whoops, last sentence of paragraph #5 should read "You *CAN* have higher
walls and easier quality control, but you can't have higher walls and
higher newcomer retention (or diversity)."
On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 9:45 AM Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Kerry,
I like this a lot except for one small, but critical, distinction. I want
to get your take on it (yours specifically, in this case, because of your
background and the thought you've put into this issue).
I think that explicitly forbidding newcomers from performing certain kinds
of actions, or editing certain pages, is a mistake. This was a mistake with
ACTRIAL, and it would be a mistake with any other newcomer quality-control
or harm-mitigation strategies--however well intentioned.
It's a mistake for two reasons, First, it runs counter to the spirit of
Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become more 'closed' over time in both formal and
informal ways. This is a common patterns for social movements as well as
organizations--it's not unexpected, and to a certain extent it may be
necessary, but in *Wikipedia's *case it directly violates the fundamental
values and goals of the project. That means creeping bureaucracy and
"in-group" mentalities are inherently more damaging to Wikipedia than it
would be to, say, Microsoft, or Facebook, or even Stackexchange.
Second, being explicitly denied the opportunity to make particular kinds
of contributions (as opposed to being nudged towards other options,
explained to why something is a bad idea, or shown the likely outcomes of
certain actions) is an even bigger motivation-killer, long term, than
having bad experiences due to stumbling onto the "freeway" (nice
metaphor!).
Especially considering that both the current EnWiki community and the
current content embed major biases and gaps, we can't afford to make it
harder for the new people who have the expertise, the perspective, and the
passion to correct those biases and fill those gaps from participating as
full-fledged members of the community. Full stop. You can't have higher
walls and easier quality control, but you can't have higher walls and
higher newcomer retention (or diversity).
Wikipedia (esp. EnWiki) has basically two options at this point, with
maybe some narrow-ish middle ways between them:
1. Continue to make it harder and harder for new people to contribute,
through political and technological means, thus preserving the current
content to a great degree, but diminishing the relevance of the project as
a whole as it becomes increasingly incomplete, out of date, and limited in
scope.
2. Try to make it easy as possible for newcomers (with their new
knowledge, sometimes different values, and yes, sometimes *mixed
motivations*) to contribute, and try to make the project feel as exciting
for them as it was for people who joined in 2004; accept that taking this
track will lead to a degree of vandalism and COI (although probably not
different in scale than current or historical levels), and invest heavily
in algorithmic quality control, streamlined onboarding and socialization,
diversity-friendly policy change, expansive and public offline initiatives,
and all the other "suite" of methods intended to scale the ability of the
current community to handle additional growth and diversity in content and
contributors.
#1 involves no great risk to the "community" besides gradual obsolescence;
Wikipedia will go the way of many other social institutions that failed to
adapt. But it will do so slowly, and continue to provide value in the
process. It just won't ever be the world's encyclopedia.
#2 involves risk because the intention behind it is that the community
will look different, the content will look different, the mechanisms for
contributing will look different, and the policies will look different in
10 years vs. today. But it is the only shot at continuing to meaningfully
pursue the original mission at this point. I personally would love to see
this happen--as a contributor, as a scholar, as a world citizen who
believes in Wikipedia--but it involves risk because it means that people
who have power will need to give it up. That's never easy.
(Opinions my own, not those of WMF)
- J
On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 1:54 AM Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Stripping out a long email trail ...
I am not advocating lowering the BLP bar as there are genuine legal needs
to prevent libel.
What I am advocating is not letting new users do their first edits in
“high risk” articles. When I do training, I pick exercises for the group
which deliberately take place in quiet backwaters of Wikipedia, eg add
schools to local suburb articles. Such articles have low readership and low
levels of watchers and no BLP considerations, i.e. low risk articles. If
the newbie first edit is a bit of a mess, probably no reader will see it
before it is fixed by a subsequent edit. They will be able to get help from
me to fix it before anyone is harmed by it and before anyone reverts them.
The “organic” newbie can dive into any article. It would be a very
interesting research question to look at reverts and see if we can develop
risk models that predict which articles are at higher risks of reverted
edits (e.g. quality rating, length, type of article eg BLP, level of
readership, number of active watchers, etc) and there might be separate
models specifically for newbies revert risk and female newbie revert risk.
Or we just simply calculate the proportion of reverted edits and just
use declare anything over some threshold as “high risk” and not bother
finding out what the article characteristics are. We could also calculate
what is the newbie revert rate.
Then we have something actionable. We could treat the high risk articles
(by predictive model or straight stats) as semi-protected and divert
newbies from making direct edits. Or at least warn them before letting them
loose. For that matter, warn any user if they are entering into a high
conflict zone.
When you learn to drive a car, you normally start in the quiet streets,
not a busy high speed freeway, not narrow winding roads without guard rails
up a mountain. Why shouldn’t we take the same attitude to Wikipedia? Start
where it is safe.
Kerry
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Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
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Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>