[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[Dennis During]

It is not entirely a matter of recruitment.

To me the problem appears in the form of how welcoming the projects are to
the different types of contributors and types of contributions. That, in
turn relates to the value system and cognitive and social biases of those
who control the projects.

As we have more to protect (formatting, layout, content organization,
stylistic unity) there is a negative attitude toward anyone who might
jeopardize it through clumsy attempts at improvement.  I sometime notice and
feel a tendency to be more cooperative and patient with someone I perceive
as being older.  I'm pretty sure that younger contributors sense my efforts
to communicate with them as, um, adult.  This provides a bias against
younger would-be contributors.

Facilitating contributions by newbies is part of what might help make for an
easier induction of all new users, which provides a modest tendency to favor
the young without disfavoring the old.  Having a bit more structure to new
user induction seems to be the inevitable direction to go to elicit breadth
on the projects. Out existing low-structure approaches need to be
supplemented with attractive more-structured paths.

Perhaps inviting structured feedback (eg article ratings with links to
article talk pages) to draw folks into low risk-of-damage active involvement
would enable us to get more from those a little less bold and motivated.

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:26 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bleh.
>
> When did this become an either-or proposition?
>
> You go recruit retired professionals.  I'll go recruit young people.
> Someone else can recruit soccer moms, and yet another person can go
> after teachers.  Everybody wins.
>
> The only way to lose is if either:
>
> A) You believe one of these groups should not be participating in Wikipedia
>
> or
>
> B) You believe efforts to recruit professionals will actually
> interfere with my efforts to recruit young people, etc.
>
> If you believe A) then frankly I believe you are out of touch with the
> ethos of the projects.  Different groups may need a different amount
> of guidance before they are prepared to contribute, but there is no
> group of people we should be categorically shutting out or
> discouraging.
>
> If you believe B) and somehow think that recruiting one group somehow
> interferes with recruiting other groups, then I'd like to see an
> explanation of that.  It seems unlikely in most cases.
>
> Besides which, there are many things we can be doing (such as
> improving the editing interface and documentation) that should widely
> benefit most groups of potential new editors.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
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-- 
Dennis C. During

Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity
with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry