Given what we that active editors have
been declining since about 2006, I have to wonder if a 2015 study would produce
very different results from the earlier period.
From an entirely anecdotal perspective, I
do observe that there is a lot of “housekeeping” edits that go on.
I create a lot of new articles and would characterise my own editing as writing
a lot of new content in new and existing articles; this is my primary interest.
However, I am both amused and annoyed at the way that within moments of my
edit, there can be a rash of people wanting to add project tags, add esoteric
categories that I cannot imagine being used for navigation by real readers, replace
a dash of one length with a dash of another length, remove the word “comprised”
(one of the most annoying!), and so on. Many of these folks have massive edit
counts and appear (from a quick look at the last screen of recent contributions)
to devote themselves entirely to this kind of editing. Indeed, I go so far as
to say many suffer from editcountitis, a condition that often can be diagnosed
by the User page being largely devoted to reporting on their number of edits J
IMHO, I would have to say that the
value-add of these housekeeping edits is mixed. Some are genuinely useful
(people pick up mistakes I’ve made) or add categories I am unaware of
that are relevant to the topic. Some are useful if you happen to believe the
reader experience is genuinely improved by rigid adherence the Manual of Style
(I would be interested in a study on how important the consistency of the use
of various-length dashes and other MoS detail is to the reader experience). Some
like project tagging appear to be utterly pointless as most of the projects
involved are moribund. Other than meeting some deep need to “mark your
territory” like a dog (or get your edit count up), what earthly point is
there to project tagging unless the project has some active processes to
improve articles? Some are just annoying (like the user who dislikes the word “comprised”)
and many of these people create edit conflicts for me as I add further content
which is ****ing annoying. Edit conflicts is a particular problem trying to do
your second/third edit to a new article, as new articles attract housekeeping
edits like vultures to a carcass. The folks I particularly despise are the ones
who try to add multiple quality tags or speedy delete a new stub after its
first edit (which is sometimes cut short because I am interrupted –
folks, give me 5 minutes please to come back and do a little more work on it).
I teach Wikipedia editing (indeed I am off
to a local university to do it this morning) and I see first hand how this kind
of housekeeping behaviour is really disruptive to new contributors (even the
more useful and well-intended housekeeping) because of the edit conflicts it
creates. New contributors spend a long time writing and previewing before SAVE,
which is probably a desirable behaviour if it wasn’t for the
housekeepers. Whereas anyone who studied my patterns of edits would see me
saving very frequently, because of this issue with edit conflicts from the housekeepers.
I try to teach people to SAVE, SAVE, SAVE as often as possible. Having seen the
impact of edit conflicts in edit training sessions where I am there to explain
what’s happening, I suspect that housekeeping edits are probably
frightening off or frustrating away new contributors who don’t have
someone leaning over their shoulder to advise them on dealing with edit
conflicts. Because it is quick and easy to do a housekeeping edit and slow to
write good content with citations, the housekeepers can easily drive away a
content contributor.
Kerry