Indeed.  We actually concluded this in the Rise and Decline study -- the same study that is often cited for blaming counter-vandalism tools & policy.

From http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker13rise-preprint.pdf with emphasis
First, the calcification of policy is disproportionately felt by newer editors, who see their policy 
edits rejected at a higher rate. This suggests that under Wikipedia’s 
current policy regime, rules are less open to revision by affected editors than they were during 
the growth period, decreasing the dynamic flexibility that was key to Wikipedia’s adaptive 
success, and increasing the power imbalance between newer and older editors. Second, 
although newer editors are contributing more to essays – where their contributions are less 
likely to be reverted – essays are not official, enforceable rules and are not widely cited. While 
an increase in essay writing is an encouraging sign of newer editors’ continued interest in 
participating in community governance, it is not an effective mechanism for social change. As 
the BRD analysis above suggests, the informal norms documented in essays are trumped by 
formal norms embedded in bots and human computation tools.

I'd argue that the continued persistence of the problems surrounding the impersonal & negative reception of newcomers is the result of a lack of adaptability.   Policy calcification (if that's an appropriate term for the observed trends) is one bit of evidence of decreased capacity for adaptation.  Are there other bits of clear evidence for or against this hypothesis that I'm missing?

If I'm right, then it is important that we experiment with strategies for reinforcing/jump-starting Wikipedia's adaptive systems.  One way to do that is to make it easier for editors to reflect on current trends.  I'd like to think that integrating research practice into wiki culture (what I've been trying to do with all my work) is one way to do that.  But it would be better if people don't need wait on me and other WMF researchers to finish a study.  We'd all fare better if access to research materials was democratized.  That's the reason I am really excited about projects like quarry.wmflabs.org (run SQL against Wikipedia's DBs from your browser).  

-Aaron

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Alex Druk <alex.druk@gmail.com> wrote:
Agree completely! 

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 5:55 PM, Jane Darnell <jane023@gmail.com> wrote:
I watched it too and I like your theory about the editor decline being caused by a lack of innovation after 2007 rather than the usual excuses of policy and anti-vandal tool creation

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Aaron Halfaker <ahalfaker@wikimedia.org> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:40 AM, Aaron Halfaker <ahalfaker@wikimedia.org> wrote:
:)  

/me goes to upload his wik-amecium to commons

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 8:39 PM, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu@wikimedia.org> wrote:
me too - watched it

Aaron - I look forward to more discoveries about our weird paramecium

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 9:02 PM, Aaron Halfaker <ahalfaker@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Works for me. 

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 8:00 PM, Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Could it be the youtube link doesn't lead to the recorded version?

   A.

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:26 PM, Dario Taraborelli <dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org> wrote:
After a break in September, we’re resuming our monthly Research and Data showcase. The next showcase will be live-streamed tomorrow Wednesday October 15 at 11.30 PT. As usual you can join the conversation via IRC on freenode.net by joining the #wikimedia-research channel.

We look forward to seeing you there,

Dario


This month:

Emotions under Discussion: Gender, Status and Communication in Wikipedia
By David Laniado: I will present a large-scale analysis of emotional expression and communication style of editors in Wikipedia discussions. The talk will focus especially on how emotion and dialogue differ depending on the status, gender, and the communication network of the about 12000 editors who have written at least 100 comments on the English Wikipedia's article talk pages. The analysis is based on three different predefined lexicon-based methods for quantifying emotions: ANEW, LIWC and SentiStrength. The results unveil significant differences in the emotional expression and communication style of editors according to their status and gender, and can help to address issues such as gender gap and editor stagnation.

Wikipedia as a socio-technical system
By Aaron Halfaker: Wikipedia is a socio-technical system. In this presentation, I'll explain how the integration of human collective behavior ("social") and information technology ("technical") has lead to a phenomena that, while being massively productive, is poorly understood due to lack of precedence. Based on my work in this area, I'll describe five critical functions that healthy, Wikipedia-like socio-technical systems must serve in order to continue to function: allocation, regulation, quality control, community management and reflection. Next I'll argue the Wikimedia Foundation's analytics strategy currently focuses on outcomes related to a relatively narrow aspect of system health and all but completely ignores productivity. Finally, I'll conclude with an overview of three classes of new projects that should provide critical opportunities to both practically and academically understand the maintenance of Wikipedia's socio-technical fitness.


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--
    Asaf Bartov
    Wikimedia Foundation

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!

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Thank you.

Alex Druk
alex.druk@gmail.com
(775) 237-8550 Google voice

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