[WikiEN-l] Re: threats and abuse from IP user

Sat Aug 23 06:44:23 UTC 2003

J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> As the Wikipedia becomes more and more widely known, you're just going to
> have a higher and higher probability of including in that group some of
> the many humans who are losers. And, as the aftermath of Cantor and Siegel
> proved, that effect gets worse, not better, as the community grows.

Rejoice because your pessimism is unfounded in fact; I've seen over the past
year and a half that the percentage of bad edits has not increased
(although the volume has, of course) and, IMO, has in fact decreased. This
is simply due to the fact that for every jerk there are many scores of good
people (perhaps hundreds) and therefore increasing the number of people
reading and contributing to Wikipedia only makes it better, not worse. 

I had a similar pessimistic opinion, BTW, back when I could review an entire
days edits in two hours (there were only 600-800 edits a day back then!). 

But Wikipedia has scaled really well to my total astonishment.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)