Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 1 June 2014 01:39, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote: On 1 June 2014 04:26, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: ... ... selects strongly against women. Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding wikitext than men? (Probably drifting to Increase participation by women) As someone who has run editathons on women focused topics, I found this an odd comment that does not match anecdotal experience. New women users seem little different to men in the issues that arise, and though I have found myself apologising for the slightly odd syntax, given the standard crib-sheet most users get on with basic article creation quite happily. There are far more commonly raised issues such as the complex issues associated with image upload (copyright!), or the conceptual difficulty of namespaces which mean that some webpages behave differently to others. None is something that appears to select strongly against women, though the encyclopedia's way of defining notability can make it harder to create articles about pre-1970s professional women, purely because sources from earlier periods tend to be biased towards men. If there are surveys that wiki-syntax is more of a barrier for women than men (after discounting out other factors), perhaps someone could provide a link? Fae, I don't know if wiki-syntax in and of itself is more of a barrier for women than men. What I do know is that wiki-syntax is a lot harder today than it was when I started editing 8 years ago, and that today I would consider it more akin to computer programming than content creation. That is where the barrier comes in. The statistics for percentage of women employed in computer-related technology is abysmal; we all know that. Even organizations that actively seek out qualified women (including Wikimedia, I'll point out) can't come close to filling all the slots they'd willingly open, because there simply aren't that many qualified women. They're not filling the seats in college and university programs, either. Eight years ago, only about a quarter of English Wikipedia articles had an infobox - that huge pile of wiki-syntax that is at the top of the overwhelming majority of articles today. There were not a lot of templates; certainly the monstrous templates at the bottom of most articles today didn't exist then. The syntax for creating references was essentially ref insert url /ref; today there is a plethora of complex referencing templates, some of which are so complex and non-intuitive that only a small minority of *wikipedians* can use them effectively. I know wiki-syntax, and I have found it increasingly more difficult to edit as time has gone on. I don't think it's because I'm a woman, I think it's because I'm not a programmer - and women who *are* programmers are only a small minority of all programmers, so it follows that women are less likely to have the skills that will help them sort through what they see when they click Edit. It's exactly why I've been following and keeping up with the development of VisualEditor - because I believe it will make it easier for those who aren't particularly technically inclined to contribute to the project. I believe it's the route to attracting a more diverse editing population, including but not limited to women. And I think that it's pretty close to being ready for hands-on use by those who are new to our projects, now that it can handle pretty well most of the essential editing tasks. It's not perfect, but it's getting there. Risker/Anne ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 01/06/2014 10:53, Ting Chen wrote: Nowaday Wikipedia articles (across all major languages) are highly biased in style and in content to academic thesis. There is good reason for this: 'anyone can edit'. In an encyclopedia produced using the 'one best way' approach, there is sparse use of references and citations. Take this article on the syllogism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-syllogism written by Henrik Lagerlund. I don't spot any references, and generally SEP is sparing in their use. Henrik doesn't need to supply references, because he is an expert in his field, and because there is a traditional peer review process supporting SEP. In Wikipedia by contrast, 'anyone can edit', and there is no equivalent peer review process, and so the only control is insistence on citations. This is part of what makes it difficult for newcomers. I remember well the period 2006-7. The growth of Wikipedia was tremendous. Before that, it was possible to manage the occasional 'idiosyncratic' contributors. Towards the beginning of 2007 it became impossible. Then two things happened. (i) It became much easier to get the 'idiosyncratic contributors' blocked. Before that, you had to make a very strong case to a non-involved admin. After that, it progressively became more like shoot on sight. (ii) The policies on citation became increasingly established and enforced. This made it much easier to gain control of an article. 'Idiosyncratic' contributors found it difficult to find reliable sources for whatever version of flat earth theory they were promoting, and got discouraged. There was also (iii) an easy way to control the quality of an article was to impose a sort of change freeze on any contribution, good or bad. I still maintain contact with the few editors left on the Philosophy and NLP articles, and they tell me this is how they achieve it. Of course, all this will have the effect of deterring contributors. But the underlying reason is the trade-off between quality and participation. If you have a large user base under the 'anyone can edit' policy, then you are going to have quality control problems. If you address the quality problem by any of the three methods above, then you will have to limit participation in some way. No brainer. I would advise anyone with an interest in this to read Aaron Halfaker's seminal paper on this. The links are in his post here http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-May/072267.html . ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
Phototypesetters were typically professionals, therefore not strictly comparable. There is a significant difference to learning a complex system because you are going to earn a living from it, and learning the same system so you can spend your free time doing unpaid work with it. Cheers, Peter -Original Message- From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Salsman Sent: 01 June 2014 05:26 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks] (non-CS) engineer friends ... upon hitting that edit button, basically went Gak! No way! Wikitext is simpler than what phototypesetter operators in the 1960s-1990s had to deal with, and they had a much better gender balance. Wikitext resitricts editing to pretty much only computer science professionals, highly computer-literate professionals (which excludes most of Academia -- have you ever done IT support for a university?), and westerners with enough leisure time to learn it the hard way. There are abundant counter-examples. ... selects strongly against women. Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding wikitext than men? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3955/7601 - Release Date: 05/31/14 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 01/06/2014 12:00, Peter Southwood wrote: Phototypesetters were typically professionals, therefore not strictly comparable. There is a significant difference to learning a complex system because you are going to earn a living from it, and learning the same system so you can spend your free time doing unpaid work with it. Cheers, Peter Which explains the gender bias, yes? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
I agree with Ting's remarks about the importance of the social aspect. Maybe we need a taskforce against rudeness. But looking into the social aspect does not exclude improvements on the tech side. I think that maybe instead of VE we should have an 'invisible editor', meaning that if someone hits edit, no edit window with syntax shows up, but the page gets open for marking/inserting some text and change it (like it is done in wordprocessing programs). To place the change correctly in the body text or in some highly complicated template should be done by the wikimedia software without user intervention. As it is now, even simple changes like correcting a typo or a date often requires a lot of effort in locating it in the edit window. If it is hidden inside a template, even a page search does not show it. Regards, Thyge 2014-06-01 11:53 GMT+02:00 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Hello Risker, you have my sympathy, and let me tell you this: I am man and programmer, and when I edit articles nowaday I tend to ignore the info boxes and the templates at the end of each article. If I create a new article and I happen don't have a similar article with the templates and infobox already at hand, I simply create an article without both. And I think it is essential to tell the beginner to do the same: Don't bother with things that are too complicated, it is the content that counts. What I also do is help newcomers to wikify articles. I think it is an utterly bad habitate just to put a wikify template in a not nicely structured article instead of to do something by one self. It is usually just a few edits, two '''s, a few [[ and ]]s, and maybe a [[cateogry:...]] that can make the difference. Personally, there are two reasons that I don't really care about info boxes and templates: First it is my own habitate as a user. For me the summary at the begin of an article tells me more than the info boxes. Info boxes are great for machines, for semantic web or things like that, but as a human I am more content with the summary. Second, I am sure that there will be at some time some nice and capable people who will put the necessary info boxes and templates in the articles I created. I never try to start a perfect article (I even never start an article in my own sandbox, people can always see my progress in the articles), I just do something and then leave it as I am able to. In all the discussions about editor retention and new comer barriers there is one thing that astonishes me again and again, and that is the whole discussion seems to be highly biased on the technical aspect, while the social aspect mostly tend to be neglected. People put a HUGE TON of hope in the visual editor as if it can resolve everything. But actually I think what VE can do is very limited, as far as our rules and our scope don't change. Nowaday Wikipedia articles (across all major languages) are highly biased in style and in content to academic thesis. How references are used and put, the criteria for references as valid, are almost one-by-one copied by the standards from academic thesis. Content without references are by itself considered as delete candidates. Both of these strongly put up constraints on who can put new content in Wikipedia and what content is considered as viable. I always feel sorrow, that both the Foundation and the community neglected the Oral Citation Project lead by Achal ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Oral_citations ). I believe it has the potential to revolutionary how anthropology (and maybe a lot of other sciences where field study is necessary) is done just like Wikipedia revolutionized how Encyclopedia can be done. And it can really give a lot of people, who did not enjoyed the academic training, the possibility to contribute their knowledge. The other major topic that I see neglected in this whole complex of discussion is how our rules are set up. They don't really put on a price or punishment against rude behavior. There are a lot of initiative to be welcoming and helpful, they are all great, but in the end, one rude comment can destroy efforts of two or three welcoming volunteers. Our rules only set in if the rude behavior is obvious, but not if they are acid and suttle. And people tend to ignore rude behavior if they come from a high performer editor. Change our attitude to non-academic-content and change our play rule on rude behavior is harder than change in technology, this is why people do so as if the VE is the holy grale. But it is not. By the start of the last strategic period, in the years 2009 and 2010, the Foundation conducted a lot of studies about why people leave our community, and Wiki-syntax is only one of at least three other reasons. VE is just a tool, tools can be used for good or for bad, it is the mind, that decides for which the tools are used. Greetings Ting Am 01.06.2014 08:55, schrieb Risker: On 1 June 2014 01:39,
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 6/1/14, 11:53 AM, Ting Chen wrote:
And I think it is essential to tell the beginner to do the same: Don't
bother with things that are too complicated, it is the content that
counts.
Yes, I think we need to publicize this more widely. People are usually
surprised when I tell them that as a new editor it's perfectly fine to
just ignore a wide range of formatting instructions and templates, as
long as the essential content is there. All they really need is good
text and *any* readable way of citing where they got the information
from. There is no need to create an infobox, and you don't even need to
deal with citation templates. Once I've convinced people they don't
*really* need to learn how to use {{cite book}} and such, they tend to
be more willing to contribute.
When I'm giving people a miniature intro for how to contribute
referenced information to a Wikipedia article, I tell them to just put a
plaintext reference in any format they're used to inside ref/ref
tags, like this:
This is a sentence supported by a reference.refAuthor, Book title,
Publisher, year, pp. xx-xy/ref
As long as the essential information for the reference is included, this
should be fine, and someone who knows the markup can prettify it later,
if necessary. (If newbies contributing in this manner are getting bad
reactions, then the message that this is a perfectly fine way to
contribute should be better publicized to existing editors/admins, too.)
-Mark
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 06/01/2014 07:13 AM, edward wrote: Which explains the gender bias, yes? At least in large part; Risker explained it more eloquently than I. There is a bias against women because the skillsets currently useful to be able to edit wikitext (programming, heavy markup languages) are more common in professions where women are underrepresented. I didn't mean to imply that women were less skilled, but that the pool of potentially skilled editors had much fewer women in it than men. -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
I have seen little evidence either way. -Original Message- From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of edward Sent: 01 June 2014 01:14 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks] On 01/06/2014 12:00, Peter Southwood wrote: Phototypesetters were typically professionals, therefore not strictly comparable. There is a significant difference to learning a complex system because you are going to earn a living from it, and learning the same system so you can spend your free time doing unpaid work with it. Cheers, Peter Which explains the gender bias, yes? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe - No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3955/7601 - Release Date: 05/31/14 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 05/31/2014 08:27 PM, James Salsman wrote: Individual editors' skill with wikitext should be independent of almost all of the systemic biases from which we suffer [...] Seriously? I have (non-CS) engineer friends that, upon hitting that edit button, basically went Gak! No way! Wikitext resitricts editing to pretty much only computer science professionals, highly computer-literate professionals (which excludes most of Academia -- have you ever done IT support for a university?), and westerners with enough leisure time to learn it the hard way. This is, optimistically, 1-2% of the world, only a small fraction of which are women. There's no way to *not* have a catastrophic systemic bias with those demographics that pretty much excludes the vast majority of academia, most cultures, and selects strongly against women. -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
(non-CS) engineer friends ... upon hitting that edit button, basically went Gak! No way! Wikitext is simpler than what phototypesetter operators in the 1960s-1990s had to deal with, and they had a much better gender balance. Wikitext resitricts editing to pretty much only computer science professionals, highly computer-literate professionals (which excludes most of Academia -- have you ever done IT support for a university?), and westerners with enough leisure time to learn it the hard way. There are abundant counter-examples. ... selects strongly against women. Where is the evidence that women have more difficulty understanding wikitext than men? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
even finding the glaring typo you saw in a reference is nearly impossible after you hit the edit button. -- Marc Yes, it was, as references were getting longer and longer (almost to the point of including the author's likesa and deslikes and what he or she had for breakfast. That was 'solved' by the new ref=., that is really not the easiest to figure out. And oddly enough, I don't ever see anywhere any form of a tutorial on changes - such as the new ref method, hoveing footnotes, etc. Other then clicking edit on another page to see how it is done, there is no gjuidance whatsoever. Rui ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- _ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186 Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186 ___ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
[Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
[Chaging subject line as (1) topic has moved on (2) need to ensure visibility by rising above the Lila/ Wil never ending story frenzy.] Hi James Do we have any figures on retention of new editors? How long does the average new editor stay? What percentage of new editors stays on for 6 months; one year; two years? Do we have these figures for all languages? New editors should be allowed space to grow. Wikipedia is so rich in developing all kinds of scripts, templates etc, that it would be easy to create something to inform others that someone is a new editor. Pages by new editors should be left alone for a day or two. There is nothing more disheartening than getting all excited about contributing only to find that someone comes along and either deletes your first attempt or nominates it for deletion. I've have seen this happen WITHIN MINUTES of the seminal version being posted, followed up by 'warnings' on the editor's talk page. I've seen edits reverted because the formatting of the source was wrong. It should be a basic pillar that before reverting, we see if we can improve/ fix the problem. Undoing a newcomer's work and leaving something like WP:MOS as an edit summary is not helpful - if you are going to cite a WP policy, then do so by pointing directly to the specific page where the new editor can read about it. I know it is time-consuming to fill in edit summaries, especially if one is doing a series of identical edits to a whole lot of pages. But we can use technology to speed this up - on a blank edit summary, a prompt will suggest earlier text and you can select an applicable one. On an edit summary with a reference to the section of the page this does not work - so we need to find a way around this, like splitting the field. No amount of ink about how welcoming WP is to new editors, IT IS NOT. For reference, this section has some interesting facts, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Contributors. We are also losing established editors, mostly because of edit warring. There are blocks coalescing around all kinds of themes and issues and these defend their turf. Pages that contain controversial details should display a specific notice - not difficult to do, given the array of templates already in use. Some pages are the result of a compromise reached after acrimonious debate. An editor - old or new - who was not involved in discussions will not know this and might make an edit that detonates the powder keg and starts the war all over again. It would be so easy to display a notice on the EDIT PAGE saying something like Hi, if you were planning to edit .[ x detail] ... please read (link) the discussion and resolution on this. I am pretty convinced it would work far better than having thousands of pages locked ([semi-]protected). Some pages just require a simple message on the EDIT PAGE such as (example) In the English Wikipedia we use the spelling *Braganza* and not *Bragança* when referring to the House of Braganza. Please do not change this.. There are 1,300 pages where Braganza is mentioned, imagine how many headaches we could spare ourselves. Some editors seem to derive pleasure from the constant reverting/ protecting - you soon get to know who the 'group' is and can read on their talk pages comments and jokes about a here we go again scenario. It is as if they actually lie in wait for the next unwary editor to come along and make a change. At the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of pages that do not meet 20% of the quality criteria and nobody does anything to remedy them. Yet, do something like move the page, change the infobox and immediately the 'owners' come out of the woodwork to revert. Someone cited Ukranian in this thread and I would like to pick up on that. There is a tendency at the higher levels to equate Wikipedia with the English Wikipedia and all else are something else. This includes the level of involvement by the Foundation etc in the non-English Wikipedias, often with the justification (excuse?) that each is independent. And of course each language WP will use this independence to its advantage when convenient, as a reason why this or that is being done differently. In the same breath, content that is specifically marked as referring to the En-WP is then regurgitated as if it reflects the whole WP, as here, in the Portuguese WP: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confiabilidade_da_Wikip%C3%A9dia#Avalia.C3.A7.C3.B5es Independence is well and good, but not when for example the Portuguese WP votes/ debates/ discusses/ relaxing sourcing policies. If WP is to be judged on its reliability then on a number of key elements it must be held to one standard with criteria that apply across the board. We can't have different standards on reliability of sources, notibality, etc. To shrug it off as an issue of the Portuguese WP is to bury our heads in the sand, to shirk responsibility, because such issues are symptomatic of the problems facing the WP as a whole and
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
Rui Correia, 29/05/2014 15:01: Do we have any figures on retention of new editors? https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearchprofile=advancedsearch=retentionfulltext=Searchns202=1profile=advanced How long does the average new editor stay? What percentage of new editors stays on for 6 months; one year; two years? Do we have these figures for all languages? In the end what retention matters for is http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 29/05/2014, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: ... In the end what retention matters for is http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm That is an incredibly useful report. If like me, most people find this a hard table to remember how to locate, a link to a project-specific version can be found at the bottom of the Special:Statistics page, for example: * English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics * Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics You can navigate around the statistics report to find report cards and graphs of many handy types, for example http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ReportCardTopWikis.htm Perhaps we should have some more memorable on-wiki short-cuts to link and find these reports? Fae -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
Fæ, 29/05/2014 16:07: Perhaps we should have some more memorable on-wiki short-cuts to link and find these reports? I suggested Erik Zachte that we could override the default [[MediaWiki:statistics-footer]] (which is empty) on all Wikimedia wikis to link relevant WikiStats reports, but he's too humble. ;) Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
Hi Frederico Neither of those answers my question. I doesn't tell me whether we are bleeding new or old members. The reason for an editor of either group to leave are different. All that that graph shows is that there has been a frightful drop since 2007. Rui 2014-05-29 15:28 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Rui Correia, 29/05/2014 15:01: Do we have any figures on retention of new editors? https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special% 3ASearchprofile=advancedsearch=retentionfulltext= Searchns202=1profile=advanced How long does the average new editor stay? What percentage of new editors stays on for 6 months; one year; two years? Do we have these figures for all languages? In the end what retention matters for is http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- _ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186 Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186 ___ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Fæ, 29/05/2014 16:07: Perhaps we should have some more memorable on-wiki short-cuts to link and find these reports? I suggested Erik Zachte that we could override the default [[MediaWiki:statistics-footer]] (which is empty) on all Wikimedia wikis to link relevant WikiStats reports, but he's too humble. ;) yes please! rupert ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
We have deeper graphs. I want to be sensitive to our product team's time, but I am sure they will share when they can. The short answer -- I believe -- the the community tends to gravitate towards its current state and loose new editors at a higher rate. This is not unusual in general of course -- what is concerning is the delta in those rates. So we also need to understand the differences in the loss between now and say 5 years ago when rules of engagement, dynamics and overall state of the internet where different, and how that influenced retention. Again, I am still learning, and our PMs may correct me on this :) L On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 7:31 AM, Rui Correia correia@gmail.com wrote: Hi Frederico Neither of those answers my question. I doesn't tell me whether we are bleeding new or old members. The reason for an editor of either group to leave are different. All that that graph shows is that there has been a frightful drop since 2007. Rui 2014-05-29 15:28 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Rui Correia, 29/05/2014 15:01: Do we have any figures on retention of new editors? https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special% 3ASearchprofile=advancedsearch=retentionfulltext= Searchns202=1profile=advanced How long does the average new editor stay? What percentage of new editors stays on for 6 months; one year; two years? Do we have these figures for all languages? In the end what retention matters for is http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- _ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186 Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186 ___ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 29 May 2014 15:31, Rui Correia correia@gmail.com wrote:
Neither of those answers my question. I doesn't tell me whether we are
bleeding new or old members. The reason for an editor of either group to
leave are different. All that that graph shows is that there has been a
frightful drop since 2007.
The reports do include things like recently absent wikipedians.
Perhaps you would like to write down a few criteria for the ideal
report you would like to see, and then those more aware of what
statistics are available could then either point to something
equivalent, or knock out a quick report for it?
My assumption is that you would like to see something like a monthly
snapshot of stats for all accounts that (a) have ceased making
contributions in the last {1 to 6} months (b) tabulated by whether
they were 'newbies' or not. I am unsure if there is an agreed way of
measuring newbies, but something like with fewer than {10, 100, 1000}
total contributions might be meaningful.
A more general question - Is there an on-wiki page for folks to
suggest and discuss additional reports like this, email being a
non-good way of discussing this sort of thing? I can see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Analytics might be an
appropriate place, but it seems a very quiet page and the majority of
Wikimedians would probably be happier talking on meta or similar.
Fae
--
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
n 29 May 2014 15:43, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote: We have deeper graphs. I want to be sensitive to our product team's time, but I am sure they will share when they can. Hi Lila, As well as WMF teams, there are quite a few volunteers about who pull reports from the database or through the API and generate interesting reports, tables and charts to support projects they are interested in. For a bit of fun I manually generate this report of active Commons contributors with more than 10,000 edits https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:F%C3%A6/Userlist. It might be an idea to think of how you can encourage unpaid volunteers to try playing around with generating reports and creating bots to maintain them so that, as a community, more volunteers can do it themselves and produce test examples in an agile fashion, and reduce the burden on WMF teams to respond to requests. I find the labs, API and database user guides okay, but not easy, for a non-technical person to work out what they need to do to get started. Noting that the the API sandbox was a *great* well designed feature to add to the wikis. In practice, as an older guy with a technical but non-internet background, it took me nearly a year to become not-too-terrible at doing bot-stuff (and I still have not got around to working out how to run SQL queries via Python to the Wikimedia database), for the very few contributors that are interested in what happens behind the scenes, this is a tough barrier to overcome. I have been asked to help with a workshop on GLAM related automated uploading at Wikimania. I'm dreading it, as having tried several times, I find it really hard to explain to another Wikimedia how to go about this stuff in an understandable step by step fashion, without listening to myself and realising how it awkwardly sounds like explaining how to do a DNA analysis using kitchen tools from someone who watches CSI but cannot remember the periodic table. Fae -- fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase participation [WAS: The first three weeks]
On 05/29/2014 08:57 PM, James Salsman wrote: but it was misplaced because being able to figure out wikitext is an excellent attribute in new editors I think that statement fails on two aspects: for one, saying that the enthusiasm 'was misplaced' is rather premature as VE itself is rather incomplete - we do not yet know its potential. Secondly, and more importantly in my mind, being able to figure out wikitext might be a good attribute, but making it a requirement pretty much sacrifices any hope we have of getting rid of our systemic bias. The vast majority of the planet cannot - or will not - have the time and resources to learn an arcane and overcomplicated mishmash of markup languages; yet many of those have knowledge and skill to share. In 2004, when articles were mostly unformatted, that argument made sense. Most anyone with minimal computer skills (and that's already a very restricted slice of the population) could edit a page to fix a typo or add a statement or two without much difficulty. Nowadays? Not so much. For the untrained eye, even finding the glaring typo you saw in a reference is nearly impossible after you hit the edit button. -- Marc ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
