Thanks to all of you who replied to me on and off-list. This is indeed the
paper I was looking for!
Aaron, your research looked at new editors. Have you thought about
undertaking a similar study about loss of seasoned editors (the
beyond-newbie phase)? I note that there are a number of hypotheses on this
topic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Reasons_
editors_leave
but not much evidence to provide any guidance. There was a survey sent to
"formerly active" editors (can't find the URL) which gathered some data
which indicated that, apart from personal reasons, seasoned editors
primarily left because of "community issues", e.g. the behaviour of other
editors. So I was wondering if the use of edit logs, user contributions, etc
could be used (quantitatively or qualitatively) to provide insights into
patterns of behaviour (of the editor or others interacting with that editor
via contributions or talk pages etc) that might provide clues into the
departure of seasoned editors and/or early warning signs of someone "about
to walk".
Kerry
_____
From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Aaron
Halfaker
Sent: Thursday, 3 January 2013 1:36 PM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] looking for paper on the "new
editorexperience"
I think you're talking about a paper that I just finished editing American
Behavioral Scientist: The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration
Community: How Wikipedia's reaction to sudden popularity is causing its
decline
Summary of findings (and free to download pre-print):
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/
Official listing:
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/12/26/0002764212469365
For quick reference, here's my TL;DR:
To deal with the massive influx of new editors between 2004 and 2007,
Wikipedians built automated quality control tools and solidified their rules
of governance. These reasonable and effective strategies for maintaining the
quality of the encyclopedia have come at the cost of decreased retention of
desirable newcomers.
1. The decline represents a change in the rate of retention of
desirable, good-faith newcomers.
* The proportion of newcomers that edit in good-faith has not changed
since 2006.
* These desirable newcomers are more likely to have their work
rejected since 2007.
* This increased rejection predicts the observed decline in retention.
2. Semi-autonomous vandal fighting tools (like Huggle
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Huggle> ) are partially at fault.
* An increasing proportion of desirable newcomers are having their
work rejected by automated tools.
* These automated reverts exacerbate the predicted negative effects of
rejection on retention.
* Users of Huggle tend to not engage in the best practices
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BRD> for discussing the reverts they
perform.
3. New users are being pushed out of policy articulation.
* The formalized process for vetting new policies and changes to
policies ensures that newcomers' edits do not survive.
* Both newcomers and experienced editors are moving increasingly
toward less formal <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ESSAYS> spaces.
-Aaron
On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 8:47 PM, Everton Zanella Alvarenga
<ezalvarenga(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi,
I don't know the article, but check if searching here helps
http://www.mail-archive.com/wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org/
http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/WikiMedia-Research-f1477409.html
I don't know why I cannot use
google.com with the parameter "site:"
for this mailing list archive
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l>.
Tom
On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 10:48 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
In the past few months, I read a paper (or a draft
paper?) that I think
was
shared on this mailing list. Unfortunately I seem to
have lost both the
paper and the email (job change), so I would be grateful if anyone could
send me the paper or a link or whatever.
IIRC, the paper was looking at editor retention, particularly the
retention
of new editors. I think there were about 8 hypotheses
given and some
experiments conducted to test these. The one I remember most clearly was
the
finding that new good-faith editors were highly likely
to see their
contributions deleted, by either bots or more experienced editors, and
this
was likely to be de-motivating for them.
If anyone can help with this, it would be much appreciated.
Kerry
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--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more
useful than a life spent doing nothing."
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