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Infrequent Anonymous Cowards Reliable on Wikipedia
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."
Who has like hours and hours to write really good articles all the time?
The nuts. The fanatics. The giving-geeks-a-bad-name mom's-basement-dwelling sociopaths who adopt obscure TV series, comic book characters, or musicians and then write and champion the articles about their outre darlings. Next they hack into their iphones to call them and/or give them an electric shock the minute someone else edits their article, so that they can swoop down like a deranged digital valkyrie to challenge, re-edit, and pontificate. Because they're the "expert," doncha know? (...having been the first one to google the topic and cut-n-paste the article... )
A lot of people read wikipedia to look up stuff and learn and all that. They never really wanted to edit it though cuz they're lazy.
We don't want to edit it because we are *adults* with lives and jobs and families and deadlines who want our encyclopedias to be encyclopedias and not some kind of bring-your-own-violin pick-up jazz concert.