We found that a subset of users on Wikipedia publicly
proclaim their political affiliation through userboxes, and users who proclaim their
affiliation for a particular party tend to have high numbers of userboxes that are
ideologically aligned with that party. However, these ‘political’ users also had equally
high numbers of Wikipedia userboxes. That is, boxes that espoused an identity of being a
‘Wikipedian’. The results indicate that the social identities of being a member of a
political party and of being a Wikipedian may be equally important.
IMHO this is borderline moronic. Analogy: "We found that amongst
mechanics who were Republicans, the number of tools carried was
similar to the number of political stickers on their vehicles. This
indicates that the social identity of being a mechanic was similar to
that of being a Republican".
Wikipedia isn't some random place that people who like encyclopaedias
hang out. It's a workplace for encyclopaedia writers. The authors seem
to have completely missed the rules of behaviour that Wikipedians are
subject to. Did they even read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:UPYES#What_may_I_have_on_my_user_pag…
?
Steve