Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community health (retitled thread)
Hello, As far as it is about me, I can say that I left wikimedia-l twice or three times. I left mainly because of the high amount of mails, also often not very useful mails, witty remarks in 1-2 lines for example. But I think that this is a good example for a quantitative research that should later lead you to a qualitative look. And maybe it is indeed an indicator for something. In systems theory, one might think that the social system shows an internal differentiation so that people go to more specialized lists. Isnt't there literature about the traffic on mailing lists? Kind regards, Ziko 2015-06-05 3:27 GMT+02:00 Stuart A. Yeates syea...@gmail.com: Here's a list of possible metrics that we could use for measuring community health. That's a great list, with some great metrics. I'd be included to add some silo-breaking metrics which measure activity across projects or across silos within projects: * Number of editors with actions/edits on more than N wikis (N=2, N=3, etc) * Number of editors with actions/edits on more than N namespaces on the same wiki (N=2, N=3, etc) ... cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community health (retitled thread)
Hello Ziko, Am 05.06.2015 um 09:33 schrieb Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com: But I think that this is a good example for a quantitative research that should later lead you to a qualitative look. And maybe it is indeed an indicator for something. In systems theory, one might think that the social system shows an internal differentiation so that people go to more specialized lists. From the point of view of systems theory what matters is how system Wikimedia draws the line between itself and its environment because that is what constitutes Wikimedia. In other words, how open is Wikimedia still to newbies, different-minded contributors, criticism from within, etc. What is it that leads to changes in this differentiation between inside and outside the system? Is it due to moderation or to the subscribers leaving, following their interest in certain subjects? Systems theory deals with an objective description of developments, while the latter would be a matter for those interested in the individual motives for any changes. Most important: There is no metrics for that, we definitely need a qualitative approach for that. Isnt't there literature about the traffic on mailing lists? Of course, there is. ;) Mailing lists have been there since 1972, IIRC. E.g., a search for mailing list in First Monday yields 117 articles. Mailing lists are the oldest type of all virtual communities. Best, Jürgen. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community health (retitled thread)
Yes, but may I also point out that one of our biggest problems on EN wiki is that even good faith newbies will often have their edits reverted. If you add uncited facts to a page you are now much more likely to have your edit reverted than to have someone add citation needed so I would suggest a metric that includes persistence v reversion of edits that are not vandalism. Another issue worth measuring is the number of edit conflicts and the frequency that having an edit conflict triggers a newbies departure. This would require WMF help as I don't think that edit conflicts are publicly logged. But some research on this might resolve the divide between those who consider this a minor issue deserving only the lowest priority at bugzilla, and those such as myself who suspect this is one of the most toxic features of the pedia and reducing edit conflicts the easiest major improvement that could be made. By contrast commons is a relatively lonely place. From my experience you can do hundreds of thousands of edits there without ever needing to archive your talkpage. It would be interesting to see some community health metrics that looked at how many interactions people have with other editors, whether thanks or talkpage messages. My suspicion is that editor retention will vary by interaction level, and there will be a sweet spot which is best for retention, above this interaction level some people finding things distracting, and below this level people leave because they feel ignored. Another metric, and probably one best derived from polling organisations who survey the general public would be to identify how many of our readers would fix an error if they spotted it. One of the arguments that our perceived decline in editor recruitment is a cost of quality is the theory that readers who are willing to fix obvious errors are finding fewer errors per hour of reading Wikipedia. I know that casual readers are less likely to spot typos and vandalism than they were a few years ago, but I'm not sure the best way to measure this phenomenon Regards Jonathan Cardy On 5 Jun 2015, at 02:27, Stuart A. Yeates syea...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a list of possible metrics that we could use for measuring community health. That's a great list, with some great metrics. I'd be included to add some silo-breaking metrics which measure activity across projects or across silos within projects: * Number of editors with actions/edits on more than N wikis (N=2, N=3, etc) * Number of editors with actions/edits on more than N namespaces on the same wiki (N=2, N=3, etc) ... cheers stuart -- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community health (retitled thread)
HI Ziko, I agree. That sounds like a TL;DR of my research agenda. :D - It started with http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ - So I tied to make assessing newcomers easier http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/Snuggle/halfaker14snuggle-preprint.pdf - See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Snuggle - And now I'm working on https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Revision_scoring_as_a_service Feedback and collaboration welcome. -Aaron On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com wrote: The number one problem with Wikipedia seems to be the assessment of newbies and the communication with them. We often don't have enough information in order to see whether a contribution was made in good or bad faith. We usually simply revert. If the contribution was made in bad faith, that reaction is probably the best. If the contribution was made in good faith, the reaction should be different, trying to pull the newbie into the boat. WMF researchers once examined the revert ratio and found out that many new editor contributions are simply reverted. The communication with them consists only of prepared, general texts, if at all. The researchers said: You community must communicate better and write personal texts, that works better. But why do the experienced community members don't like to communicate personally with the newbies? Because they don't a response in 99% of the cases. Communicating especially with bad faith contributors is a waste of time. Also, for technical reasons the newbies usually don't see feedback: they don't know the version history or the talk pages. One way to solve the problem is to make it more likely that communication takes place, and make it easier to asses newbies. Kind regards Ziko 2015-06-05 14:46 GMT+02:00 Juergen Fenn jf...@gmx.net: Hello Ziko, Am 05.06.2015 um 09:33 schrieb Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com: But I think that this is a good example for a quantitative research that should later lead you to a qualitative look. And maybe it is indeed an indicator for something. In systems theory, one might think that the social system shows an internal differentiation so that people go to more specialized lists. From the point of view of systems theory what matters is how system Wikimedia draws the line between itself and its environment because that is what constitutes Wikimedia. In other words, how open is Wikimedia still to newbies, different-minded contributors, criticism from within, etc. What is it that leads to changes in this differentiation between inside and outside the system? Is it due to moderation or to the subscribers leaving, following their interest in certain subjects? Systems theory deals with an objective description of developments, while the latter would be a matter for those interested in the individual motives for any changes. Most important: There is no metrics for that, we definitely need a qualitative approach for that. Isnt't there literature about the traffic on mailing lists? Of course, there is. ;) Mailing lists have been there since 1972, IIRC. E.g., a search for mailing list in First Monday yields 117 articles. Mailing lists are the oldest type of all virtual communities. Best, Jürgen. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Re: [Wiki-research-l] Community health (retitled thread)
The number one problem with Wikipedia seems to be the assessment of newbies and the communication with them. We often don't have enough information in order to see whether a contribution was made in good or bad faith. We usually simply revert. If the contribution was made in bad faith, that reaction is probably the best. If the contribution was made in good faith, the reaction should be different, trying to pull the newbie into the boat. WMF researchers once examined the revert ratio and found out that many new editor contributions are simply reverted. The communication with them consists only of prepared, general texts, if at all. The researchers said: You community must communicate better and write personal texts, that works better. But why do the experienced community members don't like to communicate personally with the newbies? Because they don't a response in 99% of the cases. Communicating especially with bad faith contributors is a waste of time. Also, for technical reasons the newbies usually don't see feedback: they don't know the version history or the talk pages. One way to solve the problem is to make it more likely that communication takes place, and make it easier to asses newbies. Kind regards Ziko 2015-06-05 14:46 GMT+02:00 Juergen Fenn jf...@gmx.net: Hello Ziko, Am 05.06.2015 um 09:33 schrieb Ziko van Dijk zvand...@gmail.com: But I think that this is a good example for a quantitative research that should later lead you to a qualitative look. And maybe it is indeed an indicator for something. In systems theory, one might think that the social system shows an internal differentiation so that people go to more specialized lists. From the point of view of systems theory what matters is how system Wikimedia draws the line between itself and its environment because that is what constitutes Wikimedia. In other words, how open is Wikimedia still to newbies, different-minded contributors, criticism from within, etc. What is it that leads to changes in this differentiation between inside and outside the system? Is it due to moderation or to the subscribers leaving, following their interest in certain subjects? Systems theory deals with an objective description of developments, while the latter would be a matter for those interested in the individual motives for any changes. Most important: There is no metrics for that, we definitely need a qualitative approach for that. Isnt't there literature about the traffic on mailing lists? Of course, there is. ;) Mailing lists have been there since 1972, IIRC. E.g., a search for mailing list in First Monday yields 117 articles. Mailing lists are the oldest type of all virtual communities. Best, Jürgen. ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l ___ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
