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