Who are Wikipedia Authors?
Soon enough we will know a little more on who is editing pages on the most popular open content encyclopedia, Wikipeida, thanks to its operator The Wikimedia foundation, who plans on surveying its contributors.
The main goal of the survey strategy will be to uncover the identities and posting habits of Wikipedia authors.
The real interesting information will come in the form of discovering how many professionals/experts are actually editing pages and how many are simply individuals unqualified to write such entries in an encyclopedia.
As we all know, many Wikipedia contributors have hidden agendas, and therefore will not freely disclose any personal information. But this may be a way to pick out many of the unqualified authors, since qualified author with real information should have no reason to hide.
Though as with any survey, we know all the information will not be perfect. Still, any information collected will be information that gives us a peak into the mysterious back-end world of Wikipeida entries, so it will be useful.
Some information collected will be released at Wikimania this July and the rest will be out by the end of the year.
Can’t wait!
One Comment to “Who are Wikipedia Authors?”
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This is one big LOL. Know why? Because this ridiculous plan makes the fallacious assumption that so-called “experts in their fields” come, automatically, without “hidden agendas” (no doubt by virtue of the immense amount of money it takes to be acknowledged as an expert in one’s field?). And how, by the way, does one identify a bona-fide “expert?” With a diploma? There are plenty of idiotic graduates, post-grads and post-docs in the world — and by the same token, there are also plenty of highly educated individuals without credentials from academia.
I can see this, possibly, working for strictly technical documents. Anything else is crap.