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."
Not news (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
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Although I do believe grammar is becoming a specialty skill, I'm also glad that such "specialists" regularly edit the submissions. Forum trolls (really, let's keep the word "trolls" -- "poo-flinging monkeys" may be accurate, but is a slight on our simian bre
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Re:Of course... (Score:4, Informative)
Happened to me once. I noticed a list of "movies about the Mafia" was full of titles just about crime, so I deleted those I knew were not Mafia related. Then later I see they've been reverted by some asshole (later I worked out it was a bot) that had decided I was a vandal (as stated in the comment).
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Informative)
The bots are not infallible. They do catch a ton of the really ridiculous crap that people add to Wikipedia, but they miss some, and have a few false positives as well.
If you are not some random vandal, one thing that you could (actually, should do, as I strongly recommend it) is that you specify why you remove content in the "Edit summary" box. If you say, "Removing movies unrelated to mafia", the bot leaves you alone, or if someone sees the bot revert your removal for an invalid reasons, they can always revert the bot. I've done that myself many a time.
Remember: Humans watch the Recent changes [wikipedia.org] feed too. If you provide a reason for the human, the human may leave you alone. Otherwise, you're just a random IP that is removing content for no reason whatsoever, which happens all day, every day. ~~~~
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Well, did you provide a reason why you deleted the content?
Yes. That's why I was pissed off, as well as insulted at being labelled a "vandal" when I was actually correcting errors. This happened within minutes of my edit, so I guess it was totally automated. Which is even more annoying, being reverted by a bot set loose by some smarmy teenager (I looked up his profile).
Re:Of course... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, I did try to communicate with him, and no I wasn't abusive. He ignored me.
I'm not "way too angry". I only mentioned it at all in answer to a direct question. At the time I was pissed because I'd spent time and thought "giving back" to the community only to have it deleted and be insulted for my trouble. I got over it a few minutes later and haven't mentioned it to anyone till now. Now I know Wikipedia is infested with self-important twats who like to play power games, so I don't waste my
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You realise that you are calling me a liar?
had his mother raped. Guy Number Three had his ancestors' graves desecrated,
I told you exactly what happened. I didn't exaggerate or claim malice, just careless arrogance. Some twat sent a bot to delete stuff without bothering to check what it was, and ignored my attempts to discuss it with him. Fuck you if you don't believe me.
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I did not call you a liar. Read my post again. Yes, I said I'm not inclined to believe you, but that does not equate me calling you a liar. Basically, I'm saying you may well be right, but your claim is pretty outlandish. As I mentioned, these claims always come up in wikipedia discussions on slashdot, and I've yet to see evidence for them. Naturally, my inclination to believe these claims decerese for every time I see them without any evidence to back them up.
Have a pint and a smoke and don't take th
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Yes it does. Weasel words.
these claims always come up in wikipedia discussions on slashdot, and I've yet to see evidence for them
I don't "always make these claims". I'm talking, for the first time, about something that happened to me, personally. So if you don't believe me, you are calling me, personally, a liar. Your smug response is exactly what exacerbates these situations.
If these "claims" are not true, why
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 edi
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Re:Of course... (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? I just checked the half dozen edits Ive made over the past six months. The 5 trivial ones are all intact, and the extensive one (transportation in the town I live in) was edited & rearranged, for the better.
Perhaps the quality of the edits is important.
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What's the motivation to register? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Additionally, as an anonymous editor, you can't edit semi-protected pages, but you cannot upload images either. You cannot move pages either, nor create pages in the article namespace. You can still create talk pages, but if you want to create an article, you
Blind Wikipedians? (Score:2, Informative)
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(By the way, in US english, commas and periods should ALWAYS go inside the q
Re:Not news (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not news (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I have done so, it has been rolled back within minutes, which I assume means that registered editors are watching for anonymous changes and removing them no matter what. As a result, my current attitude towards Wiki editors can be summarized with the words "fuck you."
Hopefully, some of those pricks will read this article and change their attitude, but I doubt it.
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[citation needed]
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Ah, but that's when it is the most fun. :-D
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The problem is that not all of us have the time to be monitoring the changes we do to the Wikipedia. I have made some changes as anonymous some time. But a lot of times the article is locked so I can not edit it myself and what I do is just write the comment, correction or idea in the discussion page. If the article is as "important" to have be locked then it ha
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(By the way, in US english, commas and periods should ALWAYS go inside the quotes.)
No they "don't".
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Yes, but for a strange reason. American newspapermen couldn't be bothered with the nuances of the English language, even though some of the nuances were linguistically valuable. In this case, placement of punctuation inside or outside quotation marks relays information about the quote. I'm American so, you know, screw the redcoats and all that, but I think our stateside grammarians dropped the ball on this one.
Re:Not news (Score:5, Interesting)
The American style is inconsistent. We put question marks and exclamation points inside the quotes only if it is part of the quoted content. Note the difference in these sentences:
Similarly, we treat punctuation with regards to parentheses in this way. A period goes inside the parentheses only if it is a complete sentence.
However, the American style says to put periods and commas inside the quotation marks in all cases. I would argue that American usage is simply wrong here, as it is thoroughly inconsistent with all other punctuation combinations. Thus, I make it a point (despite being American) to ignore it and follow the much more rational British rules. The rules for punctuation should logically be determined by whether the punctuation is truly part of what is being quoted or not.
For example, if I use a term in an ironic way, I might put that in quotes.
In that context, if that were at the beginning or end of a sentence, punctuation should logically go outside the quotes.Putting it inside the quotes implies that you are quoting the period as though "nice girl" were a complete sentence or some reasonable facsimile thereof. It just doesn't make sense. If a wookiee can live on Endor....
The same holds true if you are using quotes to define new terminology (though this is less frequently done with quotes these days and more frequently done with boldface text or other typographic conventions).
This stands in contrast with cases in which punctuation would logically be part of the quote.
But I digress.
Re:Not news (Score:4, Interesting)
The graph they show is practically meaningless.
The rest of the study may possibly have some good stuff in it, but the incompetence that has gone into this graph leaves me with grave reservations. I notice, for example, that the main body on p. 15 refers to "FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE". I also notice that there is no figure 2. I don't think this study has a shred of credibility.
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I don't find it surprising either. It sounds like the expected results to me. Basically, when a person first discovers it's possible to edit something on wikipedia, and wants to do so, they probably don't have an account. Therefore their first (perhaps even first few) submissions or edits are likely to be anonymous. These new users fall into two basic categories: Well-meaning individuals, and idiots who deface wikipedia. The idiots continue to submit anonymously because a named account doesn't last lon
ha! (Score:5, Funny)
... and more reliable than Slashdot summaries (Score:5, Informative)
That study was published by Dartmouth College. Dartmouth University is an unrelated entity in Canada.
...Dartmouth? (Score:2)
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Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It would be interesting to try that study with a commercial entity.
Yo, mod point tanks (Score:3, Interesting)
At what point do these posters become registered? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At what point do these posters become registere (Score:4, Interesting)
If I'm not already logged in and see a minor problem in an article, I'll usually fix anonymously. Not worth the time to log in.
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But yeah, I don't even do typo fixes on partially locked or "this article is disputed" pages because I figure it'll just get lost in the revert war or undone by a knee jerk "OMG an edit it must be vandalism on my precious page!" reaction.
Even if they do... (Score:2)
Re:At what point do these posters become registere (Score:5, Informative)
A - 0
B - 0
C - 0
D - 2
E - 0
F - 0
G - 0
H - 0
I - 0
J - 0
In short: most of the people registering accounts had made no edits prior to registering. It's common knowledge on Wikipedia that something like half of all accounts registered never make any edits at all, so this makes sense.
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How many of those new users you selected have made edits since registering? I think many of those you sampled will never edit, period. Not before, not after. To mak
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Can't speak for the anonymous posters at Wikipedia or even any of the ACs here but for myself. The validity of a statement is the greatest when it can stand on its on without the benefit or detriment allocated to the statement by its maker. Posting as AC often draws extra scrutiny as to the validity and worth of the posting. If a moderator perceivers value in it worth their mod point application then
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Lost Passwords? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I read it on wikipedia (Score:4, Funny)
Even better, the number of these "Good Samaritans" has tripled in the last six months!
well duh (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was going to agree with you, then I noticed I've broken the 5,000 post mark on Slashdot. So apparently I do have the time and can't make fun of the wikipedians.
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Re:well duh (Score:4, Funny)
Digg users? Come on now, that's just being unfair. They have no "darlings" in any sense of the word.
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.
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Depends, (Score:3, Funny)
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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 h
True on slashdot too (Score:5, Funny)
I used to run a small site... (Score:2)
Maybe I was below the traffic threshold for trolls to show up.
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FUCK OYU
Oyu? (Score:5, Funny)
Questionable methodology, questionable results (Score:4, Interesting)
This metric makes sense if the wiki is new, and most of the edits are adding new content. The metric is virtually meaningless if the wiki is established, and most of the edits by a group of people are vandalism or reverts - people fixing the article will have a lower score by virtue of the fact that they are making the same edit (more or less) over and over again.
Normally, you'd expect that the more edits a user makes, the more trustworthy he is. If he were vandalizing, he wouldn't make more than a few before being blocked. If he's making hundreds, he should be considered more trust worthy (and have a higher retention rate) than if he's new. The results here show the exact opposite for anonymous users. In short, the methodology is flawed and the results are wrong.
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"Vandalism : Revert : Vandalism : Revert" is counted such that Revert is credited with 100% retention and Vandalism is credited with 0% retention. What matters is which characters of an edit are preserved going forward, not if they were preserved in an immediate sense.
The "per-contribution" aspects refers to averaging/normalization.
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Road to hell paved with good intentions (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, not all edits which are good-intended actually contribute to the overall quality. Of course, edits which fix simple things like revert vandalism, fix a typo, update a number etc, are all good. But the rest pose a potential problem. First off, newcomers, while well-intented, simply do not know the way Wikipedia works. They may include unsourced or poorly sourced material, insert a POV without even realising it, piss off another editor by being careless (and thus start an edit war) etc.
But even those edits which do not break any Wikipedia rules or guidelines still can cause damage, this time much more subtle. The thing is, a (good) Wikipedia article is not just a collection of facts, even if every single fact is relevant, neutral, sourced, and deserves to be in the article. An article is a unified piece of work. It should flow to the reader, not bump. Information must be properly organized and related to each other. A major suffering of Wikipedia is the so-called "contribution creep", where people just keep dumping more and more facts into the article. The result is grossly disproportional coverage of some sections compared to others, a huge overemphasis on bullet-point lists rather than coherent paragraphs, lots of small factoids which while each good on their own right, do not belong together, parts of articles being outdated compared to other parts, and a lot of other problems which make Wikipedia look like a search result by Google rather than a real encyclopedia.
Early on, Wikipedia's first priority was to fill its databank with stuff, and all contributions (other than those breaking policy) were welcome. Recently, WP is at the stage of more stringent enforcement of policies, as well as guidelines and styleguides. And by all means, that is very important and should be the first priority. But it's not enough to be a good encyclopedia. Making sure everything is neutral, notable, verifiable, attributed, legal, and formatted according to style, is all sub-article tasks, which you apply to a particular sentence, paragraph, or image. But then you have to pause for a moment and look at an article at the big picture. Does it flow smoothly? Are all sections balanced? Are all parts equally updated? Would an average reader get a proportional representation from the article?
You can easily handle the sub-article problems (those that break a clearcut policy or guideline) contributions from anonymous edits (as well as non-anonymous edits). But "Contribution creep" is biggest problem to the overall article, where there is no clearcut right or wrong. And that's why, no matter how important anonymous edits are to Wikipedia (and they certainly are), the already developed articles should be marked as "revised" and new contributions screened before updating them. Not because of potential vandalism or policy violations (those are easy to fix), but precisely to manage contribution creep and make sure well-intented contributions don't introduce speedbumps to an article and break its coherent organization and flow.
Re:Road to hell paved with good intentions (Score:5, Informative)
There are edits that are obviously unhelpful; there are others that are clearly helpful. But there is a gray area of edits that falls in between, and for which editors' reactions vary a lot.
A good example is an anonymous/new editor adding unsourced information to a carefully-sourced Featured article. You can't let the information just remain there, as editors have gone through that page, double-checked the citations and validity of the statements, and generally polished the article to have its prose crisp and clean. But you cannot just revert the edit wholesale, as the edit was not done in bad faith. While sometimes the edits can be fixed, there are many times that the edits are incorrigible, and need to be completely reworked or removed (such as introducing widespread, irrelevant rumors on the biography of a celebrity).
So, at this time, some editors remove the text, with an explanation in the edit summary. Sometimes anonymous editors read the edit summaries, sometimes they don't. Often they wonder why their text got removed, justifiably so. Some users take that personally and begin accusing us of being "grammar Nazis", or even "suppressors of the truth" (I've heard that one before). But in a way, we're just trying to keep everything in order.
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The problem, as I saw when I was still active, was not that mop-wielders were editing, but that mop-wielders often forgot to act in bad faith, and were also overwhelmingly deletionist in almost every line of thinking and discussion. While there are many good admins, there are many more bad admins, and the systemic nature of the problem is such that many bad admins think they are seriously doing good work by simpl
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All it requires is a server cluster,a copy of wiki, minimum rules and some advertisement.
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So if someone sees something lacking, they should be free to add to it. If the content they add isn't formatted correctly or
whatever, that is what editors should fix, no?
As it stands, I've made minor modifications to wikipedia as well as attempting to add at least two pages that have links
to the page already, but aren't filled out. The modifications went ok, but last I checked the pages I
Wikipedia should return to its early days (Score:2)
Early on, Wikipedia's first priority was to fill its databank with stuff, and all contributions (other than those breaking policy) were welcome.
And ideally it should still be like this.
Recently, WP is at the stage of more stringent enforcement of policies, as well as guidelines and styleguides
Which is a very Bad Thing, IMO. Wikipedia is still incomplete, and the more paranoid it becomes about 'protecting' its content, the less contributions it's going to get. There is now too much unnesessary bureaucracy on Wikipedia that makes everyone's life very difficult.
Makes sense ? (Score:2)
"An anonymous user who makes a single edit is probably a good guy who spotted a mistake, an anonymous user who makes lots of edit is probably a vandal, if his contribution were good he'd probaly register to get credit. A registred user who does bad edits would be kicked pretty soon therefore registered user with large number of edits probably do quality edits".
Duh ?
If the finding were the
Not too surprising (Score:2)
This makes sense, right? If someone is editing anonymously, why are they editing anonymously? If they edit the Wikipedia frequently and just haven't bothered to get an account, it seems likely that they're lazy, stupid, or have something to hide. If they're anonymous because they don't make frequent edits and don't see the point in making an accoun
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This is true... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would imagine that most single edits are like that - someone with a good depth of knowledge on a subject, noticing something that's not quite right. The threshold for action is high enough that you'd only do it if it was worthwhile.
ease of logging in (Score:5, Interesting)
Dynamic IP (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd think this would be obvious..... (Score:2)
And if you're going to go though the trouble of making an account, you're either going to do a quick piece of vandalism and leave, or be an active contributor.
I don't even think this is hindsight bias kicking in for calling this obvious. It really is just common sense. I'
I give you 10 EUR via PayPal if you write a paper (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm surprised someone actually got money to research this.
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
Re:I give you 10 EUR via PayPal if you write a pap (Score:2)
Who gives a fsck about reputation? (Score:2)
I find it strange that it is suggested that logged-in users care about their reputation. I am such a logged-in user [wikipedia.org] and I don't care that much about reputation or what people may think or say about me, even though my Wikipedia account is linked with my real name. I mostly care to improve articles or correct misunderstandings. If I find that in some specific occasion I can make the encyclopedia better at the cost of making 500 people hate me, I won't give a fsck what the people are going to think or say a
my experiance (Score:3, Interesting)
I find this to be true (Score:3, Interesting)
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