[OSM-talk] Wikipedia article

[Jason Remillard]

Hi,

Simon - If you look at the slashdot and hackernews links, I think you
will see that many of the people that are upset probably don't have an
ideological ax to grind.
Eugene - Obviously, I think it is OK right now that it is hard to diff
and revert changes. We are not under assault by spammers.

One last thought. It is interesting to study Wikipedia because the
project is so successful. It is a top 10 web site, everybody knows and
uses it, they have a well funded foundation, etc, etc. Hardly anybody
knows about OSM, and our registered user count is quite small compared
to Wikipedia.

However, check this link out. It shows that Wikipedia has about
36,000+ active editors (90 day average)

http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/images/decline.png

OSM, currently have about 18,000 active editors (30 day average)

http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/

We know that 80% of the edits are done by the active editors. Using
this important metric, we are about half the size of Wikipedia, which
is amazing.

Jason




On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Jason Remillard
<remillard.jason at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tom
>
> Your blog post is very interesting.
>
> Just in case anybody thinks that the rapid growth of OSM is inevitable
> at this point,  this study shows how Wikipedia turned off its growth
> like a switch when they starting clamping down on first time editors.
> Since 2007 the number of active editors has actually decreased.
>
> http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/
>
> Unless the map in your area is 100% perfect and complete, be extra
> nice to those new editors!
>
> Jason
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org> wrote:
>> I wrote an article somewhat in the same vein:
>>
>>> http://macwright.org/2013/10/15/point-and-shoot.html
>>
>> Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one
>> of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly,
>> elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some
>> relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more
>> actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be
>> friendly.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jason Remillard <remillard.jason at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> The MIT technology review just published this article on Wikipedia.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/
>>>
>>> It is sport criticizing Wikipedia, but two things stuck out.
>>>
>>> Wikipedia is trying to get more editors. However, they seem to have
>>> some additional problems that OSM does not have.
>>>
>>> Wikipedia failed to roll out the new GUI article editor.
>>>
>>> If you read the discussion on hacker news, and Slashdot.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1643228/wikipedias-participation-problem
>>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638
>>>
>>> It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits.
>>> It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every
>>> bodies first edits are questionable.
>>>
>>> OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really
>>> good thing.
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> talk mailing list
>>> talk at openstreetmap.org
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
>>