Dear Kerry, Though the vast majority of my edits are precisely the sort of minor housekeeping edits that you describe, I agree with almost all that you say. But would make three little observations.
1 the solution to the edit conflict problem is to fix the software so we have fewer edit conflicts. It wouldn't be a big change to have the software treat categories and project tags as their own sections and not reject newbies edits as conflicts with the taggers and the categorisers. When you are training newbies you can minimise these problems by getting them to start articles in sandboxes and to create sections. But the solution is to get a high priority for various low priority and won't fix bugs on phabricator that would reduce edit conflicts. For the research community the big opportunity is to do research on edit conflicts, if the research showed that they are as I believe the biggest biter of good faith newbies then there is a good chance that some programming resource could be allocated to them. If the research showed that they are not significant and that projects like AFT, Visual Editor, liquid threads, flow and the media wiki viewer really were a better investment for the WMF than reducing edit conflicts, then I will be astonished, and the WMF somewhat vindicated. 2 don't take the "editors have been in decline since 2006/7" too seriously. These are raw figures on edits, they don't take account of the edit filters which during that era lost us most of our vandalism and with it the vandal reversion, vandal warnings, aiv reports and block messages that were generated in response. Nor do they allow for the migration to wikidata of things like intrawiki links. The truth is I'm pretty sure no-one has meaningful figures for community size in that era. 3 project tagging even for currently dormant projects shouldn't cause edit conflicts on articles as the tags go on talk pages. Whether project tagging has use or not depends on your attitude about the health of the community. If we are experiencing uniform and irreversible decline with a dwindling band of editors who aren't changing their editing interests and no new recruits then I could see the argument that once a wiki project has become moribund it won't revive. If however we are broadly stable but with a steady in flow of new editors, then I would see dormant wiki projects as an opportunity for newish editors to take on a role within the community. Again, somebody could earn a doctorate studying this. Regards Jonathan > On 23 Jun 2015, at 22:44, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raym...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Given what we that active editors have been declining since about 2006, I > have to wonder if a 2015 study would produce very different results from the > earlier period. > > From an entirely anecdotal perspective, I do observe that there is a lot of > “housekeeping” edits that go on. I create a lot of new articles and would > characterise my own editing as writing a lot of new content in new and > existing articles; this is my primary interest. However, I am both amused and > annoyed at the way that within moments of my edit, there can be a rash of > people wanting to add project tags, add esoteric categories that I cannot > imagine being used for navigation by real readers, replace a dash of one > length with a dash of another length, remove the word “comprised” (one of the > most annoying!), and so on. Many of these folks have massive edit counts and > appear (from a quick look at the last screen of recent contributions) to > devote themselves entirely to this kind of editing. Indeed, I go so far as to > say many suffer from editcountitis, a condition that often can be diagnosed > by the User page being largely devoted to reporting on their number of edits J > > IMHO, I would have to say that the value-add of these housekeeping edits is > mixed. Some are genuinely useful (people pick up mistakes I’ve made) or add > categories I am unaware of that are relevant to the topic. Some are useful if > you happen to believe the reader experience is genuinely improved by rigid > adherence the Manual of Style (I would be interested in a study on how > important the consistency of the use of various-length dashes and other MoS > detail is to the reader experience). Some like project tagging appear to be > utterly pointless as most of the projects involved are moribund. Other than > meeting some deep need to “mark your territory” like a dog (or get your edit > count up), what earthly point is there to project tagging unless the project > has some active processes to improve articles? Some are just annoying (like > the user who dislikes the word “comprised”) and many of these people create > edit conflicts for me as I add further content which is ****ing annoying. > Edit conflicts is a particular problem trying to do your second/third edit to > a new article, as new articles attract housekeeping edits like vultures to a > carcass. The folks I particularly despise are the ones who try to add > multiple quality tags or speedy delete a new stub after its first edit (which > is sometimes cut short because I am interrupted – folks, give me 5 minutes > please to come back and do a little more work on it). > > I teach Wikipedia editing (indeed I am off to a local university to do it > this morning) and I see first hand how this kind of housekeeping behaviour is > really disruptive to new contributors (even the more useful and well-intended > housekeeping) because of the edit conflicts it creates. New contributors > spend a long time writing and previewing before SAVE, which is probably a > desirable behaviour if it wasn’t for the housekeepers. Whereas anyone who > studied my patterns of edits would see me saving very frequently, because of > this issue with edit conflicts from the housekeepers. I try to teach people > to SAVE, SAVE, SAVE as often as possible. Having seen the impact of edit > conflicts in edit training sessions where I am there to explain what’s > happening, I suspect that housekeeping edits are probably frightening off or > frustrating away new contributors who don’t have someone leaning over their > shoulder to advise them on dealing with edit conflicts. Because it is quick > and easy to do a housekeeping edit and slow to write good content with > citations, the housekeepers can easily drive away a content contributor. > > Kerry > > From: wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org > [mailto:wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan > Morgan > Sent: Wednesday, 24 June 2015 3:24 AM > To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Aaron Swartz Hypothesis on WikipediaAuthorship > > > On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Finn Årup Nielsen <f...@imm.dtu.dk> wrote: > > One interesting original study is this one: "Creating, Destroying, and > Restoring Value in Wikipedia" from 2007 by > Reid Priedhorsky and others. > http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1316624.1316663 > > > Yes, this is the best study of which I'm aware. > > - J > > > best regards > Finn Årup Nielsen > > > > > On 06/23/2015 04:46 PM, Krzysztof Gajewski wrote: > Hi all, > > I wonder if you know if somebody verified and / or further researched > Aaron Swartz's thesis on structure of Wikipedia participation. You can > find it here: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia > > Best, > Krzysztof Gajewski > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > > -- > Finn Årup Nielsen > http://people.compute.dtu.dk/faan/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l > > > > -- > Jonathan T. Morgan > Senior Design Researcher > Wikimedia Foundation > User:Jmorgan (WMF) > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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