[Foundation-l] Frequency of Seeing Bad Versions - now with traffic data

Thu Aug 27 18:58:00 UTC 2009

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/8/27 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > Why do you assume that number of reverts has any correlation with amount
> of
> > vandalism?  Has this been studied?
>
> It seems to be a sensible assumption, although checking it would be
> wise.

It seems to me to be begging the question.  You don't answer the question
"how bad is vandalism" by assuming that vandalism is generally reverted.

I would put money on a significant majority of reverts being
> reverts of vandalism rather than BRD reverts, it may not be an
> overwhelming majority, though.

I don't know about that, though I won't take the other end of the bet.  Have
you done much editing while not logged in?  If so, I think you have to admit
that it's quite common to find yourself reverted for things which are not
properly classified as vandalism.

However, that's only one half of the equation.  The other half is how many
instances of vandalism are not reverted, and how many are not "reverted" in
a way that is detected by this program.