Wikipedia:Flux Rating

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This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is retained as a historical archive. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus has become unclear. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should seek broader input via a forum such as the proposals page of the village pump.

There is a problem with Wikipedia articles that are changing rapidly. Users can not tell from the main page if the information they are reading is new and being edited frequently, in significant dispute, or being systematically vandalised.

One indicator of a page that is in such states of flux is the number of substantial page edits in a short period of time (say, a month).

One potential solution to this would be a Edit Flux Rating for articles. The number substantial page edits in a period of time could be converted, by some automatic algorithm, to a rating that would be displayed on the page. The higher that number, the lower the confidence a user may have in the contents of the page. (an inverse flux may be easier for visitors to understand, making a stability rating, but a flux rating is a more direct reflection of what is being measured. A stability rating would first have to be a working flux rating.)

Over time, the flux of a newly stable page will naturally decrease, and the rating will fall. In this way the visitors to the page may have increasing confidence in the information on that page.