[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/12 George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:
>> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 2009/8/11 Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>:
>>>> Thank you, Thomas, you just made my point. This is exactly the type of focus
>>>> and denial I was speaking of.
>>>
>>> I'm not denying we have a problem with civility. I got desysopped for
>>> a civility block the community and ArbCom objected to. What I'm
>>> denying is that this problem is going to lead it disaster. There is
>>> absolutely no evidence of that.
>>
>>
>> I think there is a significant structural risk in the community
>> steadily getting less welcome to new blood.
>
> I agree, but is there evidence that we are losing a significant number
> of new users due to incivility? Numbers of new editors have dropped
> recently, but that is to be expected as we pick more and more of the
> low hanging fruit. I don't see how a poll can determine whether our
> civility problems are having a large impact, only a survey of people
> that leave after a short time can do that.

The poll can tell us that a lot of people, enough that it's probably
statistically significant as a sample (albeit self selected), are
concerned about the component issues.

You're right - a real "proper" survey would survey new users, and then
users who came and then left.  But finding the latter seems hrad.

I think it's unlikely we can put the effort required in to do a proper
statistical survey of the newly departed userbase, and suggest that we
assume that more experienced people's impressions are roughly
accurate.  That is subject to challenge or someone actually doing the
recently departed userbase survey and getting most appropriate info on
the table.


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