Edit count

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In Wikipedia and similar wikis, an edit count is a record of the number of edits performed by a certain editor, or by all editors on a particular page. An edit, in this context, is an individually recorded change to the content of a page. Within Wikimedia projects, a number of tools exist to determine and compare edit counts, resulting in their usage for various purposes, with both positive and negative effects. [1]

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Use and misuse of edit counts

Pie chart of all edits to the English Wikipedia, with a slice for each thousand of the 10,000 most active Wikipedians, and everyone else in brown (as of July 3, 2019) Top 10000 Rest of English Wikipedia Pie Chart 3July19.png
Pie chart of all edits to the English Wikipedia, with a slice for each thousand of the 10,000 most active Wikipedians, and everyone else in brown (as of July 3, 2019)

An editor's edit count is often used as a shorthand for determining their level of activity within a wiki, to the extent that it has been said that "one's edit count is a sort of coin of the realm". [2] Tools exist on Wikipedia "to compare contributors by the number of edits they have made", [3] and a Wikipedia editor's edit count "may bring suffrage in elections where only community members may participate". [1] Edit counts are also often weighed in community determinations of whether to grant editors extended rights. [1]

It has been noted, however, that the measure fails to reflect the quality of contributions, with minor improvements and even acts of vandalism potentially registering the same number of edits as substantial additions and improvements of content. [1] [4] [5] Vandalism can similarly increase the edit count associated with a specific article without indicating improvements to the quality of the article. [6] The edit count recorded for a particular article tends to reflect the general level of editor interest in the article, with relatively obscure or unfamiliar topics sustaining low overall edit counts over time. [7] Reader interest, however, is more immediately gauged through pageviews.

At the extreme end, editors who are more focused on increasing their edit count than on improving the quality of work being performed may suffer social consequences due to excessive time invested in making edits. [1] Historically, it has been asserted that some Wikipedia administrators "engage in 'drive-by reversing' so as to drive up their edit count", with such edits sometimes being made too quickly for the editor to have actually read the content being reverted. [8] The development of "an unhealthy obsession with the notion of edit count" has locally been deemed "editcountitis". [1] [9] [10]

The total edit count for all Wikipedians combined was reported as having reached one billion in mid-January 2021, with the billionth edit being registered by the most prolific non-bot Wikipedia editor, Steven Pruitt, though it was also noted that several hundred thousand early Wikipedia edits were lost in a software upgrade. [11] Notably, some of the highest edit counts in Wikipedia are achieved by bots running automated tasks, rather than by human editors. [12] Among human editors, it has been observed that a small percentage of editors are responsible for a substantial proportion of the total number of edits that have been made. [3]

Academic studies

One of the earliest significant academic studies about Wikipedia was a 2007 peer-reviewed paper, [13] also mentioned in The Guardian , [14] in which a team of six researchers from the University of Minnesota measured the relationship between editors' edit count and the editors' ability to convey their writings to Wikipedia readers, measured in terms of persistent word views (PWV)—the number of times a word introduced by an edit is viewed. The accounting method is best described using the author's own words: "each time an article is viewed, each of its words is also viewed. When a word written by editor X is viewed, he or she is credited with one PWV". [13] The number of times an article was viewed was estimated from the web server logs. [13]

The researchers analyzed 25 trillion PWVs attributable to registered users in the interval September 1, 2002 − October 31, 2006. At the end of this period, the top 10% of editors (by edit count) were credited with 86% of PWVs, the top 1% about 70%, and the top 0.1% (4200 users) were attributed 44% of PWVs, i.e. nearly half of Wikipedia's "value" as measured in this study. The top 10 editors (by PWV) contributed only 2.6% of PWVs, and only three of them were in top 50 by edit count. From the data, the study authors concluded that "[g]rowth of PWV share increases super-exponentially by edit count rank; in other words, elite editors (those who edit the most times) account for more value than they would [be attributed] given a power-law relationship". [13] The study also analyzed the impact of bots on content. By edit count, bots dominate Wikipedia; 9 of the top 10 and 20 of the top 50 are bots. In contrast, in the PWV ranking, only two bots appear in the top 50, and none in the top 10. Based on the steady growth of the influence on those top 0.1% editors by PWV, the study concluded that the editors with the highest edit count "dominate what people see when they visit Wikipedia". [13]

A 2008 study of English Wikipedia editors who had successfully passed the peer review process to become administrators by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University devised a probit model, which found that the number of edits was a factor in the success of such efforts. [15] Edit counts in certain Wikipedia namespaces were more valuable to this end.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Wikipedia</span>

Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MeatballWiki</span> Wiki dedicated to online communities

MeatballWiki is a wiki dedicated to online communities, network culture, and hypermedia. Containing a record of experience on running wikis, it is intended for "discussion about wiki philosophy, wiki culture, instructions and observations."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki</span> Type of website that visitors can edit

A wiki is a form of online hypertext publication that is collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MediaWiki</span> Free and open-source wiki software

MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker, after which it has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It powers several wiki hosting websites across the Internet, as well as most websites hosted by the Foundation including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Meta-Wiki and Wikidata, which define a large part of the set requirements for the software. MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language and stores all text content into a database. The software is optimized to efficiently handle large projects, which can have terabytes of content and hundreds of thousands of views per second. Because Wikipedia is one of the world's largest and most visited websites, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication has been a major concern for developers. Another major aspect of MediaWiki is its internationalization; its interface is available in more than 400 languages. The software has more than 1,000 configuration settings and more than 1,800 extensions available for enabling various features to be added or changed. Besides its usage on Wikimedia sites, MediaWiki has been used as a knowledge management and content management system on websites such as Fandom, wikiHow and major internal installations like Intellipedia and Diplopedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English Wikipedia</span> English-language edition of Wikipedia

The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of Wikipedia</span> Controversy surrounding the online encyclopedia Wikipedia

The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias. Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior, social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven policy application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia</span> Free online crowdsourced encyclopedia

Wikipedia is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the use of the wiki-based editing system MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. It is consistently ranked as one of the ten most popular websites in the world, and as of 2024 is ranked the fifth most visited website on the Internet by Semrush. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization that employs a staff of over 700 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RationalWiki</span> Wiki criticizing religion and pseudoscience

RationalWiki is an online wiki which is written from a scientific skeptic, secular, and progressive perspective. Its stated goals are to "analyze and refute pseudoscience and the anti-science movement, document crank ideas, explore conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, and fundamentalism, and analyze how these subjects are handled in the media." It was created in 2007 as a counterpoint to the Christian fundamentalist Conservapedia after an incident in which some editors of Conservapedia were banned. RationalWiki has been described as liberal in contrast to Conservapedia.

"Ignore all rules" (IAR) is a policy used on Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. The English Wikipedia policy reads: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." [emphasis in original]. The rule was proposed by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger to encourage editors to add information without focusing excessively on formatting, though Sanger later criticized the rule's effects on the community.

Wikipedia has been studied extensively. Between 2001 and 2010, researchers published at least 1,746 peer-reviewed articles about the online encyclopedia. Such studies are greatly facilitated by the fact that Wikipedia's database can be downloaded without help from the site owner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GroupLens Research</span> Computer science research lab

GroupLens Research is a human–computer interaction research lab in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities specializing in recommender systems and online communities. GroupLens also works with mobile and ubiquitous technologies, digital libraries, and local geographic information systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia community</span> Volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia

The Wikipedia community, collectively and individually known as Wikipedians, is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry.

<i>Good Faith Collaboration</i> 2010 book by Joseph Michael Reagle

Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a 2010 book by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. that deals with the topic of Wikipedia and the Wikipedia community. The book was first published on August 27, 2010, through the MIT Press and has a foreword by Lawrence Lessig. The book is an ethnographic study of the history of Wikipedia, its real life and theoretical precursors, and its culture including its consensus and collaborative practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gender bias on Wikipedia</span> Gender gap problem in Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects

Gender bias on Wikipedia is a term used to describe various gender-related disparities on Wikipedia, particularly the overrepresentation of men among both volunteer contributors and article subjects, as well as lesser coverage of and topics primarily of interest to women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aaron Halfaker</span> American computer scientist

Aaron Halfaker is a principal applied scientist at Microsoft Research. He previously served as a research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation until 2020.

<i>Common Knowledge?</i> 2014 book by Dariusz Jemielniak

Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia is a 2014 book about Wikipedia's community of contributors. The author is Dariusz Jemielniak, who is a Wikipedia contributor himself.

A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is an affinity group for contributors with shared goals within the Wikimedia movement. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sibling projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Predictions of the end of Wikipedia</span> Theories that Wikipedia will break down or become obsolete

Various publications and commentators have predicted the end of Wikipedia since it rose to prominence. Multiple potential dangers have been proposed, such as poor quality control and inconsistent editors/administrators.

Ideological bias on Wikipedia, especially on its English-language edition, has been the subject of academic analysis and public criticism of the project. Questions relate to whether its content is biased due to the political, religious, or other ideologies its volunteer editors may adhere to. These all draw concerns as to the possible effects this may have on the encyclopedia's reliability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deletion of articles on Wikipedia</span> Removal of articles on Wikipedia

Volunteer editors of Wikipedia delete articles from the online encyclopedia regularly, following processes that have been formulated by the site's community over time. The most common route is the outright deletion of articles that clearly violate the rules of the website. Other mechanisms include an intermediate collaborative process that bypasses a complete discussion, and a whole debate at the dedicated forum called Articles for deletion (AfD). As a technical action, deletion can only be done by a subset of editors assigned particular specialized privileges by the community, called administrators. An omission that has been carried out can be contested by appeal to the deleting administrator or on another discussion board called Deletion review (DRV).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates (2008). How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It. No Starch Press p. 323–24.
  2. ↑ Dariusz Jemielniak, Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia (2014), p. 39, quoting Joseph M. Reagle Jr. (2010), p. 157.
  3. 1 2 Schiff, Stacy (July 31, 2006). "Know It All". The New Yorker. Vol. 82, no. 23. p. 40. Retrieved March 6, 2021.
  4. ↑ Claudia Müller-Birn, Janette Lehmann, and Sabina Jeschke, "A Composite Calculation for Author Activity in Wikis: Accuracy Needed", Sabina Jeschke, Ingrid Isenhardt, and Klaus Henning, eds., Automation, Communication and Cybernetics in Science and Engineering 2009/2010 (2010), p. 138.
  5. ↑ Adele Godoy Vrana, Anasuya Sengupta, and Siko Bouterse, "Toward a Wikipedia For and From Us All", in Joseph Reagle, Jackie Koerner, Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution (2020), p. 253.
  6. ↑ Andrew Lih, "Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources? Metrics for evaluating collaborative media as a news resource", Journalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong; Paper for the 5th International Symposium on Online Journalism (April 16–17, 2004), p. 20.
  7. ↑ Ehmann, Katherine; Large, Andrew; Beheshti, Jamshid (October 6, 2008). "Collaboration in context: Comparing article evolution among subject disciplines in Wikipedia". First Monday . doi: 10.5210/fm.v13i10.2217 .
  8. ↑ O'Neil, Mathieu (2009). Cyberchiefs: Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes. London; New York: Pluto Press. p. 163. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183pc3c. ISBN   9781849644037. OCLC   656841493.
  9. ↑ Dariusz Jemielniak, Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia (2014), p. 40.
  10. ↑ Jane Klobas, Wikis: Tools for information Work and Collaboration (2006), p. 199.
  11. ↑ Gault, Matthew (January 15, 2021). "The English Language Wikipedia Just Had Its Billionth Edit". Motherboard .
  12. ↑ Priedhorsky, Reid; Chen, Jilin; Lam, Shyong (Tony) K.; Panciera, Katherine; Terveen, Loren; Riedl, John (November 2007). "Creating, destroying, and restoring value in wikipedia". Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Conference on supporting group work - GROUP '07. p. 259. doi:10.1145/1316624.1316663. ISBN   9781595938459. S2CID   15350808.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 Priedhorsky, Reid; Chen, Jilin; Lam, Snider (Tony); Panciera, Katherine; Terveen, Loren; Austin, Shane (2007). "Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia". Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work. Conference on Supporting Group Work. ACM Press. pp. 259–268. doi:10.1145/1316624.1316663. ISBN   978-1-59593-845-9. Archived June 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  14. ↑ Baker, Nicholson (April 10, 2008). "How I fell in love with Wikipedia". The Guardian. Retrieved November 29, 2010.
  15. ↑ Burke, Moira; Kraut, Robert (2008). Taking up the mop. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '08. p. 3441. doi:10.1145/1358628.1358871. ISBN   978-1-60558-012-8.
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