De: Piotr Konieczny <piokon(a)post.pl>
Para: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
<wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
CC:
Enviado: Lunes 29 de octubre de 2012 6:41
Asunto: Re: [Wiki-research-l] War of 1812 and all that
I believe we have a number of studies which have shown that majority of
content was written by the small minority of most active editors. This
does not invalidate the comment about automated editing; bottom line -
most of anything on Wikipedia, i.e. both content and non-content support
infrastructure, was and is being done by a small group of very dedicated
people.
Well, actually there are many different cases. For example, there is a very good article
on the good
quality contributions from "casual" editors that is frequently overlooked:
Anthony, Denise L., Sean W. Smith, Timothy Williamson. 2009.
"Reputation and Reliability in Collective Goods: The case of the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia."
Rationality and Society 21(3): 283-306.
The previous version of this paper was published back in 2005. Then, it came a series of
publications remarking the large fraction of work (usually measured in number of edits
over total number of contributions per week or month) carried out by very active editors.
Thus, using the same terminology as in the paper above, it is true that a lot of work
comes from "zealots", but we should not forget "good samaritans".
Specially now that Wikipedia is even more popular, making it more difficult to fight
vandalism (as we can see from the last reports on the growing number of reverts).
Best,
Felipe.
--
Piotr Konieczny
"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on
one's laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski
On 10/28/2012 5:57 PM, Kerry Raymond wrote:
My comments on the top editors came from what I
read here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edi…
Editors who use automated tools to do various little fixes can generate
large
edit counts. Of course it does not follow that all large-edit-count
editors are doing this.
Sent from my iPad
On 29/10/2012, at 8:47 AM, "Yaroslav M. Blanter"
<putevod(a)mccme.ru> wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:13:48 +1100, Kerry Raymond wrote:
>
>> As far as I can see most of the top 10000 editors appear to be
making
>> a lot of of their contributions in terms
of administration and
>> quality
>> control (eg fighting vandalism) rather than in content. I think the
>> "long tail" of (good faith) editors are mostly
contributing
content
>> on
>> a range of topics that I believe will continue to grow. I believe
>> that
>> once a WYSIWYG editor for WP becomes available we will see a growth
>> in
>> the long tail of editors and the topics they write on because I
think
>> wiki markup is a barrier for many people
currently
under-represented
>> in the demographics of WP editors.
> I actually have quite the opposite impression. I think most of the top
> contributors are actually creating content. I myself am somewhere in
the
> top 3000, and 90% of my edits are in the
article space. I would be
> interested to see a study on this if it exists.
>
>> I agree WP has moved into a new phase different from its earliest
>> years and probably its policies and processes might need to change
to
>> reflect that. For example, it's fine
to "be bold"
with a stub, but
>> woe
>> betide the newbie editor that decides to be bold with a
>> well-developed
>> article whose current words may have been carefully crafted to
>> capture
>> the right nuances to keep all the warring factions happy.
Personally
>> I
>> believe mature articles need more of a curated approach to
>> incorporate
>> new material contributed by anyone but where the edits are done by
>> more experienced editors of that topic. Not that they should be
>> "gatekeepers" but that the material be added in the right
place and
>> in
>> a way that reflects prior agreements in relation to reflecting
>> differing viewpoints. I think the WP policy on mature articles
should
be "be careful not to break what's already
there".
With this I agree.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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