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Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

blog.ericgoldman.org

51–52 of 52 posts

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His analysis was better than mine in that he weighed content by persistence. Still, for what it's worth, I found that when edits were weighed by length, the 1000 most frequent editors dominated.

Depends on how well you calculate length. Miniscule edits can produce enormous diffs.

That's true. I forgot to mention that I capped the lengths of negative edits to 10.

Re: Wikipedia Will Fail in Four Years (2006)

#52

I know a guy who's a "Wikipedia consultant." He's a longtime editor who now sells his services to companies and people looking to polish their image. I'm glad the practice hasn't spread.

why not report him to the wider wiki community. it seems prudent to crack down on this kind of behaviour for all our benefit.

Like ZeroGravitas says, Wikipedia isn't zero sum. He frames the issue as being paid to make Wikipedia better. It's not clear that what he's doing is wrong, though it does leave a funny taste in my mouth. I suppose it really depends on how much the money biases him.
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