[Wikimedia-l] effect of edit filter on editing levels, (was thanking anons)

[Oliver Keyes]

Actually, yes, we do; Aaron Halfaker did a lot of work quantifying and
defining 'man-hours' in a Wikipedia sense.


On 15 January 2014 10:15, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers at gmail.com>wrote:

> Marc,
>
> It isn't just the vandalism and reversion of vandalism that we've lost as a
> result of the edit filters (originally known as abuse filters) there is
> also the lost userpage warnings, AIV reports, block messages and removal of
> AIV reports:) But yes the majority would have been vandalism and its
> reversion.
>
> Supporting this theory, we have as one would expect a drop in the number of
> editors clearing the five edit a month threshold - typically any vandal who
> got through the whole four level warning cycle and then did something block
> worthy would have made it into the 5 or more edits count for that month.
>
> I suspect we've also seen a some of our active vandal fighters drop away or
> shift to things that involve fewer edits per hour. Unfortunately I don't
> think we yet have any sort of estimated editor hours donated figure, for
> example one could do this crudely by only counting unique hours in which an
> editor has made at least one edit. It would be salutary to see how that was
> changing over time.
>
> Also the pattern of decline in raw edit count fits with a steady refinement
> of the edit filters from 2009 to the present day. The exception of course
> being the decline from 2007-2009, but I suspect much of that comes with
> Huggle et al speeding up vandalism reversion. Once you start blocking
> people after half a dozen edits rather than a couple of dozen you are bound
> to have a drop in total editing,
>
> Of course there remains the issue that our audience is still growing faster
> than the Internet whilst  nobody really knows whether the underlying rate
> of goodfaith editing is increasing or stable. I suspect that much of this
> is the growth of mobile where we are much more of a broadcast medium than
> an interactive one. But that is a rather more tenuous theory than the known
> effectiveness of the edit filters.
>
> I wrote an essay about this last
> spring<
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/Going_off_the_boil%3F
> >,
> I'd be interested in your take on it. Erik Zachte tweeted it and I don't
> think that anyone has rebutted the main points.
>
> Regards
>
> Jonathan
>
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2014 23:38:15 -0500
> > From: "Marc A. Pelletier" <marc at uberbox.org>
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thanking anonymous users
> > Message-ID: <52D4BF37.90403 at uberbox.org>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> >
> > On 01/13/2014 11:20 PM, Tim Starling wrote:
> > > The English
> > > Wikipedia edit rate has been declining since about January 2007, and
> > > is now only 67% of the rate at that time. A linear regression on the
> > > edit rate from that time predicts death of the project at around 2030.
> >
> > That's...  come /on/ Tim!  You know better than to say silly things like
> > that.
> >
> > The abuse filter alone could very well account for this (the prevented
> > edits and the revert that would have taken place).  :-)  I used to do a
> > lot of patrol back in those years and - for nostalgia's sake - I tried
> > doing a bit over a year ago.  The amount of "surface" vandalism has gone
> > down a *lot* since.
> >
> > -- Marc
> >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>




-- 
Oliver Keyes
Product Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation