On 12/13/05, John Lee johnleemk@gawab.com wrote:
Andrea Forte wrote:
Has it ever been suggested before that a simple indicator of "how many people are watching this article" could be a useful tool for:
users who want to figure out what to trust wikipedians who want to know where to spend their efforts discouraging vandalism
Has this been tried? Suggested? Debated?
Just curious,
Andrea
It's not exactly new, but I've never figured out why it hasn't been explored further.
One of the drawbacks is that vandals would be able to target articles that have zero users watching them. It's been suggested that instead of exact counts, ranges would be used for lesser watched articles ("Less than 10 users watching"). Perhaps admins could have access to exact counts so that they could identify if an article wasn't being watched. Overall, it's a very good idea that just needs to have the details nailed down.
Carbonite