Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Opinion essay

Opinion essay

The conservatism of Wikimedians

The status quo

Above is one of my favourite images at the moment – a graphical representation of all the key words found in taskforce planning for the Wikimedia Strategy project, in which the community got together and basically crowdsourced a long-term strategic plan. The reason I find it interesting isn’t because of the words which are displayed prominently, but the words that aren’t; specifically, those looking to move the community forward neglected the word “community” (slightly to the right of “work”) and the word “social” (slightly above “working”, and, in comparative terms, dwarfed by the word “php”. Sigh.)

I’m not going to lie, this doesn’t surprise me. Wikimedians actually tend to put a fairly small amount of stock in changing things to boost the community or the social aspects of the movement. Whether it’s WikiLove, help reform or any other project to ameliorate the less pleasant aspects of the projects, the same refrain comes from an annoyingly large chunk of the community – “I managed to edit and contribute to the projects without [whatever is being proposed], so other people can too”.

The source of this is fairly clear – people don’t like change, and because existing editors are largely comfortable with the current situation (after all, they built it, either accidentally or deliberately, and since they’ve stayed around we can conclude they don’t mind it that much) they don’t really see that there’s so much of a problem. In a way, I reckon this is a result of our successes more than our failures; while new user numbers are dropping, we maintain an enviably high retention rate for existing editors. As a result, experienced users don’t see a problem. Why would they? Oh, sure, they hear rumours that user numbers are dropping, but all their friends are still here, so it can’t be that bad. Cries that “yes, all your friends are still here, but you just missed out on a thousand new ones” aren’t met or internalised well.

The problem

My problem with all of this isn’t just that there is genuinely a lot of stuff we need to do to Fix the Wiki that people don’t get, it’s that this position is based on a pair of fallacies that the individuals in question could, with a bit of effort, think through and avoid. When people say “I managed to edit and contribute to the projects without [whatever is being proposed], so other people can too”, what they’re saying is:

The on-wiki system has remained the same
The people we’re trying to recruit are the same as the people we already have

The on-wiki system has remained the same

People drop ideas for reform on the grounds that they managed and therefore anyone else can. This is based on the fallacy that the system has remained the same since they started, which is of course not the case – except, possibly, for our newest users. Even users who are a year old are dealing with a completely different environment from the one they started off with; policy bloats, our tolerance for expansion has been reduced, and the community has become increasingly harsh and automated in its dealings with new users over time. The fact that the system in 2006 when Exampleexperienceduser joined was nice and characterised by decent, friendly communication and a million opportunities to expand the wiki does not mean that the current one is.

The people we’re trying to recruit are the same as the people we already have

In other words – for the aforementioned statement to be true, the potential new editors now have to be largely identical in terms of motivation, interests and enthusiasm to the existing users. We can’t say that our current system works for new users because it works for established users unless there are actually similarities between the two groups.

Why this matters

The problem is that there aren’t. Early adopters of Wikipedia were, by-and-large, nerds. Utter nerds. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean that in a “it was 2001 and they were on the Internet” way. Longhairs from the 1960s and 1970s counterculture movement (cf. Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture, recommended), early computer and Internet proponents, FOSS addicts, codejunkies, we had them all. Early adopters were people who saw a nascent project – or later on, an established project that everyone with any academic or political value ripped the hell out of – as something it was worth contributing to, for free. Early adopters were happy to use a pseudo-HTML markup scheme to contribute and delve deep into the raw guts of an article or talkpage to make their views or facts known.

What we’re dealing with now in terms of potential volunteers is largely different. People bandy around the term “Facebook generation”, but it’s true; we’re dealing with a completely distinct group of people. 2011 users are likely to be people who have grown up with the Internet and with Wikipedia. If you’re at university now, Wikipedia will have been around since you entered secondary education, and possibly before that. It is no longer new and exciting, it is no longer a step into the unknown, and so the motivations of people who do try to contribute are likely to be pretty damn different. Moreover, the people we’re dealing with don’t want to have to deal with markup, or raw pagetext in this fashion; they aren’t used to looking under the hood. If they’re WordPress users they live in a world in which looking under the hood is not mandatory; if they’re Facebook users they live in a world in which looking under the hood isn’t even possible.

So we’re not dealing with the same system, or even the same people; we’ve got a bloated and increasingly unfriendly wiki on the one hand and a pool of potential recruits with vastly different motives and expectations from our norms on the other. This means that we can’t simply sit in our ivory tower and make judgements about whether Wikimedia is failing, or succeeding, or what our potential users expect; we have to go to those potential users and ask them. The problem is that the Foundation has been doing exactly that in a lot of places, trying to get information on what people want from the horse’s mouth, and when acting on the data (as with WikiLove) has largely been met with a big stubborn sign saying Do Not Want.

What we can do about it

Wikimedia is a fantastic movement. It’s the Whole Earth Catalogue for the 21st century, a smorgasbord of educational material and trivia that for the first time offers the potential for people to truly take their education into their own hands – after a fashion, anyway. But if we want to live up to the expectations, if we want these projects to continue, we have to start accepting the data people bring us and accepting that we might need to make some changes. We need to throw out our assumptions, throw out our fallacies and innate resistance to change, and seek to build a movement that people want to contribute to rather than one people don’t mind contributing to.

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Well written and I concur.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:54, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well stated Ironholds. I agree with you on many points --Guerillero | My Talk 03:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are many truths in Ironhold's commentary. According to statistics, the average contributor was born since desktop computers became commonplace. Although the average serious user is computer savvy enough to create and edit a proper article that complies with Wikipedia policies, changes are urgently needed as the Wikipedia matures, and new users come on board. However, there are also those who have 'done FaceBook/MySpace' and who are now looking at what they can do to Wikipedia. These are the ones that Wikipedia needs to guard against, and some recent suggestions for necessary change have been rejected. Nobody is arguing for making page creation or user retention more difficult. Fortunately, and partly due to this, methods for protecting the encyclopedia against uncontroversially unwanted pages and edits are now under priority discussion and development, and at the same time of course, methods for encouraging new users to respect Wikipedia policies. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreeing with this piece. You're probably aware of the Foundation's present work on a WYSIWYG editor, which now has direct support from grants. Systems like LiquidThreads have been trying for years to bring the basic usability benefits of web forums to our discussion pages. I hope in the future the community will embrace effective new usability measures like these. Dcoetzee 03:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Last time I saw LiquidThreads brought up at one of the Village Pumps, it was meant with a resounding chorus of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" – which I guess illustrates Ironholds' point pretty well. Jenks24 (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - To be fair, LiquidThreads does (or did) suck, massively, and "it's really ugly and slow and useless" would have been a valid reaction. As you say, however, the reaction was "what's wrong with what we're doing now?". Ironholds (talk) 04:24, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - LiquidThreads probably came out of the proverbial oven a little too early. Early versions were very clunky and not an improvement on the way we do things now. However, its gotten better with age and I think it worked quite well on the StrategyWiki. I think a lot of the opposition to it comes from people who tried the early versions and haven't seen how much it has improved. Back on topic, this is an excellent piece Ironholds and I agree completely. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]
      - Liquid threads was the thing that barred me from returning to the strategy wiki after I took a wiki break from it. The number of unread messages in threads I'd participated in meant that my PC would just hang whenever I tried to return. It may have been improved since then, but I'm not convinced it was going in the right direction. Now if we introduced a feature that defaulted to an auto signature on talkpages but let editors tick a box to say "don't sign this time" that would make the site genuinely more user friendly. And we wouldn't have to waste so much of our communication with newbies on telling them that sometimes they need to sign with ~~~~ and sometimes they don't. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:04, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - If anything, liquid threads is a perfect example of how being non-conservative and "innovative" can actually mess things up! Jason Quinn (talk) 21:08, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Ironholds. Until now, I thought I was the only one (besides the WMF staff) that understood the big picture. Let hope this message spreads. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 03:31, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree wholeheartedly. I'm quite a nrrrd, of the liberal arts variety; I was on Usenet back in the day, as a wee nrrrd before the Web, hanging around the Alt hierarchy. And I feel the same marginalization here. When the Web went mainstream, Usenet bit the dust. I wonder if the same tsunami-scale cultural change will happen to Wikipedia when the WYSIWYG editing GUI is updated. Probably it will be the same, yet different...lol.

OttawaAC (talk) 03:45, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thanks everyone! I honestly wasn't expecting this level of agreement. It's great to see that, whatever the general trends or issues, we still have it within us to recognise issues for what they are :). Ironholds (talk) 04:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Don't read too much into it. On the Internet, everybody has a voice but the Peter Principle is still at work. People generally like the idea of "moving forward"; consequently, there is ALWAYS a resounding chorus for any proposal that promises that... regardless if the change is necessary. There's a "pro-change bias" when faced with a choice of not changing or changing in the name of "moving forward" or "innovation" or "keeping up". There are two underlying mechanisms for this bias. One is that proposals themselves are always written in a flowery way that gets people excited about it. The other is that many people who opine simply have not given (or cannot give) the problem as much thought and introspection as it needs. But they like the idea of "moving forward" so they support it enthusiastically. This principle is exhibited time and time again in software products and has caused inter companies to vanish after disastrous redesigns. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:24, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Kudos. We have to get rid of the fear that hordes are waiting to destroy us. The light of proper user interface design and intelligent (and accessible!) help and policy documentation will win out in the long run. Note: I think there's a typo in the Why it Matters section--first sentence: "The problem is that there aren’t" should be, "The problem is that they aren't"... I think. Cheers! Ocaasi^{t | c} 04:42, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's correct, I'm afraid; "the problem is that there aren't [similarities between the two groups]". Ironholds (talk) 05:01, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'll go ahead & disagree with some of what Ironholds has written. The points where I disagree with him are as follows:

My objection to many proposed changes is not that I manage perfectly without them, but that I don't think they fix the problems we have. For example, the Foundation wants to make editting for newbies easier when I believe they ought to spend these resources on retaining veteran editors.
I believe that the people we want to recruit are, in many ways, the same people who presently contribute to Wikipedia. To quote one person, who is considered by many an expert on Wikipedia, people who consider writing encyclopedia articles a fun hobby are a strange bunch. And the number of people who consider any activity a worthwhile avocation -- stamp collecting, following sports, needlepoint -- will be a finite number. I could be wrong in this belief, but no one has bothered to do the research to determine whether it is the reason new contributors is off -- or the cause lies somewhere else.
The problem is that nobody -- not the Foundation, groups with vested interests, opinionated old hands like me -- has bothered to do the necessary research to provide the data needed to move this discussion from an endless flamefest based on opinions to one where objective decisions could be rationally made.
The "On-wiki system" hasn't remained the same over the last ten years. in earlier days, the Wikipedia culture was far more similar to a social networking website than it is now. WikiMeetups were started to encourage Wikipedians to know each other better, to socialize. Then around 2005 or 2006 a reaction to this community-building emerged; I strongly believe that the Userbox debacle in early 2006 was a part of this reaction. And that could explain why the number of new Wikipedians stopped growing around 2006.
I won't argue that things have become ossified in many ways for the Wikipedia community; it is harder to propose & make changes now than it was in, say 2003 or 2005. But I will argue that this is because people are going about it in all the wrong ways; once upon a time, either one person or a small group of people could advocate a change & it happened. Nowadays, if someone wants to effect a change that person has to make an effort to reach out & involve people.
As a last point, no matter what eventually is done, it's going to have a negligible effect on a large number of volunteers. There is a large number of contributors who have "hunkered down" in parts of Wikipedia of their own choosing, & no longer care to have anything to do with the rest of the community. I suspect in many cases, not even with each other. Right now, any significant changes made to the Wikipedia culture will simply frustrate & embitter these people, & drive them away -- unless a serious effort is made to reach out to them. -- llywrch (talk) 06:26, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Research has definitely been done - a lot of it - and the problem with that statement (that it's always going to be a finite number) is that...well, yes, it's true. There will always be a finite number of people who like the idea of editing Wikipedia. So, what we need to do is try to make it easier for them, because what we're doing at the moment means our pool of potential editors is not "people who are interested" but instead "people who are interested, able to navigate our help system, thick-skinned to deal with the more stubborn and aggressive editors, fine with pseudo-html syntax and able to grasp a large number of rules without giving up". That's an artificially narrowed pool. Ironholds (talk) 16:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that nobody ... has bothered to do the necessary research — Wikimedia is one of the most well-researched online projects in existence (cf. Wikipedia:Wikipedia in academic studies and of course WMF's recent summer of research, recent surveys, etc.). What kinds of research do you specifically suggest should be done? I'm not denying that further research is necessary (it always is), although it may also be the case that there's existing relevant research that you're not aware of.--Eloquence * 07:54, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll address the points Eloquence did not. Why exactly do we care if we drive those people off who have stopped contributing? If they've hunkered up and hate change, that implies they are the people who WP:OWN articles and drive away a lot of people. We don't need to retain those editors. Trying to keep articles the same is not contributing.

And while I'll agree that Wikipedia editors are an eclectic bunch, there is no reason why bad user interface should be something to embrace. The people that want it to be hard to contribute to the project are the very people rejecting the founding principles of Wikipedia. Again, we need those people to leave. Those people who actually care shouldn't give a crap what changes, as long as they can still contribute. Heck, if they're like me, they want it to happen.

I know many, many people who at one time wanted to contribute to Wikipedia, but got burnt very quickly. There's no easy way for a new person to even see all the various policies, and yet oldtimers will attack them with it, all while pretending to honor WP:AGF. The people leave not because they have nothing to contribute, but because frustration has overridden their altruism. We want those people.

There is a problem with any community that wants to fight to get rid of new people. All online communities with a purpose should be fighting to get new people, or they will stagnate and become an insular club. There's only so much that old contributors can contribute, and chances are they've contributed most of what they can. They need to let new blood in. — trlkly 08:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ironholds: Maybe we both misunderstand each other on this point. What I hear from the WMF is that we need to be more civil & supportive of the new editors in order to keep them. What I would like to see is that we try to be more civil & supportive of established editors not only to keep them, but because then we will also be civil & supportive to all editors. Everyone expects a little hazing when they join a new group; it's a part of the rite of passage, an instinctual behavior of humans. But with Wikipedia as it now exists, contributors get hazed all of the time.

As for your comments about markup, those are the words that cause me to believe, bluntly, that you don't know WTF you are talking about. Wikimarkup in itself is very simple & easy to learn: in almost 9 years of writing articles, for most of what I do I only use a dozen tags. IMHO, the only trick any newbie realy needs to know -- beyond the basics of spelling, grammar & punctuation -- is that to create a new paragraph one presses the enter key twice. Now, had you mentioned things like image syntax, or how user unfriendly our templates are -- lack of documentation, not well organized for end users, not consistent between projects -- I'd agree with you 100%. But because everyone says wikimarkup is hard to use, resources get thrown at that, & at creating helps for using templates.

Eloquence: All of the research I've seen has been of the nature of statistical analyses of relationships between Wikipedians or how articles grow. Nothing about how to make Wikipedia content better. A survey of established Wikipedians about what they think needs to be changed -- not just a talk page where anyone & everyone can post their favorite rants -- would be a good place to start. (My suggestions: more help in obtaining sources to write articles with, & teach new users how to research topics.)

Another area would be how to write better encyclopedia articles. You can find books on how to write in many different genres -- poetry, autobiography, novels & short stories, resumes -- but there's nothing on how to write an encyclopedia article. I know this because I've looked. It's not because the information is proprietary: from what I've learned, the editorial staff at Encyclopedia Britannica & World Book don't know either. AFAICS, the art of writing encyclopedia articles hasn't changed in a major way since 1800. Maybe we'd all benefit if the Foundation devoted some resources to that end.

BTW, I mention a few other areas worth investigating here. In case anyone is looking for a topic for a graduate thesis.

trlkly: Obviously you didn't understand who I was describing as "contributors who have 'hunkered down'". These are not people with ownership issues over a few articles. These are people with one foot out the door, who limit their contributions to things like Wikignoming or reverting vandalism because they're frustrated or burned out because they had to deal with too many cranks, vandals, POV-pushers, or well-meaning but ignorant contributors, yet never received any appreciation for their efforts. I've been cleaning up after one banned user who inserted tangential references to his favorite author in countless articles. Some of these references arguably belong, but most are nothing more than added at the end of the article as "sources" -- even though there are no inline citations to those works. And as I've been cleaning up after him, I've encountered at least three different editors who fought that banned editor, & the experience convinced them to scale way back in their contributions to Wikipedia because of him.

And some long-term editors burn out because they encounter a snot-nosed attitude like yours, & wonder WTF are they trying to improve articles when it's clear nobody cares. If established editors burn out, why should anyone care when the Foundation can send a team out to recruit three or four times more newbies to replace them? The myth of Wikipedia is that we all can be treated like hamburger because Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced creation; we're all doing this in our spare time with no cost to anyone. After all, properly-run oureach efforts -- funded with multi-million dollars grants from famous foundations -- will replace contributors as they burn out. And no one needs to pay all of these volunteers or deal with personnel issues, either.

I'm finished here. -- llywrch (talk) 21:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wholeheartedly agree with Llywrch that everyone (and especially the WMF) needs to be supportive of both newbies and experienced editors. There should be skilful ways whereby support for one need not exclude the other. I'm not sure what's the best way to help reduce burn-out - a lot of it does depend on individuals being patient, resilient, not prone to anger, willing to take breaks, having good priorities, etc... Perhaps retired/semi-retired users can be emailed and thanked for their contributions.. :) Also, WikiLove doesn't seem to have templates for stressed editors - even the Resilient Barnstar is geared towards newcomers. eug (talk) 04:03, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well put IronHolds, I wholeheartedly agree. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I quite agree with Ironholds's analysis of the problem. Unless we make some pretty serious changes to both the underlying technology and the way our community works, there is a real risk that we'll run out of contributors.... The Land (talk) 09:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I very much agree with Ilywrch that there needs to be a lot more effort to retain veteran contributors. Experienced editors in good standing are the lifeblood of Wikipedia, they are the people who write and maintain most of the substantive articles, without them there is no project worth speaking of. Yet people keep obsessing about the noob experience. Not that this is not important, but it's far from the most important issue IMO. As someone said above, maintaining an online encyclopedia is never going to be a hobby that attracts vast numbers, what is most important is that the experience for those with a real enthusiasm for the concept remains positive. And personally, I think nothing turns off experienced Wikipedians more than our broken dispute resolution system, which basically allows POV pushers of every stripe to run rampant over the project, often for years before they are held to account, while responsible users who try to oppose them end up quitting in disgust. What we need above all IMO is a dispute resolution system that is both fairer and more effective. To do that, I think we have to stop shunting content disputes into the "too hard" basket, because most of the frustration that is generated on this project is generated by content disputes. These simply cannot be effectively resolved, as the current system tries to do, merely by focussing on behavioural issues. Some time ago I drafted one possible alternative approach, which can be read here. I haven't formally proposed it yet for a variety of reasons, but feedback on it would still be appreciated. Gatoclass (talk) 13:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd concur with the need to retain experienced editors as well - speaking as an editor who has been off and on since 2004, and who has kept coming back for different reasons. However I think that many of the steps we need to take to be more welcoming to new people are the same as those we need to take to keep more people onboard. Personally I'm more concerned about the scale of the arguments we have about trivial matters (e.g. just as an example, what sort of dashes to use ;-) and the way those discussions are conducted, than dispute resolution for controversial content. The Land (talk) 13:33, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed; I don't think the two things need to be mutually incompatible. A WYSIWYG editor is not something likely to negatively impact on experienced editors, for example. Ironholds (talk) 16:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible a WYSIWYG editor could negatively impact experienced editors, depending on how it's done. If it's not optional, if it only works in the most popular browsers, if I can no longer copy and paste my properly marked up file from my editor, I might never create an article again. I just doubt they'll do it that way. Ntsimp (talk) 02:54, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Land, tempests in tea cups will always be a thorn in the side of Wikipedia: it's an equal problem for the larger world. Recently I was reading a book about the ancient general Hannibal, and came to the part where he leads his men down from the Alps into Italy. Now it is an accepted fact that Hannibal could have taken one of two routes and arrived where Turin currently stands; either route is possible. But, to quote the author, "in the absence of definitive archeological evidence, of which there is not a scrap, the truth will remain buried deep in the past, despite a mountain of argumentation, opinion, prejudice, jealousy, and perhaps even hatred -- a perfect example of an academic dispute grown bitter because so little is truly at stake." If the grownups in tenured chairs at prestigious colleges can't behave, why should we expect a bunch of semi-anonymous nerds on the Internet to act any better? Not to excuse reprehensible behavior, but wiki wiki software isn't a panacea for the imperfections of man, no matter what claims Wales, Gardner, & company might make about Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 20:14, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not forgetting that Wikipedia has grown in sophistication, in terms of policies and processes. Even with a WYSIWYG editor, the impression is that one would have easily just jumped straight to edit something five years ago as compared to now. We will need something that allow new editors to quickly pick up and integrate themselves into the community. - Mailer Diablo 19:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ironholds makes good points. Llywrch, Gatoclass and The Land also make good points. I am often put off by the claims about how badly new editors are treated. Almost all of my interaction with new editors has been with vandals, spammers, people who feel they deserve to be listed as notable residents of some city, authors who want their latest books listed in 50 or 100 articles, and such ilk. We do not need to retain that sort of editor. I will also revert presumably good faith edits that significantly diminish the encyclopedic value of an article. New editors who make such edits may be worth retaining, and I can see that I could do more to help them. I have started helping with the Wikipedia:United States Education Program. Rather than making Wikipedia "friendlier" in some vague sense, I think we will be better served by providing specific help to new users on how to identify topics that are not covered very well in Wikipedia, and how to write encyclopedia articles. Of course, I expect some disagreement over how one should write an encyclopedia article, but I think it would be worth trying. -- Donald Albury 10:47, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly uphill work getting even minor change "we all know X" "We've been using it for years" etc. etc. Some people forget that this is a wiki and we need to be agile and smart in making stuff easy for the desireable new editors. Never mind the fancy wisyig stuff, assailing new editors with vast complex edifices of rules, guideines, policies, essays, many honoured more in the breach than the observance, with a plethora of noticeboards, cabals, projects, portals, newsletters: complex rights both social and technical; filters, bots, tools, js, css, HTML, wikimarkup, citation styles... We just have to know that less is soemtimes more. Rich Farmbrough, 19:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]
While many people (including the writer of this opinion essay) agree with the end result, we tried to implement a change a couple of weeks ago, and you can read about the result in the September 25th Signpost article about it; the community was furious. In off-wiki discussions with one of our best admins on that issue (incidentally, he and I spent many, many hours getting that ready), he told me he came very close to retiring over it, and it's obvious from my comments in various fora that I'm still angry about it. I've refused to help them designing this new interface partly because I think there's a good chance it will do more harm than good, but also because if they don't care about the view of one of the most prolific NPPers on NPP then I have no reason to give up my time trying to help them. Malleus Fatuorum summed it up quite well here; Wikipedia is so desperate to attract new editors that they're willing to forgo the experienced editors, and when they get feedback from us there's an attempt to forge ahead anyways. I think Llywrch has excellent observations above on the subject, so I'll say no further for now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's a fallacy here; I'm saying that not changing is bad. I'm not saying that all change is good simply because it's change. The fact that the writer of this opinion piece is also the person who ran the most supported comment against your proposal should indicate that. I would, however, suggest you do get involved in the NPP work - Kudpung is, for example, and refusing to participate in Foundation discussions over an issue because they rejected a community-centred proposal simply leaves us with nobody talking to anyone else...and that's not how productive change is going to happen. Ironholds (talk) 01:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know you and I don't see eye to eye on this specific issue (which is fine, reasonable people can come to different conclusions); here, I'm more concerned with the way in which that was handled. I wouldn't have thought of it as such a big deal if it was handled in any number of different ways (I've had ideas shot down by the community before; it's just the way the big wheel spins), but what ended up happening wasn't terribly conducive to keeping editors around, which seems to run rather contrary to the stated goal of attracting editors. My frustration lies in the incongruity of trying to make things easier for new editors (in this specific case, easier to create pages) in a manner which aggravates the experienced editors and causes them to perceive (whether accurately or not) their views are being discounted. It's not as much about the change itself being rejected as it is the inconsistent message it sent; I hope this is a bit clearer. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:51, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, clearer now; I agree, actually. If the Foundation was going to shoot it down, they should've shot it down as soon as it had gained traction, not during the post-consensus discussion period. The fact that staffers are working on things like the new NPP interface indicates, imo, that they've recognised they need to consult with the editing community and take their opinions into account when making feature changes. It's an unspoken way of saying "we handled that incorrectly". The staffers aren't just focusing on new editors - things like the Zoom interface are designed for experienced contributors, and it would be a real shame if you didn't help it become the best feature it can be. The Foundation has recognised it handled things improperly, and is reaching out a hand; if we want to use their resources and clout to enact real, lasting technical change, we can't slap that hand away. We need to engage, either to improve good features or mitigate the harm of bad ones. Ironholds (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reading through some of it now, and I do think it will be an improvement. Kudpung has already hit a lot of the points I would have over there, so I'm trying now to think of something I can say myself. I do agree with the overall message here in this essay, that we need to change, and I do think the WMF's willingness to engage us now is a step towards helping change get implemented faster and with less gnashing of teeth on all sides. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant! They always need screencasts, so as one of our most prolific and hard working patrollers it'd be great if you could provide one of those, even if Kudpung has already hit the nail in regards to discussion. Ironholds (talk) 03:03, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Plus la change

Progressivism is about starting good changes, and conservatism is about stopping bad changes, and obviously we need both but I'm inclined to agree that the Wikicomplex in the past year or two has been too much on the side of preventing harm to the good things we've already got. Yes, I'm comfortable with the distinction between double square brackets for jumps and curly ones for templates and <ref> in angles but back in 2006 it took a little getting used to, even though I had been a nerd since long before anyone thought it might be a good word. And yes, I complained about the new default display skin, but after two months it grew on me. So, my fellow old-timers shouldn't worry so much.

Saturday I spent a couple hours helping cute young art students with a Wikimedia outreach project at the Museum of Modern Art and though they are brighter than I ever was, some of the concepts struck them a bit odd, mostly because the concepts are leftovers from the nerdism of my beloved 20th century. Confession, the ages of the three under my special care added up to about my own age. Anyway if changes can be made that attract that kind of mind but lose a similar number of my own kind, it's sure to be a net profit for the enterprize, and I don't think the good folks who work on changing our software will so egregiously bungle the job as to drive me or many of my useful but somewhat stodgy kind away. Jim.henderson (talk) 23:58, 13 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

+1, speaking as a stodgy person. I'm relatively young (early 20s) but I've been using computers since I was a wee child. I remember command line interfaces and getting an earful of white noise when you tried to use the phone, I remember learning HTML and testing it out on a dodgy internet connection where the mail server was an old machine kept under the IT tech's desk. I remember the good ol' days of a whole 256 megs of RAM. I remember joining Wikipedia in 2006 and slowly but surely working out the editing interface. The new generation of potential editors remember none of that, and we need to understand where they're coming from. This doesn't need to impact on existing editors - nobody's saying you couldn't make the WYSIWYG editor optional, or do it wordpress-style with both WYSIWYG and the raw markup available. Ironholds (talk) 02:51, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that WYSIWYG editors tend to produce incredibly horrible markup. That means a page edited by a WYSIWYG editor then looks uneditable to someone not using WYSIWYG. Powers ^T 01:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Llywrch's argument has two main components I'd like to address. The first is that long-term editors don't enough recognition for their work, and that whether you know, they should be doing the work out of the goodness of their hearts or not, that continued organization of the site to aid community-building and pats on the back (beyond trinkets like barnstars but real, substantive things like emotional support, "space" to vent, etc.) does increase retention. I agree with this. The second component is that somehow this premise (that wikimedia needs to be a more pleasant place for all editors, old and new alike), forms a sound basis for barring implementation of changes to wikipedia to make it more accessible, because doing so might be one more offense to old-time editors. I can't agree with this, and will explain why.

The benefit to wikipedia in new editorship from adapting accessiblity measures such as WYSIWYG (which I'll use as my key example here) will far outweigh the likely small decrease in editorship that will accompany the adoption of a WYSIWYG GUI. Some will resign in protest. But so what? The fundamental problem of maintaining long-term editors and keeping them happy will not be solved by holding back a GUI (In contrast, implementing a GUI will solve several huge usability problems - in this way, innovations which are held back because they would be a mere inconvenience for frequent editors cause much greater pain for the general public). With this in mind, veterans using their influence to starve public outreach initiatives as a means to draw attention to their problems will not help wikipedia overall.

If we really should be all about fixing those problems of retention, we should run more studies and campaigns to analyze and promote retention among long-term editors. We can do this in parellel or addition to the current work being done, it is not one or the other. We shouldn't be seeking to quash efforts to solve other problems of wikipedia out of... what, jealousy? There are a lot of problems that motivate editor attrition, and I don't think WYSIWYG happening on wikipedia, for example, is really high up on that list; so I'm not convinced there's a sound basis for opposing it on those grounds. Again, at worst it may lead to a minor amount of attrition in the context of an the astronomical improvement in accessibility. (as for "WTF" ironhold is talking about in re: usability, Llywrch, try to recall the Usability and Experience studies. That's the best data we have and it supports the idea that wikimarkup is not always intuitive and functions as among the most significant obstacles between being on the outside to getting to try out investing one's time editing on wikipedia.)

If you're really concerned about editor attrition you should be thinking about how to publicize it as an issue (within the community) and solve those bigger, certain problems of recognition, support, and emotional burn-out. Those interested in working on retention should orient themselves to creating programs to address those major causal factors of attrition, rather than wasting their time voting down other solutions to other problems and obstructing any progress on any subject whatsover until WMF or other wikipedians pay funding and attention to their particular pointed agenda (this isn't the U.S. Congress). We can solve multiple important problems at once. Lets do that. Let's not pretend the solutions of retention are the same things as the problems of accessability. --Monk of the highest order^(t) 05:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All very interesting. Everything I know about computers is self-taught - it had to be - and I'm perfectly at ease with the current interface (yes , I do remember command-line operation, and in the 90s I quickly learned some very basic programming, HTML, and php, etc). However, there are generations now who only know the ease of on-line website builders, Wordpress, and posting on forums. My grandchildren are all now busy FaceBooking - but heaven help us if they get their hands on Wikipedia ;) WYSIWYG? Well, as I've said before, serious editors won't be daunted by the current UI, and the lack of WYSIWYG may ironically be one of the deterrents to vandals and creators of uncontroversially unwanted pages. What is needed is a welcoming landing page before access to the editing window. The WMF and the community are now working very hard on solutions. Developments at Outreach such as designing pre-formatted users pages is a good idea, along with the feed-back tool, but IMHO, are low priorities. New users could learn a lot about Wikipedia syntax by experimenting with the user space workshop, and building their own. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:37, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting but

It isn't that we haven't changed, its that we've changed in the wrong direction. The wiki changed radically around 2007/2008 with a big shift from improving articles to tagging them for hypothetical others to improve. If we really we want to get back to an open and collaborative wiki we should replace most of the article templates with hidden categories and foster a spirit of only using maintenance templates as an admission of failure; For example you've tried to categorise something but can't find the right category, just as at the moment you'd add a hoax tag if you're pretty sure something is a hoax but you want a second opinion. The other big change from that era was the inflation of standards at RFA which has directly made us a more closed and less welcoming community. That change was not consensus based but a ratcheting effect of blocking minorities; Once we have over 30% who will oppose over some arbitrary requirement then RFA gets a bit more difficult even if two thirds were prepared to support candidates who didn't have that level of editcountitis or other newly increased criteria. Ϣere SpielChequers 11:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So in your opinion, the reason we're dispiriting to newbies is because we tag articles for improvement and act kookily at RfA? The latter I find particularly surprising - what we're talking about here is not "we're not welcoming to long-term editors" but "we're not welcoming to new editors". New editors' experience of RfA is likely to be...ballpark figure, but I'd say around none whatsoever :p. Don't get me wrong - these are big changes, but I'd argue they're a symptom, not the disease. There's no clear link between the examples you've picked up on and our increasing attitude of looking inwards. To reverse it, however, if there is an increasing approach of "the wiki is on the defensive", heightened RfA standards and tagging would be symptomatic. These examples are as a result of a reactionary trend; they are not the cause of them. Ironholds (talk) 13:43, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you're going to change the subject from how we've changed to how we treat newbies then yes my comment about RFA is more relevant to relatively new editors, particularly those with three or four months activity. But the templating comment is very relevant to complete newbies, especially those who write new articles. My earliest wiki memories include seeing my new article get categorised and then working out the category system. That was a positive experience for me, if I'd simply seen my article tagged as uncategorised it would have been somewhat less positive. Worse still would be if we went down the Commons route and dropped templates on the talkpages of the creators of uncategorised articles. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:08, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies; I wrote the reply while horribly sleep deprived. Eurgh. The point of my opinion piece was not simply "we have not made alterations" but more "our actions have not taken into account differing perspectives and have been marked by conservativism". Ironholds (talk) 17:39, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. I think I'd say inertia rather than conservatism, but yes I'd agree that we have become a more closed community. I've tended to oscillate between thinking of RFA as either a cause or a symptom of this, and I've come to the conclusion that the changes to it in terms of standards inflation are largely a product of drift by blocking minority; But this then has the effect of making the community ever more cliqueish and closed to newish members. There's probably more than an element of negative feedback in the loop. Ϣere SpielChequers 18:42, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it has aspects of both symptom and cause. Sure, it wasn't the original cause - it was a symptom of the original cause - but the higher bar for the process can't be A Good Thing as far as future changes to the wiki's culture are concerned. Ironholds (talk) 05:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I pretty much hated this essay. The argument presented has little structure and is somewhat hodgepodge. Plus some of the arguments presented are pretty weak. I found, for instance, the use of 2001 and the characterization of Wikipedia users particularly absurd. Wikipedia did not hit critical mass until more like 2004 or 2005 and then it was built into what it is by "utter nerds" roughly between 2005 and 2008+. The Internet was hardly a nerd-only place during the oh-so ancient past of 2008. Moving on, I think the author is abusing the word "fallacy" here and neglecting counterarguments. If I were to explain my rational about that I'd end up writing an essay myself (which perhaps wouldn't be a bad idea). I'll mention just one. The problem of "policy bloat". There's a gigantic difference between a large number of policies and guidelines and bloated policies and guidelines. The number of actual policies is rather small but we do have a rather large number of guidelines now. Is that bad? Probably not. All those guidelines evolved organically! If you were to get rid of the guidelines, they would grow back because all of them basically solved some problem in the past. In this sense, "policy bloat" should be regarded as a symptom of success. True bloat, is when the guidelines are more detailed than they have to be. This is always a matter of judgment. Some pages could probably be merged, writing can always be streamlined, etc. I fully support an effort to make existing guidelines more clear and concise. Good writing is a matter of opinion though and the existing guidelines should (by now) have converged to some "average level of quality" given the nature of the wiki-process. I suspect that the "policy bloat" problem cannot be dramatically improved upon. To use an evolutionary word, the guidelines should roughly have reached their natural state of fitness. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, 2005-2008 is when the Foundation's data suggests the "normal" people wandered in. Can I suggest looking at the existing data? Ironholds (talk) 04:13, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have looked at the data. In fact, I drew my numbers directly from the article growth curve, which clearly hits an exponential elbow at around 2004/5. It then grows linearly until fairly recently when a second downward elbow begins. The bulk of Wikipedia in terms of articles was written during this interval. Therefore by your comment just now, the bulk of Wikipedia was written by "normal people", which puts you in danger of contradicting yourself since your article's hypothesis was that Wikipedia was written mostly by nerds. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all; merely that the starting Wikipedians who set up the basis of how we govern ourselves were mostly "nerds". I also never claimed it was down to articles, but users. You seem to be misreading or misunderstanding my comments. Ironholds (talk) 21:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Late, and agreeing opinion by a 2006 joiner, older than most. Yes, markup and other details are too hard. Not for my 20th century mind, retired after 41 years as technician in electronics and computers, former BBS operator. Modern minds that I meet tend to be sharper than I ever was but, having grown up working AIM, GUI, Facebook and the like, they work best in a 21st century mode. Yeah, I know AOL and its AIM faded before Wikipedia was born, but it took a step into the new way of thinking while Wikitext was being launched by old-century minds and has not yet been dragged into a new mode. Efforts to modernize with mobile and visual editing have been pitiful. Alas, they have met even more disdain from my fellow old-timers than they deserve, and have stalled. Similar problems arose late in the 20th century with shareware programs for DOS. Developers tended to concentrate on what their users wanted, which meant refinements and small improvements. They got left behind when big companies and little startups, driven by the prospect for profit, got to figuring not what the people want, but what they can be made to want. Wikipedia is not set up to come under the lash of a pushy boss like Jobs or Zuckerberg with the power to force it in a new direction. We remain comfortable, but a progressive organization is not a comfortable one, so that means we stagnate in our comfort. Eventually a few young, bright, arrogant people will figure how to steal our bacon, by making something that millions of readers and new suppliers can be persuaded to want. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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