I too am very hopeful about VE but less
sure about Flow. I do Wikipedia edit training locally for Wikimedia
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
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