Ofer Arazy, Felipe Ortega, and Oded Nov have looked at career paths among
Wikipedians
<http://oferarazy.com/PDF/ArazyOrtegaNovYeoBalila%20CSCW2015.pdf>. Also,
Judd Antin, Coye Cheshire, and Nov have looked at how new Wikipedians
select into specific roles
<https://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/764c/7a3dbe3f141096f5e7acebdb62261bf4bacb.pdf>
as editors.

I'm not aware of any work that speaks specifically to the "conversion
process" (from 50/500 edits ---> career Wikipedian) that you're talking
about, though.



On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 9:24 PM, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hmm. Integrating "push notifications" into training, as well as using them
> for recognition and suggestions for skill development, sounds like a good
> idea. Thanks for the suggestion!
>
> Pine
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 7:16 PM, Stuart A. Yeates <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> I have thought about writing a bot that congratulated active users on
>> account creation anniversaries and suggested directions for growth.
>> "Grats X you've been editing for 2 years, here's a picture of a kitten.
>> Have you thought about doing New Page Patrol?"
>>
>> "Grats Y you've been editing for a decade, here's a virtual beer, you've
>> earned it! Have you thought about applying for adminship?"
>>
>> Of course, you'd want to check account account behaviour pretty carefully
>> first.
>>
>> cheers
>> stuart
>>
>> --
>> ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
>>
>> On 21 February 2017 at 14:33, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Kerry,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the ideas. Jonathan Morgan, Aaron Halfaker, and I have had
>>> more than one conversation about wikiprojects as a way to engage with new
>>> editors. Unfortunately, there are a lot of derelict wikiprojects.
>>>
>>> I have some ideas about how to improve the training system for ENWP and
>>> Commons in particular. But that's different from the motivation issue,
>>> which I think is more challenging. With enough money and time, the training
>>> system can be upgraded. I'm not sure if the same is true for motivation. I
>>> have the impression that student Wikimedians are mostly motivated by grades
>>> (hence the precipitous decline in their participation after their Wikipedia
>>> Education Program class ends), and many other people are motivated by money
>>> or PR (hence we get a lot of people engaging in promotionalism or PR
>>> management.) It's not clear to me how someone goes from being wiki-curious
>>> to feeling motivated enough to contribute for years. There are many other
>>> hobbies that are lower stress, healthier, offer more opportunities for
>>> socializing, and offer a friendlier environment. I think that some
>>> Wikimedians are motivated by desire to promote or share their interest in a
>>> particular topic, which might keep content creators interested and engaged
>>> for years, particularly if they meet people with similar interests. But
>>> it's a phase change to go from being a content creator or curator, to
>>> taking on roles that benefit other individual Wikimedians, or broad
>>> cross-sections of the Wikimedia community. We could use all of those kinds
>>> of good-faith long-term contributors.
>>>
>>> Perhaps we should include information in our training about "career
>>> paths" for Wikimedians who would like to develop their skills and/or move
>>> into new roles?
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what else to suggest. I find it challenging to figure out
>>> how to motivate people to want to contribute productively for years, and
>>> there are some roles for which lengthy experience is an informal but
>>> significant prerequisite for acceptance and/or success. I'd like to see
>>> more people make that journey.
>>>
>>> Pine
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Kerry Raymond <[email protected]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Pine,
>>>>
>>>> It sounds to me that there are two separate parts to your question.
>>>>
>>>> One relates to the survival of such editors to being ongoing active
>>>> editors. The second seems to relate to recruiting them and perhaps
>>>> upskilling them for specific purposes, eg administration, guild of copy
>>>> editors, and whatever initiatives you have in mind.
>>>>
>>>> The first question probably relates to being able to get them better
>>>> informed about the policies of Wikipedia at least in relation to the area
>>>> of their contributions and how to engage with the community because it is
>>>> the abrasive interaction with the community that seems to drive people 
>>>> away.
>>>>
>>>> The second probably relates to raising awareness of WikiProjects and
>>>> other collaborative initiatives. (Obviously all of WP is collaborative, but
>>>> some things require higher levels of coordination and I think this might be
>>>> what you are referring to). I think probably needs some analysis of the
>>>> nature of their contributions and/or their topics of interest in order to
>>>> introduce them to targetted WikiProjects etc that seem logical trajectories
>>>> for them. The mistake we make constantly in onboarding newbies is
>>>> overwhelming them with information (think of the standard Twinkle welcome
>>>> templates) because "THEY NEED TO KNOW THIS" instead of what they want to
>>>> know "how do I do this current thing I am trying to do". For similar
>>>> reasons I think any attempts to draw them into particular
>>>> projects/initiatives should be highly targeted, not too frequent, and based
>>>> on what their interests seem to be rather where someone else would like
>>>> them to work. (I think we should avoid the mindset of "I need to recruit
>>>> some cannon fodder"). Having got their attention, someone probably has to
>>>> hold their hand through whatever upskilling is needed to get them
>>>> productive. Just pointing people at a Project page isn't helpful, there
>>>> needs to be some human outreach and shepherding.
>>>>
>>>> In some idealised universe, we should see Wikipedians as being on a
>>>> learning journey, where (through analysis of past contributions and
>>>> interactions) we are tracking them against a series of learning objectives
>>>> (as we do with coursework curriculum "they have passed this unit, let's
>>>> offer them some new units that build on that"). So, using newbies as an
>>>> example, we look for some threshold of surviving-edits that demonstrate
>>>> skills like "add text", "format text", "add list element", "make links",
>>>> "make piped links", "add citation", "add templated citations", "use a
>>>> template", "edit an infobox", "add an infobox", write on their talk page,
>>>> write on an article talk page, write on another user's talk page, add to
>>>> their own user page, etc. The idea being to suggest as various competencies
>>>> are attained how to add a new skill to their repertoire. Once they have
>>>> acquired the basic how-to skills, we could look at the suggestions of where
>>>> they might apply these skills and how to specialise their skills in various
>>>> ways.
>>>>
>>>> Kerry
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>
>>>> On 21 Feb 2017, at 2:49 am, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Research-l,
>>>>
>>>> A human resources problem that I am experiencing is a shortage of human
>>>> resources of community members who are willing, available, and have the
>>>> skills to work on a variety of useful initiatives. Is anyone on this list
>>>> aware of research that talks about motivations of long-term contributors?
>>>> In particular, I'd be interested in research that suggests ways to convert
>>>> productive, relatively new editors (say, 50-500 edits) into long-term
>>>> community members who are likely to develop into long-term, productive
>>>> Wikimedians.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Pine
>>>>
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