Back in mid-November, I did a survey of 100 randomly selected articles, and re-checked them towards the end of February: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100. I've now finished my second check of those articles. The seven deleted articles are still deleted, and the three redirects are still redirects.
Over the past three months, 868 edits were made to articles on the list, giving a mean of 9.33 edits per article. The lower edit rate could be explained by the time periods not being exactly three months: the first was about a week and a half longer, while this one was a week and a half shorter.
Many of the articles were unchanged since February: 23 articles had zero edits, with three of them having not been edited since before last November. 19 articles had ten or more edits, encompassing 80% of all edits. The ratio of trivial edits to major edits remains roughly the same, at around 99% trivial.
At the other extreme, six articles had 50 or more edits, with one article ([[Lawrenceville School]]) having over a hundred. Number of edits continues to not correlate with improvement, with only one of the most-edited articles showing significant improvment.
Overall coverage is mostly unchanged, with [[CBS Columbia Square]]'s improvement from "stub" to "good" being the only major improvement. A few other articles added a paragraph or two, but not enough to promote them to a higher level.
Two articles lost significant ground in terms of quality: [[Padstow, New South Wales]] added five paragraphs of information, but wikification was removed from much of the existing article in the process. [[Etham]] lost a paragraph.
Sourcing of articles has improved slightly: two articles gained sources, for a total of 17 out of 85 articles having sources. The total number of sources has increased significantly, with 54 sources cited. [[General Semantics]] has continued to acquire sources, with 27 being cited, up from 17 the last time I checked.
The image situation has continued on its previous trend: the ratio of free to non-free images remains roughly 2:1, with the addition of five free images and five non-free images, and the removal of four non-free images. 16 of the previous 17 dubious free-license images have been deleted.
On 5/20/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
Many of the articles were unchanged since February: 23 articles had zero edits, with three of them having not been edited since before last November. 19 articles had ten or more edits, encompassing 80% of all edits. The ratio of trivial edits to major edits remains roughly the same, at around 99% trivial.
Thanks for the update. I hadn't picked up on this before 99% trivial? What do we have to do to get people to "be bold'?
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/20/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
Many of the articles were unchanged since February: 23 articles had zero edits, with three of them having not been edited since before last November. 19 articles had ten or more edits, encompassing 80% of all edits. The ratio of trivial edits to major edits remains roughly the same, at around 99% trivial.
Thanks for the update. I hadn't picked up on this before 99% trivial? What do we have to do to get people to "be bold'?
Get rid of the culture of fear where an editor avoids being bold to avoid arguments.
Ec
On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Get rid of the culture of fear where an editor avoids being bold to avoid arguments.
Yes. The trouble is, edit wars have an effect far wider than just the article where they take place. Peopel hear about them, and expect to run into them everywhere. The fact is, in the various random topics I've edited, I've only ever hit two edit wars. Occasionally people revert changes, but usually in good faith - the changes were simply incorrect.
On the other hand, I very, very frequently break up unstructured articles into sections, wikify, or rearrange sections into some kind of order - the very basic sort of editing that anyone can do, but that people seem afraid to? It's actually really trivial to read an article paragraph by paragraph and add a ==section heading== before each one summarising what it's about, and it's so helpful. Once that's done you can actually begin to see the article as whole and see what's missing, rather than just seeing that there's lots of text, and maybe it has enough text?
Steve
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
On the other hand, I very, very frequently break up unstructured articles into sections, wikify, or rearrange sections into some kind of order - the very basic sort of editing that anyone can do, but that people seem afraid to? It's actually really trivial to read an article paragraph by paragraph and add a ==section heading== before each one summarising what it's about, and it's so helpful. Once that's done you can actually begin to see the article as whole and see what's missing, rather than just seeing that there's lots of text, and maybe it has enough text?
I do this all the time. Irritating to see an otherwise fine article that has most of the material in the lead section and the ToC is down at the end, showing "External links" and so on.
Pete, bold enough to do this
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Get rid of the culture of fear where an editor avoids being bold to avoid arguments.
Yes. The trouble is, edit wars have an effect far wider than just the article where they take place. Peopel hear about them, and expect to run into them everywhere. The fact is, in the various random topics I've edited, I've only ever hit two edit wars. Occasionally people revert changes, but usually in good faith - the changes were simply incorrect.
OK, sometimes it is a bit like judging the English by the behaviour of its soccer fans. It makes you shy about being near any of them.
On the other hand, I very, very frequently break up unstructured articles into sections, wikify, or rearrange sections into some kind of order - the very basic sort of editing that anyone can do, but that people seem afraid to? It's actually really trivial to read an article paragraph by paragraph and add a ==section heading== before each one summarising what it's about, and it's so helpful. Once that's done you can actually begin to see the article as whole and see what's missing, rather than just seeing that there's lots of text, and maybe it has enough text?
Some editors don't like to do work that's "really trivial"; it's inconsistent with their self-image. ;-)
I agree with the importance of what you say. It still involves building a culture that values the need to wash dishes once in a while. It's tough doing that when heretofore they took it for granted that mom would always do that.
Ec