Hi Jane,
Regarding "Are there any numbers available on how many AfC's resulted in
articles vs. submissions and then also the same numbers for non-AfC page
creations vs. speedy deletions?", I'm sure that data is available but I
suspect that getting WMF to take another round of analyzing and trying to
improve the situation with AfC would probably require that it be on some
team's quarterly goals.
I feel that it would be good to resurrect the WMF Growth team. Currently, I
hear that contributor growth is one of the metrics that is or will be
emphasized for Product teams, but there is no single point of contact for
coordinating the multiple growth initiatives, both inside of Product and
those being funded by grants. I think that coordination in this area would
be beneficial, and that this team would be well positioned to take on
activities like developing ways to improve AfC, NPP, etc.
Along these lines, one of my thoughts is that WMF has invested heavily in
software engineering and data science, my impression is that WMF is lacking
in social scientists. WMF has tried many times to develop technical
improvements for social problems, with success that has been mixed at best.
I would like to see people with backgrounds in fields like social
psychology, economics, sociology, and urban planning be involved in a
resurrected Growth team.
Also, I'm wondering if the shortage of volunteer capacity -- particularly
the shortage of competent and quickly-responsive volunteer capacity -- in
certain community roles (like reviewers of CoI-flagged edits as well as
domains like AfC) increasingly suggests that some of these tasks be at
least partially done by paid staff, such as the Wiki Ed Foundation
currently does with its content experts that assist classes in the US and
Canada Wikipedia Education Program. I suspect that WMF wouldn't want to
touch these roles in AfC, CoI and other queues because content review is
involved, so maybe this is a place where Wikimedia affiliates can and
should get more involved. The affiliates can work on content in ways that
WMF cannot.
Thoughts?
Pine
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 10:19 PM, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Pine,
I agree with Oliver and Kerry on the violence vs. drip-drip-drip. Our
success at keeping people from editing matches the height of the
threshold-to-edit. There's no violence going on, it's just the annoyance
tolerance level that the typical volunteer needs to have in order to be
able cross into the wikiverse seems to be going up these days. Thanks for
posting the link to that SWOT analysis - is there any more information
about the context in which it was made? Though you mention that experienced
Wikipedians know New Page Patrollers create collateral damage and the
SWOT slide shows NPP as both a strength and a weakness, no one ever
addresses the fact that NPP also contains some seriously misguided POV
pushers who in fact act as censors when they use the AfC tools and leave
the entries they don't care about to rot. So I see NPP not just as a
strength and a weakness, but also as a threat, and its associated AfC is a
major threat. I assume AfC was left out of the SWOT analysis because it is
so controversial:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWOT_analysis_of_Wikipedia_in_2015.…
In that slide the parenthetic notes on items which may fall into more than
one quadrant do not include "undisclosed conflict-of-interest editing" so I
am also guessing whoever made it falls into the camp of thinking that
anyone who is a paid editor and doesn't reveal this on their userpage is a
threat. It leaves out a major battle ground about whether or not GLAM
employees are considered paid editors or not when they venture into our
world for the first time. I see AfC as one of the major threats to the
English Wikipedia, and one way to combat this is to educate newbies on how
to avoid it. Whenever I speak to anyone who is interested in contributing
on the English Wikipedia and who also has a paid job or a volunteer
position that they want to write about on Wikipedia, I first try to change
their mind and try to get them to contribute to another subject first and
if not that, then another project first such as Commons or Wikidata. I
also always tell them 1) never edit Wikipedia from their work IP address in
case someone links their onwiki interests to their job and 2) never attempt
anything on English Wikipedia through AfC as it will rot there forever. I
recommend they ignore the official advice to indicate their employer on
their userpage, and always emphasize that their choice of username should
be personal and not organization-based. In the case of volunteers this is
really hard to explain and unfortunately most have to experience some form
of onwiki-harassment before they get it.
I personally see AfC as some sort of last-gasp effort to keep the hoards
at the gate. If anything, it enforces a form of old-boys-network onboarding
as people have no hope of having their contributions rescued without the
help of an insider. I am an experienced Wikimedian of several projects and
can wrangle my way through the most complicated templates, but I give up
entirely when it comes to the jungle of AfC. Are there any numbers
available on how many AfC's resulted in articles vs. submissions and then
also the same numbers for non-AfC page creations vs. speedy deletions? Post
creation period analysis (3, 6 and 12 months later) would be interesting to
have too. My gut feeling is that AfC is busily creating a backlog we will
never get through.
To answer your original question, I think the reason we lack New Page
Patrollers for the subjects in which they are needed at AfC is exactly the
same reason why those people are being turned back at the gates - nobody
currently cares about their contributions. If an AfC comes in for a soccer
player, ship model or popular TV episode they are welcomed with open arms.
You always get what you reward most in the end.
Jane
On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 12:28 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yesterday I gave a presentation about community
policing at the Cascadia
Wikimedians' end of year event with Seattle TA3M [1][2][3]. An issue that
came up for discussion is the extent to which, on English Wikipedia,
experienced Wikipedians conducting New Page Patrol create collateral damage
during their well-intentioned efforts to protect Wikipedia. Another subject
that came up is the need for more human resources for mentoring of newbies
who create articles using the Articles for Creation system [4]; one comment
I've heard previously is that the length of time between submission and
review may be long enough for the newbie to give up and disappear, and
another comment that I've heard is that newbies may not understand the
instructions that they're given when their article is reviewed. These
comments correlate with the community SWOT analysis that was done at
WikiConference USA this year, in which "biting the newbies", NPP, and
"onboarding/training" were identified as weaknesses [5]
Personally, I would like the interaction of experienced editors with the
newbies in places like NPP and AFC to look more like this
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Police_Week_May_15,_2010_on_Court_Avenue_Bridge,_Des_Moines,_Iowa,_USA-1.jpg>
and less like this
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ferguson_Day_6,_Picture_44.png>.
Granted, it's hard for a relatively small number of experienced Wikipedians
to keep all the junk and vandals out while also mentoring the newbies and
avoiding collateral damage, so one strategy could be to increase the
quantity of skilled human resources that are devoted to these domains. Any
thoughts on how to make that happen?
I am currently especially interested in this topic because of my IEG
project which officially starts this week. [6] It would be very helpful to
retain the new editors that are trained through these videos, so improving
editor retention via improved newbie experiences at NPP and/or AFC would be
most welcome.
Pine
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_reform_in_the_United_States
[3]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Presentations_at_Cascadia_Wikimedia…
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creation
[5]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SWOT_analysis_of_Wikipedia_in_2015.…
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Motivational_and_educational_vid…
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