Desilets, Alain Alain.Desilets@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca escribió:
De: Desilets, Alain Alain.Desilets@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca Asunto: RE: [Wiki-research-l] "Regular contributor" Para: glimmer_phoenix@yahoo.es, "Research into Wikimedia content and communities" wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: viernes, 14 noviembre, 2008 2:32 Regarding this, I have had heard different stories about contributors.
I seem to recall one study that concluded that, while 85% of the **edits** are done by a small core of contributors, if you take a random page and select a sentence from it, this sentence is more likely to be the result of edits by contributors from the "long tail" than core contributors. I forget the reference for that study though.
Does someone on this list have solid information about this? I think it's a fairly crucial piece of information that we should have a clear handle on as a research community.
Hi, Alain. Yes, the study is by Aaron Schwartz. It was a base premise in our last paper at HICSS 08, comparing his statement to the theory of Jimmy Wales about the core of very active users.
Actually, both are right (more or less :) ). If you look at it from the "per_user" perspective, the core can be identified very precisely.
But your question is focused on "per_article" statistics. It's logical to expect so, since the distribution of distinct authors per article follows a stepped power-law, and you have a lot of articles in the larger editions. If you pick an article at random, chances are that you will, most probably, pick one with few editors.
Best,
Felipe.
Alain
-----Original Message----- From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wiki-
research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Felipe Ortega
Sent: November 13, 2008 5:33 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] "Regular
contributor"
You have a very similar effect in larger Wikipedias.
In those ones,
there is no very active, "single bus"-like
contributor, but a core of
very active users concentrating about 85% of the total
number of edits
per month.
It seems that in these languages, though, there is a
generational relay
in which new active users jump into the core to
substitute those who
eventually give up, for any reason. So, the
concentration becomes
stable after a couple of years (aprox.) and the
encyclopedia is able to
continue growing.
Best.
F.
--- El jue, 23/10/08, Gerard Meijssen
escribió:
De: Gerard Meijssen
Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] "Regular
contributor"
Para: "Research into Wikimedia content and
communities"
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: jueves, 23 octubre, 2008 10:27 Hoi, I missed that this was the research mailing
list.. my fault.
Consequently my answer was not appropriate. With
this in mind, it is
interesting to learn how the spread is in
particularly the smaller
projects. In my opinion there must be a certain
amount of productive
people in order to get to a community that does
not have one person
who is the "bus factor".
Having someone who drives the bus is really
important. I wonder how
you can point this person out. I think that
someone who is just
editing is important but it is not all that
builds a community.
Thanks, GerardM
On the Volapuk wikipedia Smeira was really
important. When he left, I
understand that activity collapsed.
2008/10/22 phoebe ayers
2008/10/21 Gerard Meijssen
Hoi, When you divide people up in groups,
when you
single out the ones "most
valuable", you in effect divide the
community. Whatever you base your
metrics on, there will be sound
arguments to deny
the point of view. When it
is about the number of edits, it is
clear to the
pure encyclopedistas that
most of the policy wonks have not
supported what
is the "real" aim of the
project.
When you label groups of people, you
divide them
and it is exactly the
egalitarian aspect that makes the
community
thrive.
But this isn't about labeling people for
the rest
of time and saying that
this is how they are defined *on Wikipedia*
--
it's about saying how do you
study people who regularly contribute to
Wikipedia,
and as a part of that
how do you define the group that you are
studying,
which is an important
question for any research study.
Given that it's impossible to study
every
contributor to the project in
every study, and since many researchers are
interested
in why people who
spend a lot of time or effort working on
Wikipedia do
so (and what exactly
it is they do), this is a very relevant
question for
this list.
--phoebe
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