From the Phoenix article linked elsewhere:
"Swartz, however, launched a study of his own, which found a marked difference between edit-intensive users, who contribute small fixes to existing entries, and those who actually wrote the bulk of articles. "Almost every time I saw a substantive edit," he writes, "I found the user who had contributed it was not an active user of the site. They generally had made less than 50 edits (typically around 10), usually on related pages. Most never even bothered to create an account."
In other words: it's generally the core crew of several thousand dedicated Wikipedians who combine to keep the site refined and readable, correcting mistakes and counteracting vandalism. But it's usually regular folks with special expertise (the self-proclaimed Dylanologist, the amateur horticulturalist, the military buff), writing one or two or five articles apiece, who've contributed the bulk of the content. Both groups are equally important to Wikipedia's success."
http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=52864&page=2
I haven't asked GlassCobra exactly how scientific his 'study' is, but it matches my own intuition. This is precisely why I believe that our notions of the 'community' are quite incorrect in orientation, and the regular contempt and suspicion showered on IPs apparently getting uppity and on new/returning accounts is the worst possible thing for the project. I suspect that there are more people actually creating the useful content on WP than those with long-term, high-count established accounts warring on policy pages and project-space appear to imagine there are.
RR
On 17/12/2007, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
I haven't asked GlassCobra exactly how scientific his 'study' is, but it matches my own intuition. This is precisely why I believe that our notions of the 'community' are quite incorrect in orientation, and the regular contempt and suspicion showered on IPs apparently getting uppity and on new/returning accounts is the worst possible thing for the project. I suspect that there are more people actually creating the useful content on WP than those with long-term, high-count established accounts warring on policy pages and project-space appear to imagine there are.
Oh yeah. Biting the n00bs is a REALLY BAD THING. The question is how to deal with problem cases (up to and including persistent and dangerous nutters) without getting into a bitey attitude.
- d.
On Dec 17, 2007 1:57 AM, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
From the Phoenix article linked elsewhere:
<snip> "Almost every time I saw a substantive edit," he writes, "I found the user who had contributed it was not an active user of the site. They generally had made less than 50 edits (typically around 10), usually on related pages. Most never even bothered to create an account."
Without knowing the methodology, it's really hard to evaluate a statement like this. I agree with the statement - if anyone adds more than a paragraph in a single edit, it's usually an IP or new editor. And more often than not, it's a long essay unsuitable for Wikipedia, or a chunk of text cut out of some other online source and pasted into an article. Once you discount the copyvios and text dumps, is this still the case?
In addition, of course, there's the whole issue of "collaborative editing". Ideally, you make a change. Someone else adds to it. And so it proceeds. Writing a substantive article from scratch takes several hundred edits, and most of them are going to be small. Taking a newbie's text dump and incorporating it into the article also involves a lot of small edits.
That said, of course, IPs get zero respect - in my experience, if you edit without logging in you get all sorts of rude comments and threats, you get reverted without comment...I think the community's attitude to new editors is horrible (and is probably hurting the project). And there are far too many people who seem to have forgotten why we're here. But at least in the articles I edit, the idea that useful new content is mostly added by anons and new editors doesn't appear to hold.
On Dec 17, 2007 1:57 AM, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
From the Phoenix article linked elsewhere:
"Swartz, however, launched a study of his own, which found a marked difference between edit-intensive users, who contribute small fixes to existing entries, and those who actually wrote the bulk of articles. "Almost every time I saw a substantive edit," he writes, "I found the user who had contributed it was not an active user of the site. They generally had made less than 50 edits (typically around 10), usually on related pages. Most never even bothered to create an account."
In other words: it's generally the core crew of several thousand dedicated Wikipedians who combine to keep the site refined and readable, correcting mistakes and counteracting vandalism. But it's usually regular folks with special expertise (the self-proclaimed Dylanologist, the amateur horticulturalist, the military buff), writing one or two or five articles apiece, who've contributed the bulk of the content. Both groups are equally important to Wikipedia's success."
http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=52864&page=2
I haven't asked GlassCobra exactly how scientific his 'study' is, but it matches my own intuition. This is precisely why I believe that our notions of the 'community' are quite incorrect in orientation, and the regular contempt and suspicion showered on IPs apparently getting uppity and on new/returning accounts is the worst possible thing for the project. I suspect that there are more people actually creating the useful content on WP than those with long-term, high-count established accounts warring on policy pages and project-space appear to imagine there are.
RR
Wanted to clarify, really quick, Swartz is not me. Not sure exactly how that link was made. Swartz = blogger, unaffiliated with WP (as far as I know), GlassCobra = me, WP admin. Thanks.
On 24/12/2007, Alex Sawczynec glasscobra15@gmail.com wrote:
Wanted to clarify, really quick, Swartz is not me. Not sure exactly how that link was made. Swartz = blogger, unaffiliated with WP (as far as I know), GlassCobra = me, WP admin. Thanks.
Aaron Swartz is a Wikipedian and actually ran for the Foundation board last year. [[User:AaronSw]], blog at http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ .
- d.