Pine wrote:
I agree that the shift to mobile is a big deal;
I do not agree: Active editor attrition began on its present trend in 2007, far before any mobile use was significant.
I remain concerned that tech-centric approaches to editor engagement like VE and Flow, while perhaps having a modest positive impact, do little to fix the incivility problem that is so frequently cited as a reason for people to leave.
I agree that VE has already proven that it is ineffective in significantly increasing editor engagement. And I agree that Flow has no hope of achieving any substantial improvements. There are good reasons to believe that Flow will make things worse. For example, using wikitext on talk pages acts as a pervasive sandbox substitute for practicing the use of wikitext in article editing.
And I do not agree that civility issues have any substantial correlation with editor attrition. There have been huge civility problems affecting most editors on controversial subjects since 2002, and I do not see any evidence that they have become any worse or better on a per-editor basis since.
My opinion is that the transition from the need to create new articles to maintaining the accuracy and quality of existing articles has been the primary cause of editor attrition, and my studies of Short Popular Vital Articles (WP:SPVA) have supported this hypothesis.
Therefore, I strongly urge implementation of accuracy review systems: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Develop_systems_for_accuracy_re...