[Foundation-l] Another look a bot creation of articles

[John Vandenberg]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 10:22 PM, Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 3:04 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> You may want to consider the scale of things ... when you are talking
>> chemicals, proteins a number like 240 million articles can be expected. With
>> such numbers you have to wonder to what extend Wikipedia can cope.
>> Thanks,
>>      GerardM
>>
>
> I couldn't agree more. My major complaint to mass creation of articles by
> bots is the simple problem of maintainability.
>
> Assuming the English Wikipedia has (more or less) a few thousand
> dedicated contributors (let's say 3500), that approximates to about
> 705 articles per person. Now, balloon that number up to 4 million articles,
> and you now have 1142 articles per person.
>
> Now granted, not every article is being updated and maintained on a daily
> (or even weekly or monthly) basis. However, those articles _still_ need a
> helpful eye kept on them. Vandalism and libel are still very much a part
> of the projects, and without someone to keep an eye on things, it
> degenerates rather quickly. Antivandalism bots can only help so much.
>
> Personally, I don't have the time in the day to sit there and revert vandalism
> on 240 million articles, nor do many others, I would gather.

More articles does not make the vandals more prolific, or more adept
and agile.  There will still be the same percentage of the little
buggers, and their methods will not alter much.

If anything, more accessible knowledge will mean there are less people
that become vandals.

--
John