Hoi,
To move the needle on English Wikipedia, the numbers involved are huge. So
at best things change incrementally. What fails most of the research is
that it only considers English WIkipedia whereas changes are much easier on
the smaller projects.
I do go as far that in order to become more inclusive we should stop
focusing on English Wikipedia both in attention, spending and research and
by English. Then again there are too many systemic impediments.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Fri, 21 Sep 2018 at 02:44, Jonathan Morgan <jmor...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> (Re: Jonathan's 'Chilling Effect' theory and Kerry's call for experiments
> to increase gender diversity)
>
> Kerry: In a magic world, where I could experiment with anything I wanted to
> without having to get permission from communities, I would experiment with
> enforceable codes of conduct that covered a wider range of harassing and
> hostile behavior, coupled with robust & confidential incident reporting and
> review tools. But that's not really an 'experiment', that's a whole new
> social/software system.
>
> I actually think we're beyond 'experiments' when it comes to increasing
> gender diversity. There are too many systemic factors working against
> increasing non-male participation. In order to do that you would need to
> increase newcomer retention dramatically, and we can barely move the needle
> there on EnWiki, for both social and technical reasons. But one
> non-technical intervention might be carefully revising and re-scope
> policies like WP:NOTSOCIAL that are often used to arbitrarily and
> aggressively shut down modes of communication, self-expression, and
> collaboration that don't fit so-and-so's idea of what it means to be
> Wikipedian.
>
> Initiatives that start off wiki, like women-oriented edit-a-thons and
> outreach campaigns, are vitally important and could certainly be supported
> better in terms of maintaining a sense of community among participants once
> the event is over and they find they're now stuck alone in hostile
> wiki-territory. But I'm not sure what the best strategy is there, and these
> kind of initiatives are not large-scale enough to make a large overall
> impact on active editor numbers on their own, though they set important
> precedents, create infrastructure, change the conversation, and do lead to
> new editors.
>
> The Community Health
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_health_initiative> team
> just hired a new researcher who has lots of experience in the online
> harassment space. I don't feel comfortable announcing their name yet, since
> they hasn't officially started, but I'll make sure they subscribe to this
> list, and will point out this thread.
>
> Jonathan: This study <https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2145265> is the
> one I cite. There's a more recent--paywalled!--follow up
> <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-015-0573-y> (expansion?)
> that I haven't read yet, but which may provide new insights. And this short
> but powerful enthnographic study
> <https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702514>. And this lab study
> <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216306781> on
> the gendered perceptions of feedback and anonymity. And the--ancient, by
> now--former contributors survey
> <https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results>,
> which IIRC shows that conflict fatigue is a significant reason people
> leave. And of course there's a mountain of credible evidence at this point
> that antisocial behaviors drive away newcomers, irrespective of gender.
>
> Thanks for raising these questions,
>
> - J
>
> On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 3:21 AM, Jonathan Cardy <
> werespielchequ...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Thanks Pine,
> >
> > In case I didn’t make it clear, I am very much of the camp that IP
> editing
> > is our lifeline, the way we recruit new members. If someone isn’t happy
> > with Citizendium et al as tests of that proposition then feel free to
> > propose tests. I am open to being proved wrong if someone doesn’t mind
> > wasting their time checking what seems obvious to me.
> >
> > Just please if you do so make sure you test for the babies that I fear
> > would be thrown out with the bathwater, i.e the goodfaith newbies.
> >
> > I am not short of promising lines of enquiry, and more productive uses of
> > my time. My choice for my time available for such things is which
> promising
> > lines of enquiry to follow, and banning IPs isn’t one if them.
> >
> > One where we might have more agreement is over the default four warnings
> > and a block for vandalism. I think it bonkers that we block edit warrers
> > for a first offence but usually don’t block vandals till a fifth
> offence. I
> > know that the four warnings and a block approach dates back to some of
> the
> > earliest years on Wiki, but I am willing to bet that it wasn’t very
> > scientifically arrived at, and that a study of the various behaviours
> that
> > we treat this way would probably conclude that we could reduce the number
> > of warnings for vandals, whilst we might want a longer dialogue with non
> > neutral editors, copy pasters and those who add unsourced material.
> > Afterall, many of our editors started without getting issues like
> > neutrality, and whilst the few former vandals who we have don’t generally
> > have a grudge that their early vandalism lead to a block, the same isn't
> > always true of others.
> >
> > The other issue that could really use some research is on the chilling
> > effect theory. Here the community is divided, some honestly believe that
> > the high quality work of certain individuals justifies a certain level of
> > snark, even to the point of harassment. Others, including myself, believe
> > that tolerance of bad behaviour drives away some good editors and fails
> to
> > improve the behaviour of some who would comply with stricter civility
> > enforcement. It would be really useful to have a study one could point to
> > when that argument next recurs.
> >
> > Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
> > ________________________________
> > From: Wiki-research-l <wiki-research-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org> on
> > behalf of Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com>
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2018 8:29:32 AM
> > To: Wiki Research-l
> > Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Results from 2018 global Wikimedia survey
> > are published!
> >
> > I'm going to respond to Kerry and Jonathan in two parts of one email.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Hi Kerry, I did not say that transparency should be a free-for-all, and
> > it's important to keep in mind that transparency from my perspective is
> > intended to ensure due process for everyone involved. That includes
> > ensuring that people who are adjudicating cases are not callously
> > dismissing complaints, mistreating people who have been victimized,
> > neglecting evidence, or rushing to conclusions. I would oppose, for
> > example, people who are adjudicating a case deciding to engage in
> > questioning that is completely unnecessary for dealing with the relevant
> > allegations.
> >
> > On a related issue, I don't trust WMF to adjudicate cases or involve
> itself
> > directly in deciding who gets to be on Wikimedia sites or attend
> Wikimedia
> > events; WMF is not the same thing as Wikimedia and I remain deeply
> unhappy
> > with some of WMF's choices over the years and its lack of apology for
> those
> > choices. I would be more trusting of a somewhat less transparent process
> > for adjudicating off-wiki problems if it was led by people who are
> elected
> > from the community, similar to English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee
> > elections. Arbcom is far from perfect, but I have modestly more faith in
> > Arbcom than I do in WMF. On the other hand, arbitrators are volunteers,
> and
> > over the years I have seen more than one instance of arbitrators
> appearing
> > to be stressed; volunteers with high skill levels and good intentions
> are a
> > precious resource, and if one of the outcomes of WMF's strategy process
> is
> > a move toward having a global Arbitration Committee then one of the
> > difficult questions will be how to get an adequate supply of highly
> skilled
> > people with good intentions to volunteer. On a related note, I prefer to
> > avoid identity politics when deciding who should be on arbitration
> > committees; I feel that identity politics are often poisonous and make it
> > very difficult to have civil dialogue. How to balance the virtue of
> > diversity with the virtue of avoiding identity politics is an issue that
> I
> > haven't worked out.
> >
> > We're getting off of the topic of research and into more of a policy
> > discussion, so if you'd like to continue in this topic then I suggest
> doing
> > so on Wikimedia-l or on Meta.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Hi Jonathan, I'd be supportive of running small experiments about
> blocking
> > all IP editors on ENWP and mid-sized Wikipedias to see whether that is a
> > net positive. As you noted, the research would be somewhat complicated
> when
> > keeping in mind that the researchers would want to check for positive and
> > negative side effects, but I think that it would be worth doing. Would
> you
> > like to make a proposal in IdeaLab?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Pine
> > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan T. Morgan
> Senior Design Researcher
> Wikimedia Foundation
> User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
