Hey Pine, Thanks for prod'ing the conversation. See also the discussion about Wikipedia's decreasing adaptability on the Wikimedia analytics mailing list here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/analytics/2014-October/002651.html
IMO, the critical piece of evidence that English Wikipedia is suffering from a lack of adaptive flexibility is the lack of any substantial change to the treatment of newcomers since the massive decline in retention of good-faith newcomers started in 2007[2]. A secondary piece of evidence is the increasing resistance to policy/guideline (formalized norm) changes for all editors, but especially newcomers[3]. We've seen some follow-up work that suggests that Wikipedia's complexity itself is a barrier for new editors[7] and that these issues extend to spaces specifically designed to support newcomers' work[6]. There have been some interesting efforts to address the symptoms of the problem. For example, see WP:Teahouse[4], WP:Snuggle[5] and Onboarding Research[8]. Personally, I think that the way forward is to recognize that *hard problems are hard* because others have tried the easy/intuitive solutions already. I think it is time to dig in and understand the fundamental, socio-technical nature of Wikipedia. To that end, I'm working on building data resources of strategic importance (see [9, 10, 11, 12]). I'm also working towards experimenting with the effects of increased reflexive power by surfacing a value-added measurement service[13]. And of course, I'm advertising our socio-technical problems at research showcase like the one Pine linked and when giving talks (e.g. [14]) so that we can grow our army of wiki researchers. OMG WALL OF REFERENCES: 1. Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., Morgan, J. T., & Riedl, J. (2012). The rise and decline of an open collaboration system: How Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline. *American Behavioral Scientist*, 0002764212469365. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker13rise-preprint.pdf 2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desirable_newcomer_survival_over_time.png from [1] Figure 4, pg. 12 3. Page 17, table 2 and the two pgs preceeding it. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker13rise-preprint.pdf 4. Morgan, J. T., Bouterse, S., Walls, H., & Stierch, S. (2013, February). Tea and sympathy: crafting positive new user experiences on wikipedia. In *Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work* (pp. 839-848). ACM. http://jtmorgan.net/jtmorgan/files/morgan_cscw2013_final.pdf 5. Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., & Terveen, L. G. (2014, April). Snuggle: designing for efficient socialization and ideological critique. In *Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems* (pp. 311-320). ACM. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/Snuggle/halfaker14snuggle-preprint.pdf 6. Schneider, J., Gelley, B. S., & Halfaker, A. (2014, August). Accept, decline, postpone: How newcomer productivity is reduced in English Wikipedia by pre-publication review. In *Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration* (p. 26). ACM. http://cse.poly.edu/~gelley/acceptdecline.pdf 7. Ford, H., & Geiger, R. S. (2012, August). Writing up rather than writing down: Becoming wikipedia literate. In *Proceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration* (p. 16). ACM. http://www.opensym.org/ws2012/p21wikisym2012.pdf 8. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Onboarding_new_Wikipedians 9. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Ideas/MediaWiki_events:_a_generalized_public_event_datasource 10. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Editor_Interaction_Data_Extraction_and_Visualization 11. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Automated_Notability_Detection 12. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service 13. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WikiCredit 14. https://www.si.umich.edu/events/201409/icos-lecture-aaron-halfaker -Aaron On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 1:23 AM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > Both of the presentations at the October Wikimedia Research Showcase were > fascinating and I encourage everyone to watch them [1]. I would like to > continue to discuss the themes from the showcase about Wikipedia's > adaptability, viability, and diversity. > > Aaron's discussion about Wikipedia's ongoing internal adaptations, and > the slowing of those adaptations, reminded me of this statement from MIT > Technology Review in 2013 (and I recommend reading the whole article [2]): > > "The main source of those problems (with Wikipedia) is not mysterious. The > loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, > operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that > deters newcomers who might increase partipcipation in Wikipedia and broaden > its coverage." > > I would like to contrast that vision of Wikipedia with the vision > presented by User:CatherineMunro (formatting tweaks by me), which I re-read > when I need encouragement: > > "THIS IS AN ENCYCLOPEDIA > One gateway > to the wide garden of knowledge, > where lies > The deep rock of our past, > in which we must delve > The well of our future, > The clear water > we must leave untainted > for those who come after us, > The fertile earth, > in which truth may grow > in bright places, > tended by many hands, > And the broad fall of sunshine, > warming our first steps > toward knowing > how much we do not know." > > How can we align ouselves less with the former vision and more with the > latter? [3] > > I hope that we can continue to discuss these themes on the Research > mailing list. Please contribute your thoughts and questions there. > > Regards, > > Pine > > [1] youtube.com/watch?v=-We4GZbH3Iw > > [2] > http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ > > [3] Lest this at first seem to be impossible, I will borrow and tweak a > quote from from George Bernard Shaw and later used by John F. Kennedy: > "Some people see things as they are and say, 'Why?' Let us dream things > that never were and say, 'Why not?'" >
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