[Foundation-l] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)

Gwern Branwen gwern0 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 22 04:05:18 UTC 2011


I have just completed and written up a little research project of mine:
http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism#the-editing-community-is-dead-who-killed-it

Summary:

1. Talk pages are where references/links/citations go to die; less
than 10% ever make it back
2. In just the sampled edits, millions of page-views are affected
3. Conclusion: putting references/links/citations in an Article's Talk
page is a bad idea (compared to External Links)

Numbers, source code, and lists of edits are provided in the link.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net



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