[WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.

[Marc Riddell]

> From: "Christopher Thieme" <cdthieme at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:43:31 -0500
> To: WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.
> 
> I'd love to see some psychology-oriented individual do a case study on what
> kind of people are attracted to editing on Wikipedia.  What psychological
> defects lurk behind the computer screens and the keyboards.  Why do I ask?
> Because in the last month (including right now), I've gotten in spats, edit
> wars, content disputes, with people who would be poster children for
> narcissitic personality disorder and one of several temporal lobe disorders,
> respectively.
> 
> Something like that would probably explain a lot about the bitterness,
> control issues, the incessant desire to be "right", etc. that some people
> have when approaching the subject of editing.
> 
> Just a crazy idea. (no pun intended).
> 
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme

An interesting (and tempting ;-) ) notion. The problem is, for the study to
be at all valid, the person conducting it could not be a part of the
Wikipedia Community. And, for such a person to gain access to the data, they
would need to sign on as a member of the Community. Still an interesting
idea, though.

Marc Riddell
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