To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or surveying at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left Facebook (example <http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf>) by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to burnout) such as the 2012 survey: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17 (see the editor survey category <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Editor_surveys> if you're looking for others)
Some things that come to mind though: - I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing (as a very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but many more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be relevant: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_readers_evaluate_Wikipedia_articles#Second_round_survey - Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity: - Harassment as barrier: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity - Edit summaries in particular as harassment: https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019> ) - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this -- e.g., https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_Report/Thriving_Movement#Safe_and_Secure_Spaces - 2015 Harassment Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015 - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good insights too -- e.g., https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Amir, > > This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual > editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process, and > I don't know if the best questions got included. > > But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start editing has > to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back to > my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made it > into my first 50. > > There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started > to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep > decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism tools > that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask > editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research > this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of > active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians > start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be > available. > > Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse, > disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be inclined > to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than > talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former editors > would be useful. > > My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or > oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to tackle > abuse we need more edit filters to prevent such abuse from going live. > > WSC > > On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni < > [email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content pages > > on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? > > > > And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced > editors > > and new and potential editors? > > > > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: > > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and patrollers' > > time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some > people > > say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is > there > > any data about it, beyond intuition? > > > > 2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the wikis' > > reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages and > > wikis.) > > > > 3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries affects > editors, > > and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about certain > > topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How > does > > it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country, > > professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki, etc.? > > > > Thanks! :) > > > > -- > > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > > “We're living in pieces, > > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore > > _______________________________________________ > > Wiki-research-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > -- Isaac Johnson (he/him/his) -- Research Scientist -- Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
