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

[Andrew Lih]

On 2/28/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> 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.

I agree that the Watchlist is likely the main vector through which
edits become known to others and acted upon. Also don't discount the
nudges people leave on Talk pages of others to explicitly notify
others of a Wikiproject or set of edits.

I do take some issue with the analysis of the paper. Rather than say
oligarchy becomes democracy, I think it's more accurate to say small
democracy scaled up to become big democracy, and the power curve
followed. There was never a "rule by a few" in the strict sense of an
oligarchy. Even right from the start when Wikipedia got Slashdotted in
2001, it was welcoming newcomers to take up whatever role they
identified themselves for.

This also shows the complete inadequacy of using "system of
government" metaphors for trying to describe the dynamics of a
peer-production environment. It's as useful as using kilograms to
measure brightness.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)