Hello!
This is a long-winded email. I have broken up my thoughts into multiple mails for ease-of-threading; this mail is a larger "overview" and I'm going to include my actual "forward thinking" solutions in a reply to it so that we can discuss those separately from this.
I am interested in opening a discussion about things that we can do to help alleviate the gender gap (as well as encourage further participation across the board). I alluded earlier to the fact that I have several ideas about this, and I want to open a dialog here (and am planning to have a broader conversation on-wiki).
First, I suppose I should really introduce myself.
My name is Brandon Harris, though most people seem to know me as "jorm" or some variant of that (my staff account is "Jorm (WMF)"). I am an employee of the Foundation - a designer. For the past several months I have been tasked on-and-off with redesigning LiquidThreads (LQT), which is a next-generation discussion system.
Originally, I approached the problems of LQT from a position of "how do I make what is there better." I have since come to the conclusion that this approach was incorrect, and refocused my thinking to a more holistic approach to the larger problem of editor participation, retention, and ease-of-collaboration.
Unfortunately, the "big problem" of editor attraction, retention, and drop-off is a "death from a thousand cuts." If there were a single point of failure, we could easily identify it and suture it closed.
That doesn't mean that we can't solve it, however. It just takes a different approach.
If I were to define the single largest knife, however, I would have to say that it is social in nature. This is very specifically highlighted in the "gender gap" problem. Many of the largest communities on the web have fairly equal gender balances. It is my assessment that a large part of this is because they have a strong social bend - a bend that Wikipedia lacks.
I do not believe that WYSIWYG editing is the silver bullet and I think it is a mistake to focus on that. The "editor hump" is not specific and it's not that difficult: many, many people write blogs or make websites with even cruder tools. Once you learn to edit, it's not a problem.
The biggest barrier to editing is one of motivation: people will edit if they want to edit and it doesn't matter how easy it is to edit if they don't want to.
We have several barriers here, most of which are social in nature:
* People are not actually aware that they *can* edit * People do not feel that they have the *right* to edit * People do not feel that their edits will remain * People do not wish to deal with the social bureaucracy * People do not feel that they have anything worth contributing
First, I think that we have to stop thinking about "how to we increase the number of *editors*" and instead ask "how do we increase the number of *participants*." This is a subtle but important distinction.
Whenever I sit down to make a product more usable, I think about several persons in my life who represent typical problems. When thinking about Wikipedia, I use three personas:
* My father, who knows nearly everything about James Bond and baseball, and is eager to share that knowledge, but would *never* be an editor; * My mother, who has advanced degrees in mathematics and English, and who would probably love to be an editor, but would be horrified by the culture; and * My girlfriend's father, a retired engineer who used to work at Lawrence Berkeley, who would probably be an editor. He would not be horrified by the culture but would find it tedious and its rules overly confusing.
All three of them could be rather easily transformed into participants (and possibly editors, given enough time). For instance, my father would want to be able to easily discuss facts or statements in the articles, so giving him obvious tools to do that would transform him into a participant.
(One way to help do this would be to place a [discuss] link next to the [edit] link on a page section. With LiquidThreads, we could key that link to open immediately to an existing discussion about the section (or create a new one if one wasn't there). Bam! Now he's involved.)
However, the biggest problem (by far) is not "widening the funnel" of participation on-ramp but rather providing a solid social structure to ensure that new people in the participant funnel can actually *participate*. That is the the subject of my next email.
As promised, here is a mail in which I talk about possible directions. A lot of this has to do with the discussion system that is used by Wikipedia.
It is abundantly clear that Talk pages are a plague upon all the houses. They are intensely difficult to use and understand. They are *incredibly* difficult for new users to understand and navigate for many reasons (which I can elaborate on, but I'll assume we all know what they are).
So let's get rid of them. Let's move to a modern discussion system (which is the promise of LiquidThreads) - one that users are likely to be more familiar with, one that is easier to use, and one that encourages several principles.
* Identity Emphasis
It is a known problem that Talk pages do not engender (hah!) identity. In fact, the only notification that a comment exists from a different user is an indent and (possibly) a signature. To a new user, however, that doesn't help much. In fact, we've seen time and time again that newbies have difficulty distinguishing "that one guy was a jerk to me" versus "Wikipedia was a jerk to me."
I should be clear that I'm not talking about "real" identification (e.g., "Brandon Harris" vs. "Jorm") but rather the ability for a new user to easily connect all of Jorm's comments together.
There are several small things that we can do to make this better which will have a larger benefit than their sum.
First, research has shown that people are far less likely to provide hostile or negative responses *if they believe they are talking to another person* and *if they do not feel anonymous*.
Accordingly, attaching a sense of identity to both the poster and the replier can help to alleviate this. One common way to do this is the inclusion of avatars to discussion posts.
By encouraging communication between individuals we will go a long way towards creating a social structure that can build grass-roots style.
* Positive Feedback Systems
As a culture, Wikipedia has developed several mechanisms to indicate displeasure with an individual's activities. However, we have next to no methods for telling someone that they have done a good job, or "thanks for the comment". Sure, we have barnstars, but they are a non-standard feedback mechanism and likely to be confusing to new users.
A simple "thanks" button, or "this was helpful" mechanism can go a long way towards solving for that. Promoting helpfulness will make being helpful a desirable trait and will go a long way towards alleviating "newbie bite."
* Newbie Protection Mechanisms
A sad truth is that there are many people on Wikipedia who are jerks or trolls. Experienced users know to avoid such people but new users are thrown into the gladatorial arena without protection.
A system where low-value contributors (trolls) can be flagged or "downvoted" can go a long way towards addressing this. In LiquidThreads, unhelpful comments could be automatically "collapsed" and de-emphasized.
That leads me to. . .
* Reputation Systems
A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpful individuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
I have a lot of other things I've been looking at but I think this is a sufficient launch point for now.
That leads me to. . . * Reputation Systems A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpfulindividuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
I have a lot of other things I've been looking at but I think thisis a sufficient launch point for now.
Pretty clear problem I can see wi' this - users can be controversial, yet
useful. If you want article writing help, or an example to follow in writing content, Malleus Fatuorum (on en-wiki) is a great one. That doesn't mean he's a popular one. I fear this could lead to the idea that being popular is more important than being competent.
On 2/9/11 11:20 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
Pretty clear problem I can see wi' this - users can be controversial, yet useful. If you want article writing help, or an example to follow in writing content, Malleus Fatuorum (on en-wiki) is a great one. That doesn't mean he's a popular one. I fear this could lead to the idea that being popular is more important than being competent.
The idea that such a system could be gameable is one that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about.
There are several thoughts I have on the matter.
The most important one comes from the fact that Wikipedia has only one "status" to aspire to: Administrator.
If you don't want to become a wiki-janitor, well. We've got nothing for you. There is no other status.
But what if we *did* have other statuses? Ones that didn't necessarily have janitorial powers, ones that were awarded by the community?
Something like "Recognized Newbie Ambassador" for people who want to be helpful to new users, or "Featured Editor" for those who spend a lot of time editing, or a "Recognized Researcher," for those who don't know from copy-editing but are ninjas at locating references?
In much the same way that users are nominated to become administrators, they could be nominated to those positions. And their reputation "karma" (or whatever) can be used as *evidence* for the nomination (rather than having it be automatically granted).
Wikipedia has a crazy-powerful brand status. Imagine a day when you're at a random party and someone introduces themselves and tries to impress you not for being a "software engineer" but because they're an Editor Fellow for Wikipedia? Something to take pride in that is officially recognized by the community.
On Wikipedia, reputation *cannot* become a "currency" (even though I used that term). It's like the music business: it's not "what have you ever done for me" it's "what have you done for me lately?" Soft expiration of the system would likely be required, and there would have to be controls to handle obvious gaming, but those are implementation details and we should think high-level.
That'd actually be pretty useful, although I'm looking at it from a slightly different perspective. It would be excellent to have an easy way of locating and identifying those noted as say, good copyeditors, for when you have something that needs being done.
The problem, as I see it, is that this risks making things far too complicated. One of the criticisms levelled at Wikipedia is that the community and policy layout is far too complex. If we start adding in myriad different "statuses" for editors, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.orgwrote:
On 2/9/11 11:20 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
Pretty clear problem I can see wi' this - users can be controversial, yet useful. If you want article writing help, or an example to follow in writing content, Malleus Fatuorum (on en-wiki) is a great one. That doesn't mean he's a popular one. I fear this could lead to the idea that being popular is more important than being competent.
The idea that such a system could be gameable is one that I've beenspending a lot of time thinking about.
There are several thoughts I have on the matter. The most important one comes from the fact that Wikipedia has onlyone "status" to aspire to: Administrator.
If you don't want to become a wiki-janitor, well. We've got nothingfor you. There is no other status.
But what if we *did* have other statuses? Ones that didn'tnecessarily have janitorial powers, ones that were awarded by the community?
Something like "Recognized Newbie Ambassador" for people who want tobe helpful to new users, or "Featured Editor" for those who spend a lot of time editing, or a "Recognized Researcher," for those who don't know from copy-editing but are ninjas at locating references?
In much the same way that users are nominated to becomeadministrators, they could be nominated to those positions. And their reputation "karma" (or whatever) can be used as *evidence* for the nomination (rather than having it be automatically granted).
Wikipedia has a crazy-powerful brand status. Imagine a day whenyou're at a random party and someone introduces themselves and tries to impress you not for being a "software engineer" but because they're an Editor Fellow for Wikipedia? Something to take pride in that is officially recognized by the community.
On Wikipedia, reputation *cannot* become a "currency" (even though Iused that term). It's like the music business: it's not "what have you ever done for me" it's "what have you done for me lately?" Soft expiration of the system would likely be required, and there would have to be controls to handle obvious gaming, but those are implementation details and we should think high-level.
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
On 2/9/11 11:44 AM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
That'd actually be pretty useful, although I'm looking at it from a slightly different perspective. It would be excellent to have an easy way of locating and identifying those noted as say, good copyeditors, for when you have something that needs being done.
The problem, as I see it, is that this risks making things far too complicated. One of the criticisms levelled at Wikipedia is that the community and policy layout is far too complex. If we start adding in myriad different "statuses" for editors, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
To my mind, there are two competing principles of usability. These examples are focused on web-application usability but the principles apply here.
One school of thought says that "nothing should ever be more than two clicks away". For years this was the model Yahoo employed, for instance and the homepage became a mass of links.
The second school (and the one I subscribe to) is that it's okay for users to click 20 times to get what they need done *as long as those clicks make sense are are natural*.
Complexity isn't necessarily the enemy. Sometimes the lack of it is. It's okay to make edge-case or undesirable tasks complicated, for instance, if not doing so makes the primary use cases more complicated.
Reputation systems needn't be complicated; they can easily be background processes. Consider Quora's mechanisms for highlighting "best answers".
One thing I've been thinking about is the idea of "self-identification". If a person could self-identify as a newbie looking for help, for instance, or as someone who is open to helping other users, we could "badge" them as such.
There are lots of ways this can be done, which is why I've held off creating a fully-designed system to bring to the community and have instead been thinking about angles.
One thing I've been thinking about is the idea of"self-identification". If a person could self-identify as a newbie looking for help, for instance, or as someone who is open to helping other users, we could "badge" them as such.
There are lots of ways this can be done, which is why I've held offcreating a fully-designed system to bring to the community and have instead been thinking about angles.
That would be more useful. To some extent we already do that, but it's
indirect, not obvious or nuanced, and isn't built into the system.
Hello again, Brandon.
Very nice ideas. There's only one of them that I'm not sure if it'll improve the social relations or just the opposite thing:
A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpfulindividuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
This could be (it certainly would be) used by some (male) users as a weapon of vengeance against others, and there could be a real war in the discussion pages. You know, reputation is very close to ego, and ego is very close to dispute. And such a system would tear apart people with no possibility to improve their reputation, because, once your reputation goes down, nobody will want to vote for you. It's discriminatory, in my opinion, unless you have something else in mind I don't know...
Miguel Ángel
On 2/9/11 1:28 PM, Miguelinito wrote:
Hello again, Brandon.
Very nice ideas. There's only one of them that I'm not sure if it'll improve the social relations or just the opposite thing:
A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpfulindividuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
This could be (it certainly would be) used by some (male) users as a weapon of vengeance against others, and there could be a real war in the discussion pages. You know, reputation is very close to ego, and ego is very close to dispute. And such a system would tear apart people with no possibility to improve their reputation, because, once your reputation goes down, nobody will want to vote for you. It's discriminatory, in my opinion, unless you have something else in mind I don't know...
Right. This is a delicate line.
As I mentioned before, we have many ways to indicate *displeasure* but very few ways to encourage.
My initial thoughts included both a "Helpful" and a "Not Helpful" system. Upon reflection, however, I have come to think that including a negative position ("Not Helpful") would actually be, uh, not helpful. We don't need additional ways to call people jerks.
So I have come to think in a more "optimistic" mode, focusing on reward alone. The problem with that, however, comes with newbie biting by trolls.
My current thinking is to not include a "down vote" system but rather add in a "flagging" system. Flagging something would be less obvious and would not be "gameable" - especially if a posting could be marked "patrolled" or otherwise considered acceptable and immune to flagging.
To be sure, this is very shaky ground and requires a great deal of thought. It may come to pass that this is just another ghost of an idea, consigned to a graveyard. But I think it's worth talking about.
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 9:35 PM, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.orgwrote:
My current thinking is to not include a "down vote" system butrather add in a "flagging" system. Flagging something would be less obvious and would not be "gameable" - especially if a posting could be marked "patrolled" or otherwise considered acceptable and immune to flagging.
To be sure, this is very shaky ground and requires a great deal ofthought. It may come to pass that this is just another ghost of an idea, consigned to a graveyard. But I think it's worth talking about.
The problem with a "flagging" system is it'll inevitably turn into another
backlog. More e-trees have been cut down on discussion pages than on article pages, and the article backlogs are all substantial. If such a system is set up, with exceptions for some editors, we inevitably create a divide in the community - between those who are trusted by default and those who are not trusted at all.
If, for example, an autopatrolled thing was set up for all administrators, it would be making the statement that all administrators Can Do No Wrong when discussing this, and that the trust in the administrators' competence extends not just to deletions, moves and the like, but also to on-wiki interaction, which is not necessarily the case.
Hello, Brandon
I think that it shouldn't depend on other users, because, no matter how responsible they were, everybody could have sometime a bad day. I think that such a system should encourage the creation and/or improvement of articles, i.e., an objective system. Something similar to the barnstar to the featured article editor, but more detailed.
Regards
Miguel Ángel
Estimado Brandon,
Con fecha miércoles, 09 de febrero de 2011, 22:35:27, escribió:
On 2/9/11 1:28 PM, Miguelinito wrote:
Hello again, Brandon.
Very nice ideas. There's only one of them that I'm not sure if it'll improve the social relations or just the opposite thing:
A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpfulindividuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
This could be (it certainly would be) used by some (male) users as a weapon of vengeance against others, and there could be a real war in the discussion pages. You know, reputation is very close to ego, and ego is very close to dispute. And such a system would tear apart people with no possibility to improve their reputation, because, once your reputation goes down, nobody will want to vote for you. It's discriminatory, in my opinion, unless you have something else in mind I don't know...
Right. This is a delicate line.
As I mentioned before, we have many ways to indicate *displeasure* butvery few ways to encourage.
My initial thoughts included both a "Helpful" and a "Not Helpful"system. Upon reflection, however, I have come to think that including a negative position ("Not Helpful") would actually be, uh, not helpful. We don't need additional ways to call people jerks.
So I have come to think in a more "optimistic" mode, focusing on rewardalone. The problem with that, however, comes with newbie biting by trolls.
My current thinking is to not include a "down vote" system but ratheradd in a "flagging" system. Flagging something would be less obvious and would not be "gameable" - especially if a posting could be marked "patrolled" or otherwise considered acceptable and immune to flagging.
To be sure, this is very shaky ground and requires a great deal ofthought. It may come to pass that this is just another ghost of an idea, consigned to a graveyard. But I think it's worth talking about.
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 11:36 PM, Miguelinito miguelinito@gmail.com wrote:
Hello, Brandon
I think that it shouldn't depend on other users, because, no matter how responsible they were, everybody could have sometime a bad day. I think that such a system should encourage the creation and/or improvement of articles, i.e., an objective system. Something similar to the barnstar to the featured article editor, but more detailed.
Well, the WMF are currently trialling a rate-this-article system. Is that
the sorta thing you're talking about?
On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Miguelinito miguelinito@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, something like that. And, in that case, I think that there should be some way to also promote viewing of non-rated articles, otherwise there would be, as in many rating systems (skins, plugins, etc.), a small group with *a lot* of votes and all the rest with no votes.
As far as I know the rating system is being used to judge how viewers
perceive our work, rather than to categorise or organise it.
Hello
Just a quick word to say that I really appreciated your (2) emails about Solutions. Whilst I agree that issues you raise are not directly related to the "gendergap", I do not think we should aim necessarily in finding solutions to address the women issue, but rather aim at identifying what would facilitate participation and help where we can.
Do not get boggued down by rather critical comments or limited comments from members of this list. What you suggest could have significant social impacts within our community, and we should always be careful to avoid breaking what basically works. It is normal that people be hesitant and it will take a long time and many many many discussions before some of your suggestions are implemented and go live. But if it goes in the right direction, there is no hurry. We have been there for already 10 years and we plan to be there for many years to come. There is nothing urgent. Time is the essence :)
Anthere
On 2/9/11 8:17 PM, Brandon Harris wrote:
As promised, here is a mail in which I talk about possible directions. A lot of this has to do with the discussion system that is used by Wikipedia.
It is abundantly clear that Talk pages are a plague upon all the houses. They are intensely difficult to use and understand. They are *incredibly* difficult for new users to understand and navigate for many reasons (which I can elaborate on, but I'll assume we all know what they are).
So let's get rid of them. Let's move to a modern discussion system (which is the promise of LiquidThreads) - one that users are likely to be more familiar with, one that is easier to use, and one that encourages several principles.
- Identity Emphasis
It is a known problem that Talk pages do not engender (hah!) identity. In fact, the only notification that a comment exists from a different user is an indent and (possibly) a signature. To a new user, however, that doesn't help much. In fact, we've seen time and time again that newbies have difficulty distinguishing "that one guy was a jerk to me" versus "Wikipedia was a jerk to me."
I should be clear that I'm not talking about "real" identification (e.g., "Brandon Harris" vs. "Jorm") but rather the ability for a new user to easily connect all of Jorm's comments together.
There are several small things that we can do to make this better which will have a larger benefit than their sum.
First, research has shown that people are far less likely to provide hostile or negative responses *if they believe they are talking to another person* and *if they do not feel anonymous*.
Accordingly, attaching a sense of identity to both the poster and the replier can help to alleviate this. One common way to do this is the inclusion of avatars to discussion posts.
By encouraging communication between individuals we will go a long way towards creating a social structure that can build grass-roots style.
- Positive Feedback Systems
As a culture, Wikipedia has developed several mechanisms to indicate displeasure with an individual's activities. However, we have next to no methods for telling someone that they have done a good job, or "thanks for the comment". Sure, we have barnstars, but they are a non-standard feedback mechanism and likely to be confusing to new users.
A simple "thanks" button, or "this was helpful" mechanism can go a long way towards solving for that. Promoting helpfulness will make being helpful a desirable trait and will go a long way towards alleviating "newbie bite."
- Newbie Protection Mechanisms
A sad truth is that there are many people on Wikipedia who are jerks or trolls. Experienced users know to avoid such people but new users are thrown into the gladatorial arena without protection.
A system where low-value contributors (trolls) can be flagged or "downvoted" can go a long way towards addressing this. In LiquidThreads, unhelpful comments could be automatically "collapsed" and de-emphasized.
That leads me to. . .
- Reputation Systems
A reputation system is a form of soft "social currency." Helpful individuals (those with high "helpful" marks) are called out and those with low-value are de-emphasized. New users would be able to recognize individuals that the community has determined to be high-value. This helps to encourage trust, which promotes community health and vibrancy.
I have a lot of other things I've been looking at but I think this is a sufficient launch point for now.
Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
--- On Wed, 9/2/11, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.org
(One way to help do this would be to place a [discuss] link next to the [edit] link on a page section. With LiquidThreads, we could key that link to open immediately to an existing discussion about the section (or create a new one if one wasn't there). Bam! Now he's involved.)
I recall that the two market leaders in the Chinese online encyclopedia market have a much larger social networking side built into their software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike
Our articles do not say anything about the gender balance in these projects. I wonder if it is different from ours. Do we have any editors who edit there?
I like pretty much everything you have written in your posts; these are exciting ideas.
Andreas
Welcome, Brandon
For the past several months I have been tasked on-and-off with redesigning LiquidThreads (LQT), which is a next-generation discussion system.
I was really thinking that the discussion pages should be redesigned because they are very cold!!
For a start, I think that "discussion" is a word that shouldn't exist in the vocabulary!! :)
Will you tell us something more about LQT??
Best. Miguel Ángel
On 2/9/11 1:01 PM, Miguelinito wrote:
Welcome, Brandon
For the past several months I have been tasked on-and-off with redesigning LiquidThreads (LQT), which is a next-generation discussion system.
I was really thinking that the discussion pages should be redesigned because they are very cold!!
For a start, I think that "discussion" is a word that shouldn't exist in the vocabulary!! :)
Will you tell us something more about LQT??
I, too, dislike the word "discussion" and am using the phrase "Collaboration System" instead, at least in most of my talks about this. A "Discussion System" is one part of a larger "Collaboration System," to my mind.
Here is a link to the current design document. It's technical in nature, and currently a work in progress. Many things are changing with it still (such as colors, features, etc.). It's also intended as a first-draft for a platform (so things like reputation systems are not included in these mock-ups).
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads/Redesign
I'm working on a less-technical, more conversation-form document as well and should have that ready early next week, but feel free to comment on the current page.