Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
On Wed, 2 Jan 2013 2:54 PM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 2:50 PM, cyrano cyrano.faw...@gmail.com wrote: I'm proud of people like Leslie who work for less money than other opportunities but for a cause. They stand for their beliefs and their values, I strongly respect that. I certainly do, too. I'm happy to volunteer for no pay, so I doubt anyone can possibly question that. However, underpaying for labor in a high demand market is a huge risk to the timely success of Foundation projects. The cons comments on Glassdoor.com from both satisfied and unsatisfied Foundation employees explain several reasons why. Yet the money of the donations, which is given for a universal cause, is paying an incredibly tiny subset of humanity with very expensive standards of life. I think that's something pertinent to consider given the topic. Don't forget where the money is coming from. 89% of donors visit Wikipedia several times per week and 40% of them visit at least once a day,[1] but only a third have ever edited.[2] 88% of them have a college degree,[3] and more than three quarters work in skilled professions.[4] Their worldwide median income is about USD $75,000 and more than 5% make over $200,000 per year.[5] Does that sound like the kind of people who would want to risk losing talent because their donations were limited to a fundraising goal set based on the blatantly false assertion that we aren't able to raise enough money to pay market rate? Donors' primary concern for the future, far more than any other concerns across all ages, income and education levels and gender, is that volunteers will lose interest causing Wikipedia to become out of date.[6] Sadly, that is exactly the problem we are having.[7] Of all the strategic goals, the number of active editors is the only one not being met.[8] But the Education Program, the most promising in training editors inside the world's colleges and universities, doesn't even have the staff to make sure that their article talk page templates are correctly dated. Someone seriously asked me in private email whether that means they're simply slacking off. No, it does not. Those templates were corrected by staff if they were added with the wrong date back when the Education Program was much smaller, but its staffing levels has fallen far behind the numbers of articles or students participating in it. The Foundation has shown it has the political will to take action to protect the Legal and Office Actions staff from the considerable overhead that SOPA/PIPA would have caused had it become law. Does the Foundation have the will to protect volunteer editors from the deleterious effects of income inequality? Is there any other political action which would truly or more closely be in the interest of our volunteer editors, about a fifth of whom work in or near poverty to contribute to Foundation projects? Given how popular the SOPA/PIPA action was, do we have any reason to believe than editors and the public would not overwhelmingly support such an action in support of income equality? I intend to find out. ... it would be irresponsible of us to try to keep up with the average Tech company, as James Salsman had suggested. Leslie, the most frequent cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. is unanticipated medical expenses. If one of your family members faced such unanticipated expenses, and you realized you could save them from bankruptcy and perhaps even save their life by leaving the Foundation and taking a job at market rate, would that not tend to sway your idealism? Since any of your colleagues could face the same circumstances, is it therefore not irresponsible instead to fail to meet or exceed the local market rate for technical labor? By the way, less than 10% of the volunteer-contributed appeal messaging submissions from the 2010 fundraiser have ever been tested, and those that were form a lognormal distribution suggesting that we could be raising about 2.5 times as much as the best performing banner from December, if the appeal statement in its third sentence were replaced with the best performing result of multivariate testing of those alternate appeal statements. All of the foreign language testing from this and previous years shows that the best performance in English produces the best performance in other languages, usually by about the same margin. Therefore, performing a multivariate test to optimize the banners and then translating the top performing resulting messages would not place any more of a burden on translators than using A/B testing to derive a much more poorly performing local optimum and then translating that. Sincerely, James Salsman [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:2010_Donor_survey_report_excerpts.pdfpage=8 [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:2010_Donor_survey_report_excerpts.pdfpage=9 [3]
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
2013/1/3 Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org: On 03/01/13 16:09, George Herbert wrote: Laugh all you want, but the best man at my wedding's scalable P2P in the cloud company was acquired by Adobe, then he was poached by Skype who were poached by Microsoft, and now he's a Very Senior Architect spending most of his time flying around the world to far-flung offices, architecting and implementing scalable P2P in the cloud. Flying sucks. Time spent flying should be a measure of failure, not success. Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to deny the existence of petabyte-sized data sets, or to deny that some organisations derive value from being able to pass them through CPUs in a reasonable amount of time. I merely question the value of a mailing list post that says hey, big data, we should do that. Which is not, as far as I understood, what Pine said. I read Hey, big data, cool topic, interesting articles for who may be interested follow. No action needed. So what's the point of all this sarcasm? (note: rhetoric question, you should not need to answer this). We all know that our problems lie elsewhere, and as far as I am concerned I think that the topic of Wikimedia and Big Data is only a great opportunity for anyone who is interested. That said, Pine, thank you for the interesting reading. Cristian ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)
On Jan 3, 2013 11:01 AM, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote: On 3 January 2013 06:38, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote: You don't need big data to see what needs to be done. It might help; often it is surprising how statistical analysis can help narrow the focus of such efforts. For example; it is taken as a given that incivility drives away new users, but do we have hard statistical evidence to back that up? We don't even have a proper working definition of civilty, stats of how many times and how early in their editing life someone has been uncivil to would be hard to come by. And if that is a true situation, can we identify specifically what uncivil things are driving the most editors away (rudeness, templating, etc.). Editor retention programmes have some data there. Check wp:wer on en.wiki. how the data for the other projects match up I don't know. Although please lets do it without words like big data, which makes me squirm :P Can we make use of big microdata for future projects? Tom ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
On 3 January 2013 08:08, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Does that sound like the kind of people who would want to risk losing talent because their donations were limited to a fundraising goal set based on the blatantly false assertion that we aren't able to raise enough money to pay market rate? You seem to have a misunderstanding of how employers set salaries. Affordability isn't really a factor (you adjust who you hire and how many people you hire based on affordability, but you can't do much about how much you pay them). As with any procurement, you pay the minimum that is necessary to get what you want. A good employer will include a reasonable level of staff morale as part of what they want, of course. It appears that the Foundation is able to attract and retain the staff they need and keep them happy at current salary levels, so paying any more would be a waste of donor's money. They pay less than other employers, but that's because people value working for a good cause so are happy to work for less. If the Foundation failed to take advantage of that, it wouldn't be making the most efficient use of its funds. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
On 1/3/2013 12:08 AM, James Salsman wrote: Leslie, the most frequent cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. is unanticipated medical expenses. If one of your family members faced such unanticipated expenses, and you realized you could save them from bankruptcy and perhaps even save their life by leaving the Foundation and taking a job at market rate, would that not tend to sway your idealism? Since any of your colleagues could face the same circumstances, is it therefore not irresponsible instead to fail to meet or exceed the local market rate for technical labor? James, if you actually understood the dynamics involved here, you would realize that this random general-interest factoid is more or less irrelevant to your agenda. Paying market rate salaries is not what protects employees from being overwhelmed by medical expenses. The type of long-term or catastrophic medical event that generates a situation like this can outstrip even the most generous salary. What's actually relevant is the scope of medical coverage offered, including for dependents. On that score, as reflected in what Matthew shared earlier, my understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation provides benefits that meet or exceed those of just about any employer it might be competing with. If we are actually losing any employees over this specific reason, I would be very interested to hear about such cases privately to see if we need to change our approach, and I'm sure Sue and Garfield would be as well. (We might very well lose employees dealing with personal scenarios of this nature, but I believe it's more likely to be due to the impact of the situation on their time and energy levels. In that case, we have no option but to acknowledge that they have their priorities in the right order.) --Michael Snow ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation
Garfield Byrd, 26/12/2012 21:30: The annual audit of the Wikimedia Foundation, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 and the corresponding FAQ have been posted on the financial reportshttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports page of the Wikimedia Foundation web site. Please contact me with any questions. Thank you, Garfield. For the sake of comparison, could you explain where the amounts previously under Special event expense are allocated in the 2012 statement? Also, I found it interesting that donations increased by 52 % and operating expenses for fundraising by 41 %. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia Education] Add your resources
For those here interested that are not part of the education list. -- Forwarded message -- From: LiAnna Davis lda...@wikimedia.org Date: Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 3:42 PM Subject: [Wikimedia Education] Add your resources To: educat...@lists.wikimedia.org I've been working on revamping the Resources page in the education portal of the outreach wiki, with the goal of making it a better place for all of us to share help resources across the different programs: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education_Portal/Tips_and_Resources As more and more education programs start around the world, it's even more important to share resources across our countries and languages so that new programs are not reinventing the wheel and are instead building off of what others have already created. With that in mind, I'm encouraging anyone who has created good reference materials for instructors or students participating in an education program to add those resources to the page. All types of references are welcome — brochures, handouts, videos, online trainings, slide decks, etc. I welcome any additions to the page, as well as any feedback or ideas on how to make the page even more useful for all of us! LiAnna -- LiAnna Davis Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager Wikimedia Foundation http://education.wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885 x6649 lda...@wikimedia.org ___ Education mailing list educat...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation
On Jan 3, 2013 6:47 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Also, I found it interesting that donations increased by 52 % and operating expenses for fundraising by 41 %. What did you find interesting about that? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM On 12 November 2012 22:31, Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com wrote: So you're telling me there's files, but you will not import because no one of the Portuguese speakers helped in the cleaning process? Then I'll have to start from scratch (something that already exists), denying the existence of a community and the previous project and I still have to go through various bureaucratic processes, so that maybe one day the project (that already exists) come into existence? More than that, we have to manually import the WikiTravel, and as we have no import tool, we will not be able to bring together the history, so authorship is not properly credited, breaking the license, something which we can not do. Soon, we will have to find a way to give credit to those who wrote, or even write from scratch... so pretty... I really wanted to understand the reason for not bringing all the languages of Wikitravel ... everything was under a free license, it would give a lot more work? More work than the work to make 2000 new articles in pt? Tomorrow I restart the project, and maybe in 6 years it will come to have the 2000 articles again. For today I have to cancel activities for the next semester that could increase project visibility, after all it does not exist . I know that Wikipedia is The priority, but for the love of god! On 12 November 2012 15:33, MF-Warburg mfwarb...@googlemail.com wrote: 2012/11/12 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com Roland Unger, 12/11/2012 07:46: Hi folks, the Wikivoyage e.V. got the xml files of more language versions, I think also for es, fi, hu, ja, pl, pt, ro and zh from user Wrh2. Where are they? Again, please publish them. I can only underline this. It would be quite necessary to know how many pages existed there and how active the project actually was (There is no reason for the language committee to make an exception for all these languages IN BULK if some have actually no current interest from users). The XML dumps can of course be imported to Incubator in the case that an own subdomain is not immediately created. Note that some pages for a wikivoyage in Spanish have already been started on Incubator, as well as this request/discussion: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikivoyage_Spanish Besides, can these old wikis from which the xml files were taken still be accessed? At least it is not http://pt.wikivoyage-old.org/ . But there were no users who helped us to check to contents. https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikivoyage/New_language_**versions https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/New_language_versionsis now on Meta, by the way. https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/New_wikis_importers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_wikis_importers/might/ want to help doing the XML import, depending on how much pre-emptive cleanup is actually needed; you can try asking them. Indeed ;-) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com +55 11 97 97 18 884 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
Great! Osmar Valdebenito G. 2013/1/3 Patricio Lorente patricio.lore...@gmail.com 2013/1/3 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM And also the Spanish Wikivoyage! http://es.wikivoyage.org/wiki/P%C3%A1gina_principal Patricio -- Patricio Lorente Blog: http://www.patriciolorente.com.ar Identi.ca // Twitter: @patriciolorente ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
Uhuu Thank all, thanks awesome!!Hooray!! On 3 January 2013 18:28, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM On 12 November 2012 22:31, Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com wrote: So you're telling me there's files, but you will not import because no one of the Portuguese speakers helped in the cleaning process? Then I'll have to start from scratch (something that already exists), denying the existence of a community and the previous project and I still have to go through various bureaucratic processes, so that maybe one day the project (that already exists) come into existence? More than that, we have to manually import the WikiTravel, and as we have no import tool, we will not be able to bring together the history, so authorship is not properly credited, breaking the license, something which we can not do. Soon, we will have to find a way to give credit to those who wrote, or even write from scratch... so pretty... I really wanted to understand the reason for not bringing all the languages of Wikitravel ... everything was under a free license, it would give a lot more work? More work than the work to make 2000 new articles in pt? Tomorrow I restart the project, and maybe in 6 years it will come to have the 2000 articles again. For today I have to cancel activities for the next semester that could increase project visibility, after all it does not exist . I know that Wikipedia is The priority, but for the love of god! On 12 November 2012 15:33, MF-Warburg mfwarb...@googlemail.com wrote: 2012/11/12 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com Roland Unger, 12/11/2012 07:46: Hi folks, the Wikivoyage e.V. got the xml files of more language versions, I think also for es, fi, hu, ja, pl, pt, ro and zh from user Wrh2. Where are they? Again, please publish them. I can only underline this. It would be quite necessary to know how many pages existed there and how active the project actually was (There is no reason for the language committee to make an exception for all these languages IN BULK if some have actually no current interest from users). The XML dumps can of course be imported to Incubator in the case that an own subdomain is not immediately created. Note that some pages for a wikivoyage in Spanish have already been started on Incubator, as well as this request/discussion: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikivoyage_Spanish Besides, can these old wikis from which the xml files were taken still be accessed? At least it is not http://pt.wikivoyage-old.org/ . But there were no users who helped us to check to contents. https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikivoyage/New_language_**versions https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/New_language_versionsis now on Meta, by the way. https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/New_wikis_importers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_wikis_importers/might/ want to help doing the XML import, depending on how much pre-emptive cleanup is actually needed; you can try asking them. Indeed ;-) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com +55 11 97 97 18 884 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com +55 11 97 97 18 884 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
Awesome, Gerard! Muito obrigada! Happy new year and great guides to Portuguese speaking countries ;-) Oona On 3 January 2013 18:28, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM On 12 November 2012 22:31, Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com wrote: So you're telling me there's files, but you will not import because no one of the Portuguese speakers helped in the cleaning process? Then I'll have to start from scratch (something that already exists), denying the existence of a community and the previous project and I still have to go through various bureaucratic processes, so that maybe one day the project (that already exists) come into existence? More than that, we have to manually import the WikiTravel, and as we have no import tool, we will not be able to bring together the history, so authorship is not properly credited, breaking the license, something which we can not do. Soon, we will have to find a way to give credit to those who wrote, or even write from scratch... so pretty... I really wanted to understand the reason for not bringing all the languages of Wikitravel ... everything was under a free license, it would give a lot more work? More work than the work to make 2000 new articles in pt? Tomorrow I restart the project, and maybe in 6 years it will come to have the 2000 articles again. For today I have to cancel activities for the next semester that could increase project visibility, after all it does not exist . I know that Wikipedia is The priority, but for the love of god! On 12 November 2012 15:33, MF-Warburg mfwarb...@googlemail.com wrote: 2012/11/12 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com Roland Unger, 12/11/2012 07:46: Hi folks, the Wikivoyage e.V. got the xml files of more language versions, I think also for es, fi, hu, ja, pl, pt, ro and zh from user Wrh2. Where are they? Again, please publish them. I can only underline this. It would be quite necessary to know how many pages existed there and how active the project actually was (There is no reason for the language committee to make an exception for all these languages IN BULK if some have actually no current interest from users). The XML dumps can of course be imported to Incubator in the case that an own subdomain is not immediately created. Note that some pages for a wikivoyage in Spanish have already been started on Incubator, as well as this request/discussion: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikivoyage_Spanish Besides, can these old wikis from which the xml files were taken still be accessed? At least it is not http://pt.wikivoyage-old.org/ . But there were no users who helped us to check to contents. https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/Wikivoyage/New_language_**versions https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/New_language_versionsis now on Meta, by the way. https://meta.wikimedia.org/**wiki/New_wikis_importers https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_wikis_importers/might/ want to help doing the XML import, depending on how much pre-emptive cleanup is actually needed; you can try asking them. Indeed ;-) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton rodrigo.argen...@gmail.com +55 11 97 97 18 884 ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
Hoi, I am only the bringer of the good news. I posted this because of the many words we spend on it. It is happily resolved. Thanks, GerardM On 4 January 2013 00:01, Everton Zanella Alvarenga everton...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, Gerard. Thank you. I am sure there were people involved that worked hard to make it happen. The community of Portuguese speakers for sure appreciate these efforts. Tom 2013/1/3 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikivoyage project launch/migration update
Hoi Etienne, Thank you for informing us about the Assamese Wikisource; it is live as well :) A great day :) Thanks, GerardM On 4 January 2013 00:40, Etienne Beaule betie...@bellaliant.net wrote: Everyone forgot the assamese wikisource. On 2013-01-03 19:37, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, I am only the bringer of the good news. I posted this because of the many words we spend on it. It is happily resolved. Thanks, GerardM On 4 January 2013 00:01, Everton Zanella Alvarenga everton...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, Gerard. Thank you. I am sure there were people involved that worked hard to make it happen. The community of Portuguese speakers for sure appreciate these efforts. Tom 2013/1/3 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, The Portuguese Wikivoyage has been created. :) Thanks, GerardM ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 03/01/13 22:46, Martijn Hoekstra wrote: Editor retention programmes have some data there. Check wp:wer on en.wiki. how the data for the other projects match up I don't know. Yes, that page describes the problem in detail. But the suggestions they offer under how you can help are along the same lines as policies that have been in place on Wikipedia since 2002 or earlier. It's been tried, it didn't work. The problem is, some people want to feel powerful more than they want Wikipedia to grow. Or even if they want Wikipedia to grow on a cerebral level, exercising power over another user is immediately pleasurable, and they don't have sufficient impulse control to stop themselves from doing it. 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. There is risk, because the editor population will probably be reduced in the short term, and it's hard to know if it will ever recover. I don't know if there is anyone with the power to save Wikipedia who also has the required courage. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: 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. Right! Because we all know the solution to social problems is oligarchy. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 4 January 2013 00:01, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@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. Right! Because we all know the solution to social problems is oligarchy. Ironically, Steven, there is a lot to be said in favour of oligarchy; it's how most organized groups survive, provided they ensure the few who have authority remain rooted in the larger group. Tim raises many interesting points. It's a difficult problem that has its roots much further back than most us can imagine - remember that early English Wikipedians were largely drawn from either the Usenet, the academic, or the open source/free speech communities, and none of them are particularly noted for their deep-rooted commitment to civil discourse. Newer users learned their wiki-manners from the old hands; certainly many of those who were in positions of authority when I joined in 2005 were not exactly paragons of civility. Back then, though, these behaviours were considered quirky or off-beat, and the individuals considered to have character and guts. To give many of them their due, they managed to get this crazy enterprise off the ground and keep it flying despite the many obstacles that existed. At the same time, many of the processes that were established early on depended on genuine good faith and a touching degree of idealism. Requests for comment were intended to draw in users for additional considered opinions, who had little or no history with the topic (or person) involved. For some time, that worked; however, today's requests for comment almost always wind up with the editors whose opinions had already been expressed repeating the same arguments, few additional uninvolved voices, and often as not the same divergence that existed beforehand. We have been, to some extent, the victims of our own success. We grew exponentially and not organically, and given the roots of our community, the usual group structural forms were eschewed. There was also practically no money for anything for a very long time (our fundraisers now raise as much in a day as they did in the entire year when I first joined up), and very few employees who kept the operation together with shoestrings and sealing wax, while everything else was left to the editorial communities (and the volunteer developer communities) to keep things going. This flattened hierarchy of leadership worked reasonably well with a smaller editorial community that had barely scratched the surface of content creation, but quickly showed itself to be impractical when editors joined in droves - many of them focusing on hand-to-hand combat with vandals. Those who loathed wasting their time cleaning up after vandals were glad to have this newer cadre join them; however, there was a palpable difference in their reason for becoming part of the community, and when the number of highly active contributors more than doubled over a short period of time, it was impossible to provide an effective process to help them learn the technical, policy, and cultural expectations. Efforts to try to remedy some of these issues have been largely unsuccessful, with an overwhelming proliferation of often-conflicting policies that are nearly incomprehensible to the uninitiated, an overabundance of badly written and poorly descriptive templates, and a dependence on automated tools for social interaction. And Tim is right about interpersonal interactions being one of the largest problems on English Wikipedia, although I think it's important to remember that the vast majority poor editorial behaviour never comes to the attention of the broader community. Only a microscopic portion of it ever manages to get as far as a noticeboard, and if it gets there it will almost always be because an experienced user is filing the complaint (most of the time about another experienced user). No, the problems are on user talk pages, and article talk pages - or they're not even discussed, they're just edits that are reverted with snippy edit summaries or no edit summary at all. New editors don't know what BRD means (Bold, Revert, Discuss). I'm not sure Tim's proposal would be the best solution, but I'm very doubtful that the English Wikipedia community is able to pull itself together enough to establish some of the important structures that it needs to continue its growth. We probably *do* need a group with the authority to settle longterm content disputes, another with the authority to harmonize and simplify the policies, and another to improve the enculturation
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On 04/01/13 16:01, Steven Walling wrote: On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote: 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. Right! Because we all know the solution to social problems is oligarchy. The solution for social problems is to have rules and a means to punish people who break them. This is well-established by experimental psychology, see for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2599936/ Oligarchy is not the only way to achieve this, but it is the model typically used in these game theory experiments. So it is hard for me to understand why you think it is ridiculous. Oligarchy is a popular model for the governance of organisations. WMF itself is governed by a Board of Trustees. Nobody seems to think that is ridiculous. I'm not saying that good behaviour on Wikipedia can be enforced by the direct efforts of a governing committee. I am saying that a governing committee could have sufficient resources under its control (case officers, etc.) to effect significant change. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention (was Re: Big data benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices))
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@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
