Wikipedia's bold-edit collaboration script led to lower article quality than a discussion-first alternative script¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The Wikipedia script promoting frequent individual edits produced lower article quality than the alternative script requiring upfront deliberation of planned edits. → Cress 2018

Evidence¶

Cress 2018¶

Cress, U., Stahl, G., Rose, C., Law, N., & Ludvigsen, S. (2018). Forming social systems by coupling minds at different levels of cognition: Design, tools, and research methods. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 13, 235–240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-018-9284-z

q2 · i? · review · r2

Editorial summary of Heimbuch, Ollesch, and Bodemer's comparison of two collaboration scripts for wiki-based writing: the Wikipedia bold-edit script versus an alternative requiring planned edits to be discussed and deliberated before revision. The Wikipedia script yielded "a lower quality of article".

"The results show that the Wikipedia script leads to a lower quality of article, even if the effect was not as large as the authors may have expected."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• In the main study, the DDR script induced far more talk-page discussion contributions and fewer article edits than the BRD script — related
• In the pre-study, dyads using the DDR script were far more likely to integrate their partner's evidence into their answers on the main topic question — related
• In the main study, BRD articles were longer, but DDR articles had a lower relative error rate, and article length correlated positively with errors — related
• Wiki pages produced by many anonymous edits exhibit group-generated meaning not attributable to any individual contributor — related