For example, there is a user account that removes the word “comprises”, a word their user page says they don’t like for various reasons (but none of which appear to relate to Wikipedia policy) . Why is this one user through their persistence allowed to decide what words are used in Wikipedia articles? Another bully (and I can see no other way to describe their behaviour) has a long edit history full of reversions with the edit summary “no source provided” or “not a reliable source” (which seems to be something you can say about just about anything – rather like the way you can criticise most research with “but, with a larger longer study, it might show different results?”).
Kerry
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pine W
Sent: Wednesday, 16 December 2015 10:11 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities <wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community policing, New Page Patrol, Articles for Creation, and editor retention
The problems that I'm contemplating here are, for better and for worse, outside the scope of what I would consider harassment. I think that they could be described as toxic interactions in general, and/or a shortage of or long-delayed positive interactions at places like NPP and AFC.
Pine
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Well, we don't really have a judicial approach either; judges get
booted when they're biased or refusing to apply the law ;). I would
agree that it is a small circle of people, and I would agree that they
have a far larger impact than numbers would suggest. Community
Advocacy is currently running a harassment consultation at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Harassment_consultation_2015 - I
suggest looking at the proposals there.
On 15 December 2015 at 19:00, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe it's just the circles that I happen to circulate in, but it seems to
> me that a very small percentage of Wikipedians tend to be consistently harsh
> or toxic, and that small number of people tends to have disproportionately
> negative influence on the atmosphere in the community. Aligned with Jimbo's
> comments at Wikimania 2014 in London, I do wonder if their caustic nature
> rises to the level where they should be excluded from the community, and if
> so, on what grounds we would make that exclusion. Being a relentless critic
> doesn't necessarily rise to the level of harassment if it's done broadly
> rather than directed at a particular individual or group, but looking at the
> problem from an HR perspective rather than a judicial one, I agree that
> maybe more should be done to exclude toxic personalities. I wonder, though,
> how we can do that; our process for excluding people from the community is
> more like a judicial process than like an HR process. Maybe we need more of
> an HR approach?
>
> Pine
>
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>> We can probably talk about the nature of new page patrol without
>> resorting to comparisons to violent, real-world overreactions with
>> multiple serious injuries.
>>
>> To be perfectly honest as a new page patroller the biggest issue I've
>> seen is toxic senior members of the community making the prospect of
>> patrolling particularly unpleasant. It doesn't do much for patroller
>> numbers.
>>
>> On 15 December 2015 at 18:28, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Yesterday I gave a presentation about community policing at the Cascadia
>> > Wikimedians' end of year event with Seattle TA3M [1][2][3]. An issue
>> > that
>> > came up for discussion is the extent to which, on English Wikipedia,
>> > experienced Wikipedians conducting New Page Patrol create collateral
>> > damage
>> > during their well-intentioned efforts to protect Wikipedia. Another
>> > subject
>> > that came up is the need for more human resources for mentoring of
>> > newbies
>> > who create articles using the Articles for Creation system [4]; one
>> > comment
>> > I've heard previously is that the length of time between submission and
>> > review may be long enough for the newbie to give up and disappear, and
>> > another comment that I've heard is that newbies may not understand the
>> > instructions that they're given when their article is reviewed. These
>> > comments correlate with the community SWOT analysis that was done at
>> > WikiConference USA this year, in which "biting the newbies", NPP, and
>> > "onboarding/training" were identified as weaknesses [5]
>> >
>> > Personally, I would like the interaction of experienced editors with the
>> > newbies in places like NPP and AFC to look more like this and less like
>> > this. Granted, it's hard for a relatively small number of experienced
>> > Wikipedians to keep all the junk and vandals out while also mentoring
>> > the
>> > newbies and avoiding collateral damage, so one strategy could be to
>> > increase
>> > the quantity of skilled human resources that are devoted to these
>> > domains.
>> > Any thoughts on how to make that happen?
>> >
>> > I am currently especially interested in this topic because of my IEG
>> > project
>> > which officially starts this week. [6] It would be very helpful to
>> > retain
>> > the new editors that are trained through these videos, so improving
>> > editor
>> > retention via improved newbie experiences at NPP and/or AFC would be
>> > most
>> > welcome.
>> >
>> > Pine
>> >
>> > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing
>> > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_reform_in_the_United_States
>> > [3]
>> >
>> > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Presentations_at_Cascadia_Wikimedians_and_Seattle_TA3M_meetup,_December_2015.jpg
>> > [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation
>> > [5]
>> >
>> > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWOT_analysis_of_Wikipedia_in_2015.jpg
>> > [6]
>> >
>> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_video_to_introduce_Wikimedia
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Oliver Keyes
>> Count Logula
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
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--
Oliver Keyes
Count Logula
Wikimedia Foundation
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