Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 11:02 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: It should be obvious that what is missing is discipline. An arbitration committee with expanded scope, with full-time members funded by the WMF (at arm's length for legal reasons), could go a long way towards solving the problem. Some users will be reformed when their technical power is threatened (be that editing or admin access), others will just leave as soon as their reputation is at stake. I do agree that better mechanisms for dispute resolution, dealing with topic warring, article ownership, and plain old incivility are needed. But I don't believe that those issues are at the heart of the editor retention problem as you seem to suggest, but rather, that they tend to occur later in the editor lifecycle, among a subset of editors which in fact already has survived many of the primary factors that deter new editors and are therefore relatively likely to retain. The new editor experience is characterized more by templating and assembly line style enforcement of existing policies than it is by incivility, topic warring, article ownership and incivility. I'm wondering whether the key findings in Halfaker's recent rise and decline paper resonate with you: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Existing data like the above supports strongly the notion that well-intentioned, good faith contributors are much more heavily discouraged in 2012 than they were in 2004 or 2005, but this can be explained in significant part with the influx of bad faith contributors that have necessitated increasingly heavy handed ways to control against bad edits (Huggle, Twinkle, AbuseFilter, etc.) -- which catch good faith editors in the crossfire -- as well as increasing expectations of what constitutes an acceptable quality edit / page creation. In an environment where most folks who show up want to help, it's easy to be welcoming and supportive of new contributors. As Wikipedia had to deal with more and more spammers, crackpots and assholes, while simultaneously being more and more scrutinized in terms of quality and reliability, new users have increasingly been seen as guilty until proven innocent and are dealt not so much in a deliberately uncivil, but more in an assembly line robotic fashion that's highly discouraging. Templating with standard messages, no matter how friendly, is much more common than explicit incivility toward a new user and lack of any form of personal encouragement or gratitude. If that is correct, then the answer -- at least for very new users -- isn't first and foremost a more disciplined enforcement of existing policies. Rather, new editors are simply treated in a manner that's discouraging more than it is encouraging, without that treatment being in violation of any policy -- indeed, with various policies in fact calling for precisely such discouraging actions to be taken in order to preserve quality, to enforce notability and sourcing policies, etc. The answer, then, is to find ways to make the new user experience more encouraging and pleasurable, such as: * simplifying the interface so that we can at least get rid of technical reasons that lead to early edits being unsuccessful and reverted (Visual Editor, talk page replacement, notifications, etc.); * making it easy to find things to do that are relatively low-risk (something the E3 team is experimenting with right now) so that new editors can have a more ladder-like experience of becoming good contributors; * guiding the new user in a clear and instructive manner, and pointing them to places where they can get help from another human being (cf. Teahouse) More disruptive technical solutions could include: * safer alternative work/collaboration spaces that don't suffer from the contention issues of the main article space (sandboxes on steroids) * easier ways for new users to re-do an edit that has been reverted (cf. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Improve_your_edit ) * real-time mechanisms for coaching, collaboration (chat, real-time collaborative editing) and mentor matchmaking More disruptive policy-level changes would include rethinking some of the more problematic quality-related policies, especially notability. That's not to say that we should ignore the deeper social issues that arise in maintaining a universal encyclopedia in a radically open manner (and indeed, the community has learned, evolved and continually improved its ways of dealing with those issues). But most new users give up well before encountering those issues. When new editors complain about Wikipedia being mean, they complain more often about reverts, templating, deletion nominations, etc. -- none of which are in fact inherently uncivil according to Wikipedia's own policies, but rather part of
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
Erik Moeller, 04/01/2013 08:02: I'm wondering whether the key findings in Halfaker's recent rise and decline paper resonate with you: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Existing data like the above supports strongly the notion that well-intentioned, good faith contributors are much more heavily discouraged in 2012 than they were in 2004 or 2005, but this can be explained in significant part with the influx of bad faith contributors that have necessitated increasingly heavy handed ways to control against bad edits (Huggle, Twinkle, AbuseFilter, etc.) -- which catch good faith editors in the crossfire -- as well as increasing expectations of what constitutes an acceptable quality edit / page creation. The paper does contain good news though: To explore Hypothesis: Norm formalization calcification, we first looked for changes in the rate of new policy creation following the introduction of a structured proposal process in 2005. Figure 8 shows that growth of policies and guidelines began to slow in 2006, just as Forte (2009) reports. The results from our analysis of new policy/guideline proposals show that the number of new policy proposals accepted via this process peaked in 2005 at 27 out of 217 (12% acceptance). 2006 saw an even higher number of proposed policies, but lower acceptance with 24 out of 348 proposals accepted (7% acceptance). From 2007 forward, the rate at which policies are proposed decreases monotonically down to a mere 16 in 2011 while the acceptance rate stays steady at about 7.5%. In other words, it would seem that en.wiki, contrary to popular belief, has developed a good immune system against bureaucracy norms expansion. :-) The paper is actually of little use in this part IMHO, because: 1) we already know that users who joined in 2005/2006 are still disproportionately active in most community processes like deletion discussions and so on, 2) everybody knows that to influence how the wiki is run it's more effective to change a single word in an important policy than to establish ten new policies. As for (1), I doubt the Wikipedia thought police is keeping newcomers out of discussions, but one can make them look so hard that newbies won't participate. However, it.wiki recently switched from the established vote-system for deletion to a discussion system as en.wiki's, and a year of data for the new system seems to prove that it increased the words spent and drove away old/unexperienced editors (with 3+ years or 51-5000 edits), while newcomers resisted, presumably to defend their own articles. https://toolserver.org/~mauro742/liste/pdc_stats.csv https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Elenchi_generati_offline/Richieste/Archivio/2011#Lavoro_per_le_PdC Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
This thread may have started weird, but it seems to be going in a very good direction: we're all very concerned about editor retention, we all see problem areas we agree on, and we are all grasping at new ideas that seem more or less like straws. This is bad news, but it has to remain on the agenda, and we have to keep thinking about it or the project runs the risk of actually failing - the very thing we all laughed away for a long time seeing wikipedia's success. When I look back on my wiki time, I see a transition much as Erik described. I joined in 2005 with the great influx that was going on, or just coming to an end at the time. The editors who were there, who learned me the ropes, still very strongly believed in WP:IAR, and the 'it's just a guideline' principle. What I believe happened is that a new generation of editors - roughly new editors since the time I joined - who didn't create the rules had more distance from the rules, and in some ways more respect for them. These are the vandalism fighters and the new page patrollers Risker mentions were - and are - very needed. If they are not here, we might well collapse under the load of bad faith edits. Everyone obviously believes that their view of what wikipedia is is right, but I believe they don't grok wikipedia. They don't grok the meaning of a wiki, and neither do they grok IAR. And yet we need them desperately. As a community we started revering the rules over the project, and that's very very wrong. I'm going to go ahead and postulate that the greatest problem with editor retention is that it is really really hard to do something good for wikipedia - too hard for many people - and far harder still to grok wikipedia. This is a two sided problem. The first side is the problem for new editors: We have set up rules to justify fixing the good faith errors they have made which are enforced quite strictly. To grok wikipedia you need experience. As a rule of thumb, I would say about 1000 edits which are not anti-vandalism edits, and you could grok it. I am willing to go further, and say that none or very few of those 1000 edits will actually be very good. But we don't have the manpower in experience to guide all those 1000 edits, kindly explain what's wrong with them, and that it's absolutely fine that the edits aren't very good. Before that moment has arrived, we will have had a good meaning good faith vandal fighter strongly discouraging this user. It's a miracle people even make it this far. So what can we do? Well, first off, we could stop bothering new editors about the rules. There are far too many anyway, and while they are a fun mental exercise for the experienced wikipedian, a new wikipedian only needs to know a few things: Don't act like a dick, be bold, content should be verifiable, and you are here for the project - not personal gain. An editor writes the most horrific sucky article ever, but passes those above rules? Cool! Thanks! Carry on! Feedback can come later, he already took the hurdle of writing something that passes the basic rules. (note this is not how [[WP:AfC]] works). An editor breaks one of the above rules? Take ownership and responsibility for the rule. If you agree to the rule, you don't need the blue link to tell him what they did wrong. Hey, you wrote this and that article, and you didn't name your sources. Without them our readers will rightfully question the truthfullness - to them, it's just some guy on the internet who wrote that. Could you fix that? No need to bother them with the finer points of [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]]. They're just policy pages - a pretty nifty summary of consensus. Now that might be a little awkward and getting used to for our editing community, but there is another painful truth out there. The people who have the ability to properly understand wikipedia are spread far to thin to give this personal attention to newcomers, attention they very much need to come to be grown up wikipedians, and still be productive in their own right. We need a cure for that. We tried the cure of dedicated vandal fighters, and it didn't work, it landed us in the situation where we are now. We need something else, and whatever that something else will be, it will be very very painful, and will go against everything our wikispirit stands for, and we will hate it, but it will be needed. Possibly flagged revisions on all pages. Possibly a far simpler blocking policy (I for one strongly support abolishing any form of time-expiring block which are punitive almost by definition. You are blocked indefinitely, and you are unblocked if you ask for it, and give a good reason why the problematic behaviour won't be recurring. There is never a reason to unblock because three days have passed) If some administrator has the strong feeling that they are not here to build an encyclopedia, begone. Is that fair? No. There is a large factor of arbitarity there, mistakes will be made, and it requires far more responsibility from our
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 4 January 2013 13:03, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: With respect to welcoming and assisting new users on the English Wikipedia where there is a bewildering volume of varied activity by new and experienced users it might be helpful if we had a recent changes options that showed only edit by new editors with less than say 100 edits that could be monitored. Newbie helpers could then welcome, comment, compliment, or otherwise assist the new user. Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Perhaps access could be limited to only flagged newbie helpers. How would we stop Twinkle/Huggle users from using such a feed as a shooting gallery? - d. That is covered above under Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Access to that option would probably have to be limited to administrators or a new class of newbie helpers. I'm afraid the shooting gallery is already coded into Twinkle/Huggle. It is the use of that coding that is at issue. It could be used to encourage, reward and advise as well as to enforce. Fred ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 4 January 2013 13:39, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: I'm afraid the shooting gallery is already coded into Twinkle/Huggle. It is the use of that coding that is at issue. It could be used to encourage, reward and advise as well as to enforce. This is currently implemented by templating, which is how human editors can fail the Turing test. Unfortunately, just banning Twinkle/Huggle/similar first-person-shooter games is unlikely to fly. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
It would probably be easier to code and use Wikipedia the Game which had ingame commands such as view, edit, upload, discuss, search, etc which called http pages on Wikipedia than to add game features to wiki software. One could start with any mud coding with an appropriate license. Fred I've been playing on a MUD lately, http://www.alteraeon.com/ that has put considerable effort into getting new users started. MUDs, at least text-based ones, also suffer from failure to attract and engage new users. The first thing about a MUD that is simply not on a wiki is channels. On a MUD there will be a Newbie channel that experienced users monitor. Experienced users are expected to be helpful, offering encouragement and practical help to new users. A channel on a MUD is more or less an IRC channel incorporated into the software. It's real time. Another thing is that a user is logged on, and presumably engaged in the game. There is no need for that on a wiki. Anyway, a post on the newbie channel is seen by all others who are logged in and have activated that channel. This happens on a telnet terminal with a command line for input or a functional equivalent, called a client, a mud client. So something like an in-wiki IRC channel that new users would automatically be logged into along with experienced users might be helpful. The MUD I reference has both a MUD school where a presumably new user goes through the basic game moves and is instructed in them and, much more interesting and engaging, a complex Newbie zone where the new player faces an increasing complex series of challenges which successfully accomplish learning by doing. The coding on the particular MUD generously rewards every right move with experience, money, and other goodies. This is all very nanny and I doubt the average highly educated user who is a university professor or professional could accept being put to school in this manner in a compulsory way before being allowed to edit, but it could be available as an option. We could even have a practice wiki which was set up in this way as an option. Probably no one would use it though, I suppose, so whatever is done would probably have to be on the main site. It would be a sandbox, but a more active and monitored one, actually a set of practice articles in sandboxes. With respect to welcoming and assisting new users on the English Wikipedia where there is a bewildering volume of varied activity by new and experienced users it might be helpful if we had a recent changes options that showed only edit by new editors with less than say 100 edits that could be monitored. Newbie helpers could then welcome, comment, compliment, or otherwise assist the new user. Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Perhaps access could be limited to only flagged newbie helpers. Fred Bauder ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
http://www.freep.com/article/20130104/FEATURES01/130104028/Wikipedia-is-driving-away-newcomers-report-says?odyssey=nav|head A news report on the study that newbies are dropping out very early indeed - being driven out by preremptory and mechanical treatment, well before they can be driven out by more personal obnoxiousness. Presumably there's room for a study on that. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
Tim and Erik's views aren't at all incompatible or mutually exclusive; they're just looking at opposite ends of the same problem, which stated fully is that experienced editors leave and the pace of new editors turning into experienced editors is too low to maintain a steady community size. Erik's list of possible solutions, and Tim's suggestion, are both quite reasonable methods for solving the complete problem. No large scale effort to improve editor retention should ignore half the problem, though, so the true bottom line goal ought to be both encouraging new people and making life easier for the folks that are already here. Meanwhile, the project needs to adjust to its new realities. Even if some suite of solutions manages to improve the retention problem, it won't go away - fundamentally, the success of the project and its longevity are likely just as important factors as the editing environment. It doesn't come up a lot on this list, but Wikipedia's enormous success in accumulating content means that a much smaller potential group of people might be both willing and able to add more. Most topics that are popular or significant to large groups of English-writing people are already well covered, narrowing the opportunities for those folks (who, let's recall, generally don't have advanced expertise of the type amenable to Wikipedia articles) to contribute. For years this higher bar for the able and interested was offset by the influx of people dedicated to preserving what was already there, but technological improvements (AbuseFilter, anti-vandal bots, bots with admin buttons, human-driven but highly efficient tools like Huggle) has reduced opportunities in that arena as well. Which is all to say, it's totally expected that the population of both content contributors and vandal whackers will decline over time. So any complete statement of the problem, which ought to be the starting point for any efforts to solve it, should account for the awkward new editor experience, the difficulties facing long-term contributors, *and* the natural and inevitably growing attrition rate that we should reasonably expect to see. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 4 January 2013 15:41, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.rs wrote: Editing an article was easy. All I needed to know was simple and intuitive syntax for headings, bold, italic and links. It was easy to see article text through this syntax. I spent idle time in the holiday week working on [[:en:OpenOffice]]. Wikitext is just awful these days, particularly in an article like that where every assertion needs and has a cite. Anyone who thinks wikitext is just fine for the job, I urge you to click edit and contemplate fixing the guacamole you see before you. Sure hope the visual editor makes managing references on an article like that easier. - d. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:41:06 +0100, Nikola Smolenski wrote: I guess I could write much more. But at the end, I have no solution. I could imagine some partial solutions for some of the problems, but nothing that could really bring Wikipedia to days of old. Certainly, it will not. For the very same reason you mention: less not covered topics, more complexity, higher editing standards. We just have to live with that. I personally found a niche (or rather several niches) which I am covering. If nobody else gets interested (which seems to be the case), I have enough to do for the next ten years or so. This is not bad and not good. This is a fact. The question of editor retention I believe is not to return to Wikipedia as of ten or five years ago (this is largely impossible - remember the first day on Wikidata! This is why everybody went there for just a day). The problem is how to create an atmosphere in which those who are interested in writing encyclopedic articles could write them and not be afraid that tomorrow one idiot would take and article for speedy deletion when you are still sleeping, and another idiot with administrator tools would delete it because they do not understand the language of the references. And those who came here not primarily to write articles or at least to maintain the place clean, but to solve their personal problems, should be shown the door. And this is a real problem, because those who came to solve their personal problems for obvious reasons are more persistent and more aggressive. As I said in one of the previous posts, I do not know how this could be solved. But before solving the problem one needs to formulate it. Just saying edirot retention or creative atmosphere is just pronouncing buzzwords. Retention of which editors? Of all editors? On what conditions? Are we ready to sacrifice the civility a bit? And there are many questions like this which were not even been put on the agenda. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 1/4/13 9:57 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:41:06 +0100, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
I guess I could write much more. But at the end, I have no solution.
I could imagine some partial solutions for some of the problems, but
nothing that could really bring Wikipedia to days of old.
Certainly, it will not. For the very same reason you mention: less not
covered topics, more complexity, higher editing standards.
Yes, this is the main problem I've run into trying to recruit new
Wikipedia editors: less low-hanging fruit, at least on en.wiki (things
are different on smaller wikis). Fewer topics of widespread general
interest are completely article-less compared to a few years ago, so
there's less scope to e.g. write a 1-paragraph stub about [[Mahmoud
Abbas]] and feel you've contributed significantly. *And* you can no
longer do so just by jotting down a few things you remember off the top
of your head, since the standards for verifiability have gone up
considerably.
So the first problem I run into is that many people feel Wikipedia is
done, or at least done enough that the remaining work is too advanced
for a casual layperson to do. And the second problem is that not many
people want to go to a library, look up books, and do proper research
with cited sources, if it isn't a school assignment or part of their
job. I suspect that part hasn't even really changed—we have fewer
editors now than in 2005, but I would guess if you look at the number of
*souce-citing* editors in 2005 versus today, there hasn't been much of a
decline (I could be wrong on that!).
The most successful approach I've found to getting new people interested
and non-frustrated is to suggest they follow an approach roughly like this:
---
1. Start with a source, not a topic. Pick a high-quality book that
covers subjects that could have Wikipedia articles. For example, I
recently picked up a book on archaeology of northern Greece. Browse in a
library for inspiration!
1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal
or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own
research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours
or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject
you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc.
2. Scan through the book for topics that could be discrete Wikipedia
articles. For example, the book may describe specific historical
figures, or archaeological sites. Identify some that have enough
material on them in the book to put together at least a short article.
See if a Wikipedia article already exists (try several name variations,
and search for mentions in other articles).
3. Add information from the book to an existing article, or start a new
one. After each paragraph (or occasionally after specific important
sentences) add a citation to where you got the information, by adding a
citation tag: refA. Author (1999). Book, pp. 22-23/ref . You can
format the citation with whatever style you want, as long as it's
sufficient to identify the source. (Wikipedia does have official
citation templates, but there's need to trouble yourself with them when
starting out... a bot or person will re-format your citations later if
necessary).
4. If it's a new article, add at the end of the article a reference section:
==References==
{{reflist}}
This will automatically generate a bibliography of everything you put in
ref/ref tags.
5. Optionally, add categories to the article, by adding something like
this at the end of the article text, after the references:
[[Category:Castles in Greece]]
[[Category:13th-century architecture]]
---
I haven't had much success convincing people to do that, though. Not
lack of success as in people try and then fail: run into deletionism or
incivility, or just aren't able to figure it out. But lack of success in
convincing people to go to the library, find a book, and write a cited
article based on it. Most people, ime so far at least, just aren't
interested in doing that. Not sure how to change that, short of paying
editors.
-Mark
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
Sorry to top post - but, I'm just replying to the thread in general. One of my biggest frustrations with this thread is that it seems to focus on technical staff. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non profit. There is an entire department of people who do programming in grants/education/and dare I say outreach (or whatever). Then there are the HR people, etc. While I am wrapping up the last month of my fellowship, and I am not a Wikimedia staff member, I do have my master's in museum studies, with a focus on the management of said organizations. The reason I state that? Is because WMF is competitive in regards to what it offers employees in my realm - as a non-profit person (I will most likely work in non profits for the rest of my life unless I own my own business, and that could even be nonprofit). So don't forget - I'm not the only person with a degree that would take me into a world of nonprofitness - Google isn't even on my radar as someone who is bidding for me, nor am I looking at them for work. Let's just say, when I went to school, I knew I'd be working for a mission, and which in the US, many folks go into computer science with the understanding they'll be making a nice amount of money out of school. From my understanding, most technical folks don't go into the field to start using their talents for non profits, it's often a second life, after working in the for profit world. Hell, what I made as a fellow is as competitive to what first year's make working at museums. And I feel I've gotten more dare I say..perks or benefits, working as a fellow at WMF then I would working at pretty much any museum in my area of work (curatorial). (minus benefits like health insurance which contractors/fellows don't get) So for me, and a number of us who work in the nonprofit arena (not the tech person who could be stolen by big tech company arena) - WMF *is* competitive. -Sarah On 1/4/13 10:17 AM, Quim Gil wrote: On 01/03/2013 09:12 AM, Michael Snow wrote: the Wikimedia Foundation provides benefits that meet or exceed those of just about any employer it might be competing with. fwiw until recently I was working in the so-called Silicon Valley for a Scandinavian big tech corp with Scandinavian standards for HR practices and health care coverage. The coverage I get at the WMF for my family and myself is no different (including my fully covered domestic partner aka not-married mother of my children). My salary has been significantly reduced with the change, indeed. But it is definitely more than enough to have a regular middle class life in the Bay Area. And then again we would be comparing the salary I had in such company after 5 years of (hopefully good) work, not the one I had at the beginning. I'm hoping to get some salary increase if/when I can proof good results of my work but I'm not even aiming to reach the same level I got in a for-profit tech corp in Silicon Valley. That would feel wrong, being most of the WMF based on individual donations and being the WMF active in so many countries where so much can be done with the difference between such corporate salary and the one I've got now. PS: speaking entirely for myself although I wouldn't be surprised if this sentiment is shared among other WMF employees. -- *Sarah Stierch* */Museumist and open culture advocate/* Visit sarahstierch.com http://sarahstierch.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.com wrote: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Adventure which is a project very much along these lines. I'm not sure what the current status of that is, but it definitely seems like a good approach for at least some groups of newbies. There is some neat tech that the E3 team has plans to use, which would also be a good framework for this kind of interactive training: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Guided_tours On a less interactive level, we've also got some trainings tailored to different groups of people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Training We've never really tried systematically pointing newbies to a structured orientation (as opposed to giving them 10 or 20 links to explore without guidance). -Sage ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
On 4 January 2013 18:17, Quim Gil q...@wikimedia.org wrote: And then again we would be comparing the salary I had in such company after 5 years of (hopefully good) work, not the one I had at the beginning. It would be very unusual for an employer to disregard previous experience when setting a salary just because that experience wasn't with them... ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
On 01/04/2013 10:53 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote: On 4 January 2013 18:17, Quim Gil q...@wikimedia.org wrote: And then again we would be comparing the salary I had in such company after 5 years of (hopefully good) work, not the one I had at the beginning. It would be very unusual for an employer to disregard previous experience when setting a salary just because that experience wasn't with them... Whatever the theoretical arguments are, the moment for any potential employee comes when you receive an offer from the WMF. I accept it and signed because I thought it was competitive and a great next step in my career. If someone leaves the WMF some months after the core reason can't be the salary alone, since that was exactly the most clear and precise data such employee had when joining. imho the discussion about salaries and benefits are more relevant in the context of hiring and its difficulties, rather than employee retention. -- Quim Gil Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 5:03 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: With respect to welcoming and assisting new users on the English Wikipedia where there is a bewildering volume of varied activity by new and experienced users it might be helpful if we had a recent changes options that showed only edit by new editors with less than say 100 edits that could be monitored. Newbie helpers could then welcome, comment, compliment, or otherwise assist the new user. Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Perhaps access could be limited to only flagged newbie helpers. These aren't power tools like what vandalfighters have in Huggle or Twinkle, but I would check out the two following feeds of new editor activity, if you want to give this kind of task a try: -- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributionscontribs=newbiewhich shows newbie edits of all sorts -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:FeedbackDashboard which shows the positive, negative, and just plain confused comments by new editors who have at least clicked the edit button once. This one in particular needs attention from thoughtful, experienced contributors. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 8:36 PM, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 5:03 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: With respect to welcoming and assisting new users on the English Wikipedia where there is a bewildering volume of varied activity by new and experienced users it might be helpful if we had a recent changes options that showed only edit by new editors with less than say 100 edits that could be monitored. Newbie helpers could then welcome, comment, compliment, or otherwise assist the new user. Obviously access to such a recent changes option by those looking for trouble could also be used in ways that would discourage the new user. Perhaps access could be limited to only flagged newbie helpers. These aren't power tools like what vandalfighters have in Huggle or Twinkle, but I would check out the two following feeds of new editor activity, if you want to give this kind of task a try: -- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributionscontribs=newbie shows newbie edits of all sorts This is pretty cool cool. How hard would it be to hack together something like the curation tool for which I have much love, but for recent changes by newbies instead? -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:FeedbackDashboard which shows the positive, negative, and just plain confused comments by new editors who have at least clicked the edit button once. This one in particular needs attention from thoughtful, experienced contributors. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:05 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 January 2013 17:56, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: 1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc. This can be a problem in that people will become interested first in fixing something they think is wrong because they know about it. I do realise all the steps from that to here, and that a list of instructions pretty much won't be read. Along the lines of noneuclidian geometry... What if we experiment (at least conceptually) with inverting that instruction? Encourage people to write on subjects they know... Normal people won't be so much of an expert that using their own professional or academic work as a reference is even applicable. Actual experts, we can include a Please cite your sources, rather than your own work, thanks! and leave it at that. Actual experts who fail to heed that are a problem, but a much smaller and easier to communicate with and explain problem than the no-newbies one. . -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Jan 5, 2013 12:51 AM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:05 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 January 2013 17:56, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: 1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc. This can be a problem in that people will become interested first in fixing something they think is wrong because they know about it. I do realise all the steps from that to here, and that a list of instructions pretty much won't be read. Along the lines of noneuclidian geometry... What if we experiment (at least conceptually) with inverting that instruction? Encourage people to write on subjects they know... Normal people won't be so much of an expert that using their own professional or academic work as a reference is even applicable. Actual experts, we can include a Please cite your sources, rather than your own work, thanks! and leave it at that. Actual experts who fail to heed that are a problem, but a much smaller and easier to communicate with and explain problem than the no-newbies one. . Please resubmit this suggestion after three hours of AfC work -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoeks...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 5, 2013 12:51 AM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:05 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 January 2013 17:56, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: 1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc. This can be a problem in that people will become interested first in fixing something they think is wrong because they know about it. I do realise all the steps from that to here, and that a list of instructions pretty much won't be read. Along the lines of noneuclidian geometry... What if we experiment (at least conceptually) with inverting that instruction? Encourage people to write on subjects they know... Normal people won't be so much of an expert that using their own professional or academic work as a reference is even applicable. Actual experts, we can include a Please cite your sources, rather than your own work, thanks! and leave it at that. Actual experts who fail to heed that are a problem, but a much smaller and easier to communicate with and explain problem than the no-newbies one. . Please resubmit this suggestion after three hours of AfC work You think I haven't done hours (days, weeks, at one point a month) worth of AfC work? I thought AfC was a great place to ramp up my WP skills when I was getting in sync. Pick something I knew about but not enough to write an article, go research it, zap. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
On 1/4/2013 12:17 PM, James Salsman wrote: Even the best medical plans don't protect medical debtors the way that the ability to finance long term personal debt with greater salary and savings does. Right, and the best approach would be for employees to get no health insurance at all, I'm sure they would rather have the cost of that benefit paid out in salary instead and be left entirely on their own for medical expenses. Seriously, I know the US approach to paying for healthcare has its problems, but that has to be the most bizarre conclusion I've ever seen on the topic. You think that having people mortgage their future and simply giving them more cash, which they don't ultimately enjoy other than to pay loans at distressed interest rates, is a greater benefit to them than providing the best insurance coverage we can offer? Three quarters of U.S. debtors entering bankruptcy for medical reasons have insurance: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/american_journal_of_medicine_09.pdf Yes, lots of people are underinsured in various ways. The Wikimedia Foundation tries to provide generous health coverage to protect its employees from having to deal with exactly that. --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 1/4/13 5:51 PM, George Herbert wrote: On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:05 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 January 2013 17:56, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: 1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc. This can be a problem in that people will become interested first in fixing something they think is wrong because they know about it. I do realise all the steps from that to here, and that a list of instructions pretty much won't be read. Along the lines of noneuclidian geometry... What if we experiment (at least conceptually) with inverting that instruction? Encourage people to write on subjects they know... Hmm, I should've worded that more narrowly. I don't disagree with people writing on subjects they know (quite the opposite!). I have more in mind to avoid things that people have an unusually close personal/emotional connection to, which makes it more likely their editing will result in POV-pushing. For example, I'm Greek, and know a bit about Greek culture, history, etc., and these are fine areas for someone to start editing in. On the other hand, a Greek choosing [[Macedonia naming dispute]] or [[Cyprus dispute]] as the first article one edits (e.g. to correct misinformation) is less advisable, imo. It's certainly possible to edit reasonably in those areas, but I think it's a poor starting point, and requires some more experience with how to write neutral articles in contentious areas, and how to reach a consensus over what that even means. Same in my area of expertise: editing AI articles is a great place for an AI researcher to start editing, but editing an article on one's own research lab, self, department, algorithm, etc. is not a great place. Unfortunately I often find academics primarily interested in the latter: the would-be-editor question I most often get is along the lines of, how do I create a Wikipedia article on [my own thing]? I do try to redirect this into suggesting they edit more generally in their area of expertise but not *specifically* their approach/self/lab they're trying to promote, e.g. think about what exists in a good textbook or survey article that's not yet covered well in Wikipedia, and work there. But I'd say that's usually not successful. -Mark ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
Does anyone object to the idea of surveying donors to find their opinions on whether the Foundation should pay market rate for labor? I would object to the precedent being set that donors from around the world, however old or young, are able to directly decide the salaries of staff at the WMF. Salary levels should be decided by HR professionals with input from the board. I would also have an issue with donors being bombarded with emails or notices about relatively unimportant things: email fatigue is very easy to trigger, and we should be saving our 'communication points' for something more important. Disclaimer: I'm not a WMF employee, and this wont affect me- but I have worked in HR-related jobs for a few years. I'm also writing as myself, rather than as a staffer at WMUK. On Jan 4, 2013 8:18 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Michael Snow wrote: ... Paying market rate salaries is not what protects employees from being overwhelmed by medical expenses. The type of long-term or catastrophic medical event that generates a situation like this can outstrip even the most generous salary. What's actually relevant is the scope of medical coverage offered, including for dependents. Even the best medical plans don't protect medical debtors the way that the ability to finance long term personal debt with greater salary and savings does. Three quarters of U.S. debtors entering bankruptcy for medical reasons have insurance: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/american_journal_of_medicine_09.pdf Does anyone object to the idea of surveying donors to find their opinions on whether the Foundation should pay market rate for labor? Nine additional reviews have been added to http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wikimedia-Foundation-Reviews-E38331.htm since Glassdoor was mentioned here last week. Glassdoor verifies email addresses for those who claim to be current employees, and they provide anonymity in the way an internal survey with detailed responses can not. The Foundation's employee satisfaction and recommendation scores there have improved very slightly, but still not enough to exceed any of the other comparable firms and foundations. It is great to hear personally from satisfied employees, but it seems more reasonable to trust reasonably anonymous data rather than anecdotes in this case. Nathan wrote: Does the Foundation have the will to protect volunteer editors from the deleterious effects of income inequality? This is, I think, is the signal of where James is going with this. This is the recurrence of the argument from a few months ago of paying editors, something that I think virtually anyone who has thought about it would oppose. I've never suggested paying editors, but I was hoping that something like the Fellowship program could have been extended to established, long-term contributors living in poverty. There are now Foundation grants available for individuals which will be announced in a few weeks: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Individual_Engagement_Grants When I wrote that, I was trying to suggest that it would be reasonable for the Foundation to undertake an educational action campaign to help people understand the implications of Arthur Okun's 1975 regression mistake described in http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/berg.htm -- I think it is absolutely correct to describe that as the worst mathematical error in the history of human civilization, which has resulted in more than two billion preventable premature deaths and more than $20 trillion in financial losses since 1975. Moreover, the error underlies essentially all of the left-right economic debates taking place worldwide today. However, since I wrote that, it has become apparent that the IMF itself, at its highest levels, is starting to come to terms with the magnitude and implications of the error and address them directly on the world stage, and the press has picked up on that: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/03/an-amazing-mea-culpa-from-the-imfs-chief-economist-on-austerity/ So it's probably best to take a wait-and-see attitude for a month or so before I would continue to recommend such action. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: On 1/4/13 5:51 PM, George Herbert wrote: On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:05 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 January 2013 17:56, Mark delir...@hackish.org wrote: 1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc. This can be a problem in that people will become interested first in fixing something they think is wrong because they know about it. I do realise all the steps from that to here, and that a list of instructions pretty much won't be read. Along the lines of noneuclidian geometry... What if we experiment (at least conceptually) with inverting that instruction? Encourage people to write on subjects they know... Hmm, I should've worded that more narrowly. I don't disagree with people writing on subjects they know (quite the opposite!). I have more in mind to avoid things that people have an unusually close personal/emotional connection to, which makes it more likely their editing will result in POV-pushing. For example, I'm Greek, and know a bit about Greek culture, history, etc., and these are fine areas for someone to start editing in. On the other hand, a Greek choosing [[Macedonia naming dispute]] or [[Cyprus dispute]] as the first article one edits (e.g. to correct misinformation) is less advisable, imo. It's certainly possible to edit reasonably in those areas, but I think it's a poor starting point, and requires some more experience with how to write neutral articles in contentious areas, and how to reach a consensus over what that even means. I almost wonder if having a warning flag for highly sensitive or contentious article, encouraging editors without some threshold of edits (500? ... some number) to ask about contributions on the article talk page first, rather than going directly to editing the actual article... Don't make it impossible for them to edit the actual article by any means, but give them an intermediate popup warning them that they might want to think about it and ask about it first... Click through to edit the article, or click over here to ask on the talk page. If they edit anyways and push hot buttons, we deal with it, but at least they were warned. If they ask on talk page and figure it out, great. Same in my area of expertise: editing AI articles is a great place for an AI researcher to start editing, but editing an article on one's own research lab, self, department, algorithm, etc. is not a great place. Unfortunately I often find academics primarily interested in the latter: the would-be-editor question I most often get is along the lines of, how do I create a Wikipedia article on [my own thing]? I do try to redirect this into suggesting they edit more generally in their area of expertise but not *specifically* their approach/self/lab they're trying to promote, e.g. think about what exists in a good textbook or survey article that's not yet covered well in Wikipedia, and work there. But I'd say that's usually not successful. Most experts haven't written or contemplated writing general purpose overviews or survey texts in their field, so they're not actually experienced in that aspect of it. Many of them may have escaped having to teach the undergrad intro to the field course, even 8-) It's not easy. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
Michael Snow wrote: ... You think that having people mortgage their future and simply giving them more cash, which they don't ultimately enjoy other than to pay loans at distressed interest rates, is a greater benefit to them than providing the best insurance coverage we can offer? No, I didn't mean to imply anything like that. If a typical working age American's immediate family suffers catastrophic medical expenses, it's most likely going to be one of their parents, who aren't covered by the Foundation's or any other employer's plan. Medicare only pays for 60 days of hospitalization, with copayments totaling about $30,000 for the following 60 days, and then it stops paying altogether. (See e.g. http://www.kff.org/medicare/upload/7768.pdf ) In any case, most Americans who enter bankruptcy because of medical expenses have on average about $45,000 of debt, which amounts to 2.2 years of the difference between the mean salary of Wikimedia and Mozilla Foundation junior software engineers. It's not like the difference between being able to save a loved one from bankruptcy and keeping them in the hospital when they need it would displace existing health insurance or even make a serious dent in retirement savings. And that brings up another important point: What kind of talent does the WMF forgo by not being able to offer employees competitive retirement savings? I suggest that there are very good reasons that all the additional Glassdoor reviews in the past week didn't really move the needle in satisfaction or recommendation scores. If anything the Foundation should be exceeding market rate to make up for its inability to provide equity participation plans for retirement savings which commercial firms can offer. Richard Symonds wrote: I would object to the precedent being set that donors from around the world, however old or young, are able to directly decide the salaries of staff at the WMF I am not suggesting allowing donors to set salary levels, only to express their opinions as to whether they would object to the Foundation meeting market labor pay, or exceeding it to compensate for the inability to offer equity participation. Since the only objections raised against competitive pay have been that it would be an irresponsible use of donor's money, why not find out from the donor's whether they actually share that view? The worst that could happen would be that we would find that donors agree with the status quo. I would also have an issue with donors being bombarded with emails... A representative sample of 384 donors is sufficient to establish the answer with 95% confidence. I am not suggesting asking all however many million there have been. we should be saving our 'communication points' for something more important. What might be more important that we haven't already asked in donor surveys of years past? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 04/01/13 18:02, Erik Moeller wrote: I do agree that better mechanisms for dispute resolution, dealing with topic warring, article ownership, and plain old incivility are needed. But I don't believe that those issues are at the heart of the editor retention problem as you seem to suggest, but rather, that they tend to occur later in the editor lifecycle, among a subset of editors which in fact already has survived many of the primary factors that deter new editors and are therefore relatively likely to retain. The new editor experience is characterized more by templating and assembly line style enforcement of existing policies than it is by incivility, topic warring, article ownership and incivility. I'm wondering whether the key findings in Halfaker's recent rise and decline paper resonate with you: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Yes, they do resonate with me. The paper says that established users who use Huggle and similar tools do not follow best practices when they revert the edits of new users. This leads to poor editor retention. I am saying that an expanded arbcom and its delegated officers should reprimand those Huggle users. I am not saying that the editor retention problem is the kind of thing that the arbcom currently deals with. I think the arbcom is limited in the kinds of problems it can deal with because its mandate and resources are limited. Existing data like the above supports strongly the notion that well-intentioned, good faith contributors are much more heavily discouraged in 2012 than they were in 2004 or 2005, but this can be explained in significant part with the influx of bad faith contributors that have necessitated increasingly heavy handed ways to control against bad edits (Huggle, Twinkle, AbuseFilter, etc.) -- which catch good faith editors in the crossfire -- as well as increasing expectations of what constitutes an acceptable quality edit / page creation. We need ways to deal with bad faith edits that don't require destruction of the project to achieve their purpose. For example, requiring phone number verification for new users from developed countries would be less damaging. When a Huggle user drives away a new good faith user, that new user might not return for decades. You can't reverse it no matter what new policies you introduce, you just have to wait for another person to be born and grow up. It would be less damaging to tell them sorry, we can't accept any new users from Comcast this year, try again next year! Note that the total edit rate has declined from 4.5M in January 2007 to 3.5M per month in October 2012. As a metric of the workload that places on very active users, consider that figure divided by the number of users with more than 100 edits per month: it works out to 950 per very active user per month in January 2007, up to 1078 per very active user per month in October 2012. So it is hard for me to believe that the total review workload has increased over that period to such an extent that our only option is now to revert both good and bad edits on sight, with no discussion. Presumably the proportion of bad edits has increased, but it should be quicker to deal with simple vandalism than to review a good faith edit and engage with the editor. But we can always do new user phone number verification if enforcing the revert policy turns out to be too hard, right? -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
A warm welcome to the Spanish and Portuguese Wikivoyagers! 2013/1/4 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com Hoi Etienne, Thank you for informing us about the Assamese Wikisource; it is live as well :) A great day :) Thanks, GerardM On 4 January 2013 00:40, Etienne Beaule betie...@bellaliant.net wrote: Everyone forgot the assamese wikisource. On 2013-01-03 19:37, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I am only the bringer of the good news. I posted this because of the many words we spend on it. It is happily resolved. Thanks, GerardM On 4 January 2013 00:01, Everton Zanella Alvarenga everton...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, Gerard. Thank you. I am sure there were people involved that worked hard to make it happen. The community of Portuguese speakers for sure appreciate these efforts. Tom 2013/1/3 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
