On 6/21/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
These are reasonable questions. Jimbo implies that if P(t) is the number of protected articles at time t, and S(t) is the proportion of semi-protected articles, then: P(now) << P(a year ago) That is, that full protection on the whole has greatly decreased. But also that: P(now) + S(now) <= P(a year ago) That is, that the total amount of articles off-limits to newbies has not increased.
I think that the first is true, and if not we should seriously look at why not. I think that there is no reason for the second to be true.
First: Anyone notice the NYT correction?
Anyway, the more I consider the facts, the less convinced I am. The problem is in the interpretation of "anyone can edit". Does it mean "anyone who wants to edit, can", or does it mean "anyone at all can edit". Normally this wouldn't matter, but it's critical if we're attempting to measure "anyone-can-edit-ness" (ACEN).
By the first interpretation, we should take into account the fact that most edits are made by confirmed users (I think?) If there is a shift from total protection to semi-protection, then ACEN has gone up. The measure P(now) < P (then) is the critical one, but P(now) + S(now) <= P (then) should probably not totally be forgotten.
By the second interpretation, the vast hordes of potential visitors to the site massively overwhelm the small number who actually carry out the edits.Shifting towards semi-protection makes no difference at best (either way they're blocked), so the critical comparison is P(now) + S(now) <= P (then). The problem is that semi-protection lasts longer than full protection, as a rule, so that in general this comparison is far from true.
Semi-protection may indeed have been intended to improve openness and ACEN, but based on my quick perusal of the protected articles list, ACEN has gone down. Semi-protection is not the only cause of that (if a cause at all) - but I think we should be honest about where we stand now, compared to some arbitrary time in the past. I'm far from convinced that NYT "got it exactly backwards" - it's a fairly subtle question of interpretation of what ACE and "open" mean.
I also think that a serious analysis should not look at the raw number of articles (the site is a lot bigger than a year ago, so there should be a lot more of everything) but both percentages of articles, and also percentages of articles weighted by pageviews and/or edit frequency.
Pageview figures would indeed be nice, for all kinds of statistics. No one seems to have given a reason why pageview stats could not be turned on for a day, just to give us some data to play with.
Steve