On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 10:24 PM, Legoktm <legoktm.wikipe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, > > It's well known that Wikipedia is facing threats from other social > networks and losing editors. While many of us spend time trying to make > Wikipedia different, we need to be cognizant that what other social > networks are doing is working. And if we can't beat them, we need to > join them. > > I've written a patch[1] that introduces a new feature to the Thanks > extension called "feelings". When hovering over a "thank" link, five > different emoji icons will pop up[2], representing five different > feelings: happy, love, surprise, anger, and fear. Editors can pick one > of those options instead of just a plain thanks, to indicate how they > really feel, which the recipient will see[3]. > Of the many initiatives to improve editor engagement and retention that the Wikimedia Foundation has launched over the years, the only one that had a demonstrable and substantial impact (AFAIK) was the Teahouse. The goal of the Teahouse initiative was "learning whether a social approach to new editor support could retain more new editors there"; its stated design goal was to create a space for new users which would feature "warm colors, inviting pictorial and thematic elements, simple mechanisms for communicating, and a warm welcome from real people."[0] Several studies were made of the Teahouse's impact on editors. One study, conducted by Jonathan Morgan and Aaron Halfaker, found that new editors who were invited to participate in the Teahouse were 10% more likely to have met the thresholds for survival in the weeks and months after registration.[1] Another significant fact about the Teahouse is the substantial participation from women. Women make up 9% of the general editor population, but 29% percent of Teahouse participants.[2] When new editors who had been invited to the Teahouse were asked (in a 2012 survey) to described what they liked about their experiences, many respondents spoke about the positive emotional environment, saying things like: "the fact that there is somebody 'out there', that there is a sincere community, gives a professional and safe feeling about Wikipedia", and "the editors are very friendly and patient, which is great when compared to the rest of Wikipedia in how new editors are treated."[2] Why am I going on about this? I guess I'm a bit bummed out that the idea of designing user interfaces that seek to improve the emotional environment by making it easier to be warm and personal to one another is a joke. I don't think any topic is sacrosanct, this topic included. But humor works best when it provides a counterpoint and a foil to "serious" discourse, and there just isn't very much serious discourse on this topic to go around. I also worry that people in and around our community who feel a need for more opportunities for positive emotional interactions will feel invalidated, ridiculous, ashamed, or at any rate less confident about ever speaking up about this topic in a serious way, and less hopeful about being heard. [0]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Teahouse [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Teahouse_long_term_new_editor_retention#Results [2]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Teahouse/Phase_2_report/Metrics _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
