I would really like to have some work about people with special permissions on Wikimedia projects (starting with rollbacker, then admins etc.): is retention different than with regular users? if so, how? did some policies have impact on behavior of those users; if so, which? do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how (just in broader sense, of course)? which recommendations could be given based on statistical data? is it possible and how if possible to have real-time analysis of the trends? if possible, a tool would be needed; and so on.
Not a lot of information outside of statistical analysis would be needed, so it wouldn't require extra organizational efforts initially. The initial target would be small wikis and all of them are standardized by stewards. In future it would be good to have such research on all Wikimedia wikis.
So, the only issue is to find a researcher who would be willing to do that. I would mentor such researcher and I would connect him or her with other relevant Wikimedians, if necessary. I don't how how the process related to the finding researcher and mentoring him goes, but I suppose that Dario has clue :)
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
I would really like to have some work about people with special permissions on Wikimedia projects (starting with rollbacker, then admins etc.): is retention different than with regular users? if so, how? did some policies have impact on behavior of those users; if so, which? do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how (just in broader sense, of course)? which recommendations could be given based on statistical data? is it possible and how if possible to have real-time analysis of the trends? if possible, a tool would be needed; and so on.
Not a lot of information outside of statistical analysis would be needed, so it wouldn't require extra organizational efforts initially. The initial target would be small wikis and all of them are standardized by stewards. In future it would be good to have such research on all Wikimedia wikis.
So, the only issue is to find a researcher who would be willing to do that. I would mentor such researcher and I would connect him or her with other relevant Wikimedians, if necessary. I don't how how the process related to the finding researcher and mentoring him goes, but I suppose that Dario has clue :)
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
Hey Milos,
This is the kind of thing the summer researchers in the Community Dept. might be able to whip up pretty easily. Are you interested in all special permissions, or just certain ones?
Getting different rates of retention for these permissions groups is relatively easy. Answering "do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how" is more qualitative and would take time to do comprehensively, though I think we know the answer is that admins in particular have an enormous impact on retention of other groups. As for groups like rollbacker, I would think that they have a slight but perhaps still measurably different impact, primarily because getting reverted with an impersonal explanation has a distinctly negative impact on whether people stick around or not. My theories aside, different permissions require their own individual analysis.
I agree that working with a smaller wiki (and thus a smaller dataset) would be a good place to start, not least of which because it's likely that if there is a disproportionate impact from people with special userrights, the effect would be amplified on a smaller project.
We currently have one researcher tasked with starting analysis of Portuguese Wikipedia, which though it's quite old/mature has only 30ish admins. I think I'll ask him to work on this kind of analysis soon...
Hey,
I can help with statistical analysis if needed for this research.
Best, Goran
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 9:04 PM, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
I would really like to have some work about people with special permissions on Wikimedia projects (starting with rollbacker, then admins etc.): is retention different than with regular users? if so, how? did some policies have impact on behavior of those users; if so, which? do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how (just in broader sense, of course)? which recommendations could be given based on statistical data? is it possible and how if possible to have real-time analysis of the trends? if possible, a tool would be needed; and so on.
Not a lot of information outside of statistical analysis would be needed, so it wouldn't require extra organizational efforts initially. The initial target would be small wikis and all of them are standardized by stewards. In future it would be good to have such research on all Wikimedia wikis.
So, the only issue is to find a researcher who would be willing to do that. I would mentor such researcher and I would connect him or her with other relevant Wikimedians, if necessary. I don't how how the process related to the finding researcher and mentoring him goes, but I suppose that Dario has clue :)
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
Hey Milos, This is the kind of thing the summer researchers in the Community Dept. might be able to whip up pretty easily. Are you interested in all special permissions, or just certain ones? Getting different rates of retention for these permissions groups is relatively easy. Answering "do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how" is more qualitative and would take time to do comprehensively, though I think we know the answer is that admins in particular have an enormous impact on retention of other groups. As for groups like rollbacker, I would think that they have a slight but perhaps still measurably different impact, primarily because getting reverted with an impersonal explanation has a distinctly negative impact on whether people stick around or not. My theories aside, different permissions require their own individual analysis. I agree that working with a smaller wiki (and thus a smaller dataset) would be a good place to start, not least of which because it's likely that if there is a disproportionate impact from people with special userrights, the effect would be amplified on a smaller project. We currently have one researcher tasked with starting analysis of Portuguese Wikipedia, which though it's quite old/mature has only 30ish admins. I think I'll ask him to work on this kind of analysis soon...
-- Steven Walling Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
I am interested in "cheap", quantitative analysis with just a couple of notes about the structure. So, nothing should be based on qualitative analysis of the content.
My premises are: * Special permissions (even "rollback" permission) motivate editors. * Loosing special permissions demotivates editors. (I am here particularly interested in temporary admins of smaller wikis who didn't show up the second time to ask for temp adminship again.) * Users with special permissions influence workflow on projects. * Thus: ** As there are more active editors with special permissions "per capita", as more work has been done. ** During the periods of losing significant number of editors special permissions, projects have decreased
To do so, we should answer on a number of questions, like: * The first one is pre-question: It is possible to create classification of the projects based on their phase. Projects with significant number of editors are easy to classify. Smaller ones are harder to define, but I think it is possible. * Is retention of editors with special permissions higher than retention of other editors? * Is their activity higher after getting permissions? * Is there relation between the period of time of getting two permissions (rollbacker, then admin; admin, then bureaucrat) and their activity? In other words, do editors need to get special permissions from time to time to stay active? (If that's true, then granulating permissions should be general suggestion. For example, making blocks different permission from regular adminship. That has Portuguese Wikipedia, by the way; but that's the result the internal problems of their community.) * Do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how? (That's not the qualitative question, but quantitative, as well. Do we have more edits per editor or more editors or similar on projects with more editors with special permissions?) * What is correlation from project to project between the project phase and other parameters? Is it possible to make project subgroups based on that correlation? * What is the impact of flagged revisions and their localizations (en.wp has different implementation than de.wp) and other parameters? * What is the impact of introducing auto-confirmed users and other parameters? * .. Are there some other correlations?
The most complex question, but in some cases not so complex (small projects are under general policies) is: * Did some policies have impact on behavior of those users; if so, which?
If some of all premisses are true, then we should: * Educate communities, Meta community and stewards about the conclusions. Give advices to the communities how to avoid problem based on their phase. * suggest particular policies for particular time of development; * install permanent watch all over Wikimedia projects.
On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 21:04, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
This is the kind of thing the summer researchers in the Community Dept. might be able to whip up pretty easily. Are you interested in all special permissions, or just certain ones?
I am interested in all special permissions.
Getting different rates of retention for these permissions groups is relatively easy. Answering "do Wikimedians with special permissions influence development of wiki and how" is more qualitative and would take time to do comprehensively, though I think we know the answer is that admins in particular have an enormous impact on retention of other groups. As for groups like rollbacker, I would think that they have a slight but perhaps still measurably different impact, primarily because getting reverted with an impersonal explanation has a distinctly negative impact on whether people stick around or not. My theories aside, different permissions require their own individual analysis.
About the question "do Wikimedians ... and how?" -- as I said, I am interested just in quantitative answers at this moment of time. My premise is that more admins per capita anyway positively influence projects. And if true, that should be quantitatively visible.
We should add other premises, including your own, as well and test them.
I agree that working with a smaller wiki (and thus a smaller dataset) would be a good place to start, not least of which because it's likely that if there is a disproportionate impact from people with special userrights, the effect would be amplified on a smaller project.
We need anyway large communities to detect phases and to compare smaller communities with them. Statistical behavior of smaller communities is more hectic. For example, there are a lot of influences of founder(s). But, it could be about ~10 important editors who create specific dynamics.
We currently have one researcher tasked with starting analysis of Portuguese Wikipedia, which though it's quite old/mature has only 30ish admins. I think I'll ask him to work on this kind of analysis soon...
Let's do the next: Goran will do that with my suggestions or "mentoring". We will inform RCom and community from time to time; and Goran will cooperate with the researcher of Portuguese Wikipedia about common issues.
- Loosing special permissions demotivates editors. (I am here
particularly interested in temporary admins of smaller wikis who didn't show up the second time to ask for temp adminship again.)
I have a personal experience here, since I was a temporary admin on Lak Wikipedia for I believe two months (it must be smth like end of 2008). There was no community (and there is still no community), but we (three users who did not speak any Lak) tried to reach out to Lak speakers on some discussion forums. I felt that first the Wikipedia should be cleaned up (logo uploaded, vandalism removed etc), and asked for the temporary adminship (first refused by Angela who did not read my request properly, and then done by another steward - she never conceded or apologized). Once it was done, I did not feel any motivation to extend my adminship, though I am still regular on that wiki, visiting it at least every second day. In these three years, I had several occasions which required a sysop intervention, and then I put the delete template or asked stewards. I think many temporary sysop cases are like mine.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 13:35, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
- Loosing special permissions demotivates editors. (I am here
particularly interested in temporary admins of smaller wikis who didn't show up the second time to ask for temp adminship again.)
I have a personal experience here, since I was a temporary admin on Lak Wikipedia for I believe two months (it must be smth like end of 2008). There was no community (and there is still no community), but we (three users who did not speak any Lak) tried to reach out to Lak speakers on some discussion forums. I felt that first the Wikipedia should be cleaned up (logo uploaded, vandalism removed etc), and asked for the temporary adminship (first refused by Angela who did not read my request properly, and then done by another steward - she never conceded or apologized). Once it was done, I did not feel any motivation to extend my adminship, though I am still regular on that wiki, visiting it at least every second day. In these three years, I had several occasions which required a sysop intervention, and then I put the delete template or asked stewards. I think many temporary sysop cases are like mine.
There are temporary admins among native speakers now, as the requirement now is to have ~5 active users to get permanent permissions. For example, two Navajo Wikimedians were waiting for almost two years to get permanent admin permissions.
Milos,
for some reason this thread fell off my radar but you're raising some very interesting questions that as far as I know haven't been systematically addressed in the literature. There are papers on what drives the selection of admins or users with special privileges (the latest one from a group of researchers based in Warsaw titled "Social Mechanism of Granting Trust Basing on Polish Wikipedia Requests for Adminship", to be presented at SocInfo '11), but how privilege awarding affects motivation/participation in Wikipedia is a relatively unexplored field as far as I know.
May I suggest that you put together a research page on Meta with this list of questions? The research index is currently used as a place for researchers to present their projects but it should also become a place for the community to formulate questions that haven't been studied yet (or if they have, to link to existing research).
Dario
On Aug 22, 2011, at 4:45 AM, Milos Rancic wrote:
On Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 13:35, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
- Loosing special permissions demotivates editors. (I am here
particularly interested in temporary admins of smaller wikis who didn't show up the second time to ask for temp adminship again.)
I have a personal experience here, since I was a temporary admin on Lak Wikipedia for I believe two months (it must be smth like end of 2008). There was no community (and there is still no community), but we (three users who did not speak any Lak) tried to reach out to Lak speakers on some discussion forums. I felt that first the Wikipedia should be cleaned up (logo uploaded, vandalism removed etc), and asked for the temporary adminship (first refused by Angela who did not read my request properly, and then done by another steward - she never conceded or apologized). Once it was done, I did not feel any motivation to extend my adminship, though I am still regular on that wiki, visiting it at least every second day. In these three years, I had several occasions which required a sysop intervention, and then I put the delete template or asked stewards. I think many temporary sysop cases are like mine.
There are temporary admins among native speakers now, as the requirement now is to have ~5 active users to get permanent permissions. For example, two Navajo Wikimedians were waiting for almost two years to get permanent admin permissions.
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
May I suggest that you put together a research page on Meta with this
list
of questions? The research index is currently used as a place for researchers to present their projects but it should also become a place
for
the community to formulate questions that haven't been studied yet (or
if
they have, to link to existing research).
Dario
I think we need an entry "Wanted research" on the RCOM page. I wanted to do this in connection with my earlier ideas on the reader response, but I did not yet have time to do this. May be this can be a good opportunity to start.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ruwrote:
I think we need an entry "Wanted research" on the RCOM page. I wanted to do this in connection with my earlier ideas on the reader response, but I did not yet have time to do this. May be this can be a good opportunity to start.
Cheers Yaroslav
+1. Great idea.
Yes I like this idea as well +1 Diederik
Sent from my iPhone
On 2011-09-01, at 14:09, Steven Walling swalling@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote: I think we need an entry "Wanted research" on the RCOM page. I wanted to do this in connection with my earlier ideas on the reader response, but I did not yet have time to do this. May be this can be a good opportunity to start.
Cheers Yaroslav
+1. Great idea.
-- Steven Walling Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
+1
«·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·» «·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·» «·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»
Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info
Fellow Berkman center of Internet and Society. Harvard University. Postdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies. Autonomous University of Barcelona. Visiting scholar. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute. Open University of Catalonia (UOC). Member Research Committee. Wikimedia Foundation Ph.D European University Institute Visiting researcher (2008). School of information. University of California, Berkeley.
E-mail: mayo.fuster@eui.eu Twitter/Identica: Lilaroja Skype: mayoneti Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748
Postal Address: The Acetarium 265 Elm Street Somerville, MA, USA 02144 ________________________________________ From: rcom-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [rcom-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Diederik van Liere [dvanliere@gmail.com] Sent: 01 September 2011 20:37 To: The Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee mailing list Cc: The Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee mailing list Subject: Re: [RCom-l] Statistics behind Wikimedians with permissions
Yes I like this idea as well +1 Diederik
Sent from my iPhone
On 2011-09-01, at 14:09, Steven Walling <swalling@wikimedia.orgmailto:swalling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <mailto:putevod@mccme.ruputevod@mccme.rumailto:putevod@mccme.ru> wrote: I think we need an entry "Wanted research" on the RCOM page. I wanted to do this in connection with my earlier ideas on the reader response, but I did not yet have time to do this. May be this can be a good opportunity to start.
Cheers Yaroslav
+1. Great idea.
-- Steven Walling Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.orgwikimediafoundation.orghttp://wikimediafoundation.org
_______________________________________________ RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
+1 Wanted research - a great idea. Some of my thoughts related to this idea are under
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Research_Management#Discus...
Milos and I had discussed his initiative to study user contribution in relation to granted permissions and we will inform upon all related developments; I was barely able to find some time to read through the RComm messages recently.
Cheers, Goran
On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Fuster, Mayo Mayo.Fuster@eui.eu wrote:
+1
«·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·» «·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·» «·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»
Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.info
Fellow Berkman center of Internet and Society. Harvard University. Postdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies. Autonomous University of Barcelona. Visiting scholar. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute. Open University of Catalonia (UOC). Member Research Committee. Wikimedia Foundation Ph.D European University Institute Visiting researcher (2008). School of information. University of California, Berkeley.
E-mail: mayo.fuster@eui.eu Twitter/Identica: Lilaroja Skype: mayoneti Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748
Postal Address: The Acetarium 265 Elm Street Somerville, MA, USA 02144 ________________________________________ From: rcom-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [rcom-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Diederik van Liere [dvanliere@gmail.com] Sent: 01 September 2011 20:37 To: The Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee mailing list Cc: The Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee mailing list Subject: Re: [RCom-l] Statistics behind Wikimedians with permissions
Yes I like this idea as well +1 Diederik
Sent from my iPhone
On 2011-09-01, at 14:09, Steven Walling <swalling@wikimedia.orgmailto:swalling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <mailto:putevod@mccme.ruputevod@mccme.rumailto:putevod@mccme.ru> wrote: I think we need an entry "Wanted research" on the RCOM page. I wanted to do this in connection with my earlier ideas on the reader response, but I did not yet have time to do this. May be this can be a good opportunity to start.
Cheers Yaroslav
+1. Great idea.
-- Steven Walling Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.orgwikimediafoundation.orghttp://wikimediafoundation.org
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto:RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l
RCom-l mailing list RCom-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/rcom-l