User talk:Kephir/archive/2013/09

Hello, thoughts on Teahouse

Hi Kephir! I came across a comment of yours from a bit back which mentioned profiles on the Teahouse. I thought you'd be interested in a little data we picked up during the project's beginnings:

Teahouse visitors compared to invited non-visitors

Metric	Control group	Teahouse group	Contrast
Average retention (weeks with at least 1 edit)	5.02 weeks	8.57 weeks	1.7x retention
Average number of articles edited	58.7 articles	116.9 articles	2.0x articles edited
Average talk page edits	36.5 edits	85.6 edits	2.4x talk page edits
Average article space edits	129.6 edits	360.4 edits	2.8x article edits
Average total edits (all namespaces)	182.1 edits	532.4 edits	2.9x total edits
Percentage of women	9%	29%	3.2x female editors

What we found is that the environment of the Teahouse, including things which you might argue "do not contribute to building an encyclopedia", actually do exactly that because they lead to more people editing more articles for longer. Of course it's not possible to discern precisely which elements of Teahouse are responsible for the strong impact, but it's our best guess that bringing a positive, encouraging social component which shows off real people in a friendly and welcoming way is very much a part what makes Teahouse so effective.

If you're interested in reading some more, here are a few links:

• Pilot report
• Phase 2 report

Curious what you think. Cheers, Ocaasi ^{t | c} 01:55, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I shall start by saying that I do recognise that Teahouse has some actual value in explaining Wikipedia to new editors. The amount of policies, discussion venues and the technical difficulty of operating them can be overwhelming for new editors and keeping it easy and in one place is in my opinion a good idea. There should be a place which does that. I also see that the social elements have not yet overgrown the actually editing-related activity, and I think it should stay that way.

That said, I see some tendencies to create an "inner universe", to split Wikipedia into "Teahouse (and WP:AfC)" and "non-Teahouse" and keeping newbies from the "non-Teahouse" part. Which, I think, is divisive and harms the educational value of Teahouse. I also see that Teahouse members are so eager to help the newbies do what they want, that they often do not think whether they should. They do not look over the contributions and try to stop them from wasting their time on something that has no right to be kept here. And I also think that handing out awards for trivial accomplishments breeds hat collecting, entitlement, arrogance and a disregard for quality, which is also harmful. The Teahouse entry of WP:WIKISPEAK (which I wrote) pretty much sums up my anxiety about it.

And your numbers are almost as meaningful as the result of an IQ test. That is to say, marginally so. Measuring is easy. Knowing what should be measured and what the measurement means is harder. Know why did I mention IQ tests? They were invented by Alfred Binet for the purpose of finding mentally challenged (or whatever the current euphemism is) children. He specifically warned against using it as a measure of "intelligence". I think we have a similar essay about edit counts. More edits could mean more mistakes, or an inability/forgetfulness to use the "preview" button. Next, that people will stay if you treat them superficially "nice" is quite obvious. But are we retaining competent people? I fear not. On the other hand, I see a number of competent editors who are driven away by obstructive bureaucracy and mob mentality of people who think WP:CIVIL trumps everything. Try to fix that. And I could not care less about the number of female editors — I want more editors who can write the best quality content, be they female, black, gay, bisexuals, hermaphrodites, transsexuals, zoophiles, wife-murderers, paedophiles or Austrian DR-DOS developers. I could not care less about who they are (because caring about that only tempts to make ad personam arguments), as long as they manage to stay focused, write great content and not push their views on everyone. And I think these "social" elements kind of encourage the latter. So I am not pleased when I see that the Teahouse is heading in the direction of Esperanza 2.0.

And if you want to throw statistics at me, I would like to see the retention rate of contributions before and after the creation of Teahouse. Or of Teahouse members and non-members. All weighted by the popularity of each article. Basically, something like a probability that a random viewer will read something that was written by a Teahouse regular. Or compare the survival rate of contributions to good/featured articles of members and non-members. Then we would have a somewhat meaningful measure of the value of Teahouse.

Now excuse me for the verboseness. I will try to curb it the next time. Keφr 15:35, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

I should have linked to User:Ocaasi's user page to notify him. Oh well, fixing that now. Keφr 19:01, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

On AdF'ing ANI

Hi, Keφir. Re your kind thanks; yeah, I don't think I've ever been more congratulated on an action. That said, I think I've got the hang of AfD'ing with Twinkle now. Sort of. (Compare also my comment here, on the horrors of AfD'ing without Twinkle). Bishonen | talk 14:48, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Bishonen: Yes, this is where I got it from. When I read it, I laughed out loud for several minutes. You made my day :) Maybe I will reply there also, and leave my 0.02 EUR on Twinkle. I do have some. Keφr 14:55, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

AACS

I draw your attention to User talk:ConradPino#AACS and thank you for contributing. – Conrad T. Pino (talk) 20:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Infobox user script

Template:Infobox user script has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. eh bien mon prince (talk) 09:50, 28 September 2013 (UTC)