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How Wikipedia's Community Polices Vandalism
Ed Kohler

If you laid every story that's been written about Wikipedia's content being of questionable accuracy end to end, how many times would those stories circle the Earth?

I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that data somewhere on Wikipedia.

Rather than writing yet another article on the subject of Wikipedia's inaccuracy - which would be tough for me, considering how valuable I find the site - why not look into how the site actually patrols itself for vandalism?

The next time someone tells you the information on Wikipedia is of questionable accuracy, just show them this:

Wikipedia Minneapolis Subscribers

What's that? That's a shot from Google Reader showing that over 2000 people subscribe to the edits to the Wikipedia entry on the city of Minneapolis. Just that one page! Since Google Reader's currently running around 1/4 to 1/3 market share, there are probably 6000 people subscribing to the edits of that one page of Wikipedia.

Want to vandalize that page? Go ahead. But at least a thousand people will likely know about it within the hour and thousands within a day.

Wikipedia doesn't rely upon a single editor who does things like sleep, go on vacation, and hangs out with friends. Instead, it taps into the time and energy of thousands of volunteers who choose to police topics that interest them.




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Comments

1. Posted by: Disillusioned Lackey on December 5, 2007 10:00 AM:

I think that you missed out on the big story of the week, or year, per Wikipedia and Vandalism. One of Wikipedia's harshest anti-vandal fighters, who was known for being horribly abusive, was removed from her job this week, against the wishes of a supportive Jimbo Wales, and cabal of like-minded abusive administrators. The corruption was overcome by popular outrage. To this day, Jimbo Wales is denying it was a big deal - even as he almost banned the person who brought the full information to the public, and stopped short of it only to forfend popular revolt of some of his best editors.

Wikipedia is a great thing, but it needs a lot of work.

See:
Bullies, oligarchies and online forums (CNET Asia)
or
The Register--Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia
or go to Wikipedia Review

Or just do a "Google" on the words "Wikipedia Durova" on Google Blogs or Google News.

Everyone is talking about this, but offically on Wikipedia, mum's the word. Quite the scandal.




2. Posted by: Bill McGuire on December 5, 2007 8:16 PM:

Ed,

One of my friends was scolded at work for paying a little too much affection to his pet pages. He is towing the line now and being a good boy.

BTW what happened to our good friend Benjamin? Ever since he received his new toy from Amazon he has been very quiet here on TE.




3. Posted by: Doug on December 5, 2007 8:21 PM:

I think that's the feed for all recentchanges at Wikipedia. Google reader just erroneously lists what the top story was when it first fetched the feed I guess.




4. Posted by: Ed Kohler on December 5, 2007 10:42 PM:

Doug, thanks for pointing out that glitch. I'll see if I can find an accurate stat for Minneapolis or some other example.

Bill, I haven't seen Ben in a while. I imagine he's getting carpal tunnel from Kindle flipping. :-)




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