effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

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Amir E. Aharoni

16 Jan 2021 16 Jan '21

3:15 p.m.

Hi, Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content pages on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced editors and new and potential editors? Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and patrollers' time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some people say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is there any data about it, beyond intuition? 2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the wikis' reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages and wikis.) 3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries affects editors, and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about certain topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How does it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country, professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki, etc.? Thanks! :) -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

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WereSpielChequers

17 Jan 17 Jan

10:43 a.m.

Hi Amir, This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process, and I don't know if the best questions got included. But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start editing has to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back to my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made it into my first 50. There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism tools that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be available. Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse, disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be inclined to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former editors would be useful. My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to tackle abuse we need more edit filters to prevent such abuse from going live. WSC On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

...

Isaac Johnson

18 Jan 18 Jan

8:12 p.m.

To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or surveying at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left Facebook (example <http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf>) by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to burnout) such as the 2012 survey: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wi… (see the editor survey category <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Editor_surveys> if you're looking for others) Some things that come to mind though: - I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing (as a very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but many more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be relevant: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_reade… - Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity: - Harassment as barrier: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity - Edit summaries in particular as harassment: https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019> ) - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this -- e.g., https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_… - 2015 Harassment Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015 - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good insights too -- e.g., https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

editors

and new and potential editors? Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and patrollers' time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some

people

say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is

there

any data about it, beyond intuition? 2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the wikis' reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages and wikis.) 3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries affects

editors,

and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about certain topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How

does

it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country, professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki, etc.? Thanks! :) -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com ‪“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬ _______________________________________________ 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

-- Isaac Johnson (he/him/his) -- Research Scientist -- Wikimedia Foundation

Aaron Halfaker

11:51 p.m.

See page 7 of Priedhorsky, R., Chen, J., Lam, S. T. K., Panciera, K., Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007, November). Creating, destroying, and restoring value in Wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM conference on Supporting group work* (pp. 259-268). http://reidster.net/pubs/group282-priedhorsky.pdf They discuss the probability of a page view of Wikipedia containing vandalism rising over time. I wanted to replicate this analysis and extend it past 2007 but I never got the chance. I think the methodology is really interesting though. It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact* of vandalism. On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson <isaac(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

)

by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to burnout) such as the 2012 survey: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wi… (see the editor survey category <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Editor_surveys> if you're looking for others) Some things that come to mind though: - I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing (as a very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but many more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be relevant: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_reade… - Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity: - Harassment as barrier: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity - Edit summaries in particular as harassment: https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019> ) - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this -- e.g., https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_… - 2015 Harassment Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015 - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good insights too -- e.g., https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Amir, This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process,

and

I don't know if the best questions got included. But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start editing

has

to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back

my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made

into my first 50. There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism

tools

that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be available. Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse, disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be inclined to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former editors would be useful. My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to

tackle

abuse we need more edit filters to prevent such abuse from going live. WSC On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: > Hi, > > Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content

pages

on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced

editors > and new and potential editors? > > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and

patrollers'

time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some

people

say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is

there

editors, > and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about

certain

topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How

does

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

-- Isaac Johnson (he/him/his) -- Research Scientist -- Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

WereSpielChequers

19 Jan 19 Jan

6:45 p.m.

I'm sure there has been a survey of former editors done using the email this user function (as I remember it one of the more common responses was I haven't left yet). However this would not be a great way to survey re harassment as harassed people are more likely to close an email account or disable the email future. As for how many readers saw vandalism in the era before edit filters etc, it didn't need to be many readers who saw it, and many of those to remove it for this to be an important way to recruit editors. We have such a huge imbalance between readers and editors that even if only 1% of readers saw vandalism and only 1% of those fixed it, that would still be an extra hundred editors for every million readers. WSC On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 20:13, Isaac Johnson <isaac(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

)

Hi Amir, This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process,

and

I don't know if the best questions got included. But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start editing

has

to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back

my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made

tools

tackle

pages

on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced

editors > and new and potential editors? > > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and

patrollers'

time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some

people

say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is

there

editors, > and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about

certain

topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How

does

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

WereSpielChequers

6:58 p.m.

Hi Aaron, That was an interesting read and a bit of a time capsule. 2002-2006 is a bit before I started editing Wikipedia. Before many of the tools such as huggle that give vandalfighters such an advantage over vandals, I think before the era of bot reversion of vandalism when vandalism had to be reverted by humans rather than computers, and certainly before the edit filters that prevent much, possibly most vandalism from even being saved. It also seems to predate the whole panoply of page protection that stops vandals even editing many common vandalism targets (they do say that every single article is available for anyone to edit). It would be interesting to see a study now when recent changes patrollers boast of the times they have got to some vandalism faster than Cluebot. I know there were predictions in the early years that eventually the tidal wave of vandalism would overwhelm the defenders of the wiki, that study seems to have been part of that. I wonder if anyone in 2004 predicted that we would get to the current situation where adolescent vandalism has turned out to be so predictable that dealing with it has been mostly automated and now we are more worried about spam than vandalism. WSC On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 23:52, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or

surveying

at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left Facebook (example <

http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-…

)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wi…

(see the editor survey category <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Editor_surveys> if you're looking for others) Some things that come to mind though: - I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing

(as a

very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but

many

more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be relevant:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_reade…

- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity: - Harassment as barrier:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity

- Edit summaries in particular as harassment: https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019> ) - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this -- e.g.,

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_…

- 2015 Harassment Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015 - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good insights too -- e.g.,

https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/

On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Amir, This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process,

and

I don't know if the best questions got included. But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start editing

has

to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back

to > my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely

made

it > into my first 50. > > There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or

started

> to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into

steep

decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism

tools > that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to

ask

> editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to

research

> this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of > active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most

Wikipedians

> start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't

> available. > > Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse, > disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be

inclined

to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former editors would be useful. My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to

tackle

pages

on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced

editors > and new and potential editors? > > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and

patrollers'

time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some

people

say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is

there

editors, > and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about

certain

topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How

does

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Aaron Halfaker

7:42 p.m.

+1 WSC. When I thought about replicating it, I expected to see a dramatic decline in the impact of vandalism with the advent of counter-vandalism tools and abuse filter. It would be interesting to see that on a cross-wiki basis as different wikis employ different strategies (or seemingly none at all) for counter-vandalism over time. On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 10:58 AM WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

ACM

conference on Supporting group work* (pp. 259-268). http://reidster.net/pubs/group282-priedhorsky.pdf They discuss the probability of a page view of Wikipedia containing vandalism rising over time. I wanted to replicate this analysis and

extend

it past 2007 but I never got the chance. I think the methodology is

really

interesting though. It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact*

vandalism. On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson <isaac(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or

surveying > at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general

> have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop

editing

> because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing

logged-in

> usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too

but

it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left Facebook (example <

http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-…

> >) > by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey > someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that

did

ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to burnout) such as the 2012 survey:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wi…

(as a > very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble > recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal > reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty

stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but

many > more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead

lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be relevant:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_reade…

- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity: - Harassment as barrier:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity

> - Edit summaries in particular as harassment: > https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details > < > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019> > ) > - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this

e.g.,

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_…

- 2015 Harassment Survey: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015 - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good insights too -- e.g.,

https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/

> > > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers < > werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi Amir, > > > > This is one of those areas of research where we really need the

annual

> > editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy

process,

> and > > I don't know if the best questions got included. > > > > But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start

editing

> has > > to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went

back

to > my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely

made

it > into my first 50. > > There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or

started

> to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into

steep

decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism

tools > that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to

ask

> editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to

research

> this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of > active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most

Wikipedians > > start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians

won't

> available. > > Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse, > disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be

inclined > > to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than > > talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former

editors

> > would be useful. > > > > My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or > > oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to > tackle > > abuse we need more edit filters to prevent such abuse from going

live.

> > > > WSC > > > > On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni < > > amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> > > wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content > pages > > > on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? > > > > > > And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced > > editors > > > and new and potential editors? > > > > > > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: > > > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and > patrollers' > > > time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some > > people > > > say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave.

> > there > > > any data about it, beyond intuition? > > > > > > 2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the wikis' > > > reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages

and

> > > wikis.) > > > > > > 3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries affects > > editors, > > > and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about > certain > > > topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable?

How

> > does > > > it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country, > > > professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki,

etc.?

> > > > > > Thanks! :) > > > > > > -- > > > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > > > ‪“We're living in pieces, > > > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬ > > > _______________________________________________ > > > 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 > > > > > -- > Isaac Johnson (he/him/his) -- Research Scientist -- Wikimedia

Foundation

_______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

WereSpielChequers

20 Jan 20 Jan

10:23 a.m.

Hi Aaron, I would be very interested in that. In particular re flagged revisions as used on the German language Wikipedia (DE) and I think some other wikis. DE has been one of the shrinking communities, which could of course be something unconnected if it is more related to the ratio of tablet to PC users (Wikipedia being near uneditable on the mobile platform). If the Portuguese and potentially other wikes are going to drop IP editing then that also is likely to have an effect on vandalism that would be worthwhile researching. WSC On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 at 19:43, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

every

single article is available for anyone to edit). It would be interesting to see a study now when recent changes patrollers boast of the times they have got to some vandalism faster than Cluebot. I know there were predictions in the early years that eventually the

tidal

wave of vandalism would overwhelm the defenders of the wiki, that study seems to have been part of that. I wonder if anyone in 2004 predicted

that

we would get to the current situation where adolescent vandalism has

turned

out to be so predictable that dealing with it has been mostly automated

and

now we are more worried about spam than vandalism. WSC On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 23:52, Aaron Halfaker <aaron.halfaker(a)gmail.com> wrote:

ACM

extend

it past 2007 but I never got the chance. I think the methodology is

really

interesting though. It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact*

of > vandalism. > > On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson <isaac(a)wikimedia.org> > wrote: > > > To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or > surveying > > at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in

general

> have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop

editing

> because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing

logged-in

> usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too

but

it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left Facebook (example <

http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-…

> >) > by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey > someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that

did

ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to burnout) such as the 2012 survey:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wi…

> > (see the editor survey category > > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Editor_surveys> if you're > > looking > > for others) > > > > Some things that come to mind though: > > > > - I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing > (as a > > very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have

trouble

> > recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal > > reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen

plenty

of > > stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate

but

> many > > more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may

lead

to > > lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to

lower

readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be relevant:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_reade…

- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity: - Harassment as barrier:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity

> > - Edit summaries in particular as harassment: > > https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more

details

> < > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019

> > ) > > - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on

this

e.g.,

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_…

> > - 2015 Harassment Survey: > >

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015

> > - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some

good

insights too -- e.g.,

https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/

> > > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers < > werespielchequers(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi Amir, > > > > This is one of those areas of research where we really need the

annual

> > editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy

process,

> and > > I don't know if the best questions got included. > > > > But the best time to ask editors what prompted them to start

editing

> has > > to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went

back > > to > > > my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely > made > > it > > > into my first 50. > > > > > > There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or > started > > > to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into > steep > > > decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other

antivandalism

> > tools > > > that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey

ask

> editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to

research

> this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of > active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most

Wikipedians > > start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians

won't > be > > > available. > > > > > > Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of

abuse,

> > > disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be > inclined > > > to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather

than

> > talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former

editors

live. > > > > > > WSC > > > > > > On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni < > > > amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki

content

> > pages > > > > on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors? > > > > > > > > And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on

experienced

> > > editors > > > > and new and potential editors? > > > > > > > > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following: > > > > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and > > patrollers' > > > > time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But

some

> > > people > > > > say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and

leave.

Is > > > there > > > > any data about it, beyond intuition? > > > > > > > > 2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the

wikis'

> > > reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages

and > > > > wikis.) > > > > > > > > 3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries

affects

> > editors, > > > and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about > certain > > > topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable?

How

> > does > > > it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country, > > > professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki,

etc.?

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participants (4)

Aaron Halfaker
Amir E. Aharoni
Isaac Johnson
WereSpielChequers