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User:Slowking4/The Farmbrough effect

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(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.
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The Fastily effect - if you do enough of anything some of it will be wrong.[1] [2]

Math

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The mathematics is that the million edit editor with error rate .1% has 1000 errors; the new editor with a thousand edits with 10% error rate has 100 errors. The fault is focusing on the easy target, not the total quality. It is looking for the dime under the streetlamp, not where or how the dime was dropped.

The practice is now to create drama by mining large sets of edits and then creating a mass deletion, forcing editors to "fix errors" to avoid deletion. the bad leadership is crossing from older projects where it is established, into the newer projects where it appears out of place and out of consensus.

And merely mentioning the effect is seen as a personal attack. There is a personification of system problems. We would rather scapegoat than correct errors.

History of other editors

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User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ); User:Rich Farmbrough; User:Sander.v.Ginkel; Usuario:Thelmadatter; User:Dr. Blofeld

Notes

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  1. w:Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Fastily effect; w:Special:Diff/764163320: "This is certainly not an attack page. It is a maxim that it behooves us all to remember - particularly before we actually do attack someone for getting things wrong. As my mother used to say 'the only people who don't make mistakes, don't make anything.'" — Rich Farmbrough
  2. Wikipedia:Fastily effect; w:Special:Diff/764163882: "I was annoyed at the way Fastily was being treated at the time. It seemed like yet another case of a very productive editor being castigated for what might very well have been a perfectly acceptable quality of editing. ¶ There could be more written there, but I suspect that those capable of understanding it will extrapolate from the maxim." — Rich Farmbrough
this essay incorporates and expands on Wikipedia:Fastily effect