I too am very hopeful about VE but less sure about Flow. I do Wikipedia edit training locally for Wikimedia Australia and markup is something a lot of folks struggle with. Here's an email I received today from someone who was in one of my groups a month ago. I get an email from this person once or twice a week. This person is quite able to write (is an author of journal papers) and is keen to contribute to WP but, as you can see, knows what they want to do but is unable to deal with the markup. Now because this person has spent face-to-face time with me and because I know new people can't handle "Talk", I always hand out my email address at these events because this is the way they prefer to communicate post-event (this is why I am less sure about the benefits of Flow, learning it adds yet another cognitive demand on new users).
Hi Kerry, I need your help again! to complete (from me anyhow) the XXXX article. 1. I'd like to change (but I can't figure out how to do that) the text underneath the picture of XXXX. I'd prefer it to read "XXXXX". and 2. I entered some text about the XXXX issue and entered (incorrectly\incompletely?) a URL (#24) reference. When I tried to correct it, I found that I couldn't edit the reference section of the existing version. Hope that you can 'fix-it-up'. Thanks heaps. Cheers,
Aside, the Facebook theory of reducing Wikipedia editing is probably valid. Not because I believe that people see Facebook as a direct alternative to Wikipedia, but more that Facebook and Wikipedia compete for the spare time in your life. And in Facebook, I have shut out the people I don't want to deal with. Not so on Wikipedia.
Kerry
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From: wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pine W Sent: Monday, 15 September 2014 5:12 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What works for increasing editor engagement?
On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 9:38 AM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Pine wrote:
... The data you show in that table indicates that there is a negative correlation between active editors and mobile pageviews....
No, it does not. The rate of editor attrition has been constant since 2007, while mobile views have increased from zero to billions. Mobile pageviews have has absolutely no correlation with editor engagement whatsoever.
If there is a quantification of civility issues per editor somewhere, please bring it to my attention. I suggest that editors who think incivility has increased since 2006 are not familiar with incivility issues prior to 2006.
James, that's a good argument, but if that's the argument that you want to make then please show data back to 2007, not to 2009. Also, I stand by my statement that there is a negative correlation between active editors and mobile pageviews in the data that you showed. Correlation and causation are different.
If you watch Jonathan Morgan's presentation, you'll see that he says that his favorite theory about the decline in active editors after 2007 is the rise of the popularity of Facebook. I think everyone would agree that there are other issues at play as well. I believe that Jonathan says that new editors were welcomed more readily in Wikipedia's older days, and now they are more likely to receive template warnings on their talk pages.
Other possible factors include
* The length of the review time at Articles for Creation, at least on English Wikipedia, which means that contributors may lose patience before their drafts receive reviews
* The trend of preferred Internet devices switching from desktop to mobile, combined with the difficulty of contributing text from mobile, as some of us have mentioned in this discussion
* Shorter human attention spans (is there any data about this?)
* Preferred modes of social expression switching from lengthy blog prose to short strings
* The number and complexity of policies and laws that govern Wikimedia content
* Increased surveillance, censorship, and criminalization of Internet activity, which may deter potential contributors
* The reputation in social media and technical communities that Wikipedia is a hostile environment; I have heard this personally from other tech open source enthusiasts
Other people on this list may be able to contribute additional ideas.
I agree with Stuart that Wikipedia may be part of an Internet-wide trend of trolling becoming more common, and that making communication and editing easier on Wikipedia is likely to make trolling and vandalizing easier. My bigger concern is that lots of resources are being poured into VE and Flow but that VE and Flow address problems that are of less significance than others that we've mentioned in this thread, particularly the difficulty of mobile editing and the increase in hostility. AfC and the Draft namespace would be other good territories for investigation of their impact on editor retention and content creation.
I hope that VE and Flow will be net positives (I am generally supportive of the VE concept, and cautious about Flow) but I feel that Wikipedia's biggest problems may lie elsewhere, and I would like to see resources that are proportional to those spent on VE and Flow get spent on some of the other areas like AfC and the on-wiki culture. These would need to be addressed in collaboration with the content communities, and the WMF Strategic Plan update would be a good time to elevate Wikimedia's cultural issues as a priority, with a continuing emphasis on mobile and new modes of consumption and creation.
Pine