Very true. The longer you hang around Wikipedia, the more people you encounter who really piss you off. It’s a very negative culture.
I think the lack of physicality is part of the problem. Having worked in international standards and other similar battlegrounds, I know that the most important thing you can do to make the group work well together is to get them to eat and drink together. It seems to build trust and an appreciation that the other people aren’t stupid because they don’t understand what you are trying to achieve; it leads to mutual respect and consensus building back in the meeting room.
In WP, I think the lack of physicality contributes to the culture. But I don’t know if local meetups can solve the problem as the people who you are interacting with on articles are often not from your home town – indeed often you have no clue who they are, where they are from, are they young/old, is English their first language, what’s their background etc.
Now some might say “why does that matter, shouldn’t you treat all people equally?”. And my answer is that it does matter because you are communicating. To communicate, you have to operate in a shared universe of discourse. When we go about our lives every day, we automatically adjust our communication to what we perceive to be the shared universe of discourse with the other person. You don’t discuss your pension fund with children, because children don’t understand pension funds. You don’t swear when you talk to your grandmother, because nice old ladies don’t like that kind of language. You simplify your language if you think you are dealing with someone who doesn’t speak English very well. In en.WP, how you respond to a “low-quality edit” might be very different if you knew you were dealing with a 12 year old or a person who didn’t speak English very well or your grandmother.
In WP, you are denied just about every clue that you rely on in interacting with other people, so very piece of “emotional intelligence” goes out the window. If you look at most social media sites, you are encouraged to create a profile with a photo, your job/interests etc, your colleagues/friends etc (the specifics vary with the intended purpose of the site – LinkedIn is different to Facebook, but the general principles are similar). Interacting with strangers on such sites is much easier because you are supplied with the information that you also get when you eat and drink with people (you chat about your work, your family, your interests) etc. Sure, WP is not a “social media” site, but I think it could learn a few things from them about facilitating human interaction which underpins collaboration.
If, as someone mentioned, people are refused administrator privileges on the grounds of “I don’t know this guy”, I think it speaks volumes about the importance of human interaction and that WP fails to facilitate it by either physical or electronic means.
Kerry
From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Halfaker
Sent: Tuesday, 20 November 2012 1:07 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Editor retention and meetups?
The "retention problem" isn't just relevant to new editors. Retaining experienced Wikipedians is an equally substantial term in the equation.
Back to Laura's question: I don't know about any research of Wiki meetups, but there's been research of everything2 meetups and potential effects on participation (from WikiSym'11). See cite and free(ish) link below.
Wyl McCully, Cliff Lampe, Chandan Sarkar, Alcides Velasquez, and Akshaya Sreevinasan. 2011. Online and offline interactions in online communities. In Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 39-48. http://www.wikisym.org/ws2011/_media/proceedings:p39-mccully.pdf
-Aaron
On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 9:58 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond@gmail.com> wrote:
I suspect that its only fairly well-entrenched editors who attend meetups, but I agree it would be interesting data. I rather suspect that meetups are advertised in ways unlikely to reach newer editors.
Sent from my iPad
On 19/11/2012, at 10:16 AM, Laura Hale <laura@fanhistory.com> wrote:Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone knows of any research on Wikimedia meetups and the effects on editor retention?
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
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