Actually, you find that as certain types of articles rise to the level of being featured (or just improve in general), they usually end up having being rewritten almost in their entirety. Some of the information added earlier may still be there, but the wording will invariably have been changed. If there was a way to measure the 'content' of an article, not just the character strings, that would be a better measure.
Also, what you will find when looking for editors who have text strings that survive longest is that you will find those who are most assiduous about keeping track of the articles on their watchlist. That can be either ownership (bad) or stewardship of a well-done article (good).
The assumption "Presumably anything that still remains is of sufficient quality for whatever level the article is" has so much wrong with it that I don't know where to start. It is quite common for the final push for an article to be featured to involve different editors to those that brought it to the current state. And that often involves stepping back, taking a long hard look at the article and the sources, and then ripping up large quantities of the article and rewriting and rebalancing things.
Whether that is building on what went before, or not, I'm still not entirely sure.
Carcharoth
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 5:32 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
OTOH quantity has a quality all of its own. So far as I know, there's no good measure of how much text people have contributed that still remain in the article.
It would be a really good idea to measure how many unique strings of characters each editor has added to each article and in general. Presumably anything that still remains is of sufficient quality for whatever level the article is.
On 1 October 2011 16:52, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 5:46 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
I still think we could do with more rewards and maybe this damned game has given me an answer.
More editor stats.
I think what is needed is some way to measure quality objectively. It may be that only quantity can be measured objectively, and that quality can only be measured subjectively. But I'd support something that moved the focus away from quantity towards quality.
Carcharoth
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