Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[WereSpielChequers]

Hi Aaron,

I would be very interested in that. In particular re flagged revisions as
used on the German language Wikipedia (DE) and I think some other wikis. DE
has been one of the shrinking communities, which could of course be
something unconnected if it is more related to the ratio of tablet to PC
users (Wikipedia being near uneditable on the mobile platform). If the
Portuguese and potentially other wikes are going to drop IP editing then
that also is likely to have an effect on vandalism that would be worthwhile
researching.

WSC

On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 at 19:43, Aaron Halfaker 
wrote:

> +1 WSC.   When I thought about replicating it, I expected to see a dramatic
> decline in the impact of vandalism with the advent of counter-vandalism
> tools and abuse filter.
>
> It would be interesting to see that on a cross-wiki basis as different
> wikis employ different strategies (or seemingly none at all) for
> counter-vandalism over time.
>
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 10:58 AM WereSpielChequers <
> werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Aaron,
> >
> > That was an interesting read and a bit of a time capsule. 2002-2006 is a
> > bit before I started editing Wikipedia. Before many of the tools such as
> > huggle that give vandalfighters such an advantage over vandals, I think
> > before the era of bot reversion of vandalism when vandalism had to be
> > reverted by humans rather than computers, and certainly before the edit
> > filters that prevent much, possibly most vandalism from even being saved.
> > It also seems to predate the whole panoply of page protection that stops
> > vandals even editing many common vandalism targets (they do say that
> every
> > single article is available for anyone to edit).
> >
> > It would be interesting to see a study now when recent changes patrollers
> > boast of the times they have got to some vandalism faster than Cluebot.
> >
> > I know there were predictions in the early years that eventually the
> tidal
> > wave of vandalism would overwhelm the defenders of the wiki, that study
> > seems to have been part of that. I wonder if anyone in 2004 predicted
> that
> > we would get to the current situation where adolescent vandalism has
> turned
> > out to be so predictable that dealing with it has been mostly automated
> and
> > now we are more worried about spam than vandalism.
> >
> > WSC
> >
> > On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 23:52, Aaron Halfaker 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > See page 7 of Priedhorsky, R., Chen, J., Lam, S. T. K., Panciera, K.,
> > > Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007, November). Creating, destroying, and
> > > restoring value in Wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2007 international
> > ACM
> > > conference on Supporting group work* (pp. 259-268).
> > > http://reidster.net/pubs/group282-priedhorsky.pdf
> > >
> > > They discuss the probability of a page view of Wikipedia containing
> > > vandalism rising over time.  I wanted to replicate this analysis and
> > extend
> > > it past 2007 but I never got the chance.  I think the methodology is
> > really
> > > interesting though.
> > >
> > > It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact*
> > of
> > > vandalism.
> > >
> > > On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson 
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or
> > > surveying
> > > > at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in
> general
> > we
> > > > have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop
> > editing
> > > > because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing
> > logged-in
> > > > usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too
> > but
> > > > it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left
> > > > Facebook (example
> > > > <
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf
> > > > >)
> > > > by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey
> > > > someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that
> > did
> > > > ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to
> > > > burnout) such as the 2012 survey:
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17
> > > > (see the editor survey category
> > > >  if you're
> > > > looking
> > > > for others)
> > > >
> > > > Some things that come to mind though:
> > > >
> > > >- I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing
> > > (as a
> > > >very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have
> trouble
> > > >recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal
> > > >reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen
> plenty
> > of
> > > >stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate
> but
> > > many
> > > >more about 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[Aaron Halfaker]

+1 WSC.   When I thought about replicating it, I expected to see a dramatic
decline in the impact of vandalism with the advent of counter-vandalism
tools and abuse filter.

It would be interesting to see that on a cross-wiki basis as different
wikis employ different strategies (or seemingly none at all) for
counter-vandalism over time.

On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 10:58 AM WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Aaron,
>
> That was an interesting read and a bit of a time capsule. 2002-2006 is a
> bit before I started editing Wikipedia. Before many of the tools such as
> huggle that give vandalfighters such an advantage over vandals, I think
> before the era of bot reversion of vandalism when vandalism had to be
> reverted by humans rather than computers, and certainly before the edit
> filters that prevent much, possibly most vandalism from even being saved.
> It also seems to predate the whole panoply of page protection that stops
> vandals even editing many common vandalism targets (they do say that every
> single article is available for anyone to edit).
>
> It would be interesting to see a study now when recent changes patrollers
> boast of the times they have got to some vandalism faster than Cluebot.
>
> I know there were predictions in the early years that eventually the tidal
> wave of vandalism would overwhelm the defenders of the wiki, that study
> seems to have been part of that. I wonder if anyone in 2004 predicted that
> we would get to the current situation where adolescent vandalism has turned
> out to be so predictable that dealing with it has been mostly automated and
> now we are more worried about spam than vandalism.
>
> WSC
>
> On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 23:52, Aaron Halfaker 
> wrote:
>
> > See page 7 of Priedhorsky, R., Chen, J., Lam, S. T. K., Panciera, K.,
> > Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007, November). Creating, destroying, and
> > restoring value in Wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2007 international
> ACM
> > conference on Supporting group work* (pp. 259-268).
> > http://reidster.net/pubs/group282-priedhorsky.pdf
> >
> > They discuss the probability of a page view of Wikipedia containing
> > vandalism rising over time.  I wanted to replicate this analysis and
> extend
> > it past 2007 but I never got the chance.  I think the methodology is
> really
> > interesting though.
> >
> > It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact*
> of
> > vandalism.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or
> > surveying
> > > at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general
> we
> > > have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop
> editing
> > > because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing
> logged-in
> > > usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too
> but
> > > it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left
> > > Facebook (example
> > > <
> > >
> >
> http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf
> > > >)
> > > by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey
> > > someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that
> did
> > > ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to
> > > burnout) such as the 2012 survey:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17
> > > (see the editor survey category
> > >  if you're
> > > looking
> > > for others)
> > >
> > > Some things that come to mind though:
> > >
> > >- I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing
> > (as a
> > >very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble
> > >recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal
> > >reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty
> of
> > >stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but
> > many
> > >more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead
> to
> > >lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower
> > >readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some
> > > recent
> > >surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be
> > >relevant:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_readers_evaluate_Wikipedia_articles#Second_round_survey
> > >- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity:
> > >   - Harassment as barrier:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity
> > >   - Edit summaries in particular as harassment:
> > >   https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details
> > >   

Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[WereSpielChequers]

Hi Aaron,

That was an interesting read and a bit of a time capsule. 2002-2006 is a
bit before I started editing Wikipedia. Before many of the tools such as
huggle that give vandalfighters such an advantage over vandals, I think
before the era of bot reversion of vandalism when vandalism had to be
reverted by humans rather than computers, and certainly before the edit
filters that prevent much, possibly most vandalism from even being saved.
It also seems to predate the whole panoply of page protection that stops
vandals even editing many common vandalism targets (they do say that every
single article is available for anyone to edit).

It would be interesting to see a study now when recent changes patrollers
boast of the times they have got to some vandalism faster than Cluebot.

I know there were predictions in the early years that eventually the tidal
wave of vandalism would overwhelm the defenders of the wiki, that study
seems to have been part of that. I wonder if anyone in 2004 predicted that
we would get to the current situation where adolescent vandalism has turned
out to be so predictable that dealing with it has been mostly automated and
now we are more worried about spam than vandalism.

WSC

On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 23:52, Aaron Halfaker 
wrote:

> See page 7 of Priedhorsky, R., Chen, J., Lam, S. T. K., Panciera, K.,
> Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007, November). Creating, destroying, and
> restoring value in Wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM
> conference on Supporting group work* (pp. 259-268).
> http://reidster.net/pubs/group282-priedhorsky.pdf
>
> They discuss the probability of a page view of Wikipedia containing
> vandalism rising over time.  I wanted to replicate this analysis and extend
> it past 2007 but I never got the chance.  I think the methodology is really
> interesting though.
>
> It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact* of
> vandalism.
>
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson 
> wrote:
>
> > To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or
> surveying
> > at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we
> > have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing
> > because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in
> > usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but
> > it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left
> > Facebook (example
> > <
> >
> http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf
> > >)
> > by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey
> > someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did
> > ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to
> > burnout) such as the 2012 survey:
> >
> >
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17
> > (see the editor survey category
> >  if you're
> > looking
> > for others)
> >
> > Some things that come to mind though:
> >
> >- I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing
> (as a
> >very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble
> >recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal
> >reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of
> >stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but
> many
> >more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to
> >lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower
> >readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some
> > recent
> >surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be
> >relevant:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_readers_evaluate_Wikipedia_articles#Second_round_survey
> >- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity:
> >   - Harassment as barrier:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity
> >   - Edit summaries in particular as harassment:
> >   https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details
> >   <
> > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019>
> >   )
> >   - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this --
> >   e.g.,
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_Report/Thriving_Movement#Safe_and_Secure_Spaces
> >   - 2015 Harassment Survey:
> >   https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015
> >- The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good
> >insights too -- e.g.,
> >
> >
> https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[WereSpielChequers]

I'm sure there has been a survey of former editors done using the email
this user function (as I remember it one of the more common responses was I
haven't left yet). However this would not be a great way to survey re
harassment as harassed people are more likely to close an email account or
disable the email future.

As for how many readers saw vandalism in the era before edit filters etc,
it didn't need to be many readers who saw it, and many of those to remove
it for this to be an important way to recruit editors. We have such a huge
imbalance between readers and editors that even if only 1% of readers saw
vandalism and only 1% of those fixed it, that would still be an extra
hundred editors for every million readers.

WSC

On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 20:13, Isaac Johnson  wrote:

> To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or surveying
> at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we
> have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing
> because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in
> usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but
> it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left
> Facebook (example
> <
> http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf
> >)
> by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey
> someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did
> ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to
> burnout) such as the 2012 survey:
>
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17
> (see the editor survey category
>  if you're
> looking
> for others)
>
> Some things that come to mind though:
>
>- I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing (as a
>very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble
>recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal
>reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of
>stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but many
>more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to
>lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower
>readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some
> recent
>surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be
>relevant:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_readers_evaluate_Wikipedia_articles#Second_round_survey
>- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity:
>   - Harassment as barrier:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity
>   - Edit summaries in particular as harassment:
>   https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details
>   <
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019>
>   )
>   - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this --
>   e.g.,
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_Report/Thriving_Movement#Safe_and_Secure_Spaces
>   - 2015 Harassment Survey:
>   https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015
>- The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good
>insights too -- e.g.,
>
> https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers <
> werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Amir,
> >
> > This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual
> > editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process,
> and
> > I don't know if the best questions got included.
> >
> > But the best  time to ask editors what prompted them to  start editing
> has
> > to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back
> to
> > my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made
> it
> > into my first 50.
> >
> > There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started
> > to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep
> > decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism
> tools
> > that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask
> > editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research
> > this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of
> > active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians
> > start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be
> > available.
> >
> > Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse,
> > disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[Aaron Halfaker]

See page 7 of Priedhorsky, R., Chen, J., Lam, S. T. K., Panciera, K.,
Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007, November). Creating, destroying, and
restoring value in Wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2007 international ACM
conference on Supporting group work* (pp. 259-268).
http://reidster.net/pubs/group282-priedhorsky.pdf

They discuss the probability of a page view of Wikipedia containing
vandalism rising over time.  I wanted to replicate this analysis and extend
it past 2007 but I never got the chance.  I think the methodology is really
interesting though.

It doesn't directly answer the question but it does get at the *impact* of
vandalism.

On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 12:13 PM Isaac Johnson  wrote:

> To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or surveying
> at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we
> have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing
> because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in
> usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but
> it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left
> Facebook (example
> <
> http://socialmedia.soc.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CHI2013-FBLL.pdf
> >)
> by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey
> someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did
> ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to
> burnout) such as the 2012 survey:
>
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17
> (see the editor survey category
>  if you're
> looking
> for others)
>
> Some things that come to mind though:
>
>- I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing (as a
>very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble
>recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal
>reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of
>stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but many
>more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to
>lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower
>readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some
> recent
>surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be
>relevant:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_readers_evaluate_Wikipedia_articles#Second_round_survey
>- Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity:
>   - Harassment as barrier:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity
>   - Edit summaries in particular as harassment:
>   https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details
>   <
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Research/Showcase#July_2019>
>   )
>   - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this --
>   e.g.,
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_Report/Thriving_Movement#Safe_and_Secure_Spaces
>   - 2015 Harassment Survey:
>   https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015
>- The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good
>insights too -- e.g.,
>
> https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers <
> werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Amir,
> >
> > This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual
> > editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process,
> and
> > I don't know if the best questions got included.
> >
> > But the best  time to ask editors what prompted them to  start editing
> has
> > to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back
> to
> > my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made
> it
> > into my first 50.
> >
> > There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started
> > to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep
> > decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism
> tools
> > that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask
> > editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research
> > this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of
> > active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians
> > start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be
> > available.
> >
> > Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse,
> > disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be inclined
> > to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than
> 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[Isaac Johnson]

To WSC's point about the difficulty of detecting such behavior or surveying
at a point in which it would still be salient, I'd add that in general we
have a large gap in our knowledge about why people choose to stop editing
because almost all of our survey mechanisms depend on existing logged-in
usage of the wikis. This is a challenge with many other websites too but
it's generally easier to find and survey who, for instance, has left
Facebook (example
)
by collecting a random sample of people than it is to find and survey
someone who was a former editor of Wikipedia. There were surveys that did
ask about major barriers to editing (which presumably contribute to
burnout) such as the 2012 survey:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Editor_Survey_2012_-_Wikipedia_editing_experience.pdf#page=17
(see the editor survey category
 if you're looking
for others)

Some things that come to mind though:

   - I suspect very few readers see vandalism in their daily browsing (as a
   very frequent, long-term reader of English Wikipedia, I have trouble
   recalling encountering any clear vandalism in the course of normal
   reading). That said, I do suspect that most people have seen plenty of
   stories of outlandish vandalism to Wikipedia -- some legitimate but many
   more about vandalism that literally lasted minutes -- that may lead to
   lower trust. Whether or not lower trust in Wikipedia leads to lower
   readership is a separate question though. Jonathan Morgan ran some recent
   surveys on reader trust and what factors affected it that might be
   relevant:
   
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:The_role_of_citations_in_how_readers_evaluate_Wikipedia_articles#Second_round_survey
   - Specifically in the context of harassment and gender equity:
  - Harassment as barrier:
  
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gender_equity_report_2018/Barriers_to_equity
  - Edit summaries in particular as harassment:
  https://www.elizabethwhittaker.net/wmf-internship (more details
  
  )
  - Annual Community Insights Reports often have a section on this --
  e.g.,
  
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/Community_Insights_2020_Report/Thriving_Movement#Safe_and_Secure_Spaces
  - 2015 Harassment Survey:
  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Harassment_survey_2015
   - The body of work around barriers to newcomers might have some good
   insights too -- e.g.,
   https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfaker/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/


On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 5:44 AM WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Amir,
>
> This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual
> editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process, and
> I don't know if the best questions got included.
>
> But the best  time to ask editors what prompted them to  start editing has
> to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back to
> my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made it
> into my first 50.
>
> There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started
> to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep
> decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism tools
> that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask
> editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research
> this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of
> active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians
> start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be
> available.
>
> Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse,
> disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be inclined
> to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than
> talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former editors
> would be useful.
>
> My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or
> oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to tackle
> abuse we need more edit filters to prevent such abuse from going live.
>
> WSC
>
> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content pages
> > on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors?
> >
> > And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced
> editors
> > and new and potential editors?
> >
> > Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following:
> > 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and patrollers'
> > time. This 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[WereSpielChequers]

Hi Amir,

This is one of those areas of research where we really need the annual
editor survey. I think it ran once after the 2009/10 Strategy process, and
I don't know if the best questions got included.

But the best  time to ask editors what prompted them to  start editing has
to be fairly soon after they started as memories fade. I once went back to
my early edits and the edit I remembered starting me editing barely made it
into my first 50.

There is a longstanding theory that a lot of new editors start or started
to fix some vandalism that they saw, and that this group went into steep
decline a decade ago with the rise of Cluebot and other antivandalism tools
that work faster than a newbie could. But without an annual survey to ask
editors what prompted them to edit you are going to struggle to research
this. Of course you could look at the early logged in edits of
active/prolific wikipedians, but if it is true that many/most Wikipedians
start with some IP edits, the earliest edits of many Wikipedians won't be
available.

Abuse one assumes has a differential effect on the targets of abuse,
disproportionately women, gays and ethnic minorities. But I'd be inclined
to look at stuff targeted at their user and usertalkpages rather than
talkpages and edit summaries, though an email survey of former editors
would be useful.

My suspicion is that when we revert, block and maybe even revdel or
oversight abuse we assume that fixes the problem, and if we want to tackle
abuse we need more edit filters to prevent such abuse from going live.

WSC

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 at 15:16, Amir E. Aharoni 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content pages
> on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors?
>
> And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced editors
> and new and potential editors?
>
> Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following:
> 1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and patrollers'
> time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some people
> say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is there
> any data about it, beyond intuition?
>
> 2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the wikis'
> reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages and
> wikis.)
>
> 3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries affects editors,
> and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about certain
> topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How does
> it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country,
> professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki, etc.?
>
> Thanks! :)
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
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[Wiki-research-l] effects of vandalism and abuse on editors and readers

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Hi,

Is there any research about the effect of vandalism in wiki content pages
on readers, experienced editors, and new and potential editors?

And of abuse in discussion pages and edit summaries on experienced editors
and new and potential editors?

Intuitively and anecdotally one could think of the following:
1. Vandalism in content pages (articles) wastes editors' and patrollers'
time. This (probably) doesn't require proof (or does it?). But some people
say it also causes some experienced editors to burn out and leave. Is there
any data about it, beyond intuition?

2. Does vandalism *measurably* affect the perception of the wikis'
reliability? (This may be wildly different in different languages and
wikis.)

3. Abusive language on discussion pages and edit summaries affects editors,
and may cause them to reduce their editing, to stop editing about certain
topics, or to leave the wiki entirely. Is this effect measurable? How does
it differ for various groups by gender, age, religion, country,
professional and educational background, seniority at the wiki, etc.?

Thanks! :)

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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