[WikiEN-l] Rethinking Community

[Alex Sawczynec]

On Dec 17, 2007 1:57 AM, Relata Refero <refero.relata at gmail.com> wrote:

> From the Phoenix article linked elsewhere:
>
> "Swartz, however, launched a study of his own, which found a marked
> difference between edit-intensive users, who contribute small fixes to
> existing entries, and those who actually wrote the bulk of articles.
> "Almost every time I saw a substantive edit," he writes, "I found the
> user who had contributed it was not an active user of the site. They
> generally had made less than 50 edits (typically around 10), usually
> on related pages. Most never even bothered to create an account."
>
> In other words: it's generally the core crew of several thousand
> dedicated Wikipedians who combine to keep the site refined and
> readable, correcting mistakes and counteracting vandalism. But it's
> usually regular folks with special expertise (the self-proclaimed
> Dylanologist, the amateur horticulturalist, the military buff),
> writing one or two or five articles apiece, who've contributed the
> bulk of the content. Both groups are equally important to Wikipedia's
> success."
>
> http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=52864&page=2
>
> I haven't asked GlassCobra exactly how scientific his 'study' is, but
> it matches my own intuition. This is precisely why I believe that our
> notions of the 'community' are quite incorrect in orientation, and the
> regular contempt and suspicion showered on IPs apparently getting
> uppity and on new/returning accounts is the worst possible thing for
> the project. I suspect that there are more people actually creating
> the useful content on WP than those with long-term, high-count
> established accounts warring on policy pages and project-space appear
> to imagine there are.
>
> RR
>
>

Wanted to clarify, really quick, Swartz is not me. Not sure exactly how that
link was made. Swartz = blogger, unaffiliated with WP (as far as I know),
GlassCobra = me, WP admin. Thanks.