Platonides wrote:
Desilets, Alain wrote:
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.
Alain
It was a research by Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
I led a study last year that found that the long tail was even longer than it usually is (i.e., the "elite" contributors contribute even more than they would be expected to).
Specifically, the 0.1% of editors who edited the most times contributed about half the "value" of Wikipedia, when value is measured by words times views.
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~reid/papers/group282-priedhorsky.pdf
End of shameless plug. ;)
Reid