[WikiEN-l] Link removal experiment; Re: "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:33 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> My experiment has concluded and all the link removals reverted*. The
> full writeup is at
> http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism#sins-of-omission-experiment-2
>
> Result: Of the 100 removals, just 3 were reverted.
>
> 3% is even lower than I expected, and very different from Horologium's
> estimate, incidentally.

Today I did a followup at the 1 month point, hand-checking the 100
links I restored to articles while cleaning up the experiment. Of the
100, 4 do not appear in the current version of the article.

(2 of the removals were in direct response to the restoration, while
the other 2 are either unexplained and part of a large edit with many
changes or got removed in a wholesale culling of the External links
section.)

Those who think that 3% was the correct reversion rate for the
removals are invited to explain how 4% could be the correct reversion
rate for the re-adding of the same links - if it was acceptable for
97% to be removed in the first place, how could it also be acceptable
for 94% to then be restored?

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net