It comes as no great surprise to me to see these survey results show very little change in
matters of some concern (e.g. diversity, community health). Quite simply, if you don't
change the system, then don't expect the outcomes to change. I can't speak about
most projects but I don't see any change on en.WP in terms of how it operates since
the last WMF strategic plan published in 2011. We had a non-diverse toxic culture then;
nothing changes; culture remained the same. Our active editor numbers go down, the number
of articles to be maintained goes up, do the maths and see the long-term problem. Admin
numbers are also declining.
One big potentially positive change was the Visual Editor. WMF built the Visual Editor
specifically to open up editing to a wider ground of users and, as someone who does
training for new users, it is a game changer for making it easier for new users. However,
en.WP didn't change. VE is not the default for new editors on en.WP. It is not enabled
for en.WP talk pages, project pages, or even the Teahouse, or any forum where new users
might report problems or harassment etc. Almost any how-to help page gives information
only for source editor users. Commons has blocked new users from using the VE to upload
own-work photos (and no useful error message is provided to tell them what to do - just
something generic like "server error" is returned because Commons just
"fails" the upload and doesn't pass back a reason to the VE).
The old adage "praise in public, criticise in private" remains inverted in the
world of Wikipedia. Everyone can see reverted edits and the criticisms on User Talk pages.
Meanwhile "Thanks" (our lightest weight way to praise) is effectively private
(yeah, I know there is a public log, but at most it tells you who likes who). And what the
public log does show is that most people never thank anyone anyway, which again speaks
volume about our culture. We are all for transparency except curiously when thanking for a
particular edit. Transparency leads to a lack of privacy that comes with it is a turn-off
to some new users. I know from training some new users don't think it's OK that
everyone can read their User Talk page or that their entire contribution history is
visible to all. They generally believe that if they were to misbehave, then of course
someone in authority (admins in our world) should be able to look at such things for the
purposes of keeping the place safe and functioning effectively, but they don't see why
just anyone should be able to monitor them, which is a means by which you can stalk
someone or wikihound them on Wikipedia. Interestingly pretty much all of those who raise
these concerns are women, who are, in real life, the most common victims of privacy
invasions (think "up-skirt-ing" vs "up-trouser-ing", think Peeping Tom
vs Peeping Tomasina) and stalking. So should we look at trading off some transparency in
order to get more diversity?
Vandalism. Many years ago, when I questioned our very soft policy on vandalism (it takes 4
to allow you to request to block an account), I was told that "yeah, there is a lot
of vandalism now but Wikipedia is new and once people realise its value and that vandals
get blocked, it will stop happening over time". Sadly nobody told the vandals this,
as, based on my watchlist, they are still very active and still mostly IPs. I note we have
not changed our IP policy or our pseudonym account policy; editors remain as
non-real-world accountable as always. As many online newspapers and other forums are
turning off comments as they have learned that anonymous/pseudo accounts lead to
completely unproductive name calling, defamatory comments, and not the constructive civil
debate envisaged, yet at en.WP we persist in believing that the same approach can create a
positive collaborative culture, which clearly it has not.
There's no willingness even to experiment with anything that might change the culture
and I see little likelihood that en.WP's culture will change of its own accord.
However, there is one easy win for diversity at WMF. Start diversifying the WMF livestream
times. Every WMF livestream is usually between 2-4am here in Australia so I'd like to
see a bit of support for the Global East diversity by shifting the livestreams so everyone
gets a chance to participate live. One small step that WMF could take ...
Kerry
-----Original Message-----
From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
Pine W
Sent: Saturday, 15 September 2018 1:52 PM
To: Wiki Research-l <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Results from 2018 global Wikimedia survey are published!
Hi Edward,
Thanks for this publication. This research is likely to be of interest to the
WikimediaAnnounce-l (and by extension, Wikimedia-l) and Wikitech-l subscribers, so I
suggest that you cross-post this publication to those lists.
After reading this report, I have a question which may be challenging to
answer: what should we do to improve our diversity? Many of us, inside and outside of WMF,
have wanted to see progress on diversity metrics for years, and I get the impression that
while significant attention and resources are being given to diversity, our progress has
been disappointing. Perhaps that's a subject that can be discussed further during the
video presentation, but I'd also be interested in hearing your comments here on
Research-l.
Have a good weekend,
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 11:07 PM Edward Galvez <egalvez(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm excited to share that our annual survey about Wikimedia
communities is now published!
This survey included 170 questions and reaches over 4,000 community
members across four audiences: Contributors, Affiliate organizers,
Program Organizers, and Volunteer Developers. This survey helps us
hear from the experience of Wikimedians from across the movement so
that teams are able to use community feedback in their planning and
their work. This survey also helps us learn about long term changes in
communities, such as community health or demographics.
The report is available on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_Insights/2018_Rep
ort
For this survey, we worked with 11 teams to develop the questions.
Once the results were analyzed, we spent time with each team to help
them understand their results. Most teams have already identified how
they will use the results to help improve their work to support you.
The report could be useful for your work in the Wikimedia movement as well!
What are you learning from the data? Take some time to read the report
and share your feedback on the talk pages. We have also published a
blog that you can read.[1]
We are hosting a livestream presentation[2] on September 20 at 1600 UTC.
Hope to see you there!
Feel free to email me directly with any questions.
All the best,
Edward
[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/2018/09/13/what-we-learned-surveying-4
000-community-members/ [2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGQtWFP9Cjc
--
Edward Galvez
Evaluation Strategist, Surveys
Learning & Evaluation
Community Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
--
Edward Galvez
Evaluation Strategist, Surveys
Learning & Evaluation
Community Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
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