It took me years to write it
Fifteen years ago, I conducted a small study testing the error-correction tendency of Wikipedia. Not only is Wikipedia different now than it was then, the community that maintains it is different. Despite the crudity of that study’s methods, it is natural to wonder what the result would be now. So I repeated the earlier study and found surpri…
https://www.fecundity.com/nfw/2023/09/13/it-took-me-years-to-write-it/
@News4wombats A direct link to the article itself rather than two degrees of intermediation:
"Early response to false claims in Wikipedia, 15 years later"
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/12912/11332
@News4wombats I'm curious about the ethics of this research.
Was methodology reviewed by an ERB prior to experimentation?
Was Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation contacted or advised prior to the study?
Were the edits reversed after some period of time, and if so, after how long?
The linked paper indicates that the edits were reversed after 48 hours if not caught by Wikipedians until then.
@News4wombats
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@dredmorbius I did consult the IRB before doing the research. Edits were reverted after 48 hours if not already corrected.
@News4wombats Thanks.
I did see the 48 hour revert note after having it pointed out to me.
I'd still strongly suggest that work such as this involve notice and acceptance by the organisation in question, in this case the Wikimedia Foundation. Note that the Foundation itself is largely independent of actual editors who'd be maintaining / monitoring individual articles.