On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Aryeh Gregor <simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com> wrote: <snip>
> Last I heard, by the way, even now most actual *content* is added by > occasional contributors. Power users may have more edits, but that > doesn't mean they're the most important ones. <snip> It may depend on your definition of "occasional contributor" and "power user", but the way I tend to think about such distinctions would suggest your statement is false. I've never been able to do the analysis directly for enwiki, because it is too large and lacks appropriate dumps, but looking at other large Wikipedias suggests that as a rule of thumb about 70% of article content (measured by character count) comes from accounts with more than 1000 edits to articles. Only ~15% of content originates from people with 100 article edits or less. In practice, adding sentences, paragraphs, sections, and entirely new articles, is something that most people have to ease their way into. In addition, young editors who try to add large blocks of text too early in their career often find their content is reverted because of writing style or formatting problems. So, the creation of new blocks of content tends to be primarily accomplished by experienced editors. You are right that the multitude of drive-by editors willing to do spell checking and make other small edits is a great resource, and should be encouraged. However, I would suggest that for the expansion and long-term development of Wikipedia it is the retention of existing power users and the development of new ones that is most important. However, making it easier for people to first start editing should also ultimately lead to more potential power editors, so I think the goals are generally compatible. There is no reason why making it easier for newbies should ever be anything other than a net benefit to everyone. -Robert Rohde _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
