I'd go further and say it's extension of bullying that my grandmother would have called "little hitlers" (officiousness) or perhaps more scientifically the kind of behaviour observed in the Stanford prison experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment In Wikipedia, we have created a situation where any editor can be judge, jury and executioner over other people's edits. We provide the anonymity of pseudonyms too, just to make it a little bit easier. We have a civility rule that evidently sets the bar so low that we have editors calling a female editor a "cunt" and it being written off as "oh, that's just SoAndSo" (on the grounds that this particular contributor uses that kind of language all the time) -- read the gender gap mailing list if you want more charming examples of that sort of thing. This recent article in The Guardian might be a bit over-the-top: http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/12/comment-sectio ns-toxic-moderation but it does make the point pretty well. For everyone who tries to make a contribution, we have an army of folks with apparently nothing better to do than pass negative judgement (without making any positive contribution of their own). For myself, I'd reduce the power for anyone to revert edits down to some small set of circumstances, e.g. vandalism, patent nonsense and derogatory comments on living people without citation, and enforce this with a tick the box to indicate the grounds you are reverting on. Other concerns could be "reported" but not reverted (done like "thank" with a text box to raise the concern). I would introduce some new roles/rights called something like "curator" in relation to different topic areas (probably linked to category or maybe Project -- noting that many Projects are moribund though) assigned to those judged by the peers (like Request for Administrator) to have a track record of positive edits and collaborative behaviour (which would include communication) within that topic area. I'd give these folks the power to revert on a wider set of criteria within the defined topic area and the obligation to respond to "reports" within their topic area. Obviously the intention is that these people would be more able to decide if something needed a quick revert or a discussion on a talk page or whatever or some advice to a new contributor etc. This kind of mechanism is used to manage a lot of online forums and I see no reason why it should not work on WP. Alternatively, we could introduce a "no thanks" button which silently records that a logged-in user isn't happy with an edit. We use this data to look for patterns of "no thanks" involving the same editor as either the one who did the edit or as the "no thanker" with a view to identifying "problem people" and trying to do some remedial work around their behaviour/expectations. It might also reveal early signs of conflict in articles or categories involving multiple editors which might benefit from early intervention. Generally the longer arguments go on, the more entrenched the participants become in their viewpoints (it becomes more about "winning" rather addressing the original issue). Because the purpose of the tool is "macroscopic" rather than "microscopic", I actually don't think the data should generally be public but accessible to those who would be taking action on it (whatever role that might be). I know some people will not like the "lack of transparency" but I think to make it public does not help as victims and bystanders are often afraid to report bullying for fear of attracting retaliation. Also you don't want single reports to become an argument in themselves -- it's a macroscopic tool not a microscopic one. I'd even go further and say that nobody with rights to see the data should be able to see the data about themselves. But, this is a research list. What's the research we do to contribute to solving editor attrition. For myself, it's looking at patterns of edits (and reaction to those edits by others) in the days/weeks prior to a long-term active editor becoming inactive. Is there any difference to the normal pattern of their edits and edit reactions? By reaction, I mean reverts or other "non-survival" of edits on a mainspace page or response on a talk/user talk page. If it's conflict that drives people away, you'd expect to see edits not surviving or an increased level of talk (with negative sentiment if we can do sentiment analysis on the edit summaries or the talk messages). For newer editors, I think we just look at their reverts. Being new, we don't have a history of "normal situation" to compare against. Where are they editing, why are being reverted? Obviously we'd like to unpack why good faith edits are being reverted and see what might be done about it. Aside, my personal belief is that new editors don't know about Talk and User Talk and it's our consequent inability to communicate with them that makes them walk away when their edits disappear (without explanation as they will see it). I think if you could talk with them, you could probably help them achieve what they were trying to do or nicely explain why it can't be done. Our insistence on allowing anonymous edit and sign-up without an email address works against being able to help newcomers. Kerry -----Original Message----- From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Stuart A. Yeates Sent: Sunday, 14 September 2014 7:15 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] What works for increasing editor engagement? My personal hypothesis is that much wikipedia incivility is part of the broader internet-troll phenomenon (google "Don't Read The Comments" if you're unfamiliar with the effects of trolling). I'd be very interested to see a linguistic comparison between classes of edits/comments tagged as 'bad' across a range of sites which allow unmoderated comments. Being able to confirm that large part of the problem was actually part of an internet-wide problem rather than a local problem would be a big step forward. It worries me that the WMF may, by making the wikipedia interface more similar to other discussion systems, reduce the differences between us and the troll-infested platforms and make it psychologically easier for those who troll on other platforms to troll on wikipedia. cheers stuart _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

... Mobile now makes up 30% of our page views and its users display divergent behavioural patterns; you don't think a group that makes up 30% of pageviews is a user group that is a 'big deal' for engagement?

100 Million

Pine wrote: 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. Gerard Meijssen wrote: Editing under the Vector skin has worked just fine on Android since 2010 and on iOS since 2012. There is no evidence that the edits under mobile device specialty skins or apps will ever approach the proportion of editing under the Vector skin. Nor is there any evidence that the increasing proportion of mobile pageviews has had any impact on the number of active editors, who again have been declining along a constant trend since 2007 to the present, even as mobile pageviews have displaced a very substantial and growing proportion of desktop pageviews. Are you aware of the proportion of active editors who have enabled the visual editor? It is miniscule, judging from tags in recent changes. Oliver Keyes wrote: Why? Mobile pageviews are now 30%. Editing is enabled and relatively easy on mobile devices. The rate of editor attrition is unchanged from 2007. Where is there any evidence that the trend in active editors will change at all if and when mobile pageviews reach 50% or 75%? _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

... The data you show in that table indicates that there is a negative correlation between active editors and mobile pageviews....