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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."

6 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Not news by Titoxd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unlike what some users may tell you, many anonymous users contribute content and not vandalize. The quality of the edits per se is all over the place, but this is to be expected, as there is no way a new contributor can know all the nuances of the in-house referencing system, or the indications made by the Manual of Style. But they do try.

    ~~~~

    1. Re:Not news by FuturePastNow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am not a registered Wikipedia user, so anything I do is anonymous. I've only made a few (3 or 4) edits to articles, always to fix minor typos or spelling errors I've seen while reading.

      Every time I have done so, it has been rolled back within minutes, which I assume means that registered editors are watching for anonymous changes and removing them no matter what. As a result, my current attitude towards Wiki editors can be summarized with the words "fuck you."

      Hopefully, some of those pricks will read this article and change their attitude, but I doubt it.

      --
      Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
    2. Re:Not news by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The American style is inconsistent. We put question marks and exclamation points inside the quotes only if it is part of the quoted content. Note the difference in these sentences:

      Are you "working a late night"? (Translation: are you sleeping with your secretary? See comment below about terms used ironically.)
      I asked him, "Are you working a late night?" (I asked an innocent question.)

      Similarly, we treat punctuation with regards to parentheses in this way. A period goes inside the parentheses only if it is a complete sentence.

      I am smarter then you (but you knew that).
      I am smarter than you. (My dog is smarter than you.)

      However, the American style says to put periods and commas inside the quotation marks in all cases. I would argue that American usage is simply wrong here, as it is thoroughly inconsistent with all other punctuation combinations. Thus, I make it a point (despite being American) to ignore it and follow the much more rational British rules. The rules for punctuation should logically be determined by whether the punctuation is truly part of what is being quoted or not.

      For example, if I use a term in an ironic way, I might put that in quotes.

      The "nice girl" dumped me yesterday.
      In that context, if that were at the beginning or end of a sentence, punctuation should logically go outside the quotes.

      I got dumped by a "nice girl".

      Putting it inside the quotes implies that you are quoting the period as though "nice girl" were a complete sentence or some reasonable facsimile thereof. It just doesn't make sense. If a wookiee can live on Endor....

      The same holds true if you are using quotes to define new terminology (though this is less frequently done with quotes these days and more frequently done with boldface text or other typographic conventions).

      This type of memory is known as "Random Access Memory".

      This stands in contrast with cases in which punctuation would logically be part of the quote.

      "This is stupid," he said. (The comma takes the place of a period.)
      He said, "This is stiupid."

      But I digress.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  2. At what point do these posters become registered? by Nrbelex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another interesting study might determine how many posts a person usually makes before becoming registered...

  3. Road to hell paved with good intentions by SamP2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I fully admire the eagerness of individual contributors, anonymous or not, to improve Wikipedia.

    Unfortunately, not all edits which are good-intended actually contribute to the overall quality. Of course, edits which fix simple things like revert vandalism, fix a typo, update a number etc, are all good. But the rest pose a potential problem. First off, newcomers, while well-intented, simply do not know the way Wikipedia works. They may include unsourced or poorly sourced material, insert a POV without even realising it, piss off another editor by being careless (and thus start an edit war) etc.

    But even those edits which do not break any Wikipedia rules or guidelines still can cause damage, this time much more subtle. The thing is, a (good) Wikipedia article is not just a collection of facts, even if every single fact is relevant, neutral, sourced, and deserves to be in the article. An article is a unified piece of work. It should flow to the reader, not bump. Information must be properly organized and related to each other. A major suffering of Wikipedia is the so-called "contribution creep", where people just keep dumping more and more facts into the article. The result is grossly disproportional coverage of some sections compared to others, a huge overemphasis on bullet-point lists rather than coherent paragraphs, lots of small factoids which while each good on their own right, do not belong together, parts of articles being outdated compared to other parts, and a lot of other problems which make Wikipedia look like a search result by Google rather than a real encyclopedia.

    Early on, Wikipedia's first priority was to fill its databank with stuff, and all contributions (other than those breaking policy) were welcome. Recently, WP is at the stage of more stringent enforcement of policies, as well as guidelines and styleguides. And by all means, that is very important and should be the first priority. But it's not enough to be a good encyclopedia. Making sure everything is neutral, notable, verifiable, attributed, legal, and formatted according to style, is all sub-article tasks, which you apply to a particular sentence, paragraph, or image. But then you have to pause for a moment and look at an article at the big picture. Does it flow smoothly? Are all sections balanced? Are all parts equally updated? Would an average reader get a proportional representation from the article?

    You can easily handle the sub-article problems (those that break a clearcut policy or guideline) contributions from anonymous edits (as well as non-anonymous edits). But "Contribution creep" is biggest problem to the overall article, where there is no clearcut right or wrong. And that's why, no matter how important anonymous edits are to Wikipedia (and they certainly are), the already developed articles should be marked as "revised" and new contributions screened before updating them. Not because of potential vandalism or policy violations (those are easy to fix), but precisely to manage contribution creep and make sure well-intented contributions don't introduce speedbumps to an article and break its coherent organization and flow.

  4. ease of logging in by sh3l1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I often don't log in when i want to edit an article, because i don't care how my "rep" is, i just want to fix something.

    --
    Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!