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

[Anthony]

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

No need to get personal, I wasn't rationalizing anything.

> But no, you don't need to guess: you edit Wikipedia

I do?

> 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 certainly wouldn't try to make a prediction about the percentage of
links which are bad based on a biased sample where each link was the
last one in the External links section.