Infrequent Anonymous Cowards Reliable on Wikipedia 264
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."
Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
well duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Why doesnt someone donate 10 million to wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
I am hereby calling on multi millionaires and billionaires out there to please donate 10 million to wikipedia. And let's get some of the wikibooks finished.
Founded google? Founded Yahoo? Founded Apple? Facebook? Youtube? Good, now donate to wikipedia.
Sincerely!
Re:Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Some presumably do deface the pages, but I don't find it terribly surprising that somebody that primarily uses wikipedia would be more reliable than somebody that spends most of their time building a reputation. There's just so much more incentive to fix it if you are using it. That isn't to say that named contributers are inherently bad.
Re:Not news (Score:1, Insightful)
I think that's part of the "infrequent" thing. Sure, some people will deface pages, but how many will vandalize just one page once?
Re:This statistic will self-correct (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:well duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily, not everyone views volunteering as a waste of time, or indicative of fanaticism. Many people contribute to Wikipedia because they value information and education. They enjoy challenging their mind. This is their hobby (instead of Sudoku and crossword puzzles), or perhaps even their passion. This is their way of contributing to a greater good. You are more than welcome to ignore the free spread of information and impromptu musical gatherings, and focus on all the important things in your adult life. However it is rather unfortunate that you cannot see the value in what other communities achieve when they willingly devote time from their busy schedules to a communal project.
Re:At what point do these posters become registere (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I realize that certain value can be placed on statements depending on their sources I still believe all statements should be scrutinized and should have to stand on their on for validity and worth. When posting here I often add links to show where my information comes from to support my opinions/facts. Nothing special in my background such as higher degees or notable accomplishments to add any credence to a name even if I used one. Though even I find myself giving more credence to statements made by certain nicknames here and particularly when they make comments in areas where I have seen them comment in previous articles, however I have no desire to build my own "karma". Even though I have had many +5s over the years I also have some that rotted at 0 or -1 that on re-examination I not only agreed with the modding but thought "sheesh, what was I thinking" and "glad that isn't permanently linked to me".
Having met many people in this world with extensive knowledge in areas that interested them though that knowledge was completely unrelated to their jobs or specific educational backgrounds, some of which had no desire for the whole world to know they had this knowledge, it doesn't suprise me that someone like them might be involved in Wikipedia. Further, it wouldn't suprise me much if some college professors of note don't spot something at Wikipedia that makes them think "I have to fix this" and then proceeds about doing so in an anonymous fashion either to avoid comments from others in their profession on them having supplied information there, avoid conflict of interests related to their university contracts, or just simply to avoid being asked to contribute more.
Information wants to be free and so does the truth. Like OSS, Wikipedia operates in part on the theory of thousands of eyes and counts on errors being spotted by the owners of some of those eyes. Position in society, even supported by educational and work background positioning, does not always indicate the truth of their statements. No where is this more apparent then in politically related "truths". One could say that at no time is someone more free to tell the truth then when providing their words anonymously. Unfortunately the converse is true as well.
Re:Depends, (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikkipedia has had it's share of experts that amount to people lieing about their credentials to fix a page in a certain way and keep the tones of pages agenda driven. This is especially true for anything political or even emotional. I don't know how many times I have pointed to something on Wikki in a post just to have someone come back in a few days and argue that didn't understand what was written only to find everything had changed.
It just isn't reliable for much more then quick references and general primers before getting information from other sites or sources.
Dynamic IP (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Of course... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not too surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:well duh (Score:1, Insightful)
People in soup kitchens do their work because of they want to help others who are less fortunate, and because they want to gain some real-world respect. People who contribute to free software projects do so (in the vast majority of cases) because they want to fix or improve software they already use.
The fact that you spend hours of your (busy?) day editing articles on some website without being paid for it, and without gaining recognition in the real world does not necessarily imply that you are a humanitarian. Indeed, it is far more likely that you have nothing better to do with your time, and want to spend your copius layabout hours on wikipedia in edit wars rather than reading books or watching tv.
Re:Of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not news (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but that's when it is the most fun. :-D
I give you 10 EUR via PayPal if you write a paper (Score:3, Insightful)
Research is useful even if it's obvious. Previously we couldn't cite anyone if we wanted to say that anons who edit once or twice make good edits. Now, thanks to this research, we can. While it's true that these researchers could spend their time and money in better questions, for example examining P=NP, but this research is still useful, if not for everything else, at least for putting it in the references of some other wiki-related research. Now, if I want to write a paper on wikis, I can cite their research and not have to prove it myself. That's a Good Thing. Spending one's time on ground-breaking research is, of course, The Best Thing, but there is still a need for more mundane research.
The key to useful research is its methodological rigour, rather than its conclusions. Everything that is proven scientifically is good for science... even if it's for some commonly known fact such as that rain comes after seeing dark clouds. We may know something intuitively, but that's not science, and good science must be based solely on scientifically proven facts. Therefore the more facts we prove scientifically, the easier it is to make further advances, and other researchers who will work on ground-breaking research later on can still cite the mundane research instead of spending time formalising and proving trivial facts.
I would. It sounds like a good research question, even though there are better things to spend one's time, a paper on this topic could still be useful in further research, for citation purposes (so that I can just cite you instead of proving it myself, it saves me time). If you write an academic-quality paper of 12 pages minimum on this topic using quantifiable methodologies and proper statistical methods and it gets published in a reputable academic well-known open access journal under GFDL or other similar free licence, then I will offer you a symbolical 10 EUR donation via PayPal (and more if the paper results in ground-breaking conclusions), unless this exact question (correlation of slashdot ID age and quality of posts) has been dealt in another paper before. That's a real offer, and if you write and publish the paper then just e-mail me (but as I said, if your paper is qualitative, you get nothing).
It should be said that if you sit down and attempt to write a rigourous paper, you will find it much more difficult than it initially sounds like, even for such a trivial topic. You would first have to define what a high-quality post is, and although the Slashdot moderation system may help a bit, you would have to decide whether it would be correct to assume that all high-quality posts get modded up or whether quality is the same as popularity.
Re:Road to hell paved with good intentions (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Road to hell paved with good intentions (Score:2, Insightful)
Brilliant (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does your one data point override the dozens of data points you've seen other people post? And the poster you're responding to is obviously a liar, since his experience is different than yours.
Anecdote is not the singular of data, and it's pretty clear that there are lots of folks out there who've seen petty, ridiculous pissing contents by twits. But, of course, the important thing is to blindly defend the glorious Wikipedia from criticism, right?
Cue the mantra: Anyone can edit, anyone can edit, anyone can edit.
You wikipedia boosters make David Koresh look positively sane.
Re:ha! (Score:2, Insightful)