[WikiEN-l] "How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit", _The Atlantic_

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:49 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> First shouldn't we guess as to what percentage of the links were
> actually good in the first place?

I must say, I didn't expect to see someone rationalizing the results
even *before* they happened.

But no, you don't need to guess: you edit Wikipedia, you already know
what external links usually look like, and how many are bad on
average. (From actually doing the deletions, my own appraisal is that
<10% were at all questionable, and I felt pretty bad deleting most of
them.)

If you don't, you can go click on Special:Random 10 times and ask
yourself, 'would I delete the last link in the External links
section?' If you think 2 links are rotten, then perhaps you should be
predicting that - since everything is well, and any result is
acceptable, and the status quo is perfect - only 80% of the edits will
be reverted.

I look forward to your percentages.

-- 
gwern