This should be required reading - it completely upends fundamental assumptions about our content, and has huge implications for things like deletion. The sense that our inclusion and notability policies put us at odds with readers who are not major parts of the community has always been there, but this troublingly nails it: the population of people who write articles and people who delete them are nearly exclusive.
That's a huge issue.
-Phil
On Jan 3, 2009, at 10:53 AM, Steve Summit wrote:
A recent recycling of Aaron Swartz's analysis of the difference between who-makes-the-most-edits, versus who-contributes-the-most- content:
<http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/who-the-hell-writes-wikipedia-anyway
I think we all know the real story, but it's fascinating how much traction the "bulk of Wikipedia is written by 1400 obsessed freaks" meme still gets (including, for example, the referenced blog post http://www.collegeotr.com/college_otr/734_percent_of_all_ wikipedia_edits_are_made_by_roughly_1400_people_17499 from last week).
Yet another reason to Shun Any Reliance On Raw Edit Counts. (But boy, is it easy to depend on them, since they're so easy to get your hands on. And did Jimbo really once assert that "Wikipedia was actually written by 'a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers' where 'I know all of them and they all know each other'"?)
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