Hi everyone,
As you may have noticed we're now running small scale tests in preparation
for this year's Fundraiser. The plan is to have regular slots on Thursdays
and Fridays at 1730-1830 UTC, barring schedule clashes or technical
problems. For now at least these will be limited to the English Wikipedia,
and appear for anonymous users only. Users in certain chapter countries may
not see these banners, or may see different ones as local chapters carry out
their own tests.
This week we're testing two personal appeals from Wikipedia programmer and
editor Ryan Kaldari.
You can see the results from previous tests and other news at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Updates
Feedback is very welcome, and there will also be staff members in the IRC
channel #wikimedia-fundraising when banners are running.
--
Peter Coombe | Production Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
I've probably said here in the past (and have certainly thought) that
attention to WP's more media-like aspects can be a distraction from the
'pedia stuff. But the current hoo-ha about [[Johann Hari]] of the
(London) Independent touches rather directly on an aspect of my past
admin work. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/12/johann-hari-suspended-independe…
As anyone who follows the past history of the article about Hari can
see, I was involved quite heavily in the BLP side, at a point over three
years ago. And then the particular edit war ceased after I blocked one
of the participants for three months. I point this out because I was
dealing also with the other party in that war, the account the Guardian
inaccurately calls a "sock-puppet". There is a fair amount of mud being
slung at Hari right now on another matter. [[Andreas Whittam Smith]] is
looking into both the alleged plagiarism, which he is obviously entirely
competent to do, and the alleged COI or meat-puppet or whatever editing
from the account [[User:David r from meth productions]].
Given the "attempted outing" going on, and possible further close
interest in the real-life identities of editors caught up in this
business, I'm concerned (a) that this all may get nastier yet, and (b)
that at least one person's professional standing may be affected by
interpretations based on identifications, tenuous or otherwise, of our
editors. Whittam Smith may need some help in figuring out the
implications, at very least.
If there are admins or others out there with further information on all
this, I'd be interested to hear, offline and on a confidential basis. A
submission to Whittam Smith might help justice be done in this matter.
Also, I suppose, I might not be the right person to handle this, and I'm
open to other suggestions as to what, if anything, should be done.
Please use good judgement in posting anything to this list.
Charles
"Emergence of good conduct, scaling and Zipf laws in human behavioral
sequences in an online world" http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.0392
> "...In their virtual life players use eight basic actions which allow them to interact with each other. These actions are communication, trade, establishing or breaking friendships and enmities, attack, and punishment. We measure the probabilities for these actions conditional on previous taken and received actions and find a dramatic increase of negative behavior immediately after receiving negative actions. Similarly, positive behavior is intensified by receiving positive actions. We observe a tendency towards anti-persistence in communication sequences. Classifying actions as positive (good) and negative (bad) allows us to define binary 'world lines' of lives of individuals. Positive and negative actions are persistent and occur in clusters, indicated by large scaling exponents alpha~0.87 of the mean square displacement of the world lines. For all eight action types we find strong signs for high levels of repetitiveness, *especially for negative actions*..." [emphasis added]
popularization: "Virtual World Study Reveals the Origin of Good and
Bad Behavior Patterns"
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26967/
> "...Thurner and co found that positive behaviour intensifies after an individual receives a positive action.
>
> However, they also found a far more dramatic increase in negative behaviour immediately after an individual receives a negative action. "The probability of acting out negative actions is about 10 times higher if a person received a negative action at the previous timestep than if she received a positive action," they say.
>
> Negative action is also more likely to be repeated than merely reciprocated, which is why it spreads more effectively.
>
> So negative actions seem to be more infectious than positive ones.
>
> However, players with a high fraction of negative actions tend to have shorter lives. Thurner and co speculate that there may be two reasons for this: "First because they are hunted down by others and give up playing, second because they are unable to maintain a social life and quit the game because of loneliness or frustration."
>
> So the bottom line is that the society tends towards positive behaviour."
Well, maybe in the game they studied, _Pardus_. I couldn't say about
Wikipedia...
--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
>
> This reminds me somewhat of the Vector rollout, I've just today come
> across another example of why we need to upgrade newbies to Monobook
> once they start editing. Monobook has a rather useful "Email this
> user" option in the sidebar. I suspect Vector has something hidden
> away in a dropdown menu, but if so I couldn't immediately find it and
> I was expecting it to be there. If one on one advice is indeed the
> best way for some newbies to learn, them Email is probably one of the
> better ways for newbies to get feedback.
>
Just to "poke the bear" on this I put together
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ErrantX/emailuser.js which adds an icon to
user/user_talk pages the same as WikiLove - but to email users.
Feel free to use!
Tom
Hey All,
This new feature has caused a bit of flack on English Wikipedia; which gives
me a bit of a platform to bring up some issues that have been rolling round
in my brain recently. A lot of the criticism on Wiki has been overly harsh -
so I want to try some constructive feedback here on the mailing list :)
Firstly, congrats to the developers on putting together a nice, easy to use
tool. It's not to my taste (FWIW) but there is effort and care put into the
tool - and whatever anyone says or moans; kudos for that. I'd *love *to see
those involved consider tweaking and improving the Wiki interface/theme/UI
to make it more modern and nice :)
The second point to make is that this is also a somewhat "misguided" tool.
It has been pitched as a way to promote inter-editor friendship and increase
editor retention. The issue here, of course, is that WikiLove does not
really address the problem that affects new editors (or experienced editors)
and drives them away. Those problems are to do with editor interaction,
poisonous atmosphere, lack of communication - but not the sort that can be
solved by slapping a "template" on the page. No, that problem is really only
solvable by going the other way - to make a determined effort to leave
personal and thoughtful messages (I hope I am not preaching here; I make a
huge effort to do this myself).
The way that this ended up appearing to be pitched as a "golden solution"
has not gone down too well because it appears as if the developers are not
"getting" the problem (when actually I am certain they are doing so; and
realise this is just one small part in the whole picture).
The other problem is that it somewhat undermines and trivialises what a
barnstar is. Sure they can be handed out freely as it is - but it does take
a small modicum of effort. In my year back editing Wikipedia I
have received 7 barnstars from editors for my activities. I specifically
recall what they were all for - and behind each is a piece of effort, time
or trial that I am extremely proud of. Not least because someone else out
there thought "yep, this guy has done a good job here".
The point of that somewhat lengthy paragraph is this: trivialising Barnstars
removes their current purpose (a relatively difficult to obtain piece of
quiet pride). This would be fine if their new "purpose" was as-or-more
important. But as mentioned above I don't think it is.
>From a personal perspective, then, it is disappointing to see WikiLove using
Barnstars. But I am getting off topic.
The other thing that has grated is this: for the most part us editors
appreciate developer attention (and we do not show that enough, sorry).
However English Wikipedia is also strongly *independent *and makes its own
decisions. Major changes to how the software works, or to the UI (especially
if it affects the social infrastructure too) is instantly controversial and
should be discussed with the community.
Very little discussion ocurrred r.e. rolling this out. For example no trial
was offered, no "Request for Comment" was taken to guage community opinion.
I know these are our processes and a significant part of the blame lies with
the editors - but even so announcement of the feature suddenly seemed to
"appear"on-wiki the day before :) (that may not be an accurate picture - but
for most that is how it appeared).
It was only *after* deployment that is was explained that the extension is
amazing customisable on-wiki (a really thoughtful idea. You guys need to
write more extensions like this, awesome stuff). So, more miscommunication.
This comes to the crux of the issue; I think the feature probably will be
accepted by the community, with some tweaking. But communication issues have
turned some people heavily against it (mostly, I suspect, because they
genuinely feel no one was able to give feedback prior to roll out).
I've seen this happen before numerous times - Wiki does something. Or a dev
does something. There is miscommunication and people who would probably see
eye-to-eye are growling at each other across tables. The established Wiki
editors feel put out and the developers feel under-appreciated (did I
mention: WikiLove guys!). [Ironically *the same problem* is a big part of
the editor retention issue on-wiki]
It comes down to a lack of understanding of the processes, attitudes and
"languages" involved in both the developer and wiki communities.
So the question that this leads me to is this: what can we do to improve
communication between these two groups. How can we vocalize the communities
thoughts, ideas and independence. How do we get the creativity and
versatility of the developers in front of the community.
Do we need some sort of group to cross this boundary and focus on smoothing
out these hiccups?
Fire away :)
Tom
On 1 July 2011 03:45, Howie Fung <hfung(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Everyone,
>
> Earlier today, we deployed WikiLove Extension [1] to the English Wikipedia.
> We also made some minor changes to the Article Feedback Tool as well.
>
> For those who are interested, the following url may be used to view how
> Wikilove is being used:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&limit=500&wpSear…
>
> Please provide feedback on the Wikilove talk page [2].
>
> Thanks!
>
> Howie
>
> [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiLove
> [2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:WikiLove<
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiLove_1.0>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
/Please distribute this message widely/
*Call for referendum*: The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of
the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether
members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in
personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen
particular types of images strictly for their own account.
Further details and educational materials will be available shortly.
The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August, 2011, and will be
conducted on servers hosted by a neutral third party. Referendum
details, officials, voting requirements, and supporting materials will
be posted at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum
shortly.
For the coordinating committee,
Philippe (WMF)
Cbrown1023
Risker
Mardetanha
PeterSymonds
Robert Harris
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
Hi everyone. Just a quick note to let you know, the fundraising team
will be testing some banners on the English Wikipedia tomorrow
(Thursday) from 17:00 - 18:00 UTC. They will only be displayed for
anonymous users.
Pete / the wub