[WikiEN-l] "Who The Hell Writes Wikipedia, Anyway?"

[Phil Sandifer]

This should be required reading - it completely upends fundamental  
assumptions about our content, and has huge implications for things  
like deletion. The sense that our inclusion and notability policies  
put us at odds with readers who are not major parts of the community  
has always been there, but this troublingly nails it: the population  
of people who write articles and people who delete them are nearly  
exclusive.

That's a huge issue.

-Phil

On Jan 3, 2009, at 10:53 AM, Steve Summit wrote:

> A recent recycling of Aaron Swartz's analysis of the difference
> between who-makes-the-most-edits, versus who-contributes-the-most- 
> content:
>
> 	<http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/who-the-hell-writes-wikipedia-anyway 
> >
>
> I think we all know the real story, but it's fascinating how much
> traction the "bulk of Wikipedia is written by 1400 obsessed
> freaks" meme still gets (including, for example, the referenced
> blog post <http://www.collegeotr.com/college_otr/734_percent_of_all_
> wikipedia_edits_are_made_by_roughly_1400_people_17499> from last  
> week).
>
> Yet another reason to Shun Any Reliance On Raw Edit Counts.
> (But boy, is it easy to depend on them, since they're so easy
> to get your hands on.  And did Jimbo really once assert that
> "Wikipedia was actually written by 'a community ... a dedicated
> group of a few hundred volunteers' where 'I know all of them and
> they all know each other'"?)
>
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