... Wikimedia is all about adding people, but doesn't seem to care about the quality of the content....
There is no need for the Foundation to try to improve content quality. I keep careful tabs on quality studies and perform independent tests of Wikipedia quality regularly. By every measure, quality continues to improve, both organically from transient editors and structurally.
Transient editors, whether registered or IP address users, have always been the largest source of the bulk of Wikipedia content, contrary to frequent claims that a core group writes most content. Certainly long term Wikipedians have large edit counts, but they represent a very small minority by total number of bytes added to articles. The evidence is detailed at http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia which is more true now than ever as transient editors are displacing long term frequent contributors on the largest wikipedias in article space.
Structural quality improvements which have impressed me recently include the establishment of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Short_popular_vital_articles which in the 10 days that it has existed, more than 270 of its listed articles have been improved, each of which have gained an average of more than 150 bytes. At that rate, most of the level 4 vital articles will have more than 9,000 bytes of content in less than a year, as opposed to the prior rate of improvement which was closer to six years to meet the same goal.
Another very impressive structural improvement involves User:Dispenser's enhancements to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog where most of the article backlog count numbers are now clickable, such that they will show a list of the backlog category's articles sorted by importance, measured by the number of incoming links. For example, http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/categorder.py?page=Category:All_unr... As the number of incoming backlinks strongly correlates with the number of page views, this represents a quantum improvement for dealing with quality issue backlogs.
There is no reason to believe that such organics and structural quality improvements will not continue.
-Will
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Will Takatoshi willtakatoshi@gmail.com wrote:
... Wikimedia is all about adding people, but doesn't seem to care about the quality of the content....
There is no need for the Foundation to try to improve content quality. I keep careful tabs on quality studies and perform independent tests of Wikipedia quality regularly. By every measure, quality continues to improve, both organically from transient editors and structurally.
Will, the concerns about the WMF's new editor targets is not driven by concerns that English Wikipedia quality is decreasing.
English Wikipedia quality is increasing, and is less accepting of poor quality contributions and contributors. Adding lots of new editors with low quality contributions is a concern.
If the WMF wants more new editors in order to meet strategic goals that they set for themselves, they should be adding them to projects other than the large Wikipedia. Yet the WMF appears to be focused on recruiting editors to English Wikipedia.
Transient editors, whether registered or IP address users, have always been the largest source of the bulk of Wikipedia content, contrary to frequent claims that a core group writes most content. Certainly long term Wikipedians have large edit counts, but they represent a very small minority by total number of bytes added to articles. The evidence is detailed at http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia which is more true now than ever as transient editors are displacing long term frequent contributors on the largest wikipedias in article space.
Structural quality improvements which have impressed me recently include the establishment of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Short_popular_vital_articles which in the 10 days that it has existed, more than 270 of its listed articles have been improved, each of which have gained an average of more than 150 bytes. At that rate, most of the level 4 vital articles will have more than 9,000 bytes of content in less than a year, as opposed to the prior rate of improvement which was closer to six years to meet the same goal.
And the creator of Wikipedia:Short_popular_vital_articles has retired after 16 days..due to harassment/accusations of sock puppetry/etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Npmay&diff=48250323...
-- John Vandenberg
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
And the creator of Wikipedia:Short_popular_vital_articles has retired after 16 days..due to harassment/accusations of sock puppetry/etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Npmay&diff=48250323...
-- John Vandenberg
I was curious and looked into this... and for what it's worth, this isn't really an accurate statement. I'm sure with your history as an arbitrator you've been asked to use the term "harassment" less lightly, and that would probably be a good idea. It doesn't seem like this particular editor was subject to even minimally untoward comments or actions, let alone harassment.
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
And the creator of Wikipedia:Short_popular_vital_articles has retired after 16 days..due to harassment/accusations of sock puppetry/etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Npmay&diff=48250323...
-- John Vandenberg
I was curious and looked into this... and for what it's worth, this isn't really an accurate statement. I'm sure with your history as an arbitrator you've been asked to use the term "harassment" less lightly, and that would probably be a good idea. It doesn't seem like this particular editor was subject to even minimally untoward comments or actions, let alone harassment.
Sorry, I should have said "and the reasons given are" instead of "due to". I haven't investigated it; I'm just the messenger.
"I regret that I have to abandon this account because of harassment and wikistalking. I will stay around long enough to resolve the dispute I'm involved in, but no longer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Npmay
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