Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Freedom Fighters?

[icewedge]

Just ignore it. All admins have been getting these. Nothing is coming of it,
except perhaps some little humor if one so desires.

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 28 March 2010 17:18, William Pietri  wrote:
> >
> >
> >> I just received an odd email suggesting I hand over my admin account to
> >> the "Wikipedia Freedom Fighters". I see that they did something similar
> >> back in May. Whether this is an actual effort or just a way to stir up
> >> trouble, I dunno -- the content was ridiculous enough that I figure it's
> >> probably trolling -- but I figured I'd mention it.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Indeed. Best filed with any other phishing or trolling.
> >
> >
> Goes like this:
>
> "As an advanced user here at wikipedia, I am sure you are familiar with
> the corruption and bureaucracy that exists at every level, with the site
> effectively being run by a clique of editors who are only looking out
> for their own interests. Heck, maybe you are one of them! Hopefully
> though you are not, and would be willing to help us restore fairness and
> integrity to the project...
>
> We are currently expanding our portfolio of administrator accounts and
> perhaps you could consider sharing yours with us - to do so will take you
> only two minutes: change the password (if desired) and then reply to this
> email with your login details. We'll do the rest!
>
> Thank you for your time and consideration, and naturally do not hesitate to
> contact us if you have any questions."
>
> That's an onsite mail, from the account of User:Goldfishhunting who has
> been blocked.
>
> Charles
>
>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[David Goodman]

Even for the US, about 80% of the members of state legislatures
historically are not covered. For the current Michigan House of
Representatives, only 50% of the current members have articles, and
almost none of the earlier ones.
this is very low-lying fruit, well within the reach of any beginner.

My guess is that for the US alone there are a half-million similarly
unquestionably notable people with easy bios to do.  Using our current
standards of notability, and the current level of skill in research,
we could probably easily double the size of Wikipedia with material
from just English language sources.

If the other Wikipedias did similarly full coverage of their home
countries and we translated the articles, there would probably be
potential for an order of magnitude.


David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 9:42 PM, Carcharoth  wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Ian Woollard  wrote:
>
> 
>
>> The idea comes from a mixture of looking at the statistics peak and
>> looking at the articles that still are needed. Nearly all of the
>> low-hanging fruit is clearly gone now. Most of the mid-hanging fruit
>> is also now gone. We're getting towards the top of the tree, things
>> are getting more obscure. This is a *good* thing, not having so many
>> holes in the Wikipedia!
>
> But are the holes small ones to be filled in with only a few articles
> or large ones that will take a large number of articles to fill in. Or
> to put that another way, is the number of "obscure" articles much
> larger than the number of "obvious" articles. Or to use your analogy,
> are there more fruit at the top of the tree than at the bottom?
>
> Carcharoth wrote:
>>> My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of
>>> "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic
>>> areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the
>>> former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create,
>>> but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are
>>> thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed.
>
> Ian Woollard wrote:
>> I'm sure you're correct. So if there's twenty or thirty other similar
>> areas, then we're looking at a under a million articles left to write.
>> We're currently at 3.2 million. I think we'll exceed 4 million within
>> a few years.
>
> My view is that the growth can continue almost indefinitely, but the
> rate slows as the obvious articles get written. That doesn't mean that
> there is a natural limit, just that future growth will take a long
> time (maybe forever) given that the articles to be written require
> ever increasing amounts of specialist knowledge (unless you redirect
> efforts towards improving existing articles and strictly enforce which
> articles take priority - e.g. getting the core articles to a good
> state before writing more articles on obscure topics).
>
> 
>
>>> A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and
>>> see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of
>>> where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.
>>
>> This IS the point though; we're now looking for the gaps. That's
>> exactly what I'm saying. The Wikipedia should more or less run out of
>> gaps in about 3 years (ish- but it's never going to completely run
>> out, but growth from existing knowledge will be progressively slower
>> and slower). OTOH the circle of knowledge is still growing, at a
>> somewhat slower rate.
>
> I meant actually looking at actual articles created and seeing whether
> they are really as obscure as you think, rather than generalising. :-)
> If your hypothesis is correct, the articles being created should
> increasingly be obscure ones being created by experienced Wikipedians.
> Have you looked to see if that is what is actually happening?
>
> Carcharoth
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:24 PM 3/28/2010, Fred Bauder wrote:

>That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
>editors seem to think is appropriate.

I don't think that some editors realize the extent to which the 
blacklist, originally intended to control spam, is used to control 
content. A web site that is inappropriate as a reference can 
sometimes be the most important site for an external link. Yet if a 
lot of people have linked to that site, and especially if a handful 
of editors, interested in the topic -- or even they are COI -- have 
added a lot of links, the site is nominated for blacklisting. In the 
nomination and in decisions to blacklist by administrators, a 
supporting reason, besides reports on numbers of links existing, is 
often "Site is not RS." Sometimes, even, this is a controversial 
statement, but if it's not clearly RS, the argument can prevail.

The specific appropriateness of the links in the articles where 
placed *is not considered*, and, indeed, that consideration would be 
impractical.

Sometimes sites are blacklisted without massive spam, but only a 
little, and I have found, on occasion, that all the links that 
resulted in blacklisting were actually legitimate, and that was 
sustained by later stable replacement. Editors who were adding links 
in good faith, links that were actual improvements, have been blocked 
and banned for "spamming." Even when they stopped when warned.

I appreciate the need for spam control, but it can go too far. 
ArbComm decided that content control ("not RS") was not a legitimate 
reason for blacklisting, but it's complicated by the need to balance 
true spam control with damage to editorial freedom, so we can't say 
that content arguments are utterly irrelevant, either. If there is 
gross spamming, but a site is RS, we would properly be more reluctant 
to blacklist. If a site is utterly and unremediably usable, it might 
be blacklisted easily if there is spamming. Most blacklistings do 
fall into this category.

What I've seen, though, in raising the argument that a site would 
make a good external link, is the "Wikipedia is not a repository of 
links" argument, which is making a decision, like the not-RS 
argument, in the wrong place, blacklist administrators should have no 
special authority, as admins, over article content. It should be 
realized that this is truly a small number of admins, as little as 
two or three, that regularly make decisions, and, as is typical, they 
are overworked.

But, then, there is still the possibility of whitelisting individual 
links. I had thought that I'd come to some agreement with Beetstra 
over this, and I started to try to assist by reviewing whitelisting 
requests. These had been sitting for, some of them, for over two 
months without response. Whitelisting is only a practical alternative 
if it is quick, in general, and there is no anti-spam reason to deny 
a reasonable whitelisting request, it would be impossible to spam 
through whitelist requests if support is routinely required from at 
least one registered editor, not associated with the site or an SPA 
around the issue, looks at it and decides it's a reasonable request. 
That still does not make the decision at the article for actual use. 
But this is one of the charges made against me in the lastest 
Arbitration Enforcement action, that I somehow was violating my ban 
by reviewing unanswered whitelist requests and giving an opinion, an 
opinion that really shouldn't have been contentious, and there was no 
dispute on that page.

I also commented on one request on the blacklist page, where a 
request for blacklist had been made, there was a neutral comment from 
Beetstra, and I then contradicted information in the blacklist 
request, because I concluded that the site was, in fact, RS. Just my 
opinion! But evidenced. So, as far as dispute on that page was 
concerned, I was originating the dispute, which was supposedly 
allowed. It did not spin out and become a massive discussion, I was 
careful to be brief. I wasn't intervening in a dispute between 
editors. It could be said that there was a dispute between an IP 
editor and an anti-spam volunteer who had warned him or her, on the 
IP talk page, but I did not intervene in that. I was commenting on 
the blacklisting proposal, not on the possible editorial dispute 
(which apparently didn't continue, but I don't know. To my knowledge, 
the IP was not blocked, which would certainly have occurred if 
"spamming" had continued.)

Based on Beetstra's later comments, I sadly concluded that help with 
whitelisting was seen as an outside interference, it was not welcome, 
even when done carefully in such a way as to thoroughly respect the 
legitimate needs of blacklisting. So the ArbComm decision on the 
blacklist is basically a dead letter, for lack of anyone 
knowledgeable to make it happen.

Links will be provided on request. This is not an attempt to canvass 
support for some position on any web

Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Carcharoth]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:16 PM, Ian Woollard  wrote:



> The idea comes from a mixture of looking at the statistics peak and
> looking at the articles that still are needed. Nearly all of the
> low-hanging fruit is clearly gone now. Most of the mid-hanging fruit
> is also now gone. We're getting towards the top of the tree, things
> are getting more obscure. This is a *good* thing, not having so many
> holes in the Wikipedia!

But are the holes small ones to be filled in with only a few articles
or large ones that will take a large number of articles to fill in. Or
to put that another way, is the number of "obscure" articles much
larger than the number of "obvious" articles. Or to use your analogy,
are there more fruit at the top of the tree than at the bottom?

Carcharoth wrote:
>> My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of
>> "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic
>> areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the
>> former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create,
>> but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are
>> thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed.

Ian Woollard wrote:
> I'm sure you're correct. So if there's twenty or thirty other similar
> areas, then we're looking at a under a million articles left to write.
> We're currently at 3.2 million. I think we'll exceed 4 million within
> a few years.

My view is that the growth can continue almost indefinitely, but the
rate slows as the obvious articles get written. That doesn't mean that
there is a natural limit, just that future growth will take a long
time (maybe forever) given that the articles to be written require
ever increasing amounts of specialist knowledge (unless you redirect
efforts towards improving existing articles and strictly enforce which
articles take priority - e.g. getting the core articles to a good
state before writing more articles on obscure topics).



>> A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and
>> see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of
>> where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.
>
> This IS the point though; we're now looking for the gaps. That's
> exactly what I'm saying. The Wikipedia should more or less run out of
> gaps in about 3 years (ish- but it's never going to completely run
> out, but growth from existing knowledge will be progressively slower
> and slower). OTOH the circle of knowledge is still growing, at a
> somewhat slower rate.

I meant actually looking at actual articles created and seeing whether
they are really as obscure as you think, rather than generalising. :-)
If your hypothesis is correct, the articles being created should
increasingly be obscure ones being created by experienced Wikipedians.
Have you looked to see if that is what is actually happening?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Carcharoth]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:06 AM, geni  wrote:
> On 28 March 2010 20:42, Carcharoth  wrote:
>> Just as an example, I was taking part in the Military History World
>> War I contest recently, and there were at least 43 new articles
>> created (or expanded) for DYK. I'm currently trying to work out how
>> many articles were actually created (as opposed to expanded).
>
> It is to be expected that experienced wikipedians can find things to
> write about. However our new article creation has historically been
> for the most part driven by new users (and a handful of experienced
> users who managed to create very large numbers of articles) who may
> more legitimately be running out of things they can write articles on
> that won't get deleted on sight.

The presumption is that the initial article creation by "the masses"
in the early year of the project is a larger number than the "filling
in the gaps" by experienced Wikipedians. My hypothesis (OK,
speculation) is that filling in the gaps will create a *larger* number
of articles (over a longer period of time) than the initial burst of
article creation.

Think of it as the initial article creation staking out a territory.
And then slowly the gaps get filled in. Who is to say that the gaps
are not larger than the solid parts of the structure currently being
filled in?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:51 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>>> And
>>> further reading sections can point the way for future expansions of
>>> the article, or for the reader to go and find out more about the
>>> topic.
>>>
>>> Carcharoth
>>
>> That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
>> editors seem to think is appropriate.
>
> I don't think I've seen much evidence of a "war on external links"
> ... what there is is, however, is pressure against an unfiltered flood
> of external links.

Some editors, though, do have a thing against external links. An
example from my recent experience: edit-warring with an editor about
linking <5 reviews and official sites on _[[Royal Space Force: The
Wings of Honnêamise]]_. They apparently interpreted WP:EL as meaning
that *if* a link could be used elsewhere in the article (such as a
reception section), it *must* be so used or be removed.

-- 
gwern

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[geni]

On 28 March 2010 20:42, Carcharoth  wrote:
> Just as an example, I was taking part in the Military History World
> War I contest recently, and there were at least 43 new articles
> created (or expanded) for DYK. I'm currently trying to work out how
> many articles were actually created (as opposed to expanded).
>

It is to be expected that experienced wikipedians can find things to
write about. However our new article creation has historically been
for the most part driven by new users (and a handful of experienced
users who managed to create very large numbers of articles) who may
more legitimately be running out of things they can write articles on
that won't get deleted on sight.


-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Ian Woollard]

On 28/03/2010, Carcharoth  wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Ian Woollard 
>> I think a lot of people get involved to write new articles. It looks
>> like 2007 was 'peak oil' for new articles; after that it was getting
>> harder to find new articles to write; about half of the articles that
>> were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered.
>
> Does it make sense to say this when *thousands* of articles are being
> created every day?

We're currently looking at about a net increase of about 1200 articles
per day. and seems to be falling.

> Where does the idea even come from that "about half
> of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were
> already covered"? The question that needs to be asked is whether the
> "New articles per day" statistic is a measure of the articles being
> created, or the articles that are still there as having been created
> on that day, a set period (e.g. a year) after being created? i.e. Is
> the rate of article deletion included or excluded from those figures?

The idea comes from a mixture of looking at the statistics peak and
looking at the articles that still are needed. Nearly all of the
low-hanging fruit is clearly gone now. Most of the mid-hanging fruit
is also now gone. We're getting towards the top of the tree, things
are getting more obscure. This is a *good* thing, not having so many
holes in the Wikipedia!

> My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of
> "missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic
> areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the
> former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create,
> but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are
> thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed.

I'm sure you're correct. So if there's twenty or thirty other similar
areas, then we're looking at a under a million articles left to write.
We're currently at 3.2 million. I think we'll exceed 4 million within
a few years.

> could easily make lists hundreds of items long of things that an
> article could be written on (this is limited mainly by the time I have
> to compile such lists), mostly on historical subjects, but also a fair
> amount of contemporary stuff as well. Seriously. Pick any topic and I
> can guarantee that a list of ten new articles for that topic area
> would be easy to compile.
>
> Just as an example, I was taking part in the Military History World
> War I contest recently, and there were at least 43 new articles
> created (or expanded) for DYK. I'm currently trying to work out how
> many articles were actually created (as opposed to expanded).

That's not very many compared to 3.2 million articles, but I don't
mean to knock it in any way, just trying to put things into
perspective.

> A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and
> see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of
> where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.

This IS the point though; we're now looking for the gaps. That's
exactly what I'm saying. The Wikipedia should more or less run out of
gaps in about 3 years (ish- but it's never going to completely run
out, but growth from existing knowledge will be progressively slower
and slower). OTOH the circle of knowledge is still growing, at a
somewhat slower rate.

> Carcharoth

-- 
-Ian Woollard

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Keegan Paul]

I think Charles' draft analogy is a good one.

The article creation rate should be slowing, and expansion should be
growing, which is what we are focusing on for the most part.  This ties into
the decline in new contributors, but the continued activity amongst regular
and long term users.

~Keegan
-- 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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[WikiEN-l] A war on external links? Was: Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:
>> And
>> further reading sections can point the way for future expansions of
>> the article, or for the reader to go and find out more about the
>> topic.
>>
>> Carcharoth
>
> That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
> editors seem to think is appropriate.

I don't think I've seen much evidence of a "war on external links"
... what there is is, however, is pressure against an unfiltered flood
of external links.

Anyone capable of using Wikipedia is also capable of using Google,
Bing, or any of a number of other search engines.  Beyond a point
adding links reduces the value that Wikpedia provides over these
resources.

Even if you held the position that the world needed another
unselective source of links, Wikipedia isn't especially well
structured to provide it:  There is little to no automation to remove
dead or no longer relevant things,  no automation to find new
worthwhile links, and a lot of vulnerability to manipulation by
interested parties.

I think that at its best Wikipedia should be directly including all
the information available up to Wikipedia's coverage depth, linking
only for citations,  then it should have links to the most valuable
external resources which go deeper into the subject than Wikipedia
reasonably can. If you need a raw feed of sites related to some
subject area this is what the search engines do well.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Carcharoth]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Ian Woollard  wrote:



> I think a lot of people get involved to write new articles. It looks
> like 2007 was 'peak oil' for new articles; after that it was getting
> harder to find new articles to write; about half of the articles that
> were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered.

Does it make sense to say this when *thousands* of articles are being
created every day? Where does the idea even come from that "about half
of the articles that were realistically likely to be covered, were
already covered"? The question that needs to be asked is whether the
"New articles per day" statistic is a measure of the articles being
created, or the articles that are still there as having been created
on that day, a set period (e.g. a year) after being created? i.e. Is
the rate of article deletion included or excluded from those figures?

My view is that the rate of article creation and the number of
"missing" articles depends *heavily* on the topic area. Some topic
areas are very well covered, others are not so well covered. In the
former areas, you will indeed struggle to find new articles to create,
but there are some areas (history in particular) where there are
thousands (probably tens of thousands) of articles still needed. I
could easily make lists hundreds of items long of things that an
article could be written on (this is limited mainly by the time I have
to compile such lists), mostly on historical subjects, but also a fair
amount of contemporary stuff as well. Seriously. Pick any topic and I
can guarantee that a list of ten new articles for that topic area
would be easy to compile.

Just as an example, I was taking part in the Military History World
War I contest recently, and there were at least 43 new articles
created (or expanded) for DYK. I'm currently trying to work out how
many articles were actually created (as opposed to expanded).

A better approach would be to look at samples of article creation and
see what articles are being created and that will give you an idea of
where the gaps are being filled in and hence how big the gaps are.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Fred Bauder]

> And
> further reading sections can point the way for future expansions of
> the article, or for the reader to go and find out more about the
> topic.
>
> Carcharoth

That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
editors seem to think is appropriate.

Fred Bauder



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Re: [WikiEN-l] Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Carcharoth]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 10:47 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> This is about a very useful study that brought home to college
> students that wp is what it is, not what it isn't.
>
> http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/instant_mentor/weir22

Thanks, David. A very good article.

It resonates with what I've been saying (or at least thinking) for
some time, which is that Wikipedia is a starting point, no more than
that. Sometimes a very bad starting point, sometimes a very good one.
But a starting point, just like any other source (but more so than
some sources). Critical thinking and asking what is missing, and what
sources were used (or not used) by the author of what you are reading,
is the key lesson.

For so many Wikipedia articles, it is easy to do a bit of research and
find extra sources that aren't mentioned, either because those sources
were subsumed by the use of a newer source that built on the older
source, or because the editor elected to make the Wikipedia article
what it should be, which is an encyclopedic summary and starting point
for further reading. Wikipedia articles can't aspire to be a
definitive book or resource on a topic, but they can act as a useful
summary for those who only want a summary, and a starting point for
those who want to read and find out more.

As you read around a topic and get to know the sources, and how they
relate to each other, you get a real sense of how complete or balanced
the article is. The list of sources will invariably tell you how good
a Wikipedia article is in terms of how comprehensive it is. And
further reading sections can point the way for future expansions of
the article, or for the reader to go and find out more about the
topic.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Freedom Fighters?

[Charles Matthews]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 28 March 2010 17:18, William Pietri  wrote:
>
>   
>> I just received an odd email suggesting I hand over my admin account to
>> the "Wikipedia Freedom Fighters". I see that they did something similar
>> back in May. Whether this is an actual effort or just a way to stir up
>> trouble, I dunno -- the content was ridiculous enough that I figure it's
>> probably trolling -- but I figured I'd mention it.
>> 
>
>
> Indeed. Best filed with any other phishing or trolling.
>
>   
Goes like this:

"As an advanced user here at wikipedia, I am sure you are familiar with 
the corruption and bureaucracy that exists at every level, with the site 
effectively being run by a clique of editors who are only looking out 
for their own interests. Heck, maybe you are one of them! Hopefully 
though you are not, and would be willing to help us restore fairness and 
integrity to the project...

We are currently expanding our portfolio of administrator accounts and perhaps 
you could consider sharing yours with us - to do so will take you only two 
minutes: change the password (if desired) and then reply to this email with 
your login details. We'll do the rest!

Thank you for your time and consideration, and naturally do not hesitate to 
contact us if you have any questions."

That's an onsite mail, from the account of User:Goldfishhunting who has been 
blocked.

Charles



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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Freedom Fighters?

[David Gerard]

On 28 March 2010 17:18, William Pietri  wrote:

> I just received an odd email suggesting I hand over my admin account to
> the "Wikipedia Freedom Fighters". I see that they did something similar
> back in May. Whether this is an actual effort or just a way to stir up
> trouble, I dunno -- the content was ridiculous enough that I figure it's
> probably trolling -- but I figured I'd mention it.


Indeed. Best filed with any other phishing or trolling.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Charles Matthews]

Ian Woollard wrote:
> * - there's been some new articles required since the Wikipedia
> started up in 2001; knowledge has been created! New knowledge is
> eventually going to set the level of continued growth of the
> Wikipedia, perhaps about 500 articles per day or something. If you
> look at the new article feed we're growing at about ~1200 articles per
> day, and perhaps about half of those likely to survive in the feed are
> now about topics that happened since the Wikipedia started and
> couldn't have been written in 2001. Basically, the Wikipedia has been
> playing catch-up on 2001 till now as well as dealing with new
> knowledge; but IMO it will probably be mostly dealing with new
> knowledge within the next year or so.
>   
I don't completely agree here, but I do think an analysis by various 
"phases" is probably helpful - more so than trying to attribute changes 
in the editing pattern to specific "management decisions", though these 
do have an impact that is not negligible.

For the future historian of enWP, I suspect, the "end of the beginning" 
will be a key point. This is what I'd refer to as "we get the first 
draft"; the point (maybe in 2008?) where it would make sense to say "so 
in future the coverage is going to be something like this, except more 
so in some places". This is an approximate sort of concept, as is the 
demographic idea of "saturation", where "everybody likely to want to 
hear of Wikipedia has by now heard of it". Somewhere, in those concepts 
and the content/community matchup, is a basic truth about what we have 
been doing in the first nine years: collating information and recruiting 
editors, to the point where the nature of the project (as opposed to the 
nature of the mission, abstractly stated) has become reasonably clear.

So in those terms, at least, the peak of sheer activity anticipates the 
"first draft" by a year or so. Plausible enough to me: before you get 
your first draft together there are "placeholder" parts where the author 
knows that what currrently stands there is sorely deficient, things just 
dashed down. Sounds familiar enough for the sort of content that has 
needed to be gradually eradicated. Doing that is something more like 
real work (the point made earlier in the thread about referencing).

Charles


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[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Freedom Fighters?

[William Pietri]

I just received an odd email suggesting I hand over my admin account to 
the "Wikipedia Freedom Fighters". I see that they did something similar 
back in May. Whether this is an actual effort or just a way to stir up 
trouble, I dunno -- the content was ridiculous enough that I figure it's 
probably trolling -- but I figured I'd mention it.

My email came from user WikiFFyta .

William

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Ian Woollard]

On 28/03/2010, Keegan Paul  wrote:
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
>
> It's obvious of the
> peak in January of 2007.
>
> What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically
> declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a
> slope and even less so for very active contributors.

I think a lot of people get involved to write new articles. It looks
like 2007 was 'peak oil' for new articles; after that it was getting
harder to find new articles to write; about half of the articles that
were realistically likely to be covered, were already covered. (*)

Of course a lot of the articles still weren't *very* good, and many
contributors are polishing these articles up, as well as working on
the remaining new articles; that's why we're seeing a slower decline
on contributors than articles.

> What happened in the first six months of 2007?  Did we change template
> systems?  Did we reword some policies relating to new users?

There is only a little bit of very weak evidence for something
happening and no terribly obvious candidates, the only thing I can
think of was that around then there was an increased push for
referencing stuff. Before that you could more or less put anything in,
it was easy and quick. Nothing really massively changed in terms of
policies, they just enforced them more strictly. Referencing is harder
and this slowed the growth a bit, but not too badly; I'm pretty sure
that the peak isn't down due to just requiring references though,
finding new articles to write is getting quite difficult now; this IMO
is the driving reason.

> This relates to an OTRS project I have going on and I got looking into the
> userbase question to prep.
>
> ~Keegan

* - there's been some new articles required since the Wikipedia
started up in 2001; knowledge has been created! New knowledge is
eventually going to set the level of continued growth of the
Wikipedia, perhaps about 500 articles per day or something. If you
look at the new article feed we're growing at about ~1200 articles per
day, and perhaps about half of those likely to survive in the feed are
now about topics that happened since the Wikipedia started and
couldn't have been written in 2001. Basically, the Wikipedia has been
playing catch-up on 2001 till now as well as dealing with new
knowledge; but IMO it will probably be mostly dealing with new
knowledge within the next year or so.
-- 
-Ian Woollard

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[William Pietri]

On 03/27/2010 09:49 PM, Keegan Paul wrote:
> What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has statistically
> declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a
> slope and even less so for very active contributors.
>
> What happened in the first six months of 2007?  Did we change template
> systems?  Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
>

I've got two hypotheses, but no data, so I don't know how true these are.

One is that this correlates with Wikipedia's hype curve. The notion is 
that people were most likely to become involved in Wikipedia when it was 
new to them. By now most people have settled in as either readers or 
participants, and are unlikely to change roles.

The other is that this relates to the odds that somebody would arrive on 
a topic and see something that to them obviously needed fixing and that 
they could easily fix right then. This would be a function of increasing 
coverage, increasing article quality, and tightened standards that might 
eliminate things novice editors would find appealing.

These could both be true, as could a number of other things. Like 
Gregory Maxwell, I suspect it's a mix of weak effects.

William

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[WikiEN-l] Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[David Gerard]

This is about a very useful study that brought home to college
students that wp is what it is, not what it isn't.

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/instant_mentor/weir22


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Stephen Bain]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 4:57 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
>
> The number of new contributors _must_
> decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia
> will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)

Well, young people *are* increasingly turning to Wikipedia to learn
about things:

http://stats.grok.se/en/201003/Sex

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.b...@gmail.com

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Keegan Paul]

Oh yeah, the Account Creation proccess, article upload wizard, and commons
image uploading process has some effect as well.  In optimizing one or a few
times contributions, we perhaps also do not pique interest in further
content creation.  On the other hand, maybe they wouldn't have even tried
before.  I move to the former, based on the stats.

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Keegan Paul  wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Keegan Paul  wrote:
>> > http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
>> >
>> > It's obvious of
>> the
>> > peak in January of 2007.
>> >
>> > What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has
>> statistically
>> > declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a
>> > slope and even less so for very active contributors.
>> >
>> > What happened in the first six months of 2007?  Did we change template
>> > systems?  Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
>>
>> Careful not to mistake a decline in the derivative of a function to be
>> a decline in the function. The number of new contributors _must_
>> decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia
>> will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)
>>
>> The step function in December 2005 is clearly due to
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Foundation_reaction
>>
>> The only thing I recall happening around June 2007 was the
>> introduction of a real captcha.  Might be relevant if a non-trivial
>> amount of the new accounts were spambot sleepers!
>>
>> I don't recall how those stats are generated. If they are produced
>> from the public data then there will be odd distortions due to
>> deletions hiding accounts..
>>
>> I think there were also changes to the upload procedure around that
>> time (the interface language abuse for an upload wizard) which started
>> directing users to commons to upload... and uploading is a primary
>> reason to create an account.   This seems to be at least weakly
>> supported by the stats on commons:
>> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
>>
>> I'd guess that like most things its probably a mixture of weak effects.
>>
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>>
>
> Oh sure, figures lie and liars figure.  Like stereotypes, from a broad
> lens, they make sense.
>
> I think captcha probably had a good deal to do with it.  Good point there
> to mention.  The systemization of procedures is a good point as well,
> whether it be uploading or bot-assisted and the functionality of automated
> tools like huggle and twinkle.
>
> With these thoughts in mind, the good thing is that the standard userbase
> numbers are consistent.
>
> Thanks Greg, other thoughts?
>
> ~Keegan
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
>



-- 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Keegan Paul]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:57 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Keegan Paul  wrote:
> > http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm
> >
> > It's obvious of the
> > peak in January of 2007.
> >
> > What I'm interested in is thoughts of why New Contributors has
> statistically
> > declined sharply, but the list of active contributors has much less of a
> > slope and even less so for very active contributors.
> >
> > What happened in the first six months of 2007?  Did we change template
> > systems?  Did we reword some policies relating to new users?
>
> Careful not to mistake a decline in the derivative of a function to be
> a decline in the function. The number of new contributors _must_
> decline at some point, unless you hold a hypothesis that Wikipedia
> will eventually be driving the growth of human population. ;)
>
> The step function in December 2005 is clearly due to
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_biography_controversy#Wikimedia_Foundation_reaction
>
> The only thing I recall happening around June 2007 was the
> introduction of a real captcha.  Might be relevant if a non-trivial
> amount of the new accounts were spambot sleepers!
>
> I don't recall how those stats are generated. If they are produced
> from the public data then there will be odd distortions due to
> deletions hiding accounts..
>
> I think there were also changes to the upload procedure around that
> time (the interface language abuse for an upload wizard) which started
> directing users to commons to upload... and uploading is a primary
> reason to create an account.   This seems to be at least weakly
> supported by the stats on commons:
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaCOMMONS.htm
>
> I'd guess that like most things its probably a mixture of weak effects.
>
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Oh sure, figures lie and liars figure.  Like stereotypes, from a broad lens,
they make sense.

I think captcha probably had a good deal to do with it.  Good point there to
mention.  The systemization of procedures is a good point as well, whether
it be uploading or bot-assisted and the functionality of automated tools
like huggle and twinkle.

With these thoughts in mind, the good thing is that the standard userbase
numbers are consistent.

Thanks Greg, other thoughts?

~Keegan
-- 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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