Anne, Thanks for the extra perspective. The post-2007 decline in 100+ editors on en:WP may indeed reflect a decline in vandalism reverts.
The most interesting point to me was that de:WP introduced flagged revisions in spring 2008, across the board, and that editor numbers appear to have remained completely unaffected. In de:WP, at least, overall participation levels did not *drop* as a result of flagged revisions. Andreas > You raise an interesting point, Andreas. I am not > persuaded that pending > changes/flagged revisions have anything to do with the > editor retention rate > at the de:WP. However, I think you may be right that the > considerably more > homogeneous editor population, as well as the commonality > in cultural > background, was instrumental in the ability of the project > to jointly make > such a cultural shift. Indeed, the number of de:WP editors > with >100 > edits/month has remained very stable since January 2006. > (The number of > en:WP editors was essentially the same in January 2006 as > at present, but > hit its peak in April 2007. Let's not cherry pick the data > too much, okay?) > > As an aside for those interested in the historical > perspective, the massive > increase in the number of editors on en:WP coincides with a > massive influx > of vandalism, and over a thousand editors did almost > nothing *but* revert or > otherwise address vandalism. As better and more effective > tools have been > developed to address that problem - Huggle, Twinkle, > Friendly, the edit > filters, reverting bots, semi-protection, etc - the number > of editors needed > to manage vandalism has diminished dramatically. In other > words, that > 1300-editor difference may largely be accounted for because > those whose only > skill was vandal-fighting have moved on. That's not to say > there is no > vandalism on en:WP today; there's still plenty of it. > > Observing from afar, it has often struck me that when > almost all members of > an editorial community come from a common cultural > background and geographic > area, there is a synergy that isn't found on projects where > the community is > much more diverse. This is best illustrated in the > large scale on German > Wikipedia, and some other European projects, where the > community is visibly > more cohesive. In the smaller scale, certain projects with > shared > cultural/geographic background on English Wikipedia, such > as Wikiproject > Australia, are more accomplished at developing and meeting > shared > objectives. These groups, whether large projects or > small pockets within a > larger project, seem to operate in accordance with their > local cultural > norms; in other words, they don't have to find common > cultural ground before > they can move on to a discussion of a proposal. > > It's my belief that the common cultural background of the > de:WP editorial > community has been one of the keystones of its success in > being able to > implement large-scale and project-wide changes, flagged > revisions being the > most obvious. That common cultural background or > focal geographic area > simply does not exist for the English Wikipedia; we're > probably one of the > few projects where the same expression can be viewed as > friendly, somewhat > rude and downright offensive at the same time, depending on > whether the > reader is Australian, British or American (not to mention > those who have > learned English as a second language, which also makes up a > significant part > of our editorship). > > Each project also has its own culture, but I confess that > most of my > knowledge of the culture of other projects is anecdotal > rather than > observational, so I won't venture to try to compare them. > > When faced with dramatic increases in vandalism, en:WP > created tools that > are largely developed by individuals and utilized by other > individuals (with > the exception of semi-protection); de:WP developed a single > unified > community response. The remarkably high quality of > the tools used on en:WP > means that any new systemic tool has to meet a very high > threshold for it to > be considered acceptable for wide-scale use. Perhaps > that is the key > difference between these two community types: one places > more emphasis on > making cohesive group decisions, while the other more > strongly encourages a > range of solutions. I don't have any answers, just > observations. > > Risker/Anne > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
