How much does Edit Check decrease the total number of saved edits and unique editors?
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 7:07 PM Peter Pelberg ppelberg@wikimedia.org wrote:
If those new users would have got a message in the Visual Editor during
the editing, a lot more contributions would be able to stay in Wikipedia, less new contributors would get demotivated, and it would reduce the workload of existing users who do the maintenance every day.
Romaine – and everyone here who resonated with what Romaine expressed above – I thought you might value knowing that a recent A/B test https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check#Reference_Check_A/B_Test of Edit Check https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check (the idea Benoît shared here https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/RWQIXLQEBNC62THG5J4TY7OCHCKRAPUF/) supports the assumptions you're making above and in this thread more broadly.
Specifically, the A/B test showed:
- People [i] shown the Reference Check are *2.2x* more likely to publish
a new content edit that includes a reference and is constructive (not reverted within 48 hours).
- The highest observed increase was on mobile where people are *4.2x*
more likely to publish a constructive new content edit with a reference when Reference Check was shown
- New content edit revert rate decreased by *8.6%* if Reference Check was
available.
- Contributors that are shown Reference Check and successfully save a
non-reverted edit are *16%* more likely to return to make a non-reverted edit in their second month (31-60 days after).
You can read the full report that Megan Neisler https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:MNeisler_(WMF) prepared here: Reference Check AB Test Analysis https://mneisler.quarto.pub/reference-check-ab-test-report-2024.
If anything you see brings questions/ideas https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check/Ideas to mind, now is a wonderful time to share them. Reason: the Editing Team is actively planning https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check#5_June_2024 how to expand Edit Check and needs volunteer expertise to shape this experience.
i. "People" defined as people who are unregistered or published <100 edits.
-- Peter Pelberg (he/him) Lead Product Manager, Editing Team Wikimedia Foundation
On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 7:48 AM Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
For 10 years or more, already, reliable sources have been mandatory in the Wikipedia in Portuguese, and any unsourced edit can and should be reverted and the user warned. Adding to that, since at least 2016, we use the abuse filters to block any edition lacking sources. Newbies like the one described by Romaine would receive a daunting red warning from the abuse filter system about the necessity of adding reliable sources in order for their edit to be saved - and the opportunity to go back and fix the problem. This has greatly improved things there, in that subject.
Back in 2009, about 1 month after joining Wikipedia I found myself in a serious conflict with other, well established users, about a well sourced edit I wanted to add, which was being reverted by the veteran users in favour of unsourced (and false) information. At the time, I had to comply and swallow it, as the newbie I was. One year later, now with a reputation, I returned to the theme, reverted the whole thing and opened a public case there about falsification of information by said veteran user(s) - and that time it stood. This whole episode deeply marked me, and made absolutely clear that in Wikipedia there can be no tolerance for whatever lacks proper sources - something we actually often indulge in in paper encyclopedias, in my own experience. I'm very glad that the era of rampant tolerance with people adding unsourced content - something that was already against all good practices back in 2001 - is now a distant, sad memory. The quality of our Wikipedia skyrocketed since then, changing the paradigm from "Wikipedia is not reliable" to "Wikipedia is actually quite reliable, so much that I actually want to be there" all over the Lusophone world - and bringing new problems of its own. But that's undoubtedly the way to go, and it's sad it took so much time to actually implement what should have been there already from day 1.
Best, Paulo
Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com escreveu (quarta, 6/03/2024 à(s) 13:59):
In the past days, a new Wikipedia contributor edited Wikipedia and made a great contribution, except... This user added zero sources, and the article in what the edit was made was about a living person. So the verifiability is a problem and in conflict with the policy Biographies of living persons. This was just one example of thousands that have to be dealt with every day in Wikimedia. And every day the community tries to maintain the quality of Wikipedia and has to deal with this kind of edits.
I asked myself the question: why did this new contributor not add any sources?
I logged out, went to an article and clicked edit. Made some modifications (in the Visual Editor), and then clicked Publish changes. In the steps I took to edit the article, I got nowhere a message that Wikipedia wants to have sources for the information I added. Nowhere!
I hope that every experienced user by now understands the importance of adding sources. But we cannot expect from new contributors to already know this. They need to be informed that adding sources is needed. They do not go first read the manual of Wikipedia with all the help and project pages, they just start editing right away. They think, link in many other platforms, that if they do something wrong, they get a message while editing/uploading/etc.
For some strange reason, if you edit Wikipedia, you get no notification at all that you need to add sources, even while this is one of the most important pillars of Wikipedia. The result is that a lot of work of these new contributors gets lost, because the information is removed from the articles because of a lack of sources. If those new users would have got a message in the Visual Editor during the editing, a lot more contributions would be able to stay in Wikipedia, less new contributors would get demotivated, and it would reduce the workload of existing users who do the maintenance every day.
As with the influx of edits without sources nothing is done, the Dutch expression "mopping with the tap open" (Dutch: dweilen met de kraan open) applies here.
Romaine
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