"Imagine a World in which every single Wikipedia reader makes a good edit"

(And hence is not reverted, not told off and rather praised and encouraged).

It is interesting to think about transitory editors. People who will come for 6 months or a year, or two, when their life allows them the time and the mindset. I have wondered whether retention at all costs is the right way to look at what being part of our ecosystem is.

The investment might be different for someone who stays not too long. It might be less deep, more utilitarian (what are they learning that will be useful outside of Wikimedia?), geared on maximising quality edits and immediate reward rather than deep community integration.

I think we want to make sure that someone is welcome, trained and given tools they can use outside of our ecosystem, and shown quick ways to have fun so as to make them the irresistible ambassadors for the next wave of short-career editors.  

This also means a very strong (not necessarily numerous) community backbone from seasoned editors who can teach well, are patient and don't mind teaching the same thing over and over again.

The main question being whether everyone needs to become a Wikimedian or whether it's enough they learn to reach out to a toolbox which includes editing Wikipedia once in a while, to do whatever it is they're doing professionally, or personally, better. 

Cheers,

Delphine

Le sam. 5 oct. 2024 à 21:38, waltercolor--- via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> a écrit :
Perhaps what we need is also to add new Key Performance Indicators (Kpis).
Performance on Wikipedia is mainly evaluated by these indicators : number of active editors, number of articles created.
On the other hand, the rights of the contributors inside of the community (for being able to vote, etc...) are unequal and progressive and based on these three factors : seniority, industriousness, recent activity.
These kpis are all based on quantitative factors.
But there is no evaluation of the quality of the contributions.

But how establishing content based criterias and how measuring them ?

One thing that can be assessed is if a given modified or added accurate information is also correctly added or changed in all the other concerned articles to guarantee a coherence in Wikipedia.
Another one could be the evaluation of the impact of addition of new contents on Wikipedia on the display of the results of research tools like Google.
I made some quick and informal tests. I made screenshots of the results of a given research before and after adding some new names or sources in a given article.
It seems that some additions are taken quickly in account in the results of Google, ranking differently Wikipedia where there was previously no such content in the article (I speak from small additions in an existing article, not the creation of a new article).  
And also, particularly, specific new sources used to back these additions that were before very hard to find for the same topic on the same research tool (it takes me sometimes hours and days to get Wikipedia compatible good sources about specific topics...) surface now on the research results. Probably they are still specific researches about the impact on Internet of addition of new Wikipedia content (micro-edition), but working on defining content Kpis seems crucial to attract new micro editors. Yes, adding a good information and a good source on Wikipedia, even if it's only a single one, has a direct and significative impact on the quality of the information displayed on Internet. We have to prove it and value it.

I'm convinced that there will never be so many intensive life-time editors in the future, but this can still be compensated by a lot of quality micro-editors, also including more women, who don't want to devote all their time to Wikipedia only, but are able to do quality editing with a significant impact on the information provided on Internet.

So quality must be added in our Kpis.

We can do a lot for getting more "micro-editors", including more creative tools and innnovative training materials (I'll present some objects at the next French Wikiconference).

I'm also sure that a specific Wikipedia app dedicated to a good editing palette would ease a lot the editing on Mobile.


Waltercolor