The relationship between editor trend and revert trend
The relationship between editor trend and revert trend
As a combined result of Editor trend study by Diederik van Liere and Revert trend study by Erik Zachte, I just have below interesting findings:
Just showed in the left chart, the decline pattern for cohort ratio can be grouped into
- 2004-2005: A shallow decline pattern
- 2007-2010: A deeper decline pattern
- 2006: between the above two
While, the total revert ratio are
- 2004-2005: Less than 5%
- 2007-2010: Greater than 10%
- 2006: between the above two
For the above data, we have below explanations:
- Just coincidence
- Revert ratio change is the direct reason for decline pattern change for cohort ratio
- Revert ratio change and decline pattern change for cohort ratio are related, but both were lead by a deeper reason
- The combination of explanation 2 and explanation 3.
I prefer the last explanation. Whatever, I think we still need to study more data to understand the complex dynamic of Wikipedia community.--Mountain 07:56, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the reversion trend and the loss of goodfaith newbies are interlinked, and I suggest that at least as far as EN wiki is concerned one major junction is over unsourced edits. Officially if a newbie adds unsourced uncontentious content other than about living people then it shouldn't simply be reverted, other editors should either source it or tag it as citation needed, then after a few weeks or months it is likely to be sourced or go. But the reality is different and recent changes is littered with newbies adding unsourced content and other editors immediately removing it as "unsourced". I think that the solution to this is consistency, either we should reaffirm that our policy is "verifiable" and ask those who do this patrolling to check content before removing it, or we should explicitly change our policy to "verified" and include a prompt in the editing process asking editors for their source. In my view it would be much less bitey to newbies to say that we require a source for any new fact than to continue as at present.