[Foundation-l] Differences between projects with common versus highly diverse cultural backgrounds (was Re: Pending Changes)

[Andreas Kolbe]

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.
> 
> Risker/Anne
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