Hello Kerry, While I agree to most what you said, I think that the bigger picture should include that: newbies are not always good contributors, and not always good-faith contributors. And even if they have good faith, that does not mean that they can be trained to become good contributors. Dealing with newbies means always a filtering. MAybe different people are differently optimistic about the probability to make a newbie a good contributor.
Kind regards, Ziko Kerry Raymond <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> schrieb am Do. 27. Sep. 2018 um 06:47: > While I have no objection to the administrator training, I don't think > most of the problem lies with administrators. There's a lot of biting of > the good-faith newbies done by "ordinary" editors (although I have seen > some admins do it too). And, while I agree that there are many good folk > out there on en.WP, unfortunately the newbie tends to meet the other folk > first or perhaps it's that 1 bad experience has more impact than one good > experience. > > Similarly while Arbcom's willingness to desysop folks is good, I doubt a > newbie knows how or where to complain in the first instance. Also there's a > high level of defensive reaction if they do. Some of my trainees have > contacted me about being reverted for clearly good-faith edits on the most > spurious of reasons. When I have restored their edit with a hopefully > helpful explanation, I often get reverted too. If a newbie takes any action > themselves, it is likely to be an undo and that road leads to 3RR block or > at least a 3RR warning. The other action they take is to respond on their > User Talk page (when there is a message there to respond to). However, such > replies are usually ignored, whether the other user isn't watching for a > reply or whether they just don't like their authority to be challenged, I > don't know. But it rarely leads to a satisfactory resolution. > > One of the problems we have with Wikipedia is that most of us tend to see > it edit-by-edit (whether we are talking about a new edit or a revert of an > edit), we don't ever see a "big picture" of a user's behaviour without a > lot of tedious investigation (working through their recent contributions > one by one). So, it's easy to think "I am not 100% sure that the > edit/revert I saw was OK but I really don't have time to see if this is > one-off or a consistent problem". Maybe we need a way to privately "express > doubt" about an edit (in the way you can report a Facebook post). Then if > someone starts getting too many "doubtful edits" per unit time (or > whatever), it triggers an admin (or someone) to take a closer look at what > that user is up to. I think if we had a lightweight way to express doubt > about any edit, then we could use machine learning to detect patterns that > suggest specific types of undesirable user behaviours that can really only > be seen as a "big picture". > > Given this is the research mailing list, I guess we should we talking > about ways research can help with this problem. > > Kerry > > -----Original Message----- > From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] > On Behalf Of Pine W > Sent: Wednesday, 26 September 2018 1:07 PM > To: Wiki Research-l <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>; Rosie > Stephenson-Goodknight <rosiestep.w...@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Results from 2018 global Wikimedia survey > are published! > > I'm appreciative that we're having this conversation - not in the sense > that I'm happy with the status quo, but I'm glad that some of us are > continuing to work on our persistent difficulties with contributor > retention, civility, and diversity. > > I've spent several hours on ENWP recently, and I've been surprised by the > willingness of people to revert good-faith edits, sometimes with blunt > commentary or with no explanation. I can understand how a newbie who > experienced even one of these incidents would find it to be unpleasant, > intimidating, or discouraging. Based on these experiences, I've decided > that I should coach newbies to avoid taking reversions personally if their > original contributions were in good faith. > > I agree with Jonathan Morgan that WP:NOTSOCIAL can be overused. > > Kerry, I appreciate your suggestions about about cultural change. I can > think of two ways to influence culture on English Wikipedia in large-scale > ways. > > 1. I think that there should be more and higher-quality training and > continuing education for administrators in topics like policies, conflict > resolution, communications skills, legal issues, and setting good examples. > I think that these trainings would be one way through which cultural > change could gradually happen over time. For what it's worth, I think that > there are many excellent administrators who do a lot of good work (which > can be tedious and/or stressful) with little appreciation. Also, my > impression is that ENWP Arbcom has become more willing over the years to > remove admin privileges from admins who misuse their tools. I recall having > a discussion awhile back with Rosie on the topic of training for > administrators, and I'm adding her to this email chain as an invitation for > her to participate in this discussion. I think that offering training to > administrators could be helpful in facilitating changes to ENWP culture. > > 2. I think that I can encourage civil participation in ENWP in the context > of my training project < > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Pine/Continuation_of_educational_video_and_website_project > > > that I'm hoping that WMF will continue to fund. ENWP is a complex and > sometimes emotionally difficult environment, and I'm trying to set a tone > in the online training materials that is encouraging. I hope to teach > newbies about the goals of Wikipedia as well as policies, how to use tools, > and Wikipedia culture. I am hopeful that the online training materials will > improve the confidence of new contributors, improve the retention of new > contributors, and help new editors to increase the quality and quantity of > their contributions. I hope that early portions of the project will be well > received and that, over time and if the project is successful as it > incrementally increases in scale and reach, that it will influence the > overall culture of ENWP to be more civil. > > Regards, > > Pine > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
