Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-04-11/News and notes
Editor retention; Malayalam loves Wikimedia; Wikimedia reports; brief news
Efforts to improve editor retention continue
As reported last week ("Fighting the decline by restricting article creation?"), concerns about editor retention and the attraction of new users have spawned several new projects and proposals, including the Wiki Guides, the new pages incubation trial, a village pump discussion on restricting the ability of new users to write new articles, and the work of User:Snottywong and User:Kudpung to document new page patrollers and their contributions. This issue looks at both how these various projects are doing, and also new events in the area which have occurred during the week.
Board resolution
On Friday 8 April, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees published an resolution on "Openness", affirming the WMF's commitment to keeping the projects open to new users and asking individual projects and contributors to follow the same principles:
The Wikimedia projects are founded in the culture of openness, participation, and quality that has created one of the world's great repositories of human knowledge. But while Wikimedia's readers and supporters are growing around the world, recent studies of editor trends show a steady decline in the participation and retention of new editors....Wikimedia needs to attract and retain more new and diverse editors, and to retain our experienced editors. ... We consider meeting this challenge our top priority.
In particular, the resolution urges the community to
| “ | promote openness and collaboration, by:
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” |
The resolution comes less than two weeks after the Board's "Message to (the) community about community decline", and less than a month after the Executive Director Sue Gardner's "March 2011 Update" (Signpost coverage).
Update on ongoing projects
The proposal on requiring new users to attain autoconfirmed status has now entered the Requests for Comment stage. Attracting around 200 distinct users, the proposal appears likely to pass - the most popular comment in favour has 144 endorsement, while the most popular comment against it has 44. With this apparently clear, efforts have shifted to determining how it should be activated; should a trial be launched, and if so, in what form, or should the proposal simply be passed on to the developers and activated? Trial proposals vary; one suggests activating it for 3 months, and then analysing the results, leaving the system activated until the results are analysed and consensus can be reached on the back of them. Another suggests a similar chain of events, but with the system deactivated after the 3 month period. A third suggests that, if the new users are to rely on the Article Wizard and Wikipedia:Articles for Creation, these should be revamped and made friendlier before anything comes into effect.
The Wiki Guides project, which pairs experienced editors with newbies (or "turtles") in an attempt to improve retention rates, while comparing their actions to those of non-paired newbies ("controls"), has now entered its sixth week. The first statistics have been published with an analysis; James Alexander is preparing to publish the second round of statistics as the Signpost goes to print. The project has now attracted 65 experienced editors helping to guide new users, including 8 in the last week - more, however, are always appreciated and invited to sign up on the project page.
In contrast, the new pages incubation trial, launched 3 weeks ago, is not going so well. Only 8 articles have been submitted to the program - James Alexander, the lead Community Department contact for the project, tells the Signpost that the trial "was a great idea but unfortunately simply isn't scalable; interest is not sufficient for it to expand. As such, we've backed off from that approach; that being said, those currently involved (and those interested in it) should join the Wiki Guides who, if successful, will eliminate the need for incubation".
Malayalam loves Wikimedia
Malayalam Wikimediayaye Snehikkunnu (Malayalam loves Wikimedia) is a free image photography initiative by Malayalam Wikipedians. Inspired by the resounding success of Wiki projects elsewhere—like "London loves Wikimedia"—the new Malayalam Wiki project seeks to bring in more free and copy-left images to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia in this two-week project. National daily The Hindu quotes Shiju Alex, Malayalam Wiki activist and sysop, "During the two-week project period between April 2 and April 17, we intend to sensitise Malayalam Wiki contributors and users to enrich Malayalam Wiki ventures by contributing free-to-use photographs. Despite boasting over 17,000 articles on a variety of topics, the Malayalam Wiki can't claim to have many copyright-free pictures. Hence the project". Wiki activists Rajesh Odayanchal and Ajay Kuyiloor have designed a logo and advertisements for the project. More than 1150 images have already been uploaded as a part of this project, which is the first of its kind in India.
Foundation releases monthly report and yearly tax form, signs amicus brief
The Wikimedia Foundation has published its monthly report for March 2011. Apart from various items previously reported in the Signpost, it notes that at the end of March, 24 of 30 Wikimedia chapters had signed a chapter agreement with the Foundation (among the missing ones are two of the oldest Wikimedia chapters, Germany and Italy). This year's WikiSym conference will be supported by a $20,000 grant. The legal department has started the search for a Deputy General Counsel, a new position whose duties will include "participating in effective and clear communications relating to legal topics with chapter organizations and members of our Community, including users and volunteer editors" according to the job opening posted last week. The legal department also "worked on policies to help guide WMF employees on how to approach content issues."
The report mentions that the Foundation was going to sign an amicus brief in Golan v. Holder, a US court case started in 2001 "where the Supreme Court must decide whether the Copyright Clause gives Congress authority to take a work out of the public domain". (In 2007, the Foundation had signed an amicus brief in Jacobsen v. Katzer, a case involving the enforceability of free licenses.)
Also last week, the Wikimedia Foundation published its tax form for the 2009–10 fiscal year (Form 990, due on May 15), accompanied by a Q&A. The (voluntary) financial report for the same period had already been released in October (Signpost coverage: "Foundation's financial statements released"). Among the mandatory information, it lists the compensation for all independent contractors: The Bridgespan group, a non-profit which for example facilitated the strategic planning process (Signpost coverage) received $304,210 for consulting services, PR firm Fenton Communications was paid $195,000 for communications (including work on the somewhat controversial "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER" 2009-10 fundraiser), and law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey received $116,627. The functional expenses total around $10 million, including $311,564 in Paypal fees.
Briefly
- New gadget simplifies referencing: A new gadget simplifies the addition and formatting of references. The Citation expander, which logged-in users can enable via their user preferences, brings the functionality of the Citation bot to the edit page. After entering minimal information into a citation template, the gadget will consult online databases to complete any partial citations on the page being edited, whilst making the formatting consistent with existing references.
- Wikimedia Estonia report: The Estonian Wikimedia chapter has published its report for January–March 2011. It mentions a meeting at the Nordic Council of Ministers office to prepare a now-ongoing article-writing contest in the Estonian Wikipedia about the cooperation of Nordic countries, and meetings with Estonia's National Heritage Board and the metropolitan of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church about cooperation on the upcoming "Wiki Loves Monuments" contest.
- Wikimedia Sweden report: The Swedish Wikimedia chapter has published its monthly Chapters Report for March 2011, which included the election of a new Board at its annual meeting. Jan Ainali is the chapter's new chairman, succeeding Lennart Guldbrandsson who stepped down because he took up a fellowship at the Wikimedia Foundation (Signpost coverage).
- Wikimedia Denmark report: Having committed itself to quarterly reports, the Danish Wikimedia chapter published the first one, for the first quarter of 2011. It lists collaborations with the National Museum of Denmark and the Danish State Archives planned later this year, possibly involving Wikipedia-in-residence like positions.
- Wikimedia Nederlands elects new board: The Dutch Wikimedia chapter elected a new board on April 2nd. The new president is Ziko van Dijk (User:Ziko) - remarkably a German citizen, while vice president Austin Hair (international relations) as well as board member Jane Darnell are Americans. The chapter has recently acquired dedicated office space and is hiring its first employees.
- Edit notice changed: On the request of the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department, the system message appearing in the edit window was recently modified. The new wording includes an explicit agreement to the Privacy policy, in addition to the copyright licenses for the contributed content.
- Tamil Wikipedia crosses 30,000 articles: Tamil Wikipedia becomes the fifth Indic language Wikipedia to cross the 30,000 articles milestone. It took more than 2 years for the first 1000 articles, while the last 1000 articles were created organically in just the last 3 weeks.
- Using Wikipedia edits to get tenure: A blog post from the Foundation Policy Initiative ("Tenure awarded based in part on Wikipedia contributions") describes how a U.S. academic added mention of his Wikipedia contributions to the "research" part of his portfolio for an eventually successful tenure application, "based on the claim that Did You Knows, Good Articles, and Featured Articles are all scrutinized more or less during (sic?) a peer-review process".
- How to read a version history: Also on the Foundation's official blog, a posting by two Wikimedia Campus Ambassadors explained how to read the version history of a Wikipedia article, using as example the recent erroneous media reports that singer Christina Aguilera's mistaken lyrics in a performance of the US national anthem had originated in a Wikipedia error (Signpost coverage: "UK tabloid wrongly blames Wikipedia for US national anthem gaffe at Super Bowl").
- New mailing list on education and Wikimedia: A new mailing list devoted to the Educational use of Wikimedia content or projects and related topics was started on April 8.
Discuss this story
As for the editor retention issue Nathan hit it on the head when he responded to the community message with:
The key turning point was the increase in emphasis on WP:VERIFY. It unquestionably improved the quality of the encyclopedia, but it just as unquestionably changed us from a large community of online users sharing everything they know to a much smaller community of scholars willing to put in a significant amount of effort researching and documenting their use of reliable sources. That was a good thing for producing a more informative and trustworthy reference work, but it was effectively the end of "the encyclopedia everyone can edit", since most people simply can't or won't make the effort to do the kind of research required to make significant edits when every such edit requires an inline citation to a reliable published source. That combined with the exhaustion of many of the easiest topics has inevitably lead to the community shrinking. I think if we want to grow the community, we would do better putting less emphasis on trying to retain casual users who just happen to try and edit a page and more on out reach to colleges (and in some cases high schools), museums, fan groups, interest clubs, specialist news groups (like talkOrigins), and other places where we are more likely to be able to recruit people who are more likely to be interested in scholarship as a hobby. None of this is to say that more attention to WP:CIVIL isn't important; potentially productive editors are chased away from the project by rampant incivility, but I think outreach to attract the attentions of editors who are likely to be sufficiently motivated is the key. Rusty Cashman (talk) 19:40, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Er, so what was the opinion of the WMF in the Golan v. Holder case? It is conspicuously absent. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:03, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's no coincidence that the diversity, "next billion users", vocabulary and systemic bias problems were first noted (in the 2002-4 time frame) by editors who have since disappeared, some of whom were harassed and lied about by dominant cliques. And no coincidence that editorship falls off as people who denied these problems and advocated exclusion of those who made a point of highlighting them (e.g. by never logging in nor responding to lies or hearsay) have gained more influence by their petty politics. Sadly, a few persons of moderate talents (Angela Beesley, Daniel Mayer) gained undue and unreasonable influence the way courtiers always have: sucking up to power figures and making the gaining of status in Wikipedia cliques their whole life. Such persons continue to hold back Wikipedia, even technically.
If you want to really understand what a deep and persistent problem this is, go back and read The Cunctator, 24, and others (a few of whom used names of historical revolutionaries or used "troll" in their user name as a protest). The minority of users who understood the clique problem (and resisted the many calls to abolish anonymity and establish clique-based censorship) explained exactly what Wikipedia's problems would be as of 2010-2020, and had good solutions and language to describe the real problems Wikipedia has now. Any attempt to assess the problem without this historical perspective is futile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.112.112 (talk) 15:56, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Systemic bias and role of "community" has been debated since 2002
On the history:
The early debates on the systemic bias of Wikipedia are still worth reading. It's surprising how prescient some early users were, and how ignorant or self-justifying some others were. It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine who was correct, and whose vision of Wikipedia actually became the dominant one, and whether this was a good thing. Larry Sanger left citing "people like [someone he accused of being 24]" as the cause. This was really a very central debate about the future of the project(s). Terms like "billionth user" [1] (and even "three billionth user") were being used even then.
By 2004 there were active projects on "countering systemic bias", so that much of the dissident agenda had been officially recognized, or at least not opposed by ruling 'community' cliques. 2004-2008 saw the rise of ArbCom and more objectivity while Florence Devouard, Mike Godwin and other principled people were involved.
However as of 2011 things have gone backwards. Today we still see absurd clique terms like 'troll' in the actual official policy or guidance statements. If anything the WMF is dragging the project backwards into a self-justifying clique that deals with disagreement with labelling and absurd analogies to what a "real" community" does under "threat" or "attack".
But at least some people have woken up to see what effects clique and this "community" rhetoric have. The editor survey reveals that the typical user is still a 30 year old priveleged male, but there are many other users, who may or may not see themselves as part of a "community" in which such people are the majority. Some interesting quotes to consider:
"A "Wikipedian", whether or not she or her sees him or herself as part of any given "community" (and there are good reasons not to, or to see projects as existing at the juncture of many communities), agrees to respect some basic editorial rules. Even those who believe that " an encyclopedia is a market in theories and facts" or a "battlefield of ideas" can accept rules designed to make the markets or battles fair and permit new participants in. Given the shared goal of usefulness to literally everyone, it's relatively easy to justify rules that make pages more useful to readers even if this inconveniences writers (a rule understood on some level by all wiki editors). This distinguishes Wikipedia, and wiki, from other social media and could and should be emphasized in any effort to attract new editors from new communities, especially those who were previously hostile to Wikipedia."
"Features like WikiLove provide positive reinforcement and fun, and mirror the mechanisms available in other social media such as facebook." And do not require absurd ideologies of community nor labelling of the dissidents.
"As of 2011, Wikipedia still struggles with systemic bias and cliques, sometimes even using non-objective language (like "troll") in its official policy statements. However, representativeness of editors has improved: The 2011 survey shows the caricature is a bit broader than it was in 2002: According to the data, if there is a typical Wikipedia editor, he has a college degree, is 30-years-old, is computer savvy but not necessarily a programmer, doesn't actually spend much time playing games, and lives in the US or Europe."
"Social approaches (such as experiments to assign buddies to new editors) may also be more effective with women than men." More research required?
"A female user facing a genuine "stalker" does not need a clique of self-appointed counter-harassers acting on their own authority or beliefs of what constitutes "stalking", she needs a genuine investigation and response (possibly via ArbCom) that is consistent and effective at discouraging abuse."
"The study found significant decline in editors with more than 10 edits. It has been hypothesized that edit wars, reverts and acrimony among editors is a contributor to this decline. We found that, overall, editors have a very positive opinion of their peers, but many reported experiencing negative interactions and what they perceive as harassment by others. In addition, negative interactions reduce the likelihood of editing in the future. On the other hand, positive interactions, like helping others in editing and peer recognition, not only make editors have a more positive opinion of the community, but also increase the likelihood of editing in the future. Expectations of "community" may play some role in some users' disappointment, as most of the WMF's own official statements freely throw around terms like "community" without acknowledging that many Wikipedia editors provide valuable content without much (or any) concern for the social processes around that content. Academic sticklers, political drum-beaters, often provide good references and much-needed clarity and precision, but relatively few people can deal with them on equal terms. As the number of open topics decreases and the scrutiny on controversial topics increases, this intensity and conflict with users who perceive themselves as having a stake in the content will increase. In other words, as Wikipedia becomes more influential, influence on it becomes a higher-stakes game, that attracts more intense (and perhaps some ruthless) players."
"Negative experiences matter. Editors don't have hearts made of stone. Reverts without an explanation (which as a rule are almost never justified and should cause immediate scrutiny on editors that do so) can negatively define an editor’s experience on Wikipedia and make them less likely to continue editing. However, editors are here to learn and improve. A revert with an explanation, providing at least some path to a new and better interaction, has no negative impact on an editor's desire to continue contributing and is, in fact, seen as a positive interaction. We need to restrict unexplained reverts, find ways to reduce negative experiences and refine our automated tools to do a better job of differentiating a good faith edit from deliberate vandalism."
"it remains a common practice to claim that any reason for exclusion constitutes clique influence and to seek publicity for articles 'deleted' or 'censored' from Wikipedia [2]. Some of these claims are or may be valid. Where the excluded material is specific to women's rights or causes or champions (notability thresholds for feminist activists, for instance) the practice should generally be to err on the side of inclusion."
"the Global South: In some of these regions, like India and Africa, desktop Internet has yet to see broader penetration, though mobile Internet is expanding rapidly, and it is no surprise that the mobile phone is the most popular device among editors. When Wikimedia's projects reach the three billionth user projected in the early (2002) debates on it's direction, they will likely be reached predominantly by low end phones by poor people. WMF has made it our priority to increase mobile page views, and we are currently revamping our mobile platform to provide better and faster access to smartphones as well as feature phones that don’t typically have apps or can’t be synced with computers. The new platform will have in-built editing functionalities that would allow for paragraph edits, sentence edits and picture uploads to Wikimedia Commons. Lastly, we are looking to establish partnerships with network providers in key strategic geographies like India and Brazil to provide access to Wikipedia at zero or near zero cost. This would help us increase our reach and bring free knowledge to those who can’t afford to pay for data access."
"Users who lack unlimited data or free Wi-Fi access, especially for mobile devices, are particularly disadvantaged and inhibit (and should inhibit) deployment of data-rate-intensive features. A desirable solution to this problem that should be investigated is convincing mobile service providers to include all WMF projects in their lists of "free access" or "unlimited access" services alongside facebook, email and other essential applications. Thus, regardless of local data rates, it would be possible to freely access Wikipedia et al without fear of getting a big bill. Another solution would be to support cacheing when Wi-Fi access is available to minimize the use of 3G/4G bandwidth (and thus the charges). A recruiting effort to find disadvantaged editors to test such solutions and to propose new ways to radically reduce the cost of accessing WMF projects is probably justified, especially as the "typical" user has no such problem."
"While a higher than average percentage of all users have access to smartphones (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry), the average user is far less likely, and given the growth of usage in the global south, will get much less likely in future, to use more than simple SMS messaging. Accordingly surveys of readers not editors may be the way to determine the mobile strategy. Efforts to make mobile editing possible may not, given the editor profile, increase representativeness or readership of mobile users. In this respect in particular, the person writing is not the person reading."
"use of some common words or practices should be utterly excluded from WMF's official discourse:
Other words should be sharply restricted and used only with extreme due care:
In other words, Wikipedia must grow up and acknowledge its work as more diversified, political and contentious than that of any other social medium, and that this is exactly why its products and services are more important. It should abandon the "single community" ideal and acknowledge that it will be only one small factor in global harmony, albeit an extremely central one. The solution to editorial representativeness and reduced systemic bias, and increased participation, is to acknowledge the ugly reality of a world riven by conflicts, cliques and factions, and to present a process to find some version of the truth that, while not perfect, is at least more accessible and fair than the UN, civil courts, mass media or other venues. Not a "place" where one must "join" a "community" to "belong", but rather a means by which persons who see themselves as part of many communities, can find just enough common ground to acknowledge some undisputed basic reality."
Now, how long will it take the clique to censor most such evocative content and restore "community" happy-talk that actually causes the discouragement and clique mentality? We'll see if Wikipedia learned anything since 2002-4. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.112.112 (talk) 17:58, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]