On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com wrote:
While the time and effort that went into Robert Rohde's analysis is certainly extensive, the outcomes are based on so many flawed assumptions about the nature of vandalism and vandalism reversion, publicize at one's peril the key "finding" of a 0.4% vandalism rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_McCain&diff=169808394&... 11 hours Reverted with no tags.
The best part about that little exchange is: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_McCain&diff=next&oldi...
wherein a revert was made returning the vandalism, followed by another when the editor noticed his error.
I don't think Robert made any firm conclusions on the meaning of his data; he notes all the caveats that others have since emphasized, and admits to likely underestimating vandalism. I read the 0.4% as representing the approximate number of articles containing vandalism in an English Wikipedia snapshot; that is quite different than the amount of time specific articles stay in a "vandalized" state. Given the difficulty of accurately analyzing this sort of data, no firm conclusions can be drawn; but certainly its more informative than a Wikipedia Review analysis of a relatively small group of articles in a specific topic area.
Nathan