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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."

2 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.

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  2. 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.

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