Creating, destroying, and restoring value in wikipedia

TLDR

Wikipedia allows any user to edit any entry, which is both its strength and weakness. The study defines edit impact as the number of views of the edited version and proposes to measure it. The analysis shows that most viewed words come from frequent editors, that damage probability is low but rising, and that the authors propose policy changes based on these insights.

Abstract

Wikipedia's brilliance and curse is that any user can edit any of the encyclopedia entries. We introduce the notion of the impact of an edit, measured by the number of times the edited version is viewed. Using several datasets, including recent logs of all article views, we show that an overwhelming majority of the viewed words were written by frequent editors and that this majority is increasing. Similarly, using the same impact measure, we show that the probability of a typical article view being damaged is small but increasing, and we present empirically grounded classes of damage. Finally, we make policy recommendations for Wikipedia and other wikis in light of these findings.