Top Trumps on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a huge site. The site uses bots to do all fixes, and revert obvious vandalism. Its masses of users add content, and moderate pages. Unline on smaller wikis, the wiki works based on policies. One policy says that an article should be wrote in the English that makes most sense. So a location in England would be typed in UK English. If there was an article that is equal in both, oh, say the colour orange, then whatever was used originally is what it's called.

In addition there are votes. But there are loads of policies that mean half of what newbie users type will be reverted, which will obviously scare users from editing.

On smaller wikis, everything is "community". It's the community's decision, with help from SysOps of course. Smaller wikis are much more flexible, because they're writing to a "fan" audience, where as Wikip is writing for anyone, so there are a lot of differences.

I'm still around on the TTWiki, and on TT Wikip page. Though on both I just moderate.

Well, we haven't updated it in ages now. I gave up again. You are welcome to help out though.

I have also added a bit about activity Packs and the shop exclusive packs like the Cars and Michael Jackson pack. I have also added a Top Trumps Tournament section too.

...

I'm going to categorise Wikians into three groups. The editor, the vandal, and the bot. The editor contributes and reverts vandalism. The vandal does nothing but vandalise, or slip in things to articles that could make sense, but aren't. That kind of vandalism is very clever. But wrong.

And then bots fix almost everything: the obvious vandalism at least. There'll be users who watch certain things in RC. I check the history of a couple of articles, and then moderate them. And I know there are other people who do the same on the same pages.

People like to work in projects. So there's a Final Fantasy project, and even a Bedfordshire project. Users who are interested in the subject will then make sure every article categorised by the project will be overseen by them, and many other people.

So while it's moderated, it can't be done that well. There are more articles than editors. Though there are a lot of editors. Which makes it harder to find vandalism. There are so many vandalisms, it's hard to think.

Contributors: People with intent to help the wiki.
Vandals: People with intent to destroy the wiki.
Bots: Programmed to help the wiki.

And the strongest force is the vandals. I decided I'd spend a few hours reverting. So I checked the New users log, and kept refreshing and checked when a new user made a contribution.

I got beaten by other users who were probably watching RC a lot, and I imagine some bots. But I still reverted loads. Now, I was just checking the latest users. How many people sign up to vandalise? Most people will do it under their IP. So I was only reverting a small fraction of vandalisms.

So there are the contributors. These guys will maintain the site and add content. Bots do loads of maintenance. Vandals give the bots and contributors something to maintain.

Newer contributors who edit in good-faith, but not abiding by the many policies of Wikipedia (laid out so every situation is resolved straight away), may edit and there edits then need to be edited by other contributors.

It's hard to keep Wikip standing.

Thanks burgs. There is always room for anyone to add information into it though. You also have top thank ILHI too.

Edited by Solar Dragon - 01 October 2009 at 21:10

Look what I just created:
http://websites.wikia.com/wiki/Toptrumps.com

This wiki is not exactly that big yet (I only made the second article) but judging by the success of the German version and the fact that it is only the second article, we may get a few people drawn in, I hope.