Who (Really) Writes Wikipedia

Nico ? La ! writes "Aaron Swartz questions Jimbo Wales' (Wikimedia's founder) belief and evangelized truth that only around 500 people are the most important contributors to Wikipedia. Whereas the truth is that they probably are the people who do the most editing. From the post: 'For example, the largest portion of the Anaconda article was written by a user who only made 2 edits to it (and only 100 on the entire site). By contrast, the largest number of edits were made by a user who appears to have contributed no text to the final article (the edits were all deleting things and moving things around).'" Which ultimately means that Wikipedia in some ways much more closely mimics a real encyclopedia, with many contributors writing the bulk of the content, but a small group massaging that text to insure standards compliance with the overall work. Interesting thing there and worth your time, although the super-computer thing doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Anaconda

[webrunner]

I hear the number of anacondas has tripled in the last six months. Maybe that should be in the article?

Re:5%

[metlin]

> 5% of Slashdot users create 95% of the content.

That high?!

Massaging the Text

[ettlz]

...but a small group massaging that text to insure standards compliance with the overall work.

Oh, t3h 1r0n4y! It's ensure. Unless standards compliance has some sort of liability associated with it these days.

Lies!

[littleghoti]

That's not on the procul harum wikipedia page! it must be lies! Bear in mind: 1) I'm not serious 2) It will be edited otherwise within 30 secs of me posting this. 3) The whole parent post could be oblique wikipedia vandalism.

Re:Good thing there are so many single men

[metlin]

I would also guess that most of the editors are single white mails, age 12-25. Thank God for the lack of social skills that allow hundreds to stay at home and spend a weekend making Wikipedia changes! Woohoo!!

Of course! Those dastardly mails, white and brown and purple.

I bet you it's all because of postal workers -- I mean, if you were raised by postal workers, you'd be lacking in social skills, too!

Re:not quite like a real encyclopedia ...

[jacksonj04]

I must say I've noticed {{fact}} springing up all over the damn place recently. It's hard [citation needed] to read most of an article [citation needed] without seeing them.

Re:Anaconda

[Molochi]

It's true. I read that somewhere.

Re:Anaconda

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft. You must have read it in a book.

I read my heart, and it said the anaconda population has actually quadrupled, not tripled.

Insure standards please

[AmiMoJo]

Note to editors: in future, please in^H^Hensure standards of English remain high in submissions.

Re:It's true, though they're still important edits

[orthogonal]

It confirmed my own experiences as founder of WikiFur.

You can type on a keyboard while wearing a fursuit?!!?

Re:Ignore that man

[L33tminion]

Dont be silly. You make it sound like Wikipedia is being run by a cabal [wikipedia.org] or something.

(Seriously, who says Wikipedia editors want "glory"?)