[WikiEN-l] Study finds that Wikipedia has evolved from an oligarchy to a democarcy

[Rich Holton]

T P wrote:
> On 2/27/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:
>> If someone comes up with the equation for that based on the paper's
>> data, then we could do some measurements on the mechanisms by which
>> edits beget edit.  The important question is, do edits really beget
>> edits, or is the correlation between number of new edits and number of
>> total edits simply an artifact of Wikipedia's overall exponential
>> growth coupled with the relationship between article age and article
>> popularity (i.e., more important articles are created earlier).
> 
> 
> I know that an edit to something on my watchlist draws my attention and, in
> the course of checking the edit, I may see other things that need fixing.
> This is a wholly unscientific observation, of course.
> 

Additional anecdotal evidence: Sometimes I hit the random button and 
find a page that has not been edited for many months. I may make a 
simple change, perhaps do a bit of wikifying or fix a spelling mistake, 
and put the page on my watchlist. Often times such a page will attract 
other changes from other editors. I assume that these others were 
watching recent changes, or had the page on their watchlist and their 
attention was drawn by my edit (as Adam recounts, above).

-Rich