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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."

5 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. *BSD is Dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

    1. Re:*BSD is Dying by PhoenixAtlantios · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Even though this is quite obviously a troll, the constant dire predictions about X company/software/OS dying is really starting to bug me. Nothing in the software world (and maybe even the real world) is dying until it's dead; recoveries are always possible. A downward trend doesn't mean something will die out, just look at RealPlayer (though whether that's a good thing or not is debatable).

    2. Re:*BSD is Dying by JoshJ · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      It is now official. Netcraft confirms: the New User is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered New User community when IDC confirmed that New User market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all posters. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that New Users have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The New User community is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive posting test. You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict the New User's future. The hand writing is on the wall: the New User faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the New User because the New User is dying. Things are looking very bad for the New User. As many of us are already aware, the New User continues to lose market share. Their blood flows like a river of... well, blood. All major surveys show that the New User has steadily declined in postcount share. The New Users are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If the New Users are to survive at all it will be among necromancers. The New User continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the New User is dead. Fact: the New User is dying

      --
      Care about privacy? Read this!
  2. I am a sexymous coward ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I am a beautiful female anonymous coward with very large tits.


    But you nerdlingers shall never enter my enchanted love cavern, for that is reserved for jocks who can't use linux !



  3. My mac sucks by NosTROLLdamus · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a intel g5 w/2 Gigs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, Safari will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' new faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

    Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.