Re: [Wiki-research-l] Power law and contributions:
Hi Jan, I think that we may have given you a lot more than you had in mind when you asked your question. I'm aware that you were thinking of "power law" in a way that can be very different than "power dynamics", but I have the latter more on my mind, partially because of recent discussions on Wikimedia-l related to strategy. I remain interested in knowing what the goal of your research is. I'll be busy with non-Wikimedia activities for the next few days, but I'll try to get back to the Wikiverse by this Saturday. If you don't hear back from me after about two weeks then please feel free to email me off list if you'd like me to follow up. In the meantime, Kerry and other capable people may be able to help with any further questions regarding your research interests. Best wishes, Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Power law and contributions:
As someone who would qualify as a "very active editor"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits
I can honestly say that power and activity are definitely not the same thing on
Wikipedia.
Do I have power? I don't think so. I am not an administrator or other
functionary that has power over anyone else.
As a person who is principally a content writer, I get my time wasted every day
by vandals, by content cited to reliable sources being removed by someone who
simply doesn't agree with it but provides no sources to the contrary buts
simply writes "Fact!" as an edit summary, that I have to explain to yet another
American that we spell things differently in Australia and that is why there is
a {{Use Australian English}} template on the top of that article, that "City of
Brisbane" cannot be changed as "Brisbane City" as they are NOT the same thing
(one is a local government area, the other a suburb, one about 100 times the
area of the other) even if they do happen to "look like the same thing" or
"think it reads better than way". I wish I did have the power to just "whack a
mole" and NOT have to have these *same* conversations over and over and over
again with me being WP:CIVIL and them often being not civil (some even track me
down in real life and send me abusive e-mail off-wiki, including sexual remarks
because I'm a self-identified female contributor). But in Wikipedia, that's OK
because ArbCom decided that calling a female contributor "a cunt" isn't that
bad. It's Wikipedia not Wokepedia! If I share the contents of that email
on-wiki, I'm the one in trouble (their right to privacy), so I just delete
them. If I spot a user name whitewashing a politican's article that just
happens to be very similar indeed to the real life name of their media advisor,
I cannot say that on-wiki, because that's WP:OUTING.
My "community health" is pretty damn poor precisely because we give the same
power to every first time anonymous editor as we do to very active editors and
we give it effectively to the most persistent and the most unpleasant. BRD is
all very well if all involved are seriously trying to get the content right and
well-cited. It fails completely when the other party is not engaging with it,
being unpleasant, or just returning time and time again to re-do a problematic
edit based on "I know this". We have problems with acts of vandalism that get
repeated time and time again by a series of different IP addresses. This is
impossible to block, we have no solution for it. If you want to see the scale
of it, there's series of IP addresses that collectively exhibit similar
patterns of thousands of problematic edits in my topic space going back to at
least 2013 and were still active in 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:IamNotU/History_cleanup
Do we have the power to "whack a mole" the first time we see any of these
behaviour YET AGAIN? No, we don't. We have a lot of tedious process of having
to find the right admin noticeboard, submit a request with the right templates,
provide endless diffs, and then have nothing happen. We make it easy for people
to create problems, but extremely difficult to get them stopped and incredibly
tedious to clean up after them (you often can't "undo" because of intervening
edits etc and these folk can do 100s of edits in a day). Here's one:
https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/Shelati
An editor who did a mass change over every suburb of Sydney over a couple days.
I suspected them immediately as being a sockpuppet (behaviour was
characteristic of "sockpuppet") but unless you can identify the sockmaster,
you can't report it. So, instead the changes being made were discussed on the
appropriate topic noticeboards, disagreed with, but then the editor was blocked
by someone who figured out who the sockmaster was (a sockmaster dating back to
2009). The account was blocked, but the problematic edits have never been
cleaned up.
Most active contributors who retire do so because of the behaviour of other
"contributors" wears them down.
In summary, power in Wikipedia is not where you think it is on the curve. It is
the power we give to the many people to do the same vandalism, the same "meant
well but I'm stupid" edits, the same "I don't know any policies and they don't
apply to me anyway" edits, and the sockpuppets and conflict-of-interest editors
who carefully hide themselves among them.
I wish I had just a little power to exercise in topic spaces where I am
knowledgeable and have a long history of positive contribution. I don't want it
for baseball players or Icelandic musicians or Pokemon characters, just for
Queensland history and geography. That's all I ask.
Kerry
-Original Message-
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
Behalf Of Jan Dittrich
Sent: Wednesday, 22 January 2020 8:31 PM
To: Wiki Research-l
Subject:
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Power law and contributions:
Hi Jan, There are many issues involved in power dynamics. I would prefer to look at this issue from a wide angle perspective. How do you define "community health"? Are the people who have power competent and focused on public service, are they incompetent and selfish, or some other combination of those factors? There are also powerful non-community forces such as paid editors who have conflicts of interest, nations which make legal and political decisions that affect the community, trolls, political activists, WMF, and more. These can have significant effects for better and for worse. I suggest that you take these into your account in analyzing power dynamics. I also suggest taking into account that even if someone is high on the power curve, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily having a good time at others' expense. I think that some people such as English Wikipedia functionaries are sometimes under a lot of stress, and are subject to criticism and scrutiny from many directions. Also, there may be good reasons for not distributing power more widely in some cases, such as with the Checkuser tool. I worry that someday the community will be overwhelmed by organizations and/or nations which want to alter Wikimedia content for selfish reasons and who can afford to hire or manipulate large numbers of people into doing what they want. What is the goal of your research? Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 10:31 AM Jan Dittrich wrote: > Hello Researchers, > > Contribution patterns in online communities follow a power distribution > which is known as the 1% rule [1], as Wikipedia told me. > > However, the steepness of the distribution can be more or less strong: 50% > of your edits could be contributed by 2% or by 0.002%, the latter showing a > stronger imbalance. > > I wonder if there are any estimates/rules-of-thumb of what imbalance is > problematic when seen from the perspective of community health. > > I also wonder if there is research on how technology contributes to such > imbalances and how it might be mitigated – e.g training, user-friendliness, > documentation… > (based on my assumption that a steep curve is less desirable, since the > power is more concentrated, the system more fragile and the redistribution > of power more constrained) > > Jan > > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) > > -- > Jan Dittrich > UX Design/ Research > > Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin > Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0 > https://wikimedia.de > > Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der Menschheit > teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei! > https://spenden.wikimedia.de > > Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. > Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter > der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für > Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. > ___ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] New Office hours for WMF/Research starting in January 2020
This is happening now and for the next 54-min. :) Instructions for how to attend at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours#How_to_attend (#wikimedia-research channel in IRC freenode). L On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 8:02 AM Leila Zia wrote: > > A friendly reminder that the first joint Analytics and Research office > hours will take place on 2020-01-22 at 17.00-18.00 (UTC). Bring your > Wikimedia related research and data questions to us during these > office hours. More at > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours > > -- > Leila Zia > Head of Research > Wikimedia Foundation > > On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 3:35 AM Martin Gerlach wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > We, the Research team at Wikimedia Foundation, have received some requests > > over the past months for making ourselves more available to answer some of > > the research questions that you as Wikimedia volunteers, affiliates' staff, > > and researchers face in your projects and initiatives. Starting January > > 2020, we will experiment with monthly office hours organized jointly by our > > team and the Analytics team where you can join us and direct your questions > > to us. We will revisit this experiment in June 2020 to assess whether to > > continue it or not. > > > > The scope > > > > We encourage you to attend the office hour if you have research related > > questions. These can be questions about our teams, our projects, or more > > importantly questions about your projects or ideas that we can support you > > with during the office hours. You can also ask us questions about how to > > use a specific dataset available to you, to answer a question you have, or > > some other question. Note that the purpose of the office hours is to answer > > your questions during the dedicated time of the office hour. Questions that > > may require many hours of back-and-forth between our team and you are not > > suited for this forum. For these bigger questions, however, we are happy to > > brainstorm with you in the office hour and point you to some good > > directions to explore further on your own (and maybe come back in the next > > office hour and ask more questions). > > > > Time and Location > > > > We meet on the 4th Wednesday of every month 17.00-18.00 (UTC) in > > #wikimedia-research IRC channel on freenode [1]. > > > > The first meeting will be on January 22. > > > > Up-to-date information on mediawiki [2] > > > > Archiving > > > > If you miss the office hour, you can read the logs of it at [3]. > > > > The future announcements about these office hours will only go to the > > following lists so please make sure you're subscribed to them if you like > > to receive a ping: > > > > * wiki-research-l mailing list [4] > > > > * analytics mailing list [5] > > > > * wikidata mailing list [6] > > > > * the Research category in Space [7] > > > > on behalf of Research and Analytics, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > [1] irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-research > > > > [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Office_hours > > > > [3] https://wm-bot.wmflabs.org/logs/%23wikimedia-research/ > > > > [4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > > [5] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics > > > > [6] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata > > > > [7] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/tags/research > > > > > > > > -- > > Martin Gerlach > > Research Scientist > > Wikimedia Foundation > > ___ > > Wiki-research-l mailing list > > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
[Wiki-research-l] Power law and contributions:
Hello Researchers, Contribution patterns in online communities follow a power distribution which is known as the 1% rule [1], as Wikipedia told me. However, the steepness of the distribution can be more or less strong: 50% of your edits could be contributed by 2% or by 0.002%, the latter showing a stronger imbalance. I wonder if there are any estimates/rules-of-thumb of what imbalance is problematic when seen from the perspective of community health. I also wonder if there is research on how technology contributes to such imbalances and how it might be mitigated – e.g training, user-friendliness, documentation… (based on my assumption that a steep curve is less desirable, since the power is more concentrated, the system more fragile and the redistribution of power more constrained) Jan [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) -- Jan Dittrich UX Design/ Research Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0 https://wikimedia.de Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der Menschheit teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei! https://spenden.wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
