There’s been something happening recently in my little corner of Wikipedia, and I don’t know if it’s an anomaly or evidence of a trend; so this is raw random anecdotal data. By “my little corner” I mean the small collection of articles that I track via a recent-changes Atom feed, have contributed to quite a bit, and feel a little bit of shared responsibility for. There’s been a surge of recent editorial activity, with super-energetic (and apparently well-informed) new contributors trimming and tweaking and growing the articles, often several times per day. In general, while I haven’t been convinced that 100% of the changes are improvements, the quality of the articles as a whole is definitely trending up. Also, the random drive-by teenage defacements are getting fixed really fast. Anyone else seeing this?
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Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Utkarshraj Atmaram (Dec 04 2006, at 00:14)
A lot of new WikiProjects have sprung up, providing collaboration opportunities for new editors. As about defacements, the number of recent changes patrollers has increased. Tools such as Vandal Fighter, VandalProof, VandalSniper, WikiGuard, Rcbirds, Anti-vandal tool etc. have made life easier for these patrollers. Also, bots such as AntiVandalBot revert any suspicious edits immediately.
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From: Alex (Dec 04 2006, at 01:07)
I received repeated versions of already delivered notifications about changes of articles I track. The articles were not changed actually but Wikipedia strangely sent the copies of notifications about previous changes (including my own). Feeds system glitches maybe.
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From: SN (Dec 04 2006, at 03:30)
It would be nice to have a list of recent referrers for each article on Wikipedia.
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From: Manuzhai (Dec 04 2006, at 07:29)
My watchlist (which is a weird cross-selection from different topics, e.g. Eminem, The Netherlands, Highly sensitive persons -- which I actually started) has more than usual activity for today, but not the rest of last week.
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From: Evan (Dec 04 2006, at 15:48)
I must say, I've noticed that trend as well, in many diverse areas of Wikipedia, ranging from Indian history to German composers... A sign of things to come, I hope...
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