Talk:Editor engagement

What about new editor feedback?
Is WP:NEF part of Editor Engagement or WP:E3 or is it something else? Thanks in advance. 64.40.54.164 (talk) 02:41, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It's part of Editor Engagement. Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   03:08, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * . 64.40.54.60 (talk) 05:14, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Should a description and link be added to the project page? Thanks. 64.40.54.60 (talk) 05:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Please, no new toys: just make it simpler and friendlier
There are several obvious reasons for Wikipedia's decline, and obvious things that could be done about it: The complexity of current wikisource scares novices away and makes editing a pain even for seasoned editors. Forums, rules, projects, navboxes, templates, categories, stub tags, editorial tags, and the like only consume an incredible amount of editors'work without providing any significant value to readers. The AfD gang and their notability rules must be the leading cause of editor loss. Fancier feedback tools and new discussion forums will not solve the "oh @#$!" problem. The last thing that editors (new or old) need is more complexity and more distraction. Wikipedia needs the courage to cut its useless bells and whistles, and its notorious cancers, even if they are someone's pet project. Good luck, and all the best. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:27, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Make it simpler!
 * Delete all rule and standards pages. Keep only the five pillars and the advice "look at other good articles and try to imitate them".
 * Kill all Wikipedia Projects and delete their templates from the talk pages.
 * Delete all article-side editorial tags ("unreferenced", "orphan", etc.).
 * Lower the formatting standards (no nbsps, en-dashes, em-dashes, etc.).
 * Turn each navbox into a "List of" article and delete all navboxes.
 * Turn each category into a "List of" article and get rid of the category system.
 * Hard-substitute and delete all cosmetic formatting templates.
 * Hard-substitute all templates and get rid of them.
 * Find a way to move stuff out of the source text.
 * Move the infobox source to the end of the article's source text.
 * Use a notation for tables that any editor can understand on sight.
 * Get rid of all stub tags.
 * Get rid of the article evaluation machinery.
 * Get rid of those useless "rate this page" boxes.
 * Ban user-created templates.
 * Automatically provide a "==References==" section when there are refs.
 * Make it friendlier!
 * Abolish the "articles for deletion" mechanism.
 * Lower the notability standards.
 * Ban robot-assisted cosmetic editing.
 * State clearly that "uniformity is not a goal".
 * Ban editors who demand that other editors do this or that.
 * Hide the WP bureaucracy as much as possible.

New suggestion related to doodle at google.
I'm kind of running a tiny project at pt.wikipedia to editor engagement using a template banner similar to a under construction in articles related to the doodle at google. For example, today (24th July) we have Amelia Earhart and we will notice a huge incoming of readers comming to wikipedia to read about her. I think we should take advantage of this and try to catch reader's attention to WP:Welcome or other page. I'm registering my results here if you want to take a look. So far I don't have any improvement in editor engagement but I insist we should try a bit more. For example, Alan Turing's doodle last month had 2 million visits in just one day! OTAVIO1981 (talk) 11:42, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

What if it's not a "problem"?
It seems to me that the "editor engagement" programs may stem from a false premise. What if the graph doesn't show a "problem", as its been labeled, but a natural development of the encyclopedia maturing? There are two gigantic factors at work: the "new and exciting" nature of wikis is gone and the encyclopedia is largely complete. Both factors contribute to fewer editors signing up and fewer editors staying. In other words, the entire line of thinking driving the "editor engagement" programs may be flawed. Wikipedia is not a business. We don't need to think of editors as "customers" we are losing. Yes, we should focus on making editing a pleasant experience and making it easier to edit but this is a totally different point of view. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Not to be too flippant, but there are over a thousand pending Articles for Creation submissions, over fifty thousand biographies of living people that need more references, and over a hundred thousand articles with dead external links. We have an enormous amount of existing content that needs to be improved, maintained, and curated, not to mention new material that needs to be created from scratch (e.g., just look at how many new articles had to be generated during the 2012 Olympics). Our current community is straining to keep up with this workload and is shrinking by the year, while the amount of work continues to increase. Editors are not customers; they're the lifeblood that sustains our project, and right now we're in danger of bleeding out. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I like Jason Quinn's formulation because it reflects my own thinking. I think it only natural that Wikipedia will lose editors because most of the ordinary articles have been created: what's left are often the domain of specialized knowledge which fewer people will have.  Perhaps if one profiled a typical editor from 2005 one might see a high school student, but that, 7 years later, that person is already out of college and possibly pursuing a higher degree in a focused area because their editing interests have changed.  As for Maryana: I've been in groups where the members were split:  some wanted to follow up on the articles to be created, but some wanted nothing to do with that and wanted to create articles from their own interests.  I don't think it's a good incentive to direct people to create articles unless they're interested in doing so. -- kosboot (talk) 18:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Maryana, the numbers aren't "flippant" but by themselves they are sort of meaningless. What should be discussed are ratios of "work"-to-editors which are compared to the past and also to the expected future values. I actually think the numbers you just gave amount to a relatively small amount (about 3 to 5 editor-years' worth) of work compared to the cumulative work already done. And I think the point that backlogs have always been a part of the Wikipedia needs to be made. Regardless of all that, my main point is that the decline in editorship may be a natural phenomena based on the achieved quality of the encyclopedia and the fact that the new car smell is gone. Yes keeping the encyclopedia up-to-date is a challenge. We can agree on that. A corollary of what I am saying is that it it's possible that it may be the natural course of something like Wikipedia to peak in quality and then decline (maybe thereafter hitting some stable level of quality). Another point I am making, sort of implicit, is that if my first point is not realized and understood, it is possible that it could result in editor engagement programs that backfire and cause harm to the quality of the encyclopedia (meaning the that the late-time "stable" level of quality is lower with a particular editor engagement program that ended up being misguided). Everything I am saying here highlights the importance of thinking about editors and quality as a differential system. It must be thought of that way or extrapolations can lead to false conclusions. I share the concerns over editor decline. And even if my hypothesis is true, there may be components of the decline that are more easily reversed than the sociological driving force. For instance, I encourage the research and development of better tools. What I am far more skeptical about are the "social" efforts like moodbars and so forth. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:43, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Complete? Come on, less then 0.1% complete. What % of existing articles are Featured article quality? How many of the 5 millions+ known species in existence have an article, not many; or how about the million plus computer viruses, only a few dozen. Wikipedia is not complete and at the current rate of content adding it won't be complete within a hundred years. Regards, Sun Creator(talk) 18:53, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It's complete in the sense that just about every topic that an average person would look up has a satisfactory amount of information for them. This undermines the willingness of the average person to want to be an editor. They just don't see the need. The fractal "shape" of information will always mean the encyclopedia is incomplete in a literal sense. But that very fractal nature means that it requires more and more specialized knowledge to add to articles. This undermines the ability of the average person to participate. Regarding featured articles. It will never be the case that all articles become featured. Why? Because articles has a tendency to regress after achieving featured status. You are using a very literal sense of the word "complete". I am using a very practical one that considered not only the information content of the encyclopedia but also the nature of information specialization and the sociological forces that drive editors. Not only do I think it is a better point of view but a necessary one so as not to make bad decisions about editor participation. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:44, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I like Jason's ideas. To elaborate on one of them: even if an article gets FA status, to maintain that status, it needs to be consistently updated based on newly published (or newly discovered historical) information. To be sure, the average person is not going to want to touch an article that reaches that status, so again - that becomes the domain of Wikipedians who have specialized knowledge -- not to mention advanced use of all the Wikipedia software and social mechanisms. The social part is what gets me: To a large extent, Wikipedia  really is a social network (in contradistiction to what is said on WP:NOT), and that one has to be familiar with the social ettiquette in order to contribute effectively and efficiently.  -- kosboot (talk) 16:54, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The role of appreciation and community
For editors to stay, they need to have the feeling that their contributions are appreciated. In the early days new articles were rarely deleted outright, however crappy they were even by the much lower standards of those days. Others would jump in, improve style, spelling and formatting, and add links and references. That gave the contributor the rewarding feeling that their contribution had been accepted and adopted by the community as something adding value to the project, and created the motivation to stay and contribute more.

Nowadays, things have changed. Many articles created by new editors are summarily deleted or nominated for deletion, often within minutes after the initial submission, while the newbie is clearly still labouring to improve their newly created article. This sends a message: "We don't need your shit here!" Surely, the new editor will then have an Oh shit reaction, and not one of Oh well, next time better. There won't be a next time.

Another issue. I don't have any data on this, just a feeling, but my feeling is that the sense of us all forming one community with a shared goal is much less. The general level of unfriendliness and incivility has increased, and more personal attacks that would not have been condoned earlier now fall below the NPA radar. That tends to drive some people away, and the fewer people who care about the level of unfriendliness remain, the more it will increase: this is a vicious circle. And even if you're not immediately driven out, it is discouraging. Women are, on the whole, more likely to be discouraged by this than men.

Has any research been done on this? I shouldn't be surprised if these two issues go a long way to explaining the declining editor retention. --Lambiam 20:57, 25 August 2012 (UTC)