Hi everyone, Starting a new thread. I know Sunday evening can be long and uneventful, so I decided to come bearing the gift of a follow-up to my January essay: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now-2-data-strikes-back
I tried to make it shorter... and failed. But this time I crafted a tl;dr, which I'll share here in parts. tl;dr: the situation is worse than what you think, we need to close ranks and make choices and act fast. In January I shared a projection taking into account internet growth against our own trends, and where it was probably leading us. With a "conclusion" that we would probably lose half of our traffic in 3 to 5 years. Good news, I was wrong. Bad news, it will most probably be sooner than that: depending on the assumptions, between 2.3 and 4.4 years. And this doesn't include the worst case scenario with a steep decline acceleration. Back in January I also shared my concern that the readership decline would hit editorship with a lag, and hard. Well, you've guessed it, here it comes. The lag is around one month on casual contributors and eight months on the core, and we're now at almost a 4% yearly decrease on the most engaged contributors, and between -5% and -11% on the least engaged, under 25 edits a month. So, where does that leave us? Readership decline has crossed -15% year on year. The decline rate has got worse in 28 months out of the last 30. Editorship decline is worsening month over month. And because bad news travels in groups: edit numbers are increasing. Good news? Nope. It means the work not done by the people who moved on is being picked up by the most engaged people in our communities. Which is the recipe for more burnout and more people leaving, creating a very dangerous loop. One would say we already started it. Of course we can wait a few more months to see the data confirm the trends. Sadly, I'm pretty confident, again, it will. All that being said, the question is what we can do. A few things are solely in the hands of the Foundation, and I hope they'll act. But a lot of things are in the hands of everyone else. First, the situation itself. We need to create a shared sense of where we're standing. That's what I'm trying to do with these emails. But more often than not I read people saying "it doesn't matter that we lose readers". Maybe they're right. I think not. But unless we build consent around the situation, everything after that is going to be tough, slow and depleting much needed energy. Because we are lacking any mechanism to create consent, we're scattered around and stretched thin just trying to have discussions. Which leads me to... Second, we need a "place" to build consent. Following a meeting two months ago, I've been working on formalising a "campaign" to test new ways of building that shared picture: Next 25. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Next_25 there is a proposal, a few examples and some data already on the Meta page. The talk pages are there to collaborate and discuss, and the idea is to move away from approve/neutral/oppose and build something richer. In the next few days I'll try to push discussions on some topics to start building that muscle. So, without further ado, three asks: 1. Come and discuss the essay, and share it. We need our local communities to see where we actually stand. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Schiste/what-now-2-data-strikes-back 2. Please discuss and challenge this proposal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Next_25/A_proposal_to_frame_Next_25 Maybe it's the wrong idea, but we need to find a way to discuss better and build shared understanding. 3. If you are trying things, building tools, share them there: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Next_25/Tools_and_experiments And more generally, we need to value and celebrate innovation and exploration. In the essay I share some ideas, some bolder (it's the last part if you want to skip to it) but there are hundreds more. We need better ways to share them, showcase them and test them. We can't continue working in such siloed ways. We need to band together, and we need to make quick, clear choices about what we stop doing, because we can't fight every fight. Otherwise the -4% will turn to -15% very fast, and by then we'll be fighting so many fires that our time and energy won't go into building for tomorrow. That is not the path we're on today. But! It still can be. PS: Last time people reached saying I should have shared ideas and opinions more, now that I did I of course expect people to reach out and say that I shouldn't have shared ideas and opinions :D -- Christophe
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