[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com]

On Mar 21, 2012, at 10:07 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

> Birgitte_sb at yahoo.com wrote:
>> On Mar 21, 2012, at 8:53 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>>> Sue Gardner wrote:
>>>> Everybody knows that reversing stagnating/declining participation
>>>> in Wikimedia's projects is our top priority.
>>> 
>>> Thank you for sharing this.
>>> 
>>> How much discussion has there been internally about this being the wrong
>>> approach? A good number of active editors (who I imagine Wikimedia is also
>>> trying to engage and retain) feel that Wikimedia's sole focus is on the
>>> numbers game. That is, Wikimedia is all about adding people, but doesn't
>>> seem to care about the quality of the content that it's producing (or the
>>> quality of the new contributors, for that matter).
>>> 
>>> The vision of the Wikimedia movement is to create a free and accessible
>>> repository of (high-quality) educational content; the vision is not about
>>> trying to get as many people involved as possible (or even build a
>>> movement).
>>> 
>>> Is there a concern that the current focus on simply boosting the numbers (a
>>> focus on quantity) is overshadowing the arguably more important goal of
>>> improving the content (a focus on quality)?
>> 
>> This strikes me as a very oddly articulated concern about a crowd-sourcing
>> project. The basic premise underlying the whole model is increasing the
>> quantity of contributors increases the quality of the content.  Is this really
>> disputed?
> 
> How do you draw that correlation? It seems like you're missing a very
> important "may." Surely it depends on what kind of contributors you're
> pulling in and why. It would be trivial to add a lot of contributors through
> gimmicky incentives ("make ten edits, win a prize!"), but are those the type
> of editors we want?
> 

On the content level it doesn't really matter what what kind of contributors you are pulling in.  Given increased contributors over time (given they stick around after the contests you find distasteful end) quality of content improves.  This is the model assumption wikis are based upon.  Which why I find your stated objection so odd.  Now that said, I must admit there one and only one kind of contributor I find to have a significant negative impact on the quality of Wikipedia (and I imagine perhaps Wikinews as well): the "true-believer".  But I do not see this being a practical concern of the sort project under discussion. True-believer's seem to be one of the kinds of people that begin contributing without any encouragement.


> Content is king. People visit Wikimedia wikis for their content and the
> Wikimedia Foundation's stated mission is to "... empower and engage people
> around the world to collect and develop educational content ...." The
> hawkeyed focus on simply bumping up the number of contributors doesn't
> necessarily improve the content. It may. But if the focus is purely on the
> numbers (and not the quality of the contributors being added), it may also
> make the content worse.

I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I truly believe the only ways to bring about a significant improvement in the quality of content on a project as mature as the English or German Wikipedia are A) increase the numbers of contributors, or B) increase the average life-span of activity for contributors. Every other sort project I can imagine, while possibly leading to a net improvement in quality, would only amount to dumping a bucket of water into the ocean. 

Seriously, and with all due respect, do you really believe it likely the content will actually become less accurate, less comprehensive, less neutral, and/or less understandable because of WMF inadvertently encouraging the wrong "kind" of people to join in?  

I cannot imagine this happening.

> 
> It isn't the Wikimedia Foundation's stated vision or mission to build a
> movement; the idea is to find ways to create and disseminate free, high
> quality, educational content. So I continue to wonder: is the current focus
> of adding more and more people overshadowing the arguably more important
> focus of producing something of value? There are finite resources (as with
> nearly any project), but they're being used to develop tools and
> technologies that focus on one project (Wikipedia) and that often have
> questionable value (MoodBar, ArticleFeedback, etc.). ArticleFeedback has
> gone through five major iterations; FlaggedRevs was dropped after one.
> Doesn't that seem emblematic of a larger problem to you?

No it really isn't a convincing concern for me.  But I do understand this objection a great deal better.  Still I would rather see WMF put full effort into what it believes most worthwhile, than to be grudgingly addressing what I might think to be somewhat more worthwhile. If I could convince the people at WMF heart and soul to agree with me, that would be different. However I don't wish anyone to start acting as I might suggest without actually becoming convinced through my message. I am no kind of prophet and I am as capable of being mistaken as anyone. The two most basic lessons I have learned exclusively from my participation in the projects over the years is how immensely much passion counts and how easy it is to find myself absolutely mistaken even when I have taken care to throughly account for all that I could imagine.

I am not certain that WMF will be successful with this program, but neither do I find them to be clearly heading for failure. As I said above, I do believe the objective worthwhile. Increasing contributions, through both new people and longer careers, is the most significant impact that I believe can be made towards improving content quality. My own uncertainty is mostly whether WMF can actually manage to increase either of these numbers. 

I certainly cannot imagine bringing this program to a halt would actually result in the resources involved being re-directed to a non-Wikipediacentric objective!

> 
> Commons needs more support. Wikisource needs more support. Wiktionary needs
> more support. And it goes on. But the focus is about adding more people to
> Wikipedia. It isn't about making it possible to easily add music notation to
> articles. Or making it easier to transcribe articles. Or making it easier to
> re-use the vast content within contained within Wiktionary. Or ...
> 
> The focus on solely increasing participation for statistics' sake comes with
> a real cost.
> 

You are an excellent politician, and if I were interested in such things you would have won my support. However, I am really much more interested in addressing accuracy for it's own sake while improving my own understanding of things.  I can't see how this endeavor can be accurately described as "increasing participation for statistic's sake", when I see that significant improvements in quality would be the end result (if successful).  Nor I do not understand how discouraging this program would lead to any practical support for those other things which you mention.

BirgitteSB