[WikiEN-l] New York Times article

[Ilmari Karonen]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> 
> Anon make a lot of typo corrections, but are rarely bold enough to fix
> major problems in articles.

I've been noticing that this seems to vary based on subject matter. 
There are articles where no anon has ever made a useful contribution 
other than typo fixing, but there are also others where we get useful 
and well researched additions just popping out of the blue.

I believe what I'm seeing here is a variation in the pool of off-wiki 
subject enthusiasts who are aware of the article but don't otherwise 
contribute to Wikipedia.  For some subjects, these people tend to be 
more clueful than for others; also, for some subjects the culture of 
this group makes the useful contributors more likely to register than 
for others.  When these two groups intersect, such that there are many 
clueful unregistered people tracking a specific article, that's when you 
get these high-quality anon edits.

Off the top of my head, [[Siamese Fighting Fish]] seems to be a good 
example of an article with many good IP edits and little vandalism. 
Presumably there are many others, but they're not the ones one usually 
encounters while carrying out admin duties.

-- 
Ilmari Karonen