[WikiEN-l] Webypedia - another doomed alternative to Wikipedia

[Carl (CBM)]

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 9:51 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aaron Swartz found that most of the text is written by IPs, with the regulars then formatting the heck out of it.

Like I was saying, that does not match my experience with mathematics
articles. I very rarely see significant amounts of content (say, a new
paragraph) added by an anonymous user.

I randomly picked a few mathematical logic articles and ran a script
on them to see how much text had been added by anons (see below). This
is obviously not intended to be scientifically rigorous. But the data
does cast doubt on the claim "anons add most of the content" being
valid over our entire set of articles.

My hypothesis is that the claim is more likely to be true for
broadly-known topics or current events. For example, "Normal
distribution" has had much more anonymous editing than "Cumulant". But
the depth of Wikipedia comes from the latter sort of articles, and for
every one of the former kind we have lots of the latter kind.

Also, about half of our articles are stubs, and new articles cannot
even be created by anonymous users without going through some hoops. I
would assume the majority of content in stubs was added by registered
users.

- Carl

-- Data --

I wrote a script that goes through all the revisions of a page in
chronological order and tracks the absolute size of each change. So if
an anonymous user adds 100 byes, then a registered user adds 100, then
an anonymous user removes 5, and then a registered user adds 10, the
script will say "anonymous: 105" and "registered: 110". I do not try
to take reverts into account at all.

Here is the data for a selection of mathematical logic articles.  You
can see that several of these have had a relatively small amount of
information added by anonymous users.

Article: Projection (set theory)
Total edits: 17
Anon users: 102 bytes in 3 edits
Registered users: 1224 bytes in 14 edits
Current size: 1074 bytes

Article: Borel hierarchy
Total edits: 29
Anon users: 165 bytes in 2 edits
Registered users: 9265 bytes in 27 edits
Current size: 8850 bytes

Article: Algebra of sets
Total edits: 90
Anon users: 1542 bytes in 25 edits
Registered users: 17181 bytes in 65 edits
Current size: 11941 bytes

Article: Indicator function
Total edits: 149
Anon users: 1550 bytes in 22 edits
Registered users: 15114 bytes in 127 edits
Current size: 10922 bytes

Article: Complete theory
Total edits: 37
Anon users: 12 bytes in 1 edits
Registered users: 2893 bytes in 36 edits
Current size: 2691 bytes

Article: Background and genesis of topos theory
Count: 56
Anon: 133 in 9
Registered: 11662 in 47
Size: 10807

Article: Background and genesis of topos theory
Total edits: 56
Anon users: 133 bytes in 9 edits
Registered users: 11662 bytes in 47 edits
Current size: 10807 bytes

Article: Association for Logic, Language and Information
Total edits: 14
Anon users: 21 bytes in 1 edits
Registered users: 1982 bytes in 13 edits
Current size: 1985 bytes

Article: Extension by definitions
Total edits: 20
Anon users: 4 bytes in 1 edits
Registered users: 8123 bytes in 19 edits
Current size: 7887 bytes

Article: Unfoldable cardinal
Total edits: 32
Anon users: 23 bytes in 2 edits
Registered users: 3124 bytes in 30 edits
Current size: 2933 bytes

Article: Gluing axiom
Total edits: 37
Anon users: 302 bytes in 4 edits
Registered users: 9271 bytes in 33 edits
Current size: 8843 bytes

Here are some other articles I picked off the top of my head. Again,
notice that anonymous edits are dwarfed by registered edits.

Article: Group ring
Total edits: 151
Anon users: 1761 bytes in 23 edits
Registered users: 33828 bytes in 128 edits
Current size: 16851 bytes

Article: Product topology
Total edits: 97
Anon users: 3804 bytes in 22 edits
Registered users: 20526 bytes in 75 edits
Current size: 8858 bytes

Article: Linear multistep method
Total edits: 107
Anon users: 1573 bytes in 28 edits
Registered users: 18287 bytes in 79 edits
Current size: 18890 bytes

Article: Normal distribution
Total edits: 1985
Anon users: 355031 bytes in 582 edits
Registered users: 502215 bytes in 1403 edits
Current size: 82984 bytes

Article: Cumulant
Total edits: 342
Anon users: 2528 bytes in 52 edits
Registered users: 35277 bytes in 290 edits
Current size: 31639 bytes