I decided to read the wikipedia entry on xkcd.com. According to wikipedia "xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe a former contractor for NASA. Munroe describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." I have been reading xkcd for over a year now and never knew the background behind it. The wikipedia article went in depth about the origins, the author, the effects some comics have had on society. One example is YouTube has placed a feature on comments that plays back the comment aloud on "Audio Preview", based on the strip "Listen to Yourself."
Looking into the history of the page I can see many different changes made over time. Most were small updates, deletions, or additions after the man content of the page was published initially. These small changes changed the original 2 sentence wikipedia entry into a 12 page article. Also there is apparently a wikipedia talk section dedicated to this page and according to avid wikipedia editors for this page should be used and read before editing the page. These rules are enforced and developed over time through this talk page. However the knowledge of a talk page is not know to users unless they select the history and see how users have delete alterations to the page based on the contributor not adhering to the rules.
If a person is registered it shows their username with a link to their page, but if they are not then their IP address is publicly visible. Most of the deleted changes were from non-registered users and were changed quickly after they were made. One user in specific (Rjanag) closely watches the article and voices his/her option to any change not found appropriate to the guidlines.
I believe wikipedia would be made better if non-registered users were told about the existance of a wikipedia talk page and how users should post possible changes there first before commiting them to the article. This will keep redundant or unnessecary information off the page. Another idea would be to create a voting system where a change is only reflected in the article if X frequent contributors approve it. This will help eliminate the "fighting" involved with publishing a change.
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I didn’t know that the Audio Preview feature was inspired by an xkcd comic; that is actually pretty funny. :) Regarding the editing rules, it’s great how you observed that most of the deleted changes were from non-registered users who might not be aware of the rules stated on the talk page. In my post, I only observed the “fighting” going on with multiple reverts and generalized that most of it was between registered users who were passionate about given topic/issue.
ReplyDeleteWithholding a change for approval is one way to reduce this fighting, although it might also reduce a user’s willingness to make a change in the first place.
I think the "fighting" happens mostly with current events pages. I like the idea of a voting system, though this would only work with high volume pages. For more obscure pages, only a few people may be working to update it.
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