[Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 8:45 PM, The Mono <mono at mono.x10.bz> wrote:
> The problem is simple. Our top contributors leave. Because the way things
> work makes it simply intolerable.
>
> *25%* of all respondents [in a survey of contributors] said they stopped
> contributing because
>
> *"Some editors made Wikipedia a difficult place to work"*
>
> *
> *
>
> *(http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results)*


It's somewhat more complex than that.

Some respondents were banned or encouraged to go do something else.

Some were working on good stuff, and were driven away in frustration
by things that should not have happened.

The former we want gone.  They may be editing content, but they're
doing harm to the rest of the community as well.  The latter, we do
not want gone, and to the extent the situation is driving them away
(and driving away new editors who might start editing actively) we're
in trouble.



-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com