[Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: "Big data" benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))

[Erik Moeller]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> It should be obvious that what is missing is discipline. An
> arbitration committee with expanded scope, with full-time members
> funded by the WMF (at arm's length for legal reasons), could go a long
> way towards solving the problem. Some users will be reformed when
> their technical power is threatened (be that editing or admin access),
> others will just leave as soon as their reputation is at stake.

I do agree that better mechanisms for dispute resolution, dealing with
topic warring, article ownership, and plain old incivility are needed.
But I don't believe that those issues are at the heart of the "editor
retention problem" as you seem to suggest, but rather, that they tend
to occur later in the editor lifecycle, among a subset of editors
which in fact already has survived many of the primary factors that
deter new editors and are therefore relatively likely to retain. The
new editor experience is characterized more by templating and assembly
line style enforcement of existing policies than it is by incivility,
topic warring, article ownership and incivility.

I'm wondering whether the key findings in Halfaker's recent "rise and
decline" paper resonate with you:
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/

Existing data like the above supports strongly the notion that
well-intentioned, good faith contributors are much more heavily
discouraged in 2012 than they were in 2004 or 2005, but this can be
explained in significant part with the influx of bad faith
contributors that have necessitated increasingly heavy handed ways to
control against bad edits (Huggle, Twinkle, AbuseFilter, etc.) --
which catch good faith editors in the crossfire -- as well as
increasing expectations of what constitutes an acceptable quality edit
/ page creation.

In an environment where most folks who show up want to help, it's easy
to be welcoming and supportive of new contributors. As Wikipedia had
to deal with more and more spammers, crackpots and assholes, while
simultaneously being more and more scrutinized in terms of quality and
reliability, new users have increasingly been seen as "guilty until
proven innocent" and are dealt not so much in a deliberately uncivil,
but more in an assembly line robotic fashion that's highly
discouraging. Templating with standard messages, no matter how
friendly, is much more common than explicit incivility toward a new
user and lack of any form of personal encouragement or gratitude.

If that is correct, then the answer -- at least for very new users --
isn't first and foremost a more "disciplined" enforcement of existing
policies. Rather, new editors are simply treated in a manner that's
discouraging more than it is encouraging, without that treatment being
in violation of any policy -- indeed, with various policies in fact
calling for precisely such discouraging actions to be taken in order
to preserve quality, to enforce notability and sourcing policies, etc.

The answer, then, is to find ways to make the new user experience more
encouraging and pleasurable, such as:

* simplifying the interface so that we can at least get rid of
technical reasons that lead to early edits being unsuccessful and
reverted (Visual Editor, talk page replacement, notifications, etc.);
* making it easy to find things to do that are relatively low-risk
(something the E3 team is experimenting with right now) so that new
editors can have a more ladder-like experience of becoming good
contributors;
* guiding the new user in a clear and instructive manner, and pointing
them to places where they can get help from another human being (cf.
Teahouse)

More disruptive technical solutions could include:

* safer alternative work/collaboration spaces that don't suffer from
the contention issues of the main article space (sandboxes on
steroids)
* easier ways for new users to re-do an edit that has been reverted
(cf. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Improve_your_edit )
* real-time mechanisms for coaching, collaboration (chat, real-time
collaborative editing) and mentor matchmaking

More disruptive policy-level changes would include rethinking some of
the more problematic quality-related policies, especially notability.

That's not to say that we should ignore the deeper social issues that
arise in maintaining a universal encyclopedia in a radically open
manner (and indeed, the community has learned, evolved and continually
improved its ways of dealing with those issues). But most new users
give up well before encountering those issues. When new editors
complain about Wikipedia being mean, they complain more often about
reverts, templating, deletion nominations, etc. -- none of which are
in fact inherently "uncivil" according to Wikipedia's own policies,
but rather part of its overzealous immune system. In other words,
rudeness is in the eye of the beholder.

All best,
Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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