[Foundation-l] How to make unstoppable petty complaint a feature?

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's not just changes that draw petty, sarcastic and juvenile replies
> for Wikipedians. We have a pervasive problem of burnout, wherein our
> more experienced contributors became jaded and disillusioned and make
> a practice of appalling behavior.
>
<snip>

> Unfortunately this type of interaction isn't even unusual. In some
> respects it appears to be the norm, in fact, and there doesn't seem to
> be any effective way of addressing this problem. I can no longer
> recommend people to become involved in editing, because frankly I
> refuse to subject friends and colleagues to the risk of this type of
> treatment. Perhaps the Foundation should put some effort into this
> issue before soliciting new participants who are likely to be shocked
> at the editing culture.
>
>
> Nathan
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fastily#SYS_logo.png
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Fair_use
>
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Interesting point to follow up to David's.  I've gone a rounds about your
point and David's, and how it integrates.

Data is good, data is useful.  When discussing the operation of a
collaborative, volunteer environment, data does not always say what we want
it to unless we want it to.

Let's use BLPs on the English Wikipedia for an example.  No, I don't have
refs, this is off the top of my head but I've been up to my eyes in it since
September.

The English Wikipedia has 3.5 million articles.  Of those, /only/ 50,000 of
those were unreferenced BLPs.  So numerically, very small.  To break that
down further, of the BLP tagged articles on the English Wikipedia, less than
a thousand get in touch with the volunteer response team about issues per
year.  Again, statistically small.

So what we have are four salient questions:  How many people don't care, how
many people care and don't know what to do, how satisfied are they if they
figure that out, and how much volunteer resource is spent on these issues.

The thing is that this can all never be quantified to the extent of the
human condition.   All we can do is work toward helping and enticing new
consumers of Wikimedia projects.  There are new users that are eager, ones
that don't care, and others that are initially openly hostile.  The fact of
the matter is that dedicated contributors stay, the truly dedicated ones get
it, and we do need a way to promote a more friendly, welcoming environment.
 Reading over the new Public Policy intent is a good step in that direction.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan