[Wikipedia-l] the road to stability -- Yes! we have a winner!

Thu Dec 1 17:46:07 UTC 2005

Neil Harris wrote:

> I agree with Kai on this completely; if Wikipedia is about 
> optimization by repeated random/evolutionary/whatever change, 
> simulated annealing is _the_ classic way to achieve stable results.
>
> Once an article had been progressively and slowly "cooled" to a low 
> enough "temperature", it would be effectively frozen. If an article 
> was shown to be seriously wrong, or needed extensive revision, it 
> could always be "warmed up" again, either partially or all they way. 
> The old "cooled" version of the article could be marked in the history 
> as the "previous stable version".
>
> In any case, as stable articles cooled down, they would change less 
> and less often, making the use of the article rating process (where 
> ratings must necessarily refer only to a single version) more and more 
> useful.
>
> Question: what would should a good algorithm for "cooling" and 
> "heating" pages be based on? Article ratings for the last few 
> versions? Consensus in an "articles for cooling" page? Intervention by 
> admins?
>
> Perhaps even some simple automatic heuristic like (for example) _very_ 
> slowly cooling pages that are read repeatedly by a wide range of 
> readers over some significant time period and yet not edited (ie, 
> implicitly "validated" in a tiny way by those readers) during that 
> time? Perhaps articles should slowly "heat up" if not read for some time? 

I have suggested a statistically determined measure of an articles net 
rating based on a modified average of all recent individual ratings.  
The number of individual ratings upon which the value is based would 
also be noted.  A low number of individual ratings would suggest an 
article in need of attention.  This could be because the subject is so 
obscure that nobody ever pays attention to it, or the page has had so 
many recent edits that individual ratings have expired.  If we add the 
total number of individual ratings to the data it will be obvious which 
of the two alternatives applies.

When statistical determinations are made it is important to remember the 
tendency of data to normalize itself.  The individual vote becomes less 
important in its own right.  The votes of trolls, POV pushers and other 
outlaws have a reduced statistical effect on the net result.  I suppose 
that techniques could be built in to neutralize the effects of 
sockpuppetry if that is really a problem.  Neutralizing the effects of 
sockpuppets is much better for the health of the community than 
acrimonious search and punish missions.

Ec