I've been looking over a lot of history articles and the tupical pattern in terms of edits is a bell-shaped curve with the peak around 2007.
For a good example see Shakespeare http://toolserver.org/~tparis/articleinfo/index.php?article=William_Shakespe... look at the bar chart under "year counts..
By Nov 2007 the surge of editing virtually ended. The article was then 83kb in length...it had a small burst of growth in late 2009 reaching 100k in June 2009; it is now 106k long. Basically the article was mostly finished in 2007, and has had little change in the last 3 years. With a couple minor exceptions the youngest source cited in the footnotes is 2006. The newest item in the bibliography is one book from 2007, I saw n=1 article in a scholarly journal (from 1969). Maybe it's ok for a college freshman but an English major so unaware of the recent scholarship would not get a good grade.
The look at the contributors http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wik...
of the 9 editors with over 100 edits, only two have been active on this article in 2012
Shakespeare received 648,000 views in April 2012, compared to 585,000 in April 2010 and 575,000 in April 2008. As for the often heard fear that anyone can edit it, note that 1100 editors are watching over that article and are alerted to any changes. However none of them has added anything from the ton of scholarship that has appeared since 2006. ~~~~
2012/5/3 Richard Jensen rjensen@uic.edu:
Shakespeare received 648,000 views in April 2012, compared to 585,000 in April 2010 and 575,000 in April 2008. As for the often heard fear that anyone can edit it, note that 1100 editors are watching over that article and are alerted to any changes. However none of them has added anything from the ton of scholarship that has appeared since 2006. ~~~~
First, I'm simply surprised that there aren't more people who publish articles about Shakespeare (or any other topic) and run to add its summary to the relevant article. It's supposed to be good for them, because it gives them and their research (and their opinions!) more exposure, and it's supposed to be fine for Wikipedia, because they add information which can be referenced in a peer-reviewed journal.
Second, maybe it's not that bad that not everything ends up on Wikipedia. If they publish it in freely-accessible journals, it's perfectly well-aligned with Wikimedia's goals - people should have access to information and it doesn't have to happen through wikipedia.org.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
De: Richard Jensen rjensen@uic.edu Para: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org CC: Enviado: Jueves 3 de Mayo de 2012 10:24 Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] long in tooth: what outdated looks like
I've been looking over a lot of history articles and the tupical pattern in terms of edits is a bell-shaped curve with the peak around 2007.
For a good example see Shakespeare http://toolserver.org/~tparis/articleinfo/index.php?article=William_Shakespe... look at the bar chart under "year counts..
By Nov 2007 the surge of editing virtually ended. The article was then 83kb in length...it had a small burst of growth in late 2009 reaching 100k in June 2009; it is now 106k long. Basically the article was mostly finished in 2007, and has had little change in the last 3 years. With a couple minor exceptions the youngest source cited in the footnotes is 2006. The newest item in the bibliography is one book from 2007, I saw n=1 article in a scholarly journal (from 1969). Maybe it's ok for a college freshman but an English major so unaware of the recent scholarship would not get a good grade.
Hi Richard.
I think the example is quite interesting. There is a surprising pike of 1,250 edits in June 2007, and about 3,000 edits were added between May and October 2007.
This made me think that there could be some possible causes behind this peculiar pattern. Indeed, I have found some organizational factors that we must consider to understand this case:
1. The effect of Wikiproject Shakespeare: It looks like it was founded in April 2007 [1] [2].
"After we got ourselves organized, our first big project was bringing William Shakespeare to FA status" (from interview published on Signpost).
Thus, this is a good explanation for the febrile editing activity in subsequent months.
2. Apparently, it got FA status in August 2007 [3], and it showed up on the main page in October 2007 [4]. This can also explain the activity drop since then.
3. Yet another question is whether the fact that the article is currently semi-protected (and it is probably quite prone to vandalism, according to the high number of watchers) has some discouraging effect for new contributors.
Please, note that there are still new editors joining WikiProject Shakespeare in 2012.
Best, Felipe.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Shakespeare/Archive_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Shakespeare [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/William_S... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:William_Shakespeare
The look at the contributors http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wik...
of the 9 editors with over 100 edits, only two have been active on this article in 2012
Shakespeare received 648,000 views in April 2012, compared to 585,000 in April 2010 and 575,000 in April 2008. As for the often heard fear that anyone can edit it, note that 1100 editors are watching over that article and are alerted to any changes. However none of them has added anything from the ton of scholarship that has appeared since 2006. ~~~~
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