Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-26/Recent research

Less technical.
Could the standard deviation results be expressed in less technical terms so that 95% of readers know what it means? One standard deviation, BTW, is a range of about 34% on both sides of the mean, or average. Tony  (talk)  03:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Assuming a normal distribution... let's not jump to conclusions. Dcoetzee 20:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Antarctica.
While Antarctica vs. country may make for a nice sound bite, it's very much apples and oranges. Whereas Antarctica's population may be just a handful, its scientific significance and the variety of wildlife are well, continent-sized. Jztinfinity (talk) 04:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not so sure about the current variety of wildlife, last I heard Antarctica was mostly ice cap with a few penguins round the coast. Things would have been very different a few million years ago, but in recent millennia there has not been much plantlife except in the surrounding seas.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:25, 27 September 2011 (UTC)


 * See Ucucha's comments at Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-09-19/In_the_news. -- Jeandré, 2011-09-27t13:55z


 * I didn't take the time to follow the link above—I'm just skimming through here—but I just wanted to say, don't forget microbes when you consider the topic of "wildlife in Antarctica"—I bet Antarctica has a lot of microbes that we don't know about yet. Cheers, — ¾-10 23:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * And don't forget the presence of Belgica antarctica, the largest solely terrestrial animal indigenous to Antarctica. (The WP article definitely needs work -- at least someone should add which parts of Antarctica B. antarctica has been found.) -- llywrch (talk) 06:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Many of our Antarctic articles are short stubs rehashing information from the public domain USGS gazetteer (such as Metavolcanic Mountain), with over 10,000 pages currently transcluding usgs-gazetteer. This goes a long way towards explaining the apparent imbalance, which (as Uchucha says) is based on the numbers of geotagged articles only. --Avenue (talk) 13:04, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Reverting and quality
this seems like a dubious analysis: "reverted editors are less likely to be reverted in the future (particularly in the week after the revert), whereas the probability of being reverted in the control group keeps growing every week." the second part can be rephrased as "the longer you edit the more probable you will get reverted". Insofar as EVERYONE gets reverted eventually, it doesn't mean much to me. Circéus (talk) 19:46, 27 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Just a important general note about reverts: Not all editors are equal. The dumber a person is, the more likely it is that they will be reverted. So, even if reverts suppress future editing, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)


 * My thoughts exactly! The fact that reverted editors edit less and non-reverted editors edit more is very likely due to the caliber of the edits made. Bad editors, editors that are clowning around or vandalizing, are apt to be reverted and also less likely to edit in the future than "good" editors making good edits, who aren't reverted and go on to edit more. The fact that one is reverted and the other isn't is incidental to the fact that the caliber of the groups, on average, is different. Now, if one were to study the effect of malicious or bad reversions upon future participation, that would be informative... Carrite (talk) 04:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * My point is that the first part is a good interpretation, but the second part (once recast as I do), is not a good comparison: since everyone gets reverted eventually (even it its due to making a page-breaking error, or because one accidentally waded into a can of worm), it is the normal behavior that as time without a revert rise, the probability that you will get reverted obviously will too. Circéus (talk) 06:48, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to clear up potential confusion, my comment isn't in reply to yours. It's a separate note. I put mine here just because the heading was apropos. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:02, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh... I'll put in a separator line to try and clarify that. Circéus (talk) 16:05, 30 September 2011 (UTC)