On 2/27/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross(a)yale.edu>
wrote:
If someone comes up with the equation for that
based on the paper's
data, then we could do some measurements on the mechanisms by which
edits beget edit. The important question is, do edits really beget
edits, or is the correlation between number of new edits and number of
total edits simply an artifact of Wikipedia's overall exponential
growth coupled with the relationship between article age and article
popularity (i.e., more important articles are created earlier).
I know that an edit to something on my watchlist draws my attention and, in
the course of checking the edit, I may see other things that need fixing.
This is a wholly unscientific observation, of course.
Additional anecdotal evidence: Sometimes I hit the random button and
find a page that has not been edited for many months. I may make a
simple change, perhaps do a bit of wikifying or fix a spelling mistake,
and put the page on my watchlist. Often times such a page will attract
other changes from other editors. I assume that these others were
watching recent changes, or had the page on their watchlist and their
attention was drawn by my edit (as Adam recounts, above).
-Rich