I have been part of the wiki community for 6 years now. As I reflect on what I've seen over the years, I've developed a definite sense that the enthusiasm and energy in the community has waned. (I'm going to frame this discussion mostly in terms of the English Wikipedia, though I think it applies to most of the large, mature wikis.) It's a qualitative sense that the community is less active and excited about what they are doing today than they used to be. Some data supports this, like the declines in editor activity and administrator attrition, though I think I perceive it most directly as a change in the experience of being in the community.
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history, become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great job. What now?
Most of our processes and policies have changed little in years. Most of the recent software changes are small and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Compared to the days when parser functions, templates, cite, and other things were being introduced, it is rare to see changes that excite people and grow to be widely used. There are perhaps a few such things still promised on the horizon (e.g. open street maps), but mostly it seems like we've become satisfied with what we have and are slow to change. In the editing community, we see a growing interest in removing redlinks on the theory that if it hasn't been started yet how interesting can it really be, or worse deleting stubs and other incomplete articles because no one seems interested in finishing them. At the Foundation level, we see efforts to leverage Wikipedia with third party deals (e.g. Orange) and important incremental improvements (e.g. Usability), but it is rare to even consider whole new projects or have anyone articulate a grand new vision.
I'm wondering what people think about this. On the one hand we could simply accept it. We've already created a world changing encyclopedia. We can embrace Wikipedia for what it is and accept that maintaining it will not be as exciting as building it. That's the direction I think we've implicitly been following, by inertia if no other reason. We allow the policies, processes, and structures we have now to become entrenched, and focus on ensuring that the work which already exists will persist into the future. That would still be a great achievement, but it is not sexy, and I think we would continue to see a slowing and contraction in the community. Filling in details and improving prose, isn't going to easily attract volunteers.
On the other hand, I think we could try to recapture some of the vision and fire of our initial growth. Push for new tools (e.g. string functions, data storage mechanisms, new communication tools) and new projects (e.g. directory services, almanacs). There any many risks with innovating. It could backfire and damage what we have, but on the other hand having new things to do and a fresh vision could bring new energy to the community.
Personally, I look at Wikimedia and think there is still a lot of room for expansion, innovation, and growth, but I also think we've become resistant to it.
I'm wondering whether other people at the Foundation-l level perceive the same trends, and what they think about the balance between innovation and growth versus simply maintaining and solidifying the processes and products that we already have.
-Robert Rohde
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 23:36, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
I have been part of the wiki community for 6 years now. As I reflect on what I've seen over the years, I've developed a definite sense that the enthusiasm and energy in the community has waned. (I'm going to frame this discussion mostly in terms of the English Wikipedia, though I think it applies to most of the large, mature wikis.)
If you miss the excitement, learn the Sakha language, or at least Russian. Many small wikis in African and post-Soviet languages are mostly abandoned, but the small group of editors of the Wikipedia in Sakha are very excited.
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's
own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history, become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great job. What now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog
I find it pretty exciting.
I don't see a big difference between writing new articles and improving existing ones.
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history, become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great job. What now?
Are you already on
?
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history, become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great job. What now?
Are you already on
I've read a variety of things there though I haven't yet been inspired to make a proposal. My impression though, and correct me if I overlooked something, is that the strategy development process has generally been framed in terms of individual projects, but there has been very little discussion of general philosophy. Should we be innovating, taking risks, and looking for new growth opportunities? Or, should be focusing on solidifying and maintaining our existing positions and projects? One position or the other might be implicit in some of the proposals, but I haven't seen any discussion of which general path people might want to emphasize.
-Robert Rohde
Robert Rohde wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
Are you already on
I've read a variety of things there though I haven't yet been inspired to make a proposal. My impression though, and correct me if I overlooked something, is that the strategy development process has generally been framed in terms of individual projects, but there has been very little discussion of general philosophy.
That is, if anything, an unfortunate myopia that arises out of the submissions. As was noted during the board meeting prior to Wikimania (I believe you can find the comment in the minutes), a lot of the proposals there are not particularly strategic in nature. While we don't want to simply discard ideas that might have value, we will be focusing more on these kinds of fundamental questions as the process moves forward. Any help in framing these issues, and identifying which proposals really grapple with them, would be appreciated.
Should we be innovating, taking risks, and looking for new growth opportunities? Or, should be focusing on solidifying and maintaining our existing positions and projects? One position or the other might be implicit in some of the proposals, but I haven't seen any discussion of which general path people might want to emphasize.
I'm glad you're helping to start the discussion. I encourage people to continue it, both here and on the strategic planning wiki.
--Michael Snow
Hi all,
While specific proposals have indeed been solicited (largely focusing on individual projects), task forces focusing on larger strategic issues have been formed in the past few weeks. These task forces are deliberating on key issues that affect the Wikimedia community broadly. You can find a list of these task forces at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force.
Robert, your comments seem very aligned with the "Enhance community health and culture task force," which you can access at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Enhance_community_health_and_c.... Your comments and input there would be much appreciated.
Best, John
-----Original Message----- From: Robert Rohde [mailto:rarohde@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 2:31 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Growth vs. maintenance
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history, become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great job. What now?
Are you already on
I've read a variety of things there though I haven't yet been inspired to make a proposal. My impression though, and correct me if I overlooked something, is that the strategy development process has generally been framed in terms of individual projects, but there has been very little discussion of general philosophy. Should we be innovating, taking risks, and looking for new growth opportunities? Or, should be focusing on solidifying and maintaining our existing positions and projects? One position or the other might be implicit in some of the proposals, but I haven't seen any discussion of which general path people might want to emphasize.
-Robert Rohde
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On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
I've read a variety of things there though I haven't yet been inspired to make a proposal. My impression though, and correct me if I overlooked something, is that the strategy development process has generally been framed in terms of individual projects,
A lot of the proposals are flawed precisely because of that. It's no surprise because many editors focus on one project. That's certainly true of me.
Nevertheless I've tried to make a proposal that could encompass all projects:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Reward_editors
Of course I'm inclined to "big up" my own idea. But there's 500 proposals so I hope there'll be a fairly large number that would work across all the projects.
You said yourself:
" (I'm going to frame this discussion mostly in terms of the English Wikipedia, though I think it applies to most of the large, mature wikis.) "
OK. But what about the less mature ones? Huge opportunities there. *I* can't add to anything that isn't in English. But I could conceivably have an idea that would help. I mean, I doubt it in my case, but it's plausible that an English speaker could have an idea that would impact across the less mature projects. Strategy is your chance to come up with an idea there. You don't even need an idea of your own, you could build on one you find in the proposals and be a part of the process.
but there has been very little discussion of general philosophy. Should we be innovating, taking risks, and looking for new growth opportunities? Or, should be focusing on solidifying and maintaining our existing positions and projects? One position or the other might be implicit in some of the proposals, but I haven't seen any discussion of which general path people might want to emphasize.
Take a look at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Questions_that_need_answers
I'm sure you'll find those questions you're asking reflected there.
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
Take a look at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Questions_that_need_answers
I'm sure you'll find those questions you're asking reflected there.
Let me echo what Michael, John, and Bod have already stated. The majority of proposals certainly reflect a somewhat narrow point of view. The challenge right now is getting everyone to think at a higher-level. The questions above are a starting point, and we'd like to see as many people as possible to contribute to those.
=Eugene
Let me try to reformulate it in a different way.
The statement is that in Wikimedia we have (i) low signal-to-noise ratio; (ii) noise grows faster than signal, to the point that signals may become unnoticeable.
Any strategy to overcome this would either emphasize increasing signal or lowering noise, or both.
The message of Robert was about the strategies to increase the signal.
Do I understand it correctly?
Cheers Yaroslav
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:36 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
[snipping lots of good stuff, which however would make this message rather long if kept]
I think it has much to do with size. Not just size of encyclopedia, but even more size of the volunteer group. When that group gets too small, people get disinterested, but when the group gets too big, the same thing happens. The optimum may be with a group of regulars (meaning people doing edits daily or at least weekly) of about 20 people, you know everybody, and if you keep your eyes open, you know what they are working on too. If someone new comes along, they are welcomed, and if it appears that that's a "good" person (meaning that they stay and make good edits), that gets you happy, excited.
Now compare that with the situation at the English or German or Dutch Wikipedia. There's no way of keeping an overview of that. When I came to Wikipedia (here speaks the real oldtimer), I spend an hour at the end of the day to look through what the other Wikipedians were working on, and then helped or corrected them a bit, or did some work on my own. Nowadays, the English Wikipedia has about 80 edits _per minute_. One can become a regular with some existing busy, well-meaning regulars not even having noticed you. All in all, the project has become unpersonal. Wikipedia regulars are as unable to see what the Wikipedia is doing or influence it as the average Joe on the internet.
It also means that there are more and more conflicts. One will react quite differently if the person with whom one is cooperating for quite a while does something to a page one considers detrimental than when someone that one just might have heard of a few times does the same. Not to mention that most conflicts come into existence because _two_ problematic characters come into collission. And the number of such pairs (and thus the possibility of conflict) grows quadratically with the number of Wikipedians.
The usual solution to this in organizations and in human society more generally is compartmentalization with the concomitant development of formal and informal links between the compartments.
At some stage, there also develops a need for centralized direction, to keep the compartments from fragmenting and diverging too far. The modern solution to this is some sort of federalism., As most of us are accustomed to such societies, Wikipedia can be expected to naturally develop in this direction. I think some such concept is underlying most of the realistic proposals.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 6:27 AM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 10:36 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
[snipping lots of good stuff, which however would make this message rather long if kept]
I think it has much to do with size. Not just size of encyclopedia, but even more size of the volunteer group. When that group gets too small, people get disinterested, but when the group gets too big, the same thing happens. The optimum may be with a group of regulars (meaning people doing edits daily or at least weekly) of about 20 people, you know everybody, and if you keep your eyes open, you know what they are working on too. If someone new comes along, they are welcomed, and if it appears that that's a "good" person (meaning that they stay and make good edits), that gets you happy, excited.
Now compare that with the situation at the English or German or Dutch Wikipedia. There's no way of keeping an overview of that. When I came to Wikipedia (here speaks the real oldtimer), I spend an hour at the end of the day to look through what the other Wikipedians were working on, and then helped or corrected them a bit, or did some work on my own. Nowadays, the English Wikipedia has about 80 edits _per minute_. One can become a regular with some existing busy, well-meaning regulars not even having noticed you. All in all, the project has become unpersonal. Wikipedia regulars are as unable to see what the Wikipedia is doing or influence it as the average Joe on the internet.
It also means that there are more and more conflicts. One will react quite differently if the person with whom one is cooperating for quite a while does something to a page one considers detrimental than when someone that one just might have heard of a few times does the same. Not to mention that most conflicts come into existence because _two_ problematic characters come into collission. And the number of such pairs (and thus the possibility of conflict) grows quadratically with the number of Wikipedians.
-- André Engels, andreengels@gmail.com
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I think is is most excellent write-up of my thoughts. Wikipedia is no longer "new and exciting"... Internet's attention span is short & people are looking for something more exciting to do. (that and all the community behavior / communication issues that drive newbies away).
What to do about it?
a) Revolutionary software update b) Friendlier community c) Emphasize "we are not done yet - not even close"
Renata
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
I have been part of the wiki community for 6 years now. As I reflect on what I've seen over the years, I've developed a definite sense that the enthusiasm and energy in the community has waned. (I'm going to frame this discussion mostly in terms of the English Wikipedia, though I think it applies to most of the large, mature wikis.) It's a qualitative sense that the community is less active and excited about what they are doing today than they used to be. Some data supports this, like the declines in editor activity and administrator attrition, though I think I perceive it most directly as a change in the experience of being in the community.
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history, become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great job. What now?
Most of our processes and policies have changed little in years. Most of the recent software changes are small and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Compared to the days when parser functions, templates, cite, and other things were being introduced, it is rare to see changes that excite people and grow to be widely used. There are perhaps a few such things still promised on the horizon (e.g. open street maps), but mostly it seems like we've become satisfied with what we have and are slow to change. In the editing community, we see a growing interest in removing redlinks on the theory that if it hasn't been started yet how interesting can it really be, or worse deleting stubs and other incomplete articles because no one seems interested in finishing them. At the Foundation level, we see efforts to leverage Wikipedia with third party deals (e.g. Orange) and important incremental improvements (e.g. Usability), but it is rare to even consider whole new projects or have anyone articulate a grand new vision.
I'm wondering what people think about this. On the one hand we could simply accept it. We've already created a world changing encyclopedia. We can embrace Wikipedia for what it is and accept that maintaining it will not be as exciting as building it. That's the direction I think we've implicitly been following, by inertia if no other reason. We allow the policies, processes, and structures we have now to become entrenched, and focus on ensuring that the work which already exists will persist into the future. That would still be a great achievement, but it is not sexy, and I think we would continue to see a slowing and contraction in the community. Filling in details and improving prose, isn't going to easily attract volunteers.
On the other hand, I think we could try to recapture some of the vision and fire of our initial growth. Push for new tools (e.g. string functions, data storage mechanisms, new communication tools) and new projects (e.g. directory services, almanacs). There any many risks with innovating. It could backfire and damage what we have, but on the other hand having new things to do and a fresh vision could bring new energy to the community.
Personally, I look at Wikimedia and think there is still a lot of room for expansion, innovation, and growth, but I also think we've become resistant to it.
I'm wondering whether other people at the Foundation-l level perceive the same trends, and what they think about the balance between innovation and growth versus simply maintaining and solidifying the processes and products that we already have.
-Robert Rohde
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But Renata how do you mandate a friendlier community?
How about, on the sidebar, we have a link for "Report Abuse". Right now don't we sort of leave it up to each policeman to instruct the victim in how to report that they're being abused? I still see the project as being too much of "The Fox Guarding the Chickens" for my taste. There are too many people who want to join the police force because they want control and power.
Will
Hoi, It is a sad day when a "report abuse" button is equated with being more friendly. When we want to become more friendly we have to encourage those who want to be more frienldy and give them the tools to be more friendly and at the same time the people who are effectively unfriendly to the newbies to the people who do their best and chop of heads and are proud off it should be relegated to the sidelines as a nuisance.
We do not need a police force, we do not want a police force we need social workers, friendly counsellors who make life easy, friendly and collaborative for us all.
Thanks, from Paris, GerardM
2009/11/5 wjhonson@aol.com
But Renata how do you mandate a friendlier community?
How about, on the sidebar, we have a link for "Report Abuse". Right now don't we sort of leave it up to each policeman to instruct the victim in how to report that they're being abused? I still see the project as being too much of "The Fox Guarding the Chickens" for my taste. There are too many people who want to join the police force because they want control and power.
Will
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Right Gerard, I agree with you completely. Now how do you actually do it? That's the biggest problem. We can talk about needing to be more friendly. Not just to the newbies by the way. I remember having been on the project for over a year when I got my first 3RR. I'd never heard of it before, had no idea what it meant, no idea what to do about it, or how to complain that I was being treated unfairly in the situation. (Turns out later, the victimizers were sock puppets and collaborators in abusing others.)
What actual specific things would you implement to make the project friendlier?
Will Johnson
What actual specific things would you implement to make the project friendlier?
Say:
1. Welcome new users (re-launch "kindness campaign" - the other day I welcomed a couple new users with 20+ edits since 2007) - more personalized, the better.
2. Have at least 2-3 hour delay on speedy deletes. No deletion until user's concerns on talk have been answered.
3. No blocking without min 2 warnings (except for known persistent vandals). Seen some users blocked with 1 or no warnings at all.
4. Go easy on the reverts, especially marking them "vandalism". Good faith edits -> try to incorporate them somewhere. 4a. 1RR for established users.
5. Go easy on templated warnings. Personalize as much as possible.
6. Make dispute resolution quicker & simplier. How? Um... Just by being more decisive. Block/Don't block/Revert/Protect/War/Parole/etc. and move on. The lingering, the wiki-law-ering, the appeals create all the drama.
In other words, more tolerance to innocent newbies & less for trolls, pov-pushers, etc.
That could be a start.
Renata
How about this one. Every arrest (read block for 24 hours or longer) must be approved by an "Admin Supervisor" (let's just call it for now). That Admin Supervisor, must use a Real Name and be Verified.
That by itself, would greatly cut down on the policing actions of those who are, shall we say, less scrupulous than others. Of course we'd still need a way to ensure that the Verified admin, is not the same person as a sock running the blocks, and is impartial, unbiased and uninvolved.
No block may be longer than 24 hours without the approval of the community-at-large, no matter what the infraction. Otherwise, we need a system of judges and juries who are *not* the same persons as the police and prison wardens. What we have now, essentially allows a single person, or a single group of "friends" to be police, prosecutor, jury, judge, bailiff, and warden. That in my opinion is what drives away a significant number of good prospects and it should stop.
We should not be requiring individuals to know ninety six rules just to thwart policemen who think they want to harass the person out of the project. Don't think it doesn't happen. It happens all the time. We need an Office of the Editor Advocate, and have it be obvious to all editors how to reach it.
Will Johnson
Hoi, We do not want more bureacracy, we want to kill of bureacracty and remove the people who are power building for the nuisance that they are... We can observe objectionable behaviour and to the people who think otherwise, we can show them how they are killing of our project. I would go as far as deny them that it is their project. When new users are abused by trigger happy, power hungry their admin bit loving vandals, we prevent the kind of information from entering our project that informs us about other cultures, people. It makes us a biases narrow minded ghetto of what we think we know about our selves.
We need not more rules, we need observable friendliness, we need the tools to reach out to the newbies.. Blocking is more acceptable AFTER it has been tried to reach using the social networking tools we can implement. We should. We will learn how to use these tools effectively and be less devastating to the new initiatives of our new users..
The best proof that we are not doing fine socially is by investigating our demographics... How many women, black people, minority people come to our conferences, congresses. Welcoming them does not require extra layers of bureaucracy, it needs a different approach. Thanks, GerardM
2009/11/7 wjhonson@aol.com
How about this one. Every arrest (read block for 24 hours or longer) must be approved by an "Admin Supervisor" (let's just call it for now). That Admin Supervisor, must use a Real Name and be Verified.
That by itself, would greatly cut down on the policing actions of those who are, shall we say, less scrupulous than others. Of course we'd still need a way to ensure that the Verified admin, is not the same person as a sock running the blocks, and is impartial, unbiased and uninvolved.
No block may be longer than 24 hours without the approval of the community-at-large, no matter what the infraction. Otherwise, we need a system of judges and juries who are *not* the same persons as the police and prison wardens. What we have now, essentially allows a single person, or a single group of "friends" to be police, prosecutor, jury, judge, bailiff, and warden. That in my opinion is what drives away a significant number of good prospects and it should stop.
We should not be requiring individuals to know ninety six rules just to thwart policemen who think they want to harass the person out of the project. Don't think it doesn't happen. It happens all the time. We need an Office of the Editor Advocate, and have it be obvious to all editors how to reach it.
Will Johnson
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What I'm suggesting is not more bureaucracy. Let me put it this way. Right now we have a system where you are either a worker or a policeman. There is no group who are advocates for the workers against the policemen. That is, there are no defense lawyers, there are no judges. The police patrol the police and promote the police from within their police ranks. This is not the way society in real-life actually works.
In real life the entire voting class elects the judges. Arbcom cannot serve as judge for the whole world. We need more judges of the sort who are elected by the entire community. Not promoted from within the admin ranks.
We do not have, in-project the normal sort of checks and balances, that we experience in the real world. "I was beaten up by the police!" "Well go report it to the police!" "I did and they beat me up again!"
We need advocates who are assigned solely the job (solely, solely) of helping the editors, even against the police, and who are not themselves admins (police) of any sort, but have powers that are different, not powerless.
That system provides the missing balance of power in the project, in my opinion.
Will Johnson
The problem I see most, is Wikipedia articles becoming stale. No corrections to defects, even those already been identified on talk pages and in maintenance templates. The worst 20% of Wikipedia just doesn't get better. Perhaps the entire worse half of Wikipedia.
Peter Jacobi wrote:
The problem I see most, is Wikipedia articles becoming stale. No corrections to defects, even those already been identified on talk pages and in maintenance templates. The worst 20% of Wikipedia just doesn't get better. Perhaps the entire worse half of Wikipedia.
It will if people are prepared to tackle it. I've just spent about three months adding {{geocoords}} to most of the ~7500 UK articles lacking them, and there is only a handful left. I note that we have over 10,000 articles with {{deadlink}}s, and that is my next project. Some assistance would be welcome, before I go totally insane.
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 12:51 AM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
How about this one. Every arrest (read block for 24 hours or longer) must be approved by an "Admin Supervisor" (let's just call it for now). That Admin Supervisor, must use a Real Name and be Verified.
That by itself, would greatly cut down on the policing actions of those who are, shall we say, less scrupulous than others. Of course we'd still need a way to ensure that the Verified admin, is not the same person as a sock running the blocks, and is impartial, unbiased and uninvolved.
No block may be longer than 24 hours without the approval of the community-at-large, no matter what the infraction. Otherwise, we need a system of judges and juries who are *not* the same persons as the police and prison wardens. What we have now, essentially allows a single person, or a single group of "friends" to be police, prosecutor, jury, judge, bailiff, and warden. That in my opinion is what drives away a significant number of good prospects and it should stop.
We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get the whole wiki in flames for a week. You are handcuffing one problem group here (out-of-control admins), but giving free reign to another problem group (people using Wikipedia as a means for doing politics, and considering every admin action admin abuse) at the same time. As a member of the community-at-large I don't _want_ to have to check the correctness of each and every block. That's why I favored having an arbcom. Its workings are not ideal, but at least it finally brought a few of the greatest troubleseekers to order by saying that they _can_ be blocked if they continue their disruptive actions. It's hard enough to have to withstand the criticism to each and every block as it is - it would be much worse if we were to invite that criticism as well.
<koff koff> Strategy Wiki <koff>
All joking aside, there's a whole task force for community health dealing with exactly these issues.
It's at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Enhance_community_health_and_c...
I know they'd love your input...
Philippe
On Nov 7, 2009, at 12:02 AM, Renata St wrote:
What actual specific things would you implement to make the project friendlier?
Say:
- Welcome new users (re-launch "kindness campaign" - the other day I
welcomed a couple new users with 20+ edits since 2007) - more personalized, the better.
- Have at least 2-3 hour delay on speedy deletes. No deletion until
user's concerns on talk have been answered.
- No blocking without min 2 warnings (except for known persistent
vandals). Seen some users blocked with 1 or no warnings at all.
- Go easy on the reverts, especially marking them "vandalism". Good
faith edits -> try to incorporate them somewhere. 4a. 1RR for established users.
Go easy on templated warnings. Personalize as much as possible.
Make dispute resolution quicker & simplier. How? Um... Just by
being more decisive. Block/Don't block/Revert/Protect/War/Parole/etc. and move on. The lingering, the wiki-law-ering, the appeals create all the drama.
In other words, more tolerance to innocent newbies & less for trolls, pov-pushers, etc.
That could be a start.
Renata _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
____________________ Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategy Project Wikimedia Foundation
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I think is is most excellent write-up of my thoughts. Wikipedia is no longer "new and exciting"... Internet's attention span is short & people are looking for something more exciting to do. (that and all the community behavior / communication issues that drive newbies away).
What to do about it?
a) Revolutionary software update b) Friendlier community c) Emphasize "we are not done yet - not even close"
Renata
To realize that (almost) all articles about computer games, anime series and Hollywood stars have been written. We just need to do a different work.
Cheers Yaroslav
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