Looking into the numbers and having in mind events of those times, I
don't think that the main reason for less traffic here is because of
moderation for this particular drop, from April to May this year. Drop
from quite regular ~300kB of gzipped file to ~160kB says that
something extraordinary happened. And the main reason is likely about
the Board elections themselves.
However, there is the trend which lasts since April 2012 and it's not
again about anything external to this list, but to the events internal
to this list and "the core" of the community.
For five or more previous years I hear the reasoning "let's new people
talk". That's, of course, quite good idea and the vitality of the
community depends on the influx of the new people.
However, after a number of years I don't see that the discussion on
this list is flourishing. Instead of heated but substantial
discussions, the amount of discussions at all is very low. From the 50
last threads (May 11-June 4), 20 didn't have any response and 11 have
one response (one response doesn't create a discussion). That's 62% of
all threads.
Besides that, the main reason of why still have the editing community
is the fact that natural systems usually have long tail, which means
that there should happen something very bad to have sudden drop of
participation in such large systems, like Wikimedia is.
So, the strategy proved to be wrong. Except we want to wait the next
decade to gather more data and prove or disapprove the hypothesis. If
you we want to have motivated community, we have to have people
capable to motivate the rest. And they usually have strong positions
and they can't be easily handled.
But I don't think that we had strategy at all. It was always just an
excuse for a vanity show of people in power positions. And it's not
related just to this list.
Our main problem are not loud people without power in any paradigm (a
loud user on a project; a member of the "core" community criticizing
list admins or WMF Board or staff), our main problem is the culture of
people in power position. And one person could be in both positions:
implementing the same culture on project or inside of his or her own
[Wikimedia] organization, while being oppressed as a powerless member
of the "core" community.
And the culture is based on vanity supported by anecdotal evidence.
"It's not my job, I am just a volunteer" -- but you've taken that
position, voluntarily. "I don't have time to deal with him or her" --
but it's the part of your paid of volunteer work to deal with
Wikimedia community. "It's too complex to think about it" -- Wikimedia
*is* complex by it's nature, if not the life itself.
In various Wikimedia decision-making environments it was at least a
couple of times that I was scared by how quickly anecdotal evidence is
becoming the basis for the future rule. And, of course, the
implementation varies. Some use that "evidence" quite strongly, while
other are using them as long as it's comfortable to them. And it's
useless to mention any example, as it's endemic.
Instead of working with those stubborn but enthusiastic (usually
young, white and male) people, that culture simply removes them. And
decline is obvious product of that culture. You can't trigger
enthusiasm to outsiders, so they would be happy to join the movement,
if you are suppressing the most enthusiastic people inside of the
movement. It doesn't work like that.
I am quite aware which topic this issue is opening. In black and white
world, this would be in direct collision with our aim to include
underrepresented groups. But there are many colors outside, not just
black and white.
I completely understand that there are very problematic people in the
Wikimedia wildness. But we are not talking here about random
misogynistic geek, but usually about good young guys, with proven
history of enormous contribution to our cause. Odder and Nemo are
paradigmatic for that cause.
It's not about "it would be good" or "we should" -- but we have
to
change that culture. (It seems that unmoderated
discourse.org could be
very good solution for that.) If somebody is stubborn and could cause
flame wars, the right method is to talk with that person, to address
his or her reasonable issues and give good explanation why something
had to be done in particular way.
While writing the last paragraph, I've realized that we need the
institution of social work counseling: if you have a problem with
Wikimedia structures, you could talk with us publicly or privately.
So, I've created the page [1]. Besides joining the list, feel free to
change the name of the page and fix the content. (Especially first, as
not that I am just a non-native English speaker, but I am especially
unimaginative while giving names to anything.)
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_workers_of_Wikimedia