Anyone can edit an article on Wikipedia. But are changes made by here-today, gone-tomorrow editors any good?
Studies of other collaborative projects show that most of the work tends to be done by committed contributors hoping to boost their reputation. As a result, many social scientists are sceptical of fleeting Wikipedia editors, who don’t have a track record to build up or maintain.
To see if the prejudice is well founded, researchers at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, evaluated contributions to the Dutch and French Wikipedias. They judged the quality of a contribution by how long it survived subsequent…
