I'm intrigued at the idea that "a statistical analysis revealed a 96% chance that administrator inactivity is causing the decline in active English Wikipedia editors as a whole."

I'm a longterm believer in the theory that our increasing difficulty in getting new admins is a partial cause of the decline in editor numbers - if the community doesn't want you it is natural for some to leave. I think we should carefully study all rejection points to make sure we are only losing the editors we want to lose. But I'm not sure how current levels of admin inactivity could cause an editor decline, in the medium term they will, as soon as our admin shortage gets to the point where vandalfighters find that admins aren't around to block the vandals who go beyond their final warnings then the manual part of our vandalfighting process will be undermined and some vandalfighters will give up. equally if we no longer had enough admins around to deal with personal attacks and trolls then many would leave. But at present we still maintain a pretty good 24/7 admin coverage on the English Wikipedia, as admin numbers continue to fall that won't last forever but in what other way would admin inactivity cause a decline in the editing community?

There are credible theories as to why the community has declined

The shift from improving articles to templating them, probably exacerbated in future by the rather unfortunate Article Feedback Tool.

The shift from tagging unsourced facts with citation needed to simply reverting unsourced additions as unsourced.

The increasing levels of quality on Wikipedia are causing a drop in casual editing as readers who are willing to fix the odd typo don't have as many opportunities to do so.

The incivility of some of our vested contributors makes the community a less inviting place and drives editors away.

I think there is at least some evidence for all of those factors being in play, but I wouldn't care to put a percentage on the probability of any one theory being true, and I don't think we are in a position to ascribe percentage of decline to any of them.

WereSpielChequers
 

On 12 February 2012 05:45, Steven Walling <swalling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Please see the forwarded email. This is an extremely problematic situation from my point of view, as even though this unapproved survey is only going out to ~200 people, its text gives the notion that I as a staff person approved it, not to mention the fact that it is being sent by a banned editor. I did not receive any prior contact from Salsman about this before he began to send emails out. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven Walling <swalling@wikimedia.org>
Date: Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: Actual Inactive Wikipedia administrator survey (swalling@wikimedia.org)
To: "James Salsman (Google Docs)" <jsalsman@gmail.com>
Cc: Dario Taraborelli <dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org>


Dear James,

Please do not continue to send out this survey as is. This is extremely problematic for a variety of reasons:

First and foremost, as you are well aware, you did not ask me whether I would like to sign my name as the point of contact for a survey. This is disingenuous, as it implies that I had prior knowledge of the survey and its questions. I did not, and I have already received emails directed at me personally inquiring about the survey. 

Second, and just as important, all surveys of Wikipedians that use special methods such as mass emailing or talk page messaging not only should be approved in advance by the Research Committee, a group of both Wikimedia Foundation staff, independent researchers, and Wikimedians. This is to ensure that the vast number of researchers interested in contacting editors do not abuse the trust of our community (including ex-editors). I strongly urge you to seek RCOM approval before going further, and have CC'd Dario Taraborelli, the Foundation point of contact for RCOM. 

Last, and definitely not least, running a successful survey is dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of Wikipedians. As a user banned from English Wikipedia, I do not think that the community would feel very comfortable with you email hundreds of people through Wikipedia. 

Once again, please halt surveying people until the consensus process required by the community and the Research Committee has been followed and the survey has been approved. 

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:59 PM, James Salsman (Google Docs) <jsalsman@gmail.com> wrote:
Message from jsalsman@gmail.com: 
Steven,

Thanks for being the point of contact for this survey. The real "live" survey URL is http://j.mp/inactiveadminsurvey

The responses are starting to come in (the first on Line 2 is my "test-ignore). 
Please let me know if you have any trouble reading the spreadsheet. I will summarize it with R in a week or two.

I sent out probably exactly 99 emails (plus a test to me) from the first 112 of the 286 listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Former_administrators#Desysopped_for_inactivity but then I got email-throttled, so it looks like it will take the whole weekend to cover all on that list, which is the most I can hope for. The rest didn't have emails or set preferences to refuse email. 

This is easy enough I'm not going to ask for sysadmin help to BCC them all at once (but I'm not adverse to that if you want to ask around. The email text is below, and the next on the list is # 113, User:Jersyko.)

Best regards,
James Salsman


--- email text ---

Subject: Wikipedia e-mail: inactive administrator survey


Dear Wikipedia Administrator:

Please respond to this survey: http://j.mp/inactiveadminsurvey

A few years ago, the Wikimedia Strategic Planning Task Force on Community Health noted the troubling decline in administrator participation in the English Wikipedia and resolved to survey inactive administrators to identify the reasons that admins leave the project, in hopes that would help improve the associated issues. By mid-2010 a survey was drafted but resourcing and other issues prevented action until recently when a statistical analysis revealed a 96% chance that administrator inactivity is causing the decline in active English Wikipedia editors as a whole. Therefore, this survey is being distributed to you so that the reasons for administrator attrition can be better understood and acted on. Individual responses will be kept anonymous, but aggregate summaries will be published as soon as they are available. The goal of this research is to get broad, qualitative information about why administrators have stopped contributing, in hopes that we can use it to revitalize both the administrator and editor community.

If you have questions, please reply by email to surveyrole@gmail.com or the Wikimedia Foundation Community editor retention point of contact for this survey, Steven Walling: swalling@wikimedia.org. The direct administration of this survey is being performed by a Community Health Task Force volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous at this time.

Thank you very much for your service to the community and your help with this survey response.

Click to open:
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Thank you,

--




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