tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7017082.post6943885540398489346..comments2023-03-25T12:30:12.310-04:00Comments on Wordwright: What if you built a democracy and nobody came?Gavinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09902304588711972110noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7017082.post-50723321784492024522009-01-05T21:19:00.000-05:002009-01-05T21:19:00.000-05:00You are correct that Swartz makes a persuasive arg...You are correct that Swartz makes a persuasive argument that Wales methodology is flawed. It's not entirely clear however, that the mass of contributions to Wikipedia come "from unexpected corners," unless one defines "unexpected corners" to mean everyone except for the gang of 500. Swartz's most interesting point seems to be that the mass of Wikipedia contributors seems to be unregistered users, so we don't have any idea at all who they are.<BR/><BR/>On some level, thus, Wikipedia still exists at the level of the potential (maybe everyone is contributing, professionals and lay experts, and maybe the group of contributors is skewed somehow), but as I tried to imply in my first post, this may not be a problem. Demanding that contributors register seems much more Britannica than wiki.<BR/><BR/>I'd love to know if contributions are coming from everywhere, or if particular contributions tend to come from particular places, but this doesn't seem exactly like the kind of question Wikipedia was designed to answer. (Maybe we should ask Google. It seems much more up their alley.)Gavinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09902304588711972110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7017082.post-73865073391078911462009-01-05T19:33:00.000-05:002009-01-05T19:33:00.000-05:00More than a nitpick: This is total number of edits...More than a nitpick: This is total number of edits, and many hard-core Wikipedia users keep tabs on the site w/ the aid of bots that do lots of auto-linking and auto-formatting for them. And in doing so, they rack up thousands and thousands of "edits."<BR/><BR/>Many of these edits are tiny -- a few characters.<BR/><BR/>Check out Aaron Swartz's analysis of actual volume of characters for a fairer view:<BR/><BR/>http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia<BR/><BR/>It's def true that the core editor community @ Wikipedia is very small. But that in no way contradicts the fact that the overall contributor base is very large (and it comes from unexpected corners).Robin Sloanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14544600054056664342noreply@blogger.com