Do we have any data on frequency of reverts of users (or more particularly new users) based on characteristics of the article being developed? There is a proposal about "in-context help and onboarding" of new users:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/In-context_help_and_onboarding
where I am suggesting that we don't allow new users to edit articles of higher importance, higher quality, higher readership, or higher page-watcher-ship, or about living people because I strongly suspect that this is where new users are at much higher risk of reverting. I take this approach during training, I suggest the topics they edit and choose what I regard as "low risk" ones (and provide some sources). This produces almost no reverts of their first edits which I think is very important in gaining confidence with basic editing skills.
So I was curious about whether anyone has crunched such data or has data that could be easily crunched to confirm or deny my hypotheses.
Kerry
On 20 March 2018 at 10:09, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/In-context_help_and_onboarding
where I am suggesting that we don't allow new users to edit articles of higher importance, higher quality, higher readership, or higher page-watcher-ship, or about living people because I strongly suspect that this is where new users are at much higher risk of reverting.
I can understand your reasoning, but consider who this would impact things like 1Lib1Ref, or an editor who just adds photos (possibly their own, taken especially) to articles that lack them.
On 20 March 2018 at 11:40, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
I can understand your reasoning, but consider who this would impact things like [...]
*how* this would impact...
Apologies.
Kerry,
Did you really mean "not allow" here? IMO we (WMF, researchers, Wikipedians) shouldn't be in the business of creating Yet Another Barrier to newcomer contribution.
*Suggesting* that people avoid making their first edit to the article on Donald Trump, etc.--sure, that's a good "teachable moment" and probably helps shield newcomers from unnecessary confusion and hostility.
I also believe that we could make progress by *recommending *articles for newcomers to edit based on some combination of 1) quality improvement needed, 2) low likelihood that good faith edits will be immediately reverted 3) topic is of general interest OR topic is likely to be of interest to newcomer based on their stated preferences or their editing history.
The data necessary to run a study like the one you're looking for is all public and so I think a study like this could be done. But to my knowledge no one has done it yet.
- Jonathan
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:42 AM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 20 March 2018 at 11:40, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
I can understand your reasoning, but consider who this would impact things like [...]
*how* this would impact...
Apologies.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I said "where I am suggesting that we don’t allow new users to edit articles of higher importance, higher quality, higher readership, or higher page-watcher-ship, or about living people because I strongly suspect that this is where new users are at much higher risk of reverting"
I entirely agree with you that editing Donald Trump would not be a good new user experience. I run all my edit training sessions and new-user 1Lib1Ref edit-a-thons on "low risk" articles as I perceive them. I am just curious if my perception of revert risk for new users matches statistical reality.
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Morgan Sent: Wednesday, 21 March 2018 4:30 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Revert data by article importance/quality/readership/watchership/BLP
Kerry,
Did you really mean "not allow" here? IMO we (WMF, researchers, Wikipedians) shouldn't be in the business of creating Yet Another Barrier to newcomer contribution.
*Suggesting* that people avoid making their first edit to the article on Donald Trump, etc.--sure, that's a good "teachable moment" and probably helps shield newcomers from unnecessary confusion and hostility.
I also believe that we could make progress by *recommending *articles for newcomers to edit based on some combination of 1) quality improvement needed, 2) low likelihood that good faith edits will be immediately reverted 3) topic is of general interest OR topic is likely to be of interest to newcomer based on their stated preferences or their editing history.
The data necessary to run a study like the one you're looking for is all public and so I think a study like this could be done. But to my knowledge no one has done it yet.
- Jonathan
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:42 AM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 20 March 2018 at 11:40, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
I can understand your reasoning, but consider who this would impact things like [...]
*how* this would impact...
Apologies.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF) _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Got it. Thanks for the clarification Kerry. I share your perception, but don't have data either.
- Jonathan
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 3:01 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
I said "where I am suggesting that we don’t allow new users to edit articles of higher importance, higher quality, higher readership, or higher page-watcher-ship, or about living people because I strongly suspect that this is where new users are at much higher risk of reverting"
I entirely agree with you that editing Donald Trump would not be a good new user experience. I run all my edit training sessions and new-user 1Lib1Ref edit-a-thons on "low risk" articles as I perceive them. I am just curious if my perception of revert risk for new users matches statistical reality.
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Morgan Sent: Wednesday, 21 March 2018 4:30 AM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities < wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Revert data by article importance/quality/readership/watchership/BLP
Kerry,
Did you really mean "not allow" here? IMO we (WMF, researchers, Wikipedians) shouldn't be in the business of creating Yet Another Barrier to newcomer contribution.
*Suggesting* that people avoid making their first edit to the article on Donald Trump, etc.--sure, that's a good "teachable moment" and probably helps shield newcomers from unnecessary confusion and hostility.
I also believe that we could make progress by *recommending *articles for newcomers to edit based on some combination of 1) quality improvement needed, 2) low likelihood that good faith edits will be immediately reverted 3) topic is of general interest OR topic is likely to be of interest to newcomer based on their stated preferences or their editing history.
The data necessary to run a study like the one you're looking for is all public and so I think a study like this could be done. But to my knowledge no one has done it yet.
- Jonathan
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:42 AM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 20 March 2018 at 11:40, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:
I can understand your reasoning, but consider who this would impact things like [...]
*how* this would impact...
Apologies.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
-- Jonathan T. Morgan Senior Design Researcher Wikimedia Foundation User:Jmorgan (WMF) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF) _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Part of the larger discussion is about an on-boarding system that is asking the user what they are trying to do so they can be given "just in time" advice on how to do it. Obviously the thing isn't built yet to know the options to be offered but you are right that we don't want unintended consequences of it. But, having said that, we did over 1000 edits at State Library of Queensland both this year and last year (about 1/4 of the world's total last year and about 1/6 of the world's total this year), so I see my fair share of 1Lib1Ref edits and, yes, they do get reverted. Here's an example edit from 2018 1Lib1Ref that was reverted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charters_Towers&type=revision...
Our community will bite 1Lib1Ref people (and the edit is clearly tagged as such) just as happily as any other new user and, in this case, wouldn't back down when I pointed out there was nothing wrong with the edit. I note that I had advised the Australian community in advance about 1Lib1Ref and the kinds of edits they would see happening precisely to try to start this sort of thing happening, but ...
Actually the on-boarding system would also get in the way of training sessions. So I will probably be asking for a way for "trustworthy" new users to be able to bypass the on-boarding as this will be necessary for training sessions and might also be a solution for 1Lib1Ref.
But the larger issue is to avoid new users having really bad initial experiences because it drives them away so avoiding the high-risk articles for reverting would be useful strategy. I'd happily keep 1Lib1Ref-ers away from that kind of experience. I am hand-holding my librarians through the process (the new ones all do their 1Lib1Ref in a series of edit-a-thons (we run 3 each week through the 3 weeks and they all have my email address for any problems, plus we do have some moderately experienced users among the librarians themselves). We do not encourage the new users to use Citation Hunt because it takes them to high-risk articles. We have our "lucky dip box" instead. We literally have a box with slips of paper with the names of articles needing certain kinds of edits -- this year we added public libraries in Queensland to articles about Queensland towns and suburbs and opening/closing of schools in Qld towns and suburbs) and we have clear instructions on how to do those kinds of lucky dip edits. The repetition of doing the same kind of edit over multiple (usually low-risk) articles builds skill and confidence with these groups. We do similar things in our monthly WikiClubs with the new users (different theme each month). They love doing the lucky dips (librarians are "completer" personalities I think) and only a few seem to desire to advance to more "freelance" editing.
Kerry
-----Original Message----- From: Wiki-research-l [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andy Mabbett Sent: Tuesday, 20 March 2018 9:40 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Revert data by article importance/quality/readership/watchership/BLP
On 20 March 2018 at 10:09, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/In-context_help_and_onboarding
where I am suggesting that we don't allow new users to edit articles of higher importance, higher quality, higher readership, or higher page-watcher-ship, or about living people because I strongly suspect that this is where new users are at much higher risk of reverting.
I can understand your reasoning, but consider who this would impact things like 1Lib1Ref, or an editor who just adds photos (possibly their own, taken especially) to articles that lack them.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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