On 29 September 2010 23:32, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
German Wikipedia has had pending changes implemented
*globally*, in all articles, for several years now. Unlike en:WP, where numbers of active editors have dropped significantly since 2007, numbers of active editors in de:WP have remained stable:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
The stats on that page are pretty confusing, Andreas. Could you say here what the relative figures are?
According to the tables, the number of en:WP editors with >100 edits/month stood at 5,151 in April 2007, and was down to 3,868 in August 2010.
de:WP had 1,027 in April 2007, and 1,075 in August 2010.
You raise an interesting point, Andreas. I am not persuaded that pending changes/flagged revisions have anything to do with the editor retention rate at the de:WP. However, I think you may be right that the considerably more homogeneous editor population, as well as the commonality in cultural background, was instrumental in the ability of the project to jointly make such a cultural shift. Indeed, the number of de:WP editors with >100 edits/month has remained very stable since January 2006. (The number of en:WP editors was essentially the same in January 2006 as at present, but hit its peak in April 2007. Let's not cherry pick the data too much, okay?)
As an aside for those interested in the historical perspective, the massive increase in the number of editors on en:WP coincides with a massive influx of vandalism, and over a thousand editors did almost nothing *but* revert or otherwise address vandalism. As better and more effective tools have been developed to address that problem - Huggle, Twinkle, Friendly, the edit filters, reverting bots, semi-protection, etc - the number of editors needed to manage vandalism has diminished dramatically. In other words, that 1300-editor difference may largely be accounted for because those whose only skill was vandal-fighting have moved on. That's not to say there is no vandalism on en:WP today; there's still plenty of it.
Observing from afar, it has often struck me that when almost all members of an editorial community come from a common cultural background and geographic area, there is a synergy that isn't found on projects where the community is much more diverse. This is best illustrated in the large scale on German Wikipedia, and some other European projects, where the community is visibly more cohesive. In the smaller scale, certain projects with shared cultural/geographic background on English Wikipedia, such as Wikiproject Australia, are more accomplished at developing and meeting shared objectives. These groups, whether large projects or small pockets within a larger project, seem to operate in accordance with their local cultural norms; in other words, they don't have to find common cultural ground before they can move on to a discussion of a proposal.
It's my belief that the common cultural background of the de:WP editorial community has been one of the keystones of its success in being able to implement large-scale and project-wide changes, flagged revisions being the most obvious. That common cultural background or focal geographic area simply does not exist for the English Wikipedia; we're probably one of the few projects where the same expression can be viewed as friendly, somewhat rude and downright offensive at the same time, depending on whether the reader is Australian, British or American (not to mention those who have learned English as a second language, which also makes up a significant part of our editorship).
Each project also has its own culture, but I confess that most of my knowledge of the culture of other projects is anecdotal rather than observational, so I won't venture to try to compare them.
When faced with dramatic increases in vandalism, en:WP created tools that are largely developed by individuals and utilized by other individuals (with the exception of semi-protection); de:WP developed a single unified community response. The remarkably high quality of the tools used on en:WP means that any new systemic tool has to meet a very high threshold for it to be considered acceptable for wide-scale use. Perhaps that is the key difference between these two community types: one places more emphasis on making cohesive group decisions, while the other more strongly encourages a range of solutions. I don't have any answers, just observations.
Risker/Anne
On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 6:49 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 September 2010 23:32, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
German Wikipedia has had pending changes implemented
*globally*, in all articles, for several years now. Unlike en:WP, where numbers of active editors have dropped significantly since 2007, numbers of active editors in de:WP have remained stable:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
The stats on that page are pretty confusing, Andreas. Could you say here what the relative figures are?
According to the tables, the number of en:WP editors with >100 edits/month stood at 5,151 in April 2007, and was down to 3,868 in August 2010.
de:WP had 1,027 in April 2007, and 1,075 in August 2010.
You raise an interesting point, Andreas. I am not persuaded that pending changes/flagged revisions have anything to do with the editor retention rate at the de:WP. However, I think you may be right that the considerably more homogeneous editor population, as well as the commonality in cultural background, was instrumental in the ability of the project to jointly make such a cultural shift. Indeed, the number of de:WP editors with >100 edits/month has remained very stable since January 2006. (The number of en:WP editors was essentially the same in January 2006 as at present, but hit its peak in April 2007. Let's not cherry pick the data too much, okay?)
As an aside for those interested in the historical perspective, the massive increase in the number of editors on en:WP coincides with a massive influx of vandalism, and over a thousand editors did almost nothing *but* revert or otherwise address vandalism. As better and more effective tools have been developed to address that problem - Huggle, Twinkle, Friendly, the edit filters, reverting bots, semi-protection, etc - the number of editors needed to manage vandalism has diminished dramatically. In other words, that 1300-editor difference may largely be accounted for because those whose only skill was vandal-fighting have moved on. That's not to say there is no vandalism on en:WP today; there's still plenty of it.
Observing from afar, it has often struck me that when almost all members of an editorial community come from a common cultural background and geographic area, there is a synergy that isn't found on projects where the community is much more diverse. This is best illustrated in the large scale on German Wikipedia, and some other European projects, where the community is visibly more cohesive. In the smaller scale, certain projects with shared cultural/geographic background on English Wikipedia, such as Wikiproject Australia, are more accomplished at developing and meeting shared objectives. These groups, whether large projects or small pockets within a larger project, seem to operate in accordance with their local cultural norms; in other words, they don't have to find common cultural ground before they can move on to a discussion of a proposal.
It's my belief that the common cultural background of the de:WP editorial community has been one of the keystones of its success in being able to implement large-scale and project-wide changes, flagged revisions being the most obvious. That common cultural background or focal geographic area simply does not exist for the English Wikipedia; we're probably one of the few projects where the same expression can be viewed as friendly, somewhat rude and downright offensive at the same time, depending on whether the reader is Australian, British or American (not to mention those who have learned English as a second language, which also makes up a significant part of our editorship).
Each project also has its own culture, but I confess that most of my knowledge of the culture of other projects is anecdotal rather than observational, so I won't venture to try to compare them.
When faced with dramatic increases in vandalism, en:WP created tools that are largely developed by individuals and utilized by other individuals (with the exception of semi-protection); de:WP developed a single unified community response. The remarkably high quality of the tools used on en:WP means that any new systemic tool has to meet a very high threshold for it to be considered acceptable for wide-scale use. Perhaps that is the key difference between these two community types: one places more emphasis on making cohesive group decisions, while the other more strongly encourages a range of solutions. I don't have any answers, just observations.
I find your analyse extremely interesting, I do believe indeed that culture plays a role in how people approach their wikipedia-editing and how harmoniously this actually works. However, I would not discount the sheer numbers. The number of active editors is about 3,5 times higher in the English Wikipedia than in the German, for example. This probably also accounts for a higher difficulty of achieving any kind of consensus.
Delphine
Anne,
Thanks for the extra perspective. The post-2007 decline in 100+ editors on en:WP may indeed reflect a decline in vandalism reverts.
The most interesting point to me was that de:WP introduced flagged revisions in spring 2008, across the board, and that editor numbers appear to have remained completely unaffected. In de:WP, at least, overall participation levels did not *drop* as a result of flagged revisions.
Andreas
You raise an interesting point, Andreas. I am not persuaded that pending changes/flagged revisions have anything to do with the editor retention rate at the de:WP. However, I think you may be right that the considerably more homogeneous editor population, as well as the commonality in cultural background, was instrumental in the ability of the project to jointly make such a cultural shift. Indeed, the number of de:WP editors with >100 edits/month has remained very stable since January 2006. (The number of en:WP editors was essentially the same in January 2006 as at present, but hit its peak in April 2007. Let's not cherry pick the data too much, okay?)
As an aside for those interested in the historical perspective, the massive increase in the number of editors on en:WP coincides with a massive influx of vandalism, and over a thousand editors did almost nothing *but* revert or otherwise address vandalism. As better and more effective tools have been developed to address that problem - Huggle, Twinkle, Friendly, the edit filters, reverting bots, semi-protection, etc - the number of editors needed to manage vandalism has diminished dramatically. In other words, that 1300-editor difference may largely be accounted for because those whose only skill was vandal-fighting have moved on. That's not to say there is no vandalism on en:WP today; there's still plenty of it.
Observing from afar, it has often struck me that when almost all members of an editorial community come from a common cultural background and geographic area, there is a synergy that isn't found on projects where the community is much more diverse. This is best illustrated in the large scale on German Wikipedia, and some other European projects, where the community is visibly more cohesive. In the smaller scale, certain projects with shared cultural/geographic background on English Wikipedia, such as Wikiproject Australia, are more accomplished at developing and meeting shared objectives. These groups, whether large projects or small pockets within a larger project, seem to operate in accordance with their local cultural norms; in other words, they don't have to find common cultural ground before they can move on to a discussion of a proposal.
It's my belief that the common cultural background of the de:WP editorial community has been one of the keystones of its success in being able to implement large-scale and project-wide changes, flagged revisions being the most obvious. That common cultural background or focal geographic area simply does not exist for the English Wikipedia; we're probably one of the few projects where the same expression can be viewed as friendly, somewhat rude and downright offensive at the same time, depending on whether the reader is Australian, British or American (not to mention those who have learned English as a second language, which also makes up a significant part of our editorship).
Each project also has its own culture, but I confess that most of my knowledge of the culture of other projects is anecdotal rather than observational, so I won't venture to try to compare them.
When faced with dramatic increases in vandalism, en:WP created tools that are largely developed by individuals and utilized by other individuals (with the exception of semi-protection); de:WP developed a single unified community response. The remarkably high quality of the tools used on en:WP means that any new systemic tool has to meet a very high threshold for it to be considered acceptable for wide-scale use. Perhaps that is the key difference between these two community types: one places more emphasis on making cohesive group decisions, while the other more strongly encourages a range of solutions. I don't have any answers, just observations.
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Everybody,
Sorry for the previous blunder. I'd like to point out that the Flagged Revvs were switched on in the "culturally diverse" Russian Wikipedia in the August 2008 and we don't see significant changes in the editors numbers. Once the initial opposition to a bold decision of a couple of admins was over there is a broad consensus in the community that FR improves the overall quality of a project.
Victoria
On 30 September 2010 04:02, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Anne,
Thanks for the extra perspective. The post-2007 decline in 100+ editors on en:WP may indeed reflect a decline in vandalism reverts.
The most interesting point to me was that de:WP introduced flagged revisions in spring 2008, across the board, and that editor numbers appear to have remained completely unaffected. In de:WP, at least, overall participation levels did not *drop* as a result of flagged revisions.
It would be interesting to figure out if the number (or precentage) of editors with 500+ and 1000+ edits a month has risen or declined over the same period for these projects. I'd expect en:WP's to follow much the same peak-and-decline as the 100+ edits, but I don't know enough about de:WP's typical editing practices to venture a guess there.
Interestingly, one of the "selling points" of FR has been the likelihood of increasing the editor base, presumably of editors who carry out 100+ edits a month. The de:WP experience seems to contradict that, which I admit surprises me. Perhaps that is one metric to take off the table when evaluating the effects of PC on en:WP.
Risker/Anne
Here's the Russian cherry tree ;)
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaRU.htm
FR introduction in August 2008, per Victoria's post.
The Russian project got going a little later than de:WP and en:WP, so the initial growth phase started later, too.
Growth has been steady, but no marked leap either way in August 2008.
A.
--- On Thu, 30/9/10, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
From: Risker risker.wp@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Differences between projects with common versus highly diverse cultural backgrounds (was Re: Pending Changes) To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, 30 September, 2010, 18:23 On 30 September 2010 04:02, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@yahoo.com wrote:
Anne,
Thanks for the extra perspective. The post-2007
decline in 100+ editors on
en:WP may indeed reflect a decline in vandalism
reverts.
The most interesting point to me was that de:WP
introduced flagged
revisions in spring 2008, across the board, and that
editor numbers appear
to have remained completely unaffected. In de:WP, at
least, overall
participation levels did not *drop* as a result of
flagged revisions.
It would be interesting to figure out if the number (or precentage) of editors with 500+ and 1000+ edits a month has risen or declined over the same period for these projects. I'd expect en:WP's to follow much the same peak-and-decline as the 100+ edits, but I don't know enough about de:WP's typical editing practices to venture a guess there.
Interestingly, one of the "selling points" of FR has been the likelihood of increasing the editor base, presumably of editors who carry out 100+ edits a month. The de:WP experience seems to contradict that, which I admit surprises me. Perhaps that is one metric to take off the table when evaluating the effects of PC on en:WP.
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