Hello, Aaron Swartz is right in so far that the "Jimmy Wales method" of looking at the number of edits of users is not enough. I would like to know whether Swartz counts really letters (for an encyclopaedic text), as he says, or bytes. According to him, most of the Wikipedia texts are written by IP users, and the "500 heroes", the steady editors, are only the editors who make the texts look more beautiful and fit into a concept. He says that most contributors (IP users) do not even see the need to register, and they only make a limited number of edits. They, meaning ten thousands of mostly unregistered users, write the Wikipedia, not the 500 or 1400 or 1000-2000 community members Wales mentions in public. I believe that the weak point of Swartz' research is that we cannot really identify the users who contribute. I just looked at [[de:Georg Michaelis]]: The core of the text was entered in 2004 by an IP user who actually did less than 30 edits. But - it is possible that this IP user later contributed under a different IP, or that he later registered, or even has several accounts. The next essential contribution to that article were some works of or about Michaelis, and the third was made by a registered user. This confirms our thesis that most of the articles are essentially written by a small number of users. The question is in how far we can call them a "community", also seen the volatile character of many users who are part of the community maybe only for a couple of years. Ziko 2009/1/8 David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde