[WikiEN-l] Ayn Rand and Wikipedia

[Charlotte Webb]

On 11/12/08, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> I'm late to this thread, so pardon me if I'm repeating, but I'm
> *glad* that it's not obvious who wrote an article.  I like to
> think of Wikipedia as being written by some large number of
> anonymous contributors, one of whom happens to be me.  Even asking
> whether an article was written 90% by me or 2% or whatever --
> to me, that sounds perilously close to WP:OWN.

I agree entirely. But I respect the opinions of those who do care
about this information, and mentioned a way in which it can be
determined at a glance.

Unfortunately the way in which it presented lends itself to
editcountitis, and it is more difficult to determine how many words or
sentences or paragraphs of the current version were added by User:X.

If I add three paragraphs to an article, they will over time most
likely keep a similar or nearly meaning, despite undergoing enough
changes to no longer be machine-recognizable as the same content.

This is partly because the machine doesn't really understand English
(or whatever language is being used—English is a good example as there
will usually be over a dozen ways to say exactly the same thing
without re-using any major words) and it is but one point of failure
for known methods of estimating users' contribution share for a given
article.

—C.W.