Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Infrequent Anonymous Cowards Reliable on Wikipedia

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-visit-from-the-correction-fairy dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at Dartmouth University have recently discovered that infrequent anonymous contributors, so called "Good Samaritans," are as reliable as registered users who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain. A graph from page 31 of the group's original paper (pdf file) shows that the quality of contributions of anonymous users goes down as the number of edits increases while quality goes up with the number of edits for registered users."

2 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Of course... by Moryath · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    the "contributions" of an anonymous person on wikipedia these days, no matter how good they are, are instantly reverted by any number of so-called "anti-vandalism" bots and tools.

    1. Re:Of course... by Carthag · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      It's cool. Sorry you had a shit experience, but that's not what I've seen happen. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I'm not inclined to believe it. Everytime a Slashdot discussion about wikipedia comes up, 100s of people come outta the woodwork with one story worse than the next. Guy Number One had his anonymous contributious deleted. Guy Number Two had his mother raped. Guy Number Three had his ancestors' graves desecrated, Et cetera.

      It gets old at length though.

      In 4 years on wikipedia I've seen exactly one instance of revert-warring, and no instances of indiscriminate reversion of anonymous edits. Gimme some edit histories (nah, they've probably been deleted too). ;:)