[Foundation-l] Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

[Florence Devouard]

Marco Chiesa wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 6:27 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> * wikiit-l: In constant decrease since the beginning of 2007.
>>
> As regards wikiit-l, a major reason for the decrease is that most of the
> traffic has been absorbed by the Italian chapter mailing list + we created a
> ml for sysops. I'm not sure about the trend of these lists, I'll have a look
> and will report soon.
> 
> Thanks for the insight, it's really a good work.
> Cruccone

To second this point...

The french wp list is still a little bit alive. Not much. 39 emails in 
october (which is quite high compared to previous months).

However, the french chapter lists are overall very active. We have three 
of them.

One is private, but anyone can join it (it is meant to avoid public 
archives of our discussions). I can count 23 emails in october.
This one is hosted by WMF.


The membership one is private and restricted to members. It is quite 
nicely active. 87 emails in october
This one is hosted by the French chapter, so does not enter into your 
stats. I did not check, but I think numbers are quite stable or rising.

The last one is the board one. Its members are current board members, 
plus previous still active board members. Say a dozen people. 207 emails 
in october.
This one is hosted by the French chapter, so does not enter into your 
stats. I did not check, but I am sure numbers are rising.


This suggests three things to me.


First, when you argue that only a couple of chapters are active and 
doing things, you actually miss all the discussions happening on 
chapters hosted lists. The overal wikimedia mouvement is not limited to 
lists hosted by WMF, nor to wikis hosted by WMF btw (the French Chapter 
wiki is very active). So, I guess your figures are slightly biaised 
because you lack some information to make it truely complete. There has 
obviously been a transfer of discussions from public WMF lists to 
chapter lists.
I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's just a fact. Transfer. And a 
consequence of it is balkanization.


Second, your stats include only emails sent on public lists hosted by 
WMF. For having been a long time on the board, I know for a fact a lot 
of activity goes on on private lists (such as the board list). This 
activity might balance part of the decrease of activity of public lists.
What we used to discuss here, on public lists, moved there.


However, I completely agree (without any need to check figures) that 
most internal lists are in decrease as well (that's the case of the 
comcom list and of internal list quite obviously).
And I share your concern on this.



The original move to the private lists (both WMF and chapter related) is 
due to the increase of public interest for any of our discussions. A lot 
of what used to be freely discussed publicly moved to private lists to 
avoid being published within hours in the press. Probably an escape from 
trolls as well :-)

However, the public and internal lists suffers three damages.

First damage: because of leaks, everything slightly confidential or even 
controversial is no more discussed. Neither on public, nor on private 
lists. Consequence: decrease of list volume

Second damage: the staff of WMF grew larger and does not discuss much on 
lists. So, many topics which used to be discussed on lists are now 
discussed in office. Consequence: decrease of list volume

Third damage: internal lists are quite cabalistic :-)
Just consider internal-l and see how many new members joined in 2006 ? 
in 2007 ? in 2008 ? I think by and large, most people who joined in 2008 
are staff members. Or previous members who were at risk of being removed 
because they stopped being staff or board members.
Proposition of new names is looked with serious suspicion. New blood is 
now extremely rare, and does not replace those who become inactive. 
Consequence: decrease of list volume



Last, I agree with Michael. High discussion does not necessarily mean 
"lot's done". And lot's can be done without much discussion.
The main problem as I see it is not decrease of emails sent on lists (I 
am slightly happy with this :-)), but decrease of communication between 
members or groups. We are growing. We are so numerous we can not discuss 
things easily on lists anymore. To scale, we need to break down in 
smaller groups. But we need to work on making sure communication between 
groups is still happening. I am not convinced lists do that best.


Ant