- Tuesday, 24 November 2009
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The root of all fascism is the lack of a sense of humour - Vanessa Swatzell
Wackypedia regulars get wackier the more they edit
RESEARCHERS looking into the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia have worked out that the regular editors are letting the operation down.
Dartmouth researchers, Denise Anthony and Sean Smith said that the anonymous, infrequent contributors, the Good Samaritans, were at least as reliable as the fake penis experts who update the site constantly and have a reputation to maintain.
Anthony and Smith were surprised by their findings which were basically that the more people contributed the less reliable their material became and had to be corrected.
Perhaps one of the explanations is that people who belong to the Wikipedia community feel the need to write more about stuff they do not know about in a desperate bid to keep their virtual street cred. They also seem to gain social status by deleting profiles of people who know more than they do, such as editors of techie magazines.
You can read the full report here. µ
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Whould that be nice to be an anon.? I mean you'll never be a "good" editor in Whackypedia ("admin" also) with a user name tag but 8-year old geniuses do. So why try to steal their lights? 

It must be more enjoyable to be an anon. as 1) you won't be blamed for almost anything (vandalism not included) as the term "newbie"/"assume good faith" applied to every anon's and 2) as reported, no reputation(s) to maintain, so life's easy, enjoy editing? Just pop in news/facts around the net, put up the references, then click Save page, and viola, you've became an "editor". How sweet. 

Why be a member? To start a new page? okay, ask somebody to do it for ya. To watch a page for changes? Is that helpful at all? To participate in a discussion? Isn't that anons can join too? So what left, wait for a gaziliionth-to-one chance to earn an "admin"/"moderator" position/"barnstar", honestly I don't need that, that's some too-much-time-to-waste people's interest. For what? reputations of course!

To conclude, Whackypedia is for those people who have absolutely NO reputation in the real world to proof they have a share in the web development from which they gained a sense of achievement. Which to me is similar to win in an online battle around a bunch of gamers outside a proper tournament. Without this highly stupid thought, you might think of being an anon. is a better alternative to register, while you can enjoy the fun of editing, and not needing to worry about the relationships among power users or whatever policies looming in Whackypedia.
You have got this entirely wrong.

It actually says, "Registered users’ quality increases with more contributions". 
It also says "Good Samaritans contribute higher quality content than...registered users with many contributions (cell 1) though
the latter is significant at the p<.10 level" - in other words it does not even reach the 95% confidence level.

Can you read? Have you read it?
Did Inquirer even look at the Figure 1 graph on the report?

The Inquirer headline is unfairly wrong.
Not a big suprise. I used to update and fix articles dealing with drug information being that my doctorate is in that field. I pretty stopped after having zelotes edit or revert pages because what I posted was "wrong". 

This despite that fact that I provided hard primary litature to suport my adjustments and they just had old/wrong/outdated tertiary sources. 

Wiki is a good site, but when I see the mistakes on articles that are in my proffession area of expertice it makes me question the validity of the information found in other reference articles.
Wikipedia is more reliable than some newspapers. This article is an example of that.
Wrong. Read the article. Anonymous users' contributions' quality goes down the more they post. Registered users' goes up.
Oh Charlie! Please go back to highschool and then proof your post.
Amen poster ANON! Mr. Charlie Hart, if you have a doctoral degree then I have monkeys flying out of my butt. I promise you that I do not. In just three short paragraphs (subject content indicates two were appropriate), you have managed to not only completely decimate proper English spelling and grammar, but also to bring shame to every real PhD graduate. I hope you understand why I choose not to address you as Dr. Hart.

It is completely understandable why others have been editing your Wikipedia entries, Mr. Hart. How can anyone have confidence in an "authority", such as yourself, whose command of the written English language is so atrocious?

Mr. Hart, perhaps you were a little too involved with your drug research, yes? My advice to you is to refrain from posting anything further until you become sufficiently proficient in English spelling and grammar skills to avoid further embarrassment to yourself and learned peers.
Yes, as apprentice Jim Murphy points out, grammer trumps content. I say we all throw in with Jim and burn all the rubbish not printed in proper English. Lets start with all that fuddy-duddy greek stuff, like was writ by that guy name after the planet... then move on to the Indians, say it with me "Down with zero, Down with zero." lastly we have a special place for all that religious nonsense written in hebrew, greek and latin. Then we move onto the middle english junk like the Magna Carta.... oh how the fires will burn tonight. That leaves us with... ummm, well, err, post world war comic strips, and the unibomber manifesto. but at least it's in english!
I liked the way he was complaining about zeolites editing his posts.