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

[Marc A. Pelletier]

On 01/15/2014 01:15 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote:
> 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.

My own eyeball "metric" on this is entirely subjective, but anecdotally
I observe that (a) we have considerably more content than in 2007 and
(b) the average quality level of the most of that content is
significantly higher.

To me, this means that either the number of constructive edits that are
not reverts has, at least, remained fairly stable or that we have gotten
more efficient at quality per edit.  Most likely both.

My own skepticism about the magnitude or even existence of the edit
decline problem is rooted in that simple observation.  I worry that by
focusing on raw numbers like "number of clicks on the save button" we
are loosing sight of the real objectives, and that measure meant to
correct the wrong issue could end up harming more than helping.

(As could be argued in a pastiche of your essay that the obvious
solution would be to have Mediawiki insert random typos in articles to
give visitors easy things to fix and drive edit numbers up).

-- Marc