On 2/28/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/27/07, Sage Ross sage.ross@yale.edu wrote:
If someone comes up with the equation for that based on the paper's data, then we could do some measurements on the mechanisms by which edits beget edit. The important question is, do edits really beget edits, or is the correlation between number of new edits and number of total edits simply an artifact of Wikipedia's overall exponential growth coupled with the relationship between article age and article popularity (i.e., more important articles are created earlier).
I know that an edit to something on my watchlist draws my attention and, in the course of checking the edit, I may see other things that need fixing. This is a wholly unscientific observation, of course.
I agree that the Watchlist is likely the main vector through which edits become known to others and acted upon. Also don't discount the nudges people leave on Talk pages of others to explicitly notify others of a Wikiproject or set of edits.
I do take some issue with the analysis of the paper. Rather than say oligarchy becomes democracy, I think it's more accurate to say small democracy scaled up to become big democracy, and the power curve followed. There was never a "rule by a few" in the strict sense of an oligarchy. Even right from the start when Wikipedia got Slashdotted in 2001, it was welcoming newcomers to take up whatever role they identified themselves for.
This also shows the complete inadequacy of using "system of government" metaphors for trying to describe the dynamics of a peer-production environment. It's as useful as using kilograms to measure brightness.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)