You are absolutely right, thanks for pointing it out; the information presented is very misleading, and people will misinterpret it. However, I do not think it will sets back public understanding. It certainly does a very poor job of representing statistics, but people will misunderstand the specifics, no matter how they are presented.
Despite the mendacity, it remains interesting, simply because it raises the issue. Of course, a more accurate analysis of disputes and some concept of their proportions would be great. Yes, this one will be largely misunderstood, but it may provoke discussion of Wikipedia DRAMA problems, and from that comes suggestions, realisations, improvements and more input to the project.
'Lamest' is humerous, but it also serves a useful purpose, illustrating that such debates which - whilst I hesitate to call them 'trival' - consume an absurdly disproportionate amount of our most precious resource, editors with time. Some self-reflection by the community can help improve our productivity.
The basic message is clear: if we could channel just a tiny fraction of the (sometimes erudite, thoughtful, informed, etc) debates on Wikipedia into actual content improvement, then we would have lots more decent articles.
Message: 4 Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:37:10 -0400 From: William Beutler Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "Articles of War" -- Wikipedia infographic To: English Wikipedia Message-ID: AANLkTikntjnAbeQy_TRU6ZpHOBSo9krfOh-zUzBLfTef@mail.gmail.com
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Thanks, Phoebe. I finally finished my post on this, now here. http://thewikipedian.net/2010/08/12/wikipedia-infographic-lamest-edit-wars/ Although it's a little more rant-y than I usually get, I hope McCandless finds this, takes it well and goes back to the drawing board. Getting Gizmodo to post that if it happens... well, one can dream.
As I've alluded to, I am working on a visualization project involving Wikipedia, so if there is any list or on-wiki group to know about, someone please let me know!
And if there is not a more rigorous study or project about edit wars, I'd love to see that, too.
Cheers