"The swarm does the bukl of the writing..." hints at a testable
hypothesis.
My own research indicates the opposite, but let me be perfectly NPOV
about my own research: it is completely amateurish and driven by my
need
to make interesting public talks that get the world excited and
thinking
about wikipedia. :-) I can hardly be considered an unbiased scientific
researcher.
My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by
logged
in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users. It would be extremely
interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
trafficked articles, etc.
A deeper understanding of all these issues can have some interesting
implications for us in terms of understanding certain policy issues.
--Jimbo
________________________
A key number to make available is not just the number of edits, but the
size of the deltas. This would filter different editing styles - some
people are multiple edits in a session, others are one edit and then
perhaps a proof. This will also give an indication of who does the bulk
of the writing and who does the bulk of the editting and who does the
bulk of the proofing - which are separate catagories of contribution.
All of which are important - turning raw material into a formatted
article is a crucial part of the process - but they are different
activities.