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A look back...

We all know Dennis Brown is on a break from Wikipedia. As this project (which he started) enters its 5th month, I thought it might serve us to look back at some of his comments in the very earliest days.```Buster Seven Talk 17:51, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

  • There are a number of people who do think that admins are part of the problem, and the perception alone is part of the problem. Often problems are due to a lack of clarity in policies, leading to inconsistent results from admins, meaning we need to clarify the policies. As I stated early on, my goal is to get other admins like myself to join and bridge some of the misunderstandings. This should be a solutions based project, and bashing wouldn't be tolerated. I've tried to make that clear from the start, this is about positive changes, not a place to point fingers. At the same time, you have to acknowledge that frustration with admins IS one problem and where we can find solutions, like better engagement and policy clarification, we should seek to do so. The goal of retaining quality editors should encompass all methods toward this goal. Seeking out quality editors that never get noticed and finding ways to reward them is another, as encouragement is a beneficial tool in retention. And there are hundreds of great ideas out there that I've never thought of, but at least we can have one place to discuss them. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 12:18, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for posting this, Buster. It serves as a strong reminder that WER is not only about encouraging editors to stay with Wikipedia, and to do so in keeping with in the Wikipedia:Five pillars, but also includes admins in its remit. Whether or not they have actually handed their tools in, the past 13 months have seen an unprecedented number of our most active and fair admins retiring, or gong into semi-retirement, or announcing they will severley limit their sysop duties. Some of them have done this so quietly that it has gone almost unnoticed, while others have made their intentions plain. A few have mentioned real life commitments as their reasons, while some have simply got fed up of the reputation they have to carry for that small minority of sysops who abuse the the system.
I can assure everyone that it's no fun whatsoever being one of the 20 - 30 'front line' admins. Every word we utter is jumped upon by the anti-admin brigade and analysed for possible hidden agenda, rhetoric, and semantics. Thus, we are suffering from significant admin burn out. Anyone who is really interested in knowing more, is strongly encouraged to take a look at the recent discussions on the not yet archived page of WT:RfA. Draw your own conclusions, but it would be nice to hear an occasional good word for the majority of admins who are active, simply do their job in good faith, and do not deserve to be taintned with the constant innuendos. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:01, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
A few nice words for most admins are followed by some very harsh words for those who foolishly condemn admins in general. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:29, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Anti-admin brigade

User:Kudpung refers to the anti-admin brigade. I agree that there is such a group. I would add that they are, in the long run, possibly the single major enemy of new editor retention, although they do not understand, and mean well, but are harmful, sometimes deeply harmful. They typically overlap with the class of habitually uncivil editors who have reputations as "excellent content creators", both of whom contribute to the idea that there is a fundamental conflict between "content editors" and "form editors" (actually process editors) and that admins as a class are enemies of content creators. The problem is that the anti-admin brigade weaken the ability of admins to deal with incivility by "content creators", and the resulting climate in which newbies are habitually bitten prevents retention of new editors. I do want to see retention of newbies. I do want to see retention of good admins. I will shed no tears if uncivil editors go away, even if they are "excellent content creators". (However, I don't see that they are likely to go away on anything less than an ArbCom ban. I even see that one editor who was known both as one of our best "excellent content creators" and was one of the most uncivil editors ever is trying to mastermind the election of the new ArbCom from behind a ban by the current ArbCom.) Just a few thoughts. The anti-admin brigade think that they are fighting for freedom in Wikipedia, but they are fighting for anarchy, and Wikipedia cannot be anarchy. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If you do more work actually building the encyclopedia, Robert, instead of endlessly attacking those that do and ingratiating yourself with those in power, you will cease being so complacent and realise that all is not well in the kingdom of Wikipedia`. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Very, very, very well said. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 17:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
How nice to lump those who may disagree with you on an issue into a "brigade." Perhaps we should have the "no big deal" brigade, the "wannabe" brigade, the "enemies of the state" brigade, and a few others to round things out. It's worth considering that there are simply some "bitey" people on wikipedia. Some of them are content creators, while others are admins. Attempting to shovel all the place's problems onto one theoretical group of people does no one any favors and could be considered quite uncivil in itself, as you've just created a handy label to dismiss criticism. Intothatdarkness 19:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
It is perfectly fine to disagree with an admin action. However, there are far too many people who seem unable to do so without expressing a condescending, dismissive attitude towards those they disagree with. Robert was correct in what he said. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 19:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
People like Robert, with his muddle-headed "anti-admin brigade" nonsense do you mean? Eric Corbett 19:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Your response is exactly what I'm talking about. It's one thing to disagree. It's another thing to disrespect, which is exactly what you did. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 20:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. I suggest you read what Intothatdarkness wrote again. Eric Corbett 20:12, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I did read what both of you wrote and I disagree with it. That doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. It means that I'm thinking for myself. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 20:17, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Or more likely that you're not thinking at all. Eric Corbett 20:20, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
If baiting is such a heinous crime when others do it to you, why are you doing it to me? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 20:24, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) And ASO, it's worth pointing out that lumping people who disagree into a discrete group like Robert's comment appears to is also disrespectful and dismissive. I've also had the same thought when it comes to the original coiner of the term. Intothatdarkness 20:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
ASO, everyone approaches this place based on their own experiences. What I would prefer is a certain level of fairness. There are individuals on both sides of the discussion who behave badly, and for every content creator you can point out who is uncivil, another person could point to an admin who also exhibited poor behavior. For every claimed unblockable editor produced, an untouchable admin could be located. Both groups are guilty. And both groups contain individuals who will never be held accountable for their transgressions. It's compounded when some of those individuals hold positions of trust and authority (either granted by Admin status or held through achievement as content creators). Your assumption that blame resides only on one side is both disrespectful and dismissive. If there is in fact blame, there's more than enough to go around. Intothatdarkness 20:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't believe that there is only blame on one side. However, my biggest problem is with content creators who feel entitled to act however they please simply because they have more GAs and FAs than the next person. You can see directly above that one of our most accomplished writers has no trouble talking down to me as if I'm a peasant. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 20:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
What's becoming very clear is that you can't see beyond the end of your nose. Eric Corbett 21:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
And why is that so clear? Because I disagree with you? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 21:34, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Because you're talking brown-nosing bollocks. Eric Corbett 21:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Apparently you're not going to give me a straight answer. Eric, considering that you are one of our best writers, it seems a little strange that you have to resort to borderline attacks instead of rationally explaining your position. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 21:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
After a while it becomes rather tedious having to repeatedly explain my position to a bunch of clots who apparently are so short of brain cells they have to share them. Eric Corbett 22:01, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, you won't change very many opinions when you aren't even willing to explain your position. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 16:49, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, this thread looks like another big win for editor retention. Go team! -- Khazar2 (talk) 21:24, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure some Admins would categorise me in the anti-Admin brigade. Some wouldn't. And that's a small indication of our problem. Up at the top Robert McClenon says "The anti-admin brigade think that they are fighting for freedom in Wikipedia, but they are fighting for anarchy, and Wikipedia cannot be anarchy." But where, really, is the anarchy? I was recently taken to AN/I for something I did wrong. No need to go into details, except to say that after a very long (ridiculously long, IMHO), drawn out discussion, I copped a consequence, but I'm back here, the person who took me to AN/I isn't, and someone else copped some solid warnings. One very obvious reason for the drawn out discussion was that several Admins were aggressively arguing among themselves about what policies really mean, and what to do about us. Some unilateral actions were taken, tending to be at the extremes of options available at the time. Admin decisions were overturned by other Admins. In summary, it looked like very much like anarchy. Even after the discussion I have no clear idea of what the Admin "community" thinks on the matters that were discussed. Or more accurately, my impression is that we don't have an "Admin community". We have a bunch of people with special powers who cannot agree on what our policies really are, so who go merrily along applying their own biases willy-nilly. Perhaps not quite anarchy, but.... HiLo48 (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Unsurprisingly, I agree entirely with Robert McClenon. That group certainly exists, whatever term is used for it. Good faith prevents listing the names, but those whom the caps fits will wear it. What I would prefer is a "certain level of fairness" without the perpetual taring of all admins with the same brush even if some could do with getting rid of, and I fail to understand why the topic cannot be discussed without resorting to expletives, incivility and personal attacks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
There are concerned content builders, such as myself, who want to see a better admin system. That is the opposite to the inflammatory and divisive fantasy conjured up in this thread by people who should know better. If you want respect from content builders Strikeout, you could start by showing respect yourself. I invite you, Kudpung, to list the content builders who are responsible for the "perpetual taring of all admins with the same brush". I am not aware of any regular participants on pages like this one who fall into anything like that category. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
So what's this then: The current admins as a group will never voluntarily release their grip on the levers of power.? (emphasis mine). Or was it written by someone else using your account? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:44, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Is English not your first language Kudpung? "As a group" is not a statement about individual behaviour, it is a statement about collective behaviour. To say that current admins as a group will not voluntarily release their grip on the levers of power is a simple statement of fact. We have seen, repeating ad nauseum, that admins and their retinues always block attempts at significant reform. That does not mean that all admins are like that, and I could happily name some who aren't. Your assertion that this is a "perpetual taring of all admins with the same brush" is ridiculous nonsense, and you owe me an apology. Or was the assertion written by someone else using your account? --Epipelagic (talk) 10:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, to start with, how many admins are better "content builders" than you are? And how many are worse content builders? Lat us say in terms of the share of edits in the mainspace? Or the total number of edits in the mainspace? Or in any other metric? May be we should have this statistics first before actually writing smth about "content builders vs admins"?--Ymblanter (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
No doubt you are a very good content builder Ymblanter. But what relevance does that have to this discussion? Plenty of admins are also content builders and some of them are very good content builders. --Epipelagic (talk) 11:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
I just believe that if we want to discuss the problem in terms "admins against content builders", the first thing is to make sure that these are two different categories of users. I actually believe (I do not have the statistics either) that this is not the case, and that, given recent retirements and activity desysops vs new admin elections, becomes less and less the case. If I am right, then it would be at best "some admins against some content builders", and this is a completely different story, which sounds much less appealing.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:39, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't think it helps to represent the issues as conflicts between admins and content builders, though that is often a consequence of the issues. The issues are straightforward and could be easily resolved if there were a will. Some examples are:
1. There are a huge number of of current admins, appointed for life even though many are minimally active. A high proportion were appointed back in the days when they had to do little more than ask. Quite a lot were schoolboys.
2. This huge body of admins are individually allowed to roll their own decisions, pretty much at whim; there is little centralised control. This is the anarchic element that has been commented on above.
3. Admins have little guidance to help them know why they are here; there is nothing like a mission statement or constitution.
4. Admins are not held to the same standards as content builders; they know they have a free pass. No admin has ever been desopped for being uncivil to content builders.
5. More and more bits have been made available to admins. Particular bits are not handed over to individuals who are qualified or motivated to use them. Instead, the whole bag of bits is handed over to every admin, whether they need them or not. An admin who does vandal patrols and never develops content can block vandals. But he can also block productive content builders.
However there is little point discussing such matters. There have been many discussions in the past, but the admin corp, as a group, is not interested in changing anything. Why should they? There are so many of them that they control their own terms. It is the people who come here to build the encylopedia and don't want to be admins that get the raw deal. --Epipelagic (talk) 13:09, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
1. is a pretty much no issue, since administrators who are inactive do not do any harm. It would be of course nicer if they get desysopped sooner, but as far as they do exactly nothing they are not a problem. If, in contrast, someone does nothing but pops up every time drama is coming, to enhance drama - they should be desysopped via arbcom, but I am not immediately aware of any such cases. (When I was still active in Russian Wikipedia, we had one administrator who did not edit pages and also did not help with any cleanup, and could not edit for a month, but was very quick if drama was coming. In the end, he was topic-banned from the Wikipedia namespace, but unfortunately later the ban was lifted since the arbcom decided no topic ban would prevent him from increasing drama).
2: I am not aware of any attempts to introduce any centralized control except for usual requirements that everybody should obey the policies, and I am not sure such control is needed at the moment - but try and suggest smth, may be the suggestion will be clever, then I would be happy to support it.
3: mission statement of what? We have a mission statement of the movement, or, for that matter, of Wikipedia, as I write this, I can easily read it in the top left corner of my screen. We have the Five Pillars. For the rest, see my response to 2.
4: Well, in the section above I see a content builder who is not blocked at the moment - though I would probably be blocked for incivility if I decide to express myself in the same words. Seriously, this was discussed at length couple of days ago, and you adopted a very nice position: for really desysopped admins, you insist that they were not desysopped for blocking content builders, but for smth else. Well, if you are waiting for the arbcom decision "Admin A is desysopped for blocking content builder B" - for the next elections I would vote against all standing arbitrators, since such decision, worded in this way, would be a gross breach of the Pillars.
5: I personally do not care, and there are bits I would probably never use, but the community (note: not the admin cabal, but the community) consistently votes the proposals to split the toolbox down. May be if you make a good suggestion, it will be accepted at a RfC, but so far nobody was able to after the introduction of rollback.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
There seems little point repeating key points only to see them mangled, misinterpreted and ignored in this intrinsically irrational context (not by you Ymblanter). However I'll continue for a bit. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of adding line breaks to your responses so it is easier to see which point is being addressed.
1. I didn't refer to administrators who are inactive. I referred to administrators who are minimally active. To that group could be added the large group of admins who make minimal use of their admin tools. We have way over a thousand admins including this huge group of minimally active admins. This group is particularly problematic. Many of them do not kept pace with current practice, but emerge at random to make an unjust block on a valuable content builder or to vote inappropriately on a policy issue. It has frequently been stated on this and similar pages that there are only about 30 admins who carry out most of the core admin functions on Wikipedia. The minimally active legacy admins are a costly and unnecessary ornament to Wikipedia, because at crunch time it is these admins who emerge to vote down any proposal which might limit or control the powers and privileges of being an admin. This group sits at the heart of the current systemic dysfunction.
2. I don't think centralised control is important except when it comes to the discipline of content builders. That is a specialised area, and needs a specialised panel of admins. As it is, hundreds of loose cannon admins act independently and often capriciously.
3. Yes, there is a brief mission statement for Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". I was referring to something like a mission statement for admins, perhaps something like "administrators facilitate content building on Wikipedia". Or better, a constitution or guiding document which sets out the rights and relationship between content builders and their governance.
4. I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you are saying here. I certainly think content builders should be sanctioned, maybe even blocked if they are persistently and grossly uncivil. Admins should be held to similar standards. They are not. (And, going back to an earlier point, content editors should disciplined by a special disciplinary panel, and not be repeatedly blocked by loose cannon admins as the user you seem to be referring to was).
5. It is another core myth that these are "community" decisions, representative of community feeling. These votes occur on various drama boards where the outcomes are controlled by the huge group of legacy admins and other inhabitants of the drama boards such the admin wannabes. These are not boards that most productive content builders inhabit. Whenever a key motion looks like it might be getting traction, more and more admins appear out of woodwork until the motion is defeated. This is why in the history of Wikipedia there has never been a move that limited the powers of admins. Only moves that further enhance their powers.
It is not only content editors who suffer and leave because of this fraught and unjust regime. Some of the best admins also suffer and leave rather than carry the burden of this dysfunctional system. --Epipelagic (talk) 22:48, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Epipelagic, we do have a mission-statement for admins. If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. Are you looking for a motto, something like "to serve and to protect wikipedia and her editors"? That I'm in favor of. But it should apply broadly, to anybody using wiki-tools like Huggle/STiki/AfC/Rollback/Twinkle/etc (not just to post-RfA-admins but also to pre-RfA-admins in other words). If you want to stop injustice to content-creators, then I suggest we formulate the Editor Bill Of Rights, centered around the quaint but effective slogan of "liberty and justice for all". Any group of twelve local editors -- specifically discounting WP:PUPPETs of course -- ought to be able to overturn a block, for instance. That's community consensus, eh? Hope this helps, thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:26, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. It is rare indeed on pages like this one for an editor to respond coherently to constructive criticism of the admin system. I didn't begin discussing solutions here, though for the most part they are as straightforward and obvious as the problems. But it's a waste of time discussing solutions when there is such adamant refusal to acknowledge the problems. --Epipelagic (talk) 20:18, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Whilst I disagree with most of your analysis of the problem and potential solutions Epipelagic, one possible reform that we might both support would be to upbundle certain powers from the admins to the crats. In particular I would suggest the blocking and unblocking of "the regulars" should be made a crat matter. If admin accounts could only unblock or block accounts with fewer than 100 edits and IPs then we would have decoupled adminship from supervising "content builders" so hopefully there would be less pressure to further reduce our pool of admins, and we might get better decisions about the blocking and unblocking of the regulars. This is a solution that could work both for those of us who see the main problem as our declining number of admins and those like you who don't trust most admins to block regulars. ϢereSpielChequers 21:15, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
You say vaguely that you disagree with most of the above issues (there was no discussion of solutions), but you do not say with what you disagree or why. That is a typical admin response, pretending the issues are not there. You draw a contrast by referring to those who see "the main problem as our declining number of admins". That is inside out. There are far far too many admins, most of them underqualified or largely inactive. You say yourself that a very small number of admins do most of the heavy work. We need a lot less admins, but better admins appointed to more specialised tasks and removed when they don't perform. Admins as a group refuse to be held accountable, and adding more numbers to the already bloated admins corps is just going to aggravate things. However, your suggestion of refurbishing the crat system so it functions as a disciplinary board for both admins and content builders would be a significant step in the right direction. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:11, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
My "certain level of fairness" goes both ways, Kudpung. Your apparent willingness to lump all those who have concerns about the conduct of certain admins into a group of some sort does seem to go against that level of fairness. HiLo48 touches on one of the root issues with this...lack of agreement on what policies really are. The anarchy resides within the system itself. Intothatdarkness 22:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, there may be some cliques and cabals at work here and there, but generally speaking, I would have to agree with some of the observations made by HiLo48. There has been some arbitrariness in the execution of authority in conduct dispute resolution processes I've been a party to that convinces me that content policy as a whole is in need of some fine tuning with the aim of clarifying its application. Many conduct disputes I've seen have arisen due to lax or inept enforcement of content policies. If admins are not solid content editors, then maybe a less than thorough comprehension of how policy works in practice contributes to a lot of the unsatisfactory outcomes and time wasting in those processes.
Editors that show up wanting to contribute content do not want to be hassled with such bureaucratic conundrums.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 11:30, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Admins represent the tools they use, therefore any time the tools are misused, or the tools act in a way that discourages editors and editor retention the blame falls on the body of Admins. This is a particular problem because there are a lot of systemic problems with wikipedia. Dispute resolution for instance is simply broken, and rife with tool abuse. While biting new editors is a problem, biting any editor harms editor retention. And there are other problems. Another example is sourcing. I've been involved in source disputes that were frankly ridiculous. An encyclopedia, by it's nature covers the niches, and while editing an article on something as niche as the casio g-shock watch, a possessive editor would revert anything not sourced by something published in print, at the reliable source noticeboard I was advised not to source from reputable watch sources, but instead a menshealth magazine that has about as much fact checking and oversight as a four year old's crayon diary over reputable watch resources. I argued that the day's featured article had more sources from blogs, and personal websites than it did from anything else, but a C class article I was trying to improve was being held to higher standards than formally reviewed featured articles. While wikipedia is suffering grievously from systemic problems, people seem to be obsessing over snake oil cures that absorb enormous resources while having no measured effect. I don't think the solution is to brand a group as the "anti-admin brigade", and scapegoat them when that just causes more acrimony and infighting rather than making any positive contribution to editor retention.TeeTylerToe (talk) 12:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that labeling people rarely helps, aside from possibly leading individual editors to rethink their own motivation now and then. My personal take on adding sources is that reference to a blog or personal web site, as long as it doesn't have obvious NPOV problems, is better than no sources at all, because the information may help an editor interested in improving the referencing to find a better source. For example, a blog entry may refer to a news report that's not on line. While still calling for better sourcing, I wouldn't remove it or the facts that it supports unless it was controversial or doubtful.

I am interested in the statements by Epipelagic above about the large numbers of admins, who may be fairly inactive or may have been appointed "for life" when admission was easier. Since WP is generally very democratic, why not have all admins resign and re-apply for their positions every two years? There has to be a way of reviewing people who have been given dictatorial powers. --Greenmaven (talk) 03:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Observations

1. Could less users (since 2007) be a positive thing for the quality of Wikipedia? 67.252.103.23 (talk) 19:03, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

  • The fact that there are fewer editors than before can be attributed to a number of things. First, a lot of easy and obvious topics already have good articles, so a lot of new arrivals want to put up material on COI or niche topics and it's harder to get these accepted. Secondly, people who want to put material on the internet have so many more choices these days, with social media sites and specialized wikis, etc. Thirdly, a large percentage of the early users appear to have been students, and after graduation no doubt many just found themselves busy with new jobs and young families. A smaller (but still very numerous) set of experienced editors can still get a lot done. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
I think that 67's question is, whether WP:RETENTION makes any sense whatsoever, as a project. Everybody knows that editor-count is declining. It just fell below 30k on enWiki,[1] for the first time in ages. On the face of it, having 60k editors would be categorically better for wikipedia than having 30k, right? But the assumption is, that the new-30k, would be some kind of value-add, compared to what the old-30k could accomplish all by themselves.
  You can see that at some point *adding* people would screw up wikipedia. What if all seven billion people could edit wikipedia... and did? Newborns would be entering gibberish, rolling around on the keyboards. Well, uh, the same can be said for a bunch of the not-so-newborns, truth be told. Wikipedians are a cut above average. If we had seven billion editors, the average editor would *be* dead average, and arguably that global average is too low for wikipedia to function.
  So the question is, although we are losing in quantity, are we effectively *gaining* in quality? No more Dennis Brown, which is bad. But maybe, if at the same time Dennis left, five bottom-of-the-wiki-barrel editors *also* left, the net change in the dynamic value-of-the-average-wikipedian actually could have increased that day. To me though, 67's question is rhetorical... clearly we are getting close to the point where overwhelming pressures of the AfC queue, the vandal-fighting burden, and the dearth of RfAs will paint us into a corner, and we'll have to sell out to the PR firms or to Google or the NSA or whatever just to keep the server-farm online. But at least theoretically,[2] *somebody* must be okay with the declining number of active editors... otherwise, there would be more folks taking action to fix things, right? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
I have never understood the concerns about the decline in absolute editor numbers. Anne Delong names (above) exactly what the probable causes are. I also wonder what is gained by focussing (in this project) on retaining editors with almost no WP experience. I agree that the WP:TEAHOUSE (see below) has been a huge step forward in looking after new editors and encouraging them to stay. It takes some persistence, durability and patience to develop into a good WP editor. Therefore, I have never thought that the 'barriers to entry' are too high for the kind of new editors that WP needs. We need all sorts of statistics, metrics and research into what defines a 'good editor', some measures of quality. --Greenmaven (talk) 06:07, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Greenmaven, I have the opposite problem; when I finally became clueful about the fact that editor-count has been steadily declining, I was both flabbergasted and horrified. Those emotions have only increased, once I found out that the raison d'etre of WP:RETENTION was not to reverse the downward trend, at all, but rather, merely to make sure that the folks who leave aren't Good Eggs, such as Dennis. Spam is on the rise. COI is on the rise. Wiki-PR is just a symptom; the real problem is the *established* marketing and advertising firms, not the ultra-niche-startups. Even good old visigoth attacks are on the rise. We have hundreds of millions of unique readers, each and every month -- and growing!
  But the core, central, fundamental problem is merely a personnel shortage. We have fewer and fewer people to respond. Those that remain, and respond, are too busy-busy to beat around the bush. Template-spam, template-spam, perma-ban. Of course, such draconian tactics drive away beginners... which means, we have no fresh-faced reinforcements arriving. Define irony. Why do you not believe that fewer active editors, over time, is guaranteed to be a mortal illness? Sooner or later, wikipedians will not be able to maintain wikipedia... and we will have to sell out, either getting absorbed by WP:GOOG, selling data on the readership to the highest bidder, or accepting 'donations' from big PR firms, in large brown bags.
  We are not yet to that point, but we have somewhere between two and five years before it seems inevitable, by my back-of-the-envelope calculations. Less, if the WMF keeps forcing things like WP:FLOW down our throats, driving away editors by royal fiat. I'm frankly quite terrified; where does your serenity come from, and can I share it?   :-/    74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:12, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
my serenity (!) comes from knowing that natural systems, such as WP, do not maintain linear trends for very long. The rate of decline in editor numbers will change at some point. I am confident that the change will be a plateauing out. I would be very interested to see a graph of new article creation against editor numbers. I think there was a feeding frenzy of new article creation 2003-2007. After that, the work of maintenance and quality improvement becomes less interesting to many editors. It is a buzz to create a new article, isn't it? BTW, I think fundraising was very successful this year and there is no immediate threat to WPs independence. Thanks for alerting me to WP:FLOW. I am going to check it out now. --Greenmaven (talk) 22:22, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

2. Are anonymous (IP address) contributors given enough credit (considering they contribute about 35% of non-vandalism posts? (For example, there is no WikiProject dedicated to IP address editors...) 67.252.103.23 (talk) 19:03, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Hmmm... editors who want to remain anonymous, and yet wish to be recognized.... There is no Wikiproject for logged in users, either. If there were to be a Wikiproject IP, it would have to be set up by logged in users, and wouldn't have any "members", but it could host discussions and post notices. Maybe a simpler idea would be to have an IP editors' notice board with an accompanying talk page. Can you suggest topics that would be of interest only to IPs? There are a number of policy pages and essays about IP editors; maybe that would be a good place to collect links to them for convenient access.—Anne Delong (talk) 05:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
90% of IP-editors are beginning-editors, is my hunch, so any project that is devoted to beginning editors is "their" project, by extension. WP:RETENTION is more about retaining high-caste Good Eggs, than retaining first-time-editors. WP:TEAHOUSE is the closest thing we have to a first-time-editor wikiProject, and also is arguably also the closest thing we have to a landing-page for beginners that Kudpung mentioned. Besides those, there are several specific topics that only IP folks will be personally interested in... although some registered pseudonyms might also be disinterestedly-interested (or if you prefer long-term-view-self-interested since most editors start out as IPs and thus wikipedia's long-term future hinges on how we treat IPs).
  1. creation of watchlist-tools that don't require one to register
  2. edit filters that only apply to IPs (the vast majority methinks)
  3. bots that only apply to IPs (about half methinks)
  4. mediawiki abuse extentions that only apply to IPs (the vast majority methinks)
  5. reducing the number of articles which are semi-protected (applies specifically to IPs)
  6. reducing the number of articles which are WP:FLAGGED (applies disproportionately to IPs)
  7. the name "IPs" itself... which in some parts of the wikiverse is a shorthand for "likely vandal"
  8. default behavior of auto-obscuring everbody's IP, without demanding any special per-user actions (register/pickUid/rememberPasswd/etc)
  9. generally, the caste-system mentality that is responsible for most of the decisions above
  10. insert tenth complaint here to achieve round-number :-)
Compare the way that deWiki works, where IPs are completely disallowed, to the way that enWiki used to work, circa 2005. Folks that want to edit, and out of convenience or for some other reason, want to do it from an IP, would prefer enWiki trend back towards classic liberalism, rather than locked-down modernity. The goal of the encyclopedia anyone can edit, tends to directly conflict with the top-ten-list above. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Good points. I may misunderstand something: IPs edit in German, see this, however some of their edits need approval ("Sichten") by a registered user, example. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, all of their edits in the article space need approval over there. This is flagged revisions.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
  • While it's true that there are a large number of IP users who are beginners, a lot of these are here just to make one article or an occasional spelling correction, and many of them either fade away or register an account after a while. However, there is a dedicated group of experienced editors who just prefer for one reason or another to edit using an IP address rather than a username. Maybe this group could benefit from a place to host discussions with other IPs (perhaps about ways to deal with the limitations listed above), a noticeboard for posting information about proposed changes that affect them, etc. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:23, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
  • One thing that was apparent from monitoring the use of Visual Editor when it was enabled for anonymous and new editors was that the IP editors behaved far more like experienced editors than new ones. Experienced accounts and IPs both used the wikitext editor substantially more often than new accounts.—Kww(talk) 00:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Heh heh, I just came over here to say the exact same thing as Kww; I only recently ran across that study from this summer on VizEd "effectiveness" at actually promoting retention, versus the hype that it "ought" to promote retention. There are still a majority (meaning "over half" numerically) of anons which are actual beginners, but the pressure to create an account (social and technological) is so strong here on wikipedia now... and on sites like facebook/gmail/msn/whatever it is of course mandatory... that it seems likely the percentage of unregistered-yet-experienced anons can only go up.
  Anne is correct, however, that in general most beginners come here with a specific purpose in mind: editing one particular article about their favorite movie, for instance, and more commonly, getting their company/band/gramma an article. Those folks are unerringly 'forced' to register an account, to be able to create a new article... after which they immediately get AfD'd, insulted by SineBot, ninja-reverted, and in general driven away (which is only slightly different from fading away due to lack of interest). Methinks it would be *better* if people were encouraged to remain IPs, and stick with AfC, until they fully understood the rules about COI (WP:CORPNAME is a constant problem), about socking (encouraged to create an account? why not create two, especially if you are blocked for some esoteric reason? doh!), and about the five pillars (WP:NPA).
  As for whether there should be a special noticeboard for anons-with-experience, I'm neutral there... kinda doubt such folks need such a thing. However, another thing I just found out is that certain CentralNotice campaigns are kept secret from us poor anons, for instance, the revamp of the trademark policy. And the arbcom elections (not to mention WMF-level votes) are not even advertised to *registered* pseudonyms, which seems pretty nuts to me. If anybody, anon or otherwise, is interested in a CentralNotice client-side-gadget, ping my talkpage. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:12, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

The current "homophobia" discussion at AN over unblock

We could take a look at this to see what effect, if any, it is having on editors leaving the project.--Mark Miller (talk) 01:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I have been following that, but I think that it may be better not to start another discussion about it here until the one at AN has been closed. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:06, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Of course, let me re-phrase that....we should probably think of whether the issue itself is a retention issue. I (of course) see an issue there, but Ross Hill made a great suggestion a moment ago on Jimbo's talk page and wonder now, if that might be something to raise here on this thread. The proposal was an Anti-Discrimination Task Force from WER. Thoughts? (and a thank you to User:Ross Hill)--Mark Miller (talk) 03:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
One question regarding how to implement it effectively, but, otherwise, I like the idea. Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility was also started to help editors who experience (sometimes real) impediments to editing, and it might be useful to contact them to see what if anything they might be able to contribute regarding such matters. John Carter (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
You're welcome Mark ; and please keep me informed if this task force ever gets put into use. Thanks, -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 04:29, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, turning forums such as this one into soapboxes for divisive issues (note the non-NPOV of the title of this section) will certainly affect editor retention, as each "side" strives to "retain" editors supporting its own opinions, and those of us who just want to create and improve articles became less and less comfortable and leave. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Anne. Broadly speaking, it's disappointing how many people use this page for comments like "I think editor retention would be improved by punishing the person/class of people I'm fighting with", and how few of those same editors take time for something as simple as congratulating the project's editor of the week. It's probably time for me to take this noticeboard talk page off my watchlist, actually, because it ironically does more to sour me on Wikipedia than anything else I'm involved in. -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
This isn't a noticeboard.--Mark Miller (talk) 21:43, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I stand corrected. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Regardless of what is or is not discussed about that unfortunate incident, homophobia will not cause editors who have been here a while to leave. They see it for what it is. Those who are new here have, probably, not seen posse behaviour on Wikipedia because they do not get involved in discussions, just with playing with articles. Bureaucracy is, to me, the most disheartening aspect of Wikipedia, which is why I started a thread on our esteemed founder's talk page about it. I choose not to link. If you want to see it you can pop over anyway. Fiddle Faddle 15:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • 'Bad unblock' is an inapropriate assumption and subjective. At the end of the day, the community at ANI decides, and it is well to notice that most of those who !vote or comment at ANI are not even admins. WER does indeed appear to have lost its focus - is that anything to do perhaps with the coincidence that its creator was ekeled away from Wikipedia? I think there is often little to be gained by following threads on the Founders's talk page - I don't even have it on my watch list. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
What's "ekeled"? I concur about WER being distracted, and about not bothering to watchlist Jimbo Wales. --Lexein (talk) 15:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Probably meant "heckeled" but not sure. But yes, WER has lacked focus for some time. I still have the founder's talk page watch listed though (WER founder...well Jimbo's page as well).--Mark Miller (talk) 21:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Food for thought

Here is an interesting article about editor motivations in 'The SignPost': Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-12-04/Recent research. --Greenmaven (talk) 09:03, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Less than optimal?

Lecen has posted a retired banner on his page after this block at Arbitration Enforcement.

After 3 years of conflict over the insertion of non-mainstream sources written by Fascists into Argentine history topics, Lecen recently had an Arbcom ruling in his favor. However, the topic-banned parties requested yet another review of the topic ban, and Lecen posted a comment there saying, "I asked for an interaction ban regarding Marshal and Cambalachero, but since this has direct relation to the ArbCom which we were part of I believe I'm allowed to comment. If not, let me know." While the the policy implications were still under discussion, Cambalachero, one of the parties to the Arbcom case, filed a complaint at AE. It's not clear whether Lecen's participation in the Arbcom discussion would have had any influence in the outcome of the topic ban, but the actions taken in the AE venue, and the subsequent block, certainly undermined the discussion that was still in play at the Arbcom venue.

I'm looking at what WP:BUREAU policy says about errors in procedural requests. It also says: "Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures. Furthermore, policies and guidelines themselves may be changed to reflect evolving consensus." It seems this particular policy discussion was cut short. Is that what is intended by the policy? It would not seem reasonable that someone who is being hounded by POV pushers, to the point where they have had to request an interaction ban, should be excluded from meta-discussions about their restrictions. —Neotarf (talk) 01:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it's fair to assume that Lecen is a mature and responsible individual - he has certaily made excellent contributions to the encyclopedia. However, this is not the first time he has 'Retired'. Without categorising on this instance myself, having briefly followed the links, although admins entitled to carry out an enforcement block, perhaps Arbcom should rule in such cases rather than a unilateral decision by an admin who is not an Arb - but I am not fully conversant with all the policies and guidelines for arbitration cases and their enactments. I'm not sure if WER can do anything about it. As far as I know, the only way towards a solution would be for the aggrieved party to address Arbcom directly through their mailing list if an appeal following WP:AEBLOCK is unsuccessful. As a very last recourse, perhaps a mention on the Founder's talk page would stimulate some feedback, but as I have previously mentioned, that talk page is more of a blog than anything thing else, and Jimbo is very selective about the threads he responds to; understandably so, because his tp is one of the busiesest on Wikipedia, and he also has a very active RL to take care of. In general terms, the issues concerning policy should preferably be discussed on the related policy talk pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:06, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
See my comment at User talk:Lecen. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:34, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Lecen's comment at AE pretty much says it all:
"I have the firm belief that you should block me, for 30 days or even more, perhaps indefinitely. I'm already out of Wikipedia, anyway. It wouldn't matter to me. However, it would be useful to show how the community deals with delinquents like Marshal, Cambalachero and Wee Curry Monster (who was also topic banned from similar articles) and with people like me. No wonder I stopped writing articles. In fact, you should lift the ban and let them do whatever they want. That's what's going to happen anyway."
Even though Lecen has softened his sharp criticism with the humor of irony, the underlying message of his post is clear: "If you block me, it will prove that Wikipedia has no problem with Fascist content in its articles." His frustration is evident, and is not being mitigated. —Neotarf (talk) 05:14, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree, especially when constructive editors get slapped down when trying to uphold the very policies that make Wikipedia more reliable—when enforced. The focus on being nice to repeat PoV-pushers, COI editors and vandals and the preference for going with "editor consensus" developed by tag teams of same instead of accurately summarizing reliable sources, is wildly misplaced. Part of the problem might be that we have few admins and arbs who have recent experience in making major improvements to articles, only to have them shot down by PoV-pushers and other vandals (who are much more adept at gaming the system than they were 5 years ago). Tempers do flare, and understandably so when no support from the community comes to help. Lecen's, as well as several other forced withdrawals that have shocked me the last couple months, illustrates what a frustrating and hostile place Wikipedia has become for editors trying to follow policy (NPoV, WP:V, etc.) in producing quality articles. This occurs across Wikipedia, and editors and admins who have made monumental contributions are being driven off. John Carter offers a similar recent case where a huge contributor was driven off for defending Wikipedia policies which improve reliability (that the arbs decline to look into the content means that PoV-pushing aspects get ignored). More than that, the message being set to newer editors by allowing PoV-pushers to roam free while constructive editors are sanctioned is nearly as bad. I'm not easily riled, but I'm as discouraged as Lecen and others who have experience with the many intransigent PoV-pushing vandals that seem to be thriving more, not less, over time. • Astynax talk 06:11, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Looking further, it appears that policy says (but why is it in that section?) that
"Any editor (such as a prior victim of harassment) who may be affected by a possible ban appeal should be informed, so that he or she can participate in the ban review."
This could certainly be interpreted to mean that Lecen, as someone who was both a party to the original ArbCom case, and the requester of an interaction ban against this person, should have been notified of the clarification request under consideration by the committee and specifically invited to participate. —Neotarf (talk) 08:42, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

My ears are burning, I see that User:Lecen is still citing that I'm partly responsible for him retiring. To put this into perspective, my sole interaction with the guy was over the article War of the Triple Alliance, which is now a redirect to Paraguayan War. The term Paraguayan War is used predominantly in Brazil, elsewhere the WP:COMMON name is the War of the Triple Alliance; in particular in English this term is predominant. The discussion is at Talk:Paraguayan War/Archive 1#Requested move 2012. Please check the page statistics, the last time I looked the article is hit predominantly via the redirect. A polite request that he stop refactoring the talk page discussion [3] was met with outright hostility and threats on my talk page [4]. The discussion is replete with his battle mentality and blatant vote stacking.


Please note that as a result of his WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality that he displayed in that discussion he ended up blocked for a week [5] following his block he retired [6] and has since retired at least 5 times. While I don't doubt User:Lecen may be a good content editor, he frequentlt displays WP:DIVA like qualities, he has a WP:BATTLE mentality over the most minor content disagreement, he is less than WP:CIVIL. And lets be honest here, he hasn't retired and he is being a WP:DRAMA queen. If he has really retired I'll dance down the Royal Mile in a neon pink TuTu and post the photos to prove it. His friends would do better by him by hitting him with the WP:CLUE stick rather than feeding his WP:EGO. Wee Curry Monster talk 09:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Wee, Amadscientist here. Please, just stop. That is all I can or wish to ask for. But I think you remember what I said to you before and hope you understand what I say now. Just....stop. Thanks.--Mark Miller (talk) 05:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Editor classification

At present editors fall into only three categories - registered editors, IPs and admins. Is it time to attempt further classifications based on expertise and skills? Perhaps, to avoid the criticism of caste creation, the same thing can be achieved by more types of user rights, which must be requested by editors and approved by a well constituted panel. --Greenmaven (talk) 21:56, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

No. Absolutely. Never. Leaky Caldron 21:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Your emphatic NO is interesting. Your reasoning would be helpful. Are there links anyone can provide to earlier discussions of this question? --Greenmaven (talk) 22:26, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure your suggestion is well intentioned Jack. My understanding is that WP is the encyclopaedia ANYONE can edit. Any barrier to entry, perception of preferment, right of passage, promotion, etc. based on experience, skill or whatever is not only excessively over-burdened with bureaucracy, it is against the founding principles as far as I am concerned. Leaky Caldron 22:32, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Then I guess what I am suggesting is that the founding principles may need to be reconsidered, just as we have constitutions and constitutional amendments. WP is an enormous achievement based on those founding principles, but it is also becoming 'a mature product', which may require new approaches, rules, permissions etc. I would strongly support most articles remaining accessible to all editors, because that is what built WP, and will continue building it. In this section and the one above I am trying to formulate a way of matching articles to a set of editors most likely to be able to improve them. So I am thinking in terms of classifying both articles and editors in an attempt to match them. --Greenmaven (talk) 00:46, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
  • It's unclear to me whether you mean "categories" in the sense of user rights (in which case there are substantially more than three - there's autoconfirmed, rollbacker, reviewer, autopatrolled, template editor, edit filter manager, admin, checkuser, oversighter...) or in the sense of sociological groupings (in which case there are also more than three, though what they are will depend on who you ask - off the top of my head I'd throw out anon editor, registered editor, experienced editor, gnome, article writer, arbitrator, staff...). It might help us discuss your proposal if you can explain what you mean by "categories" and "classifications", and what sort of "expertise and skills" you're imagining grouping people based on, and what areas or tools those new categories of editors would be given access to that they would otherwise not have. The newly-created template editor userright is actually an example of creation of a userright to allow people with a particular expertise access to something that was previously admins-only, but I would have a hard time thinking of a number of other expertises that map so neatly onto restricted space/tools. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:16, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
    Firstly, I need time to explore existing user rights before proposing new ones. Secondly, I am not aiming at giving access to tools so much as restricting access to articles. BTW 'autoconfirmed' seems to do no more than say. "this person is probably not a vandal". --Greenmaven (talk) 01:25, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Expanding on what Andy Dingley said above about technical articles, there are many other kinds of articles that need expertise. I, for example, can't judge notability of athletes because I don't know which leagues, tournaments, etc., are professional. I don't know how to find information about artists that's not posted by galleries. I often can't tell which business news sources are press releases. I don't have access to academic journals, (and so on). An attempt to limit editors to articles which they are qualified to edit might be more complex than it would seem on the surface. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:14, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
In practical terms, one of our most crucial (and yet, impossible) distinctions between editors would be "Those who don't edit what they don't know" and "Those who blank articles as unimportant, because they don't personally understand them". The later group is rewarded by the current culture of following rules rather than knowledge. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:58, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Founding Principles are that anyone can edit Wikipedia. Unregistered contributors can submit new articles through WP:AfC. Confirmed users (4 days, 10 edits) can upload images. The Foundation will not entertain any further restrictions to Founding Principles - see WP:ACTRIAL. The creation of new user rights is something the community (and the Foundtion) approaches with extreme caution and they are usually limited to granting additional technical access. It is not apparent that the granting of such rights would enhance user retention. 'Classifying' users would lead to an unnecessary hierarchy in a system where all users are considered fundamentally equal - the ffort is to avoid Wikipedia from becoming a meritocracy. We do have User Groups, these are the users who have access to special tools for combating vandalism, reviewing new edits, editing protected templates, etc. and admin tools for deleting pages, protecting pages, and blocking users. A process exists for electing admins from users who have demonstrated a broad knowledge of policies and good interaction with other users. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:06, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Just to be clear, my comments above were not an endorsement of classifying editors - I was just pointing out that it would be messy. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
In practice one of the biggest classification systems for editors is the combination of whitelists and user warning levels that are used by huggle and similar tools. The net result is to focus our vandalfighters on the most likely vandals. Broadly I think they are a good thing, not least because when I give a level 1 warning I know I don't need to keep an eye on that vandal afterwards - others will do it faster than I could. ϢereSpielChequers 18:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
See Category:Wikipedians.—Wavelength (talk) 17:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
See also: m:Wiki personality type, and m:Wikipedia sociology, and m:Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies, for philosophy/psychology
and m:Category:WMF standardized editor classes for analytics/quantification (currently under development)
and Wikipedia:User access levels (or Special:ListGroupRights) for permission flags
but also Wikipedia:Hat collecting which we try to avoid.
Hope that helps! ;) –Quiddity (talk) 04:54, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I just came across this sentence on a new user's User Page: "I plan on contributing to wikipedia to help improve my writing skills". How would you classify this editor? --Greenmaven (talk) 21:58, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Since the best way for anyone to improve his or her writing skills is to do lots of writing, I would classify this editor as "on the right path". —Anne Delong (talk) 23:43, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Mixed feelings on that. It depends on many factors such as the user's age, academic background, thier native language, to mention just but a few. One of the main ways to improve one's writing skills is to author large chunks of prose and have some one systematically CE it supported by explanations. Is that what the user intends to do? Is Wikipedia a school of English? Perhaps I sound biased but I was a teacher of linguistics, languages, and creative writing for over 30 years. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:35, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Greenmaven, its an interesting idea and one that has some sense, and it's been mooted before, but 1) it'll never fly, so forget it, and 2) it would be complicated to implement and impossible to implement fairly and without some negative side effects.

For instance, an idea was put forth (years ago) that Featured Articles and Good Articles should be sort-of protected and only editors in some category (let's say X number of edits, where X could be 100 or 1000 or whatever, and a robot puts you in the class automatically when you achieve the require edit count) could edit them. The theory being these articles are Featured or Good and people worked to make them that way, and so why let brand-new editors mess with them?

The counter to that is, a person making his first edit could be a distinguished professor and one of the world's top experts, or a nine year old boy. And you can't tell. And you don't want to shut out the professor.

And anything that didn't rely on a purely mechanical count of edits, or some other purely objective measure, means that another person has to put you in the special class, and so then you have politics. So I don't see any way forward with this. Herostratus (talk) 05:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

So the OP is "....not aiming at giving access to tools so much as restricting access to articles." Also, they wish to "classify" editors access "...approved by a well constituted panel". And we are seriously discussing this? Leaky Caldron 12:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Um, no, most of us are tangenting off the ideas that it hints at. Eg. I provided links to some of the many existing classification schemes. Other editors are helping to point out the flaws in phrasing and the connotations that they carry, or pointing towards past lessons that history can teach us. Other editors are asking questions to help Jack clarify the underlying queries and problems he's trying to get closer towards.
Just because an idea is phrased imperfectly, doesn't mean that it contains nothing of worth. Just because someone asked a question imperfectly, doesn't mean that others can't respond with useful answers. (Are you seriously trying to stop people from helping an inquisitive editor?) –Quiddity (talk) 19:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
No. I am pointing out, in my own imperfect way, that restricting access to articles based on a classification determined by a panel is an anathema to me. If Jack now has a more refined proposal, based on the advise provided above, may we see it? Leaky Caldron 20:17, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
You will all be pleased to hear that I have just formulated Greenmaven's Law, which may may one day be included in the WP:CANON.OF.WISDOM. It goes like this: "As an article improves, the number of editors capable of improving it further, decreases". --Greenmaven (talk) 23:37, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Editors are easily replaceable units of work, each of equal value. Eric Corbett 23:44, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
If editors are easily replaced units of equal value, we can shut this project down now. --Greenmaven (talk) 23:54, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I concede that it would be impossible to restrict editing on the basis of an editors's edit count, because of the 'professor vs 9 yr old' argument above. --Greenmaven (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I've been biting my tongue here, but I guess I'll go ahead and pitch in with my usual spiel. Your statement that it is "impossible" to restrict editing on the basis of [insert caste system here] is demonstrably untrue. We already do exactly that. But as many folks have pointed out above, we only do it unofficially and indirectly... but of course, as a direct result of wikiCulture. There is a caste-system. It is enforced by bohts to a sizable degree, because 90% of the rules only apply to lower-caste editors. But even if there were no automated tools to help "focus our vandalfighters on the most likely vandals" ... aka wikiCop caste-system profiling... everybody is already well-trained in how to WP:BITE the beginners.
  We immediately delete image-uploads. We immediately delete new articles in mainspace. We template-spam anybody who makes a mistake. We give rank wiki-beginners "friendly advice" that before they dare make another foolish edit, they should immediately read WP:COI WP:RS WP:V WP:N WP:UNDUE WP:OMG to the depth of three hyperlinks... and Remember To Sign Your Post hahahahahhhaaaaa. Basically, there is a conflict, right now, between these two goals: protecting wikipedia (articles/community/etc) against outside threats, and the fundamental driving goal of wikipedia (the encyclopedia anyone can edit). There is an old saying... those who are willing to give up a little editing-liberty for increased anti-vandalmism-security....
  So, am I just spouting nonsense here? Is everybody happy with not that worried about the downward trend in active-editor-count, and with wikipedia being "the encyclopedia where it is not *too* hard for anybody with a post-undergrad education to get a sentence or even an entire article not-insta-deleted as long as you memorize all authoritah and perfect your formatting and reliably source every word and beg on the talkpages for hours first" ... rather than the old-fashioned outdated notion of the encyclopedia anyone can edit, with at most, the requirement that they take a quick glance at WP:5P? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:16, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Can we get better statistics?

See also:Wikipedia_talk:Missing_Wikipedians#Reasons_editors_leave_Wikipedia. XOttawahitech (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I think everyone will be familiar with the graph of steadily declining editor numbers since 2007. But are there statistics on the the numbers of new editors arriving and the numbers departing, that underlie this curve? We seem to have discussed the retention of new editors at length, but not the loss of experienced editors. What do we know about the profile of the latter? --Greenmaven (talk) 00:13, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Has there ever been a systematic analysis made of a cohort of departed editors? We might make more progress (beyond opinion and anecdote), if we had more facts available. I imagine some code could be written to identify departed editors and their pattern of editing. From that cohort a qualitative, non automated, analysis of a subset, whose whose editing history suggests a competent and prolific contributor. It might even be possible to follow that up with some personal contact. --Greenmaven (talk) 02:52, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

It depends on how useful such stats would be; there are so many reasons why people appear to edit very little or or appear to stop completely, and stats cannot read their minds. Just to cite my own editing history for example, would you have thought that I had given up completely in January 2007, or been scared off for some reason or another? Looking at it more recently, would you know that I finally retired from active professional life at the end of the Thai academic year in April 2009 and that's why I have been editing solidly ever since? Or even locate the point at which I became an admin, or where I found a retirement job? I don't think stats can tell us any of this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:26, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your generous sharing of your own statistics. (I would guess that there was a life event around Feb 2012). What I am suggesting is that, if someone with a volume of editing, such as yours after April 2009, were to markedly decrease or cease for three months from today, it would be worth having that detected by a Bot, and followed up by a human, who might decide after reading their User and Talk pages, to follow up with a politely worded enquiry along the lines "I see you have not edited for a while. I hope we will see you again soon. Is there any reason for your reduced editing that you wish to discuss with someone?" --Greenmaven (talk) 05:25, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Phew... this is getting spooky. --Epipelagic (talk) 07:39, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable. There would be two main types: those who just suddenly stop completely after editing regularly and prolifically for a long time, and those whose consistent, prolific edits start to decline noticeably until they just stop completely. Both would tell a tale and might possibly be worth following up. On the other hand however, it's my guess that those who have stopped suddenly or ground to a standstill won't even be logging in or reading their Wikipedia email. A bot search may come up with hundreds if not thousands of such cases, and processing the few that we could humanly handle would only be a drop in the ocean. Chances are that most of them can't or won't come back. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:09, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Sometimes people stop editing just as they stop other hobbies for no negative reason, but just because they are busy or became interested in something else. I'm not sure that it would be a good idea to pester people and make them feel guilty if they are editing less. It might be better to concentrate on situations in which we know an editor is struggling or having a bad experience (There's sure lots of that going on at Afc where new editors are having articles declined.)
Doing our best to interact positively with the editors we meet on talk pages is more likely to be effective on encouraging them to edit more. An editor who does a good job of trimming a wordy plot summary or formatting some references might be more likely to do it again if someone recognizes the work. For example, if an article was a stub you are changing it to a higher assessment, how about adding a note on the talk page that editors X and Y did most of the improvements? —Anne Delong (talk) 01:21, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Sometime editors are driven out of Wikipedia by insensitive editors who want to vent their hatred and are supported by particular admin who share their POV. Just a thought.--Mark Miller (talk) 01:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
There was no suggestion that editors should be made to feel guilty. Just a polite enquiry about their apparent departure. --Greenmaven (talk) 02:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Greenmaven, Mark's comment was not aimed at you; he is specifically referencing the topic of the *next* talkpage section on this page. But I do agree with Anne, that trying to guilt people into coming back, or in doing more work here, is not useful. If we note in Apr'09 that kudpung-editing has peaked, and then a decline in May'09, and then a decline in Jun'09, and then a sharp decline in Jul'09 ... somebody then coming around to say, in Aug'09 -- hey kudpung, whatsa matter, you getting lazy? Bad! We don't want statistics that tell us kudpung has *left* as of July, when it is too late. We want tools that tell us, with any luck before kudpung realizes it themselves, that kudpung may not be happy about something (in the wikiverse or in real life), very early in the process. Feb'09 would be ideal, or Apr'09 if we cannot make our wiki-unhappy-detection-tools smart enough. But Jun'09 is too late.
  Now, I don't need a wikitool to tell me that Mark is unhappy in Dec'13 -- he told us himself, over at a noticeboard, and then on Jimbo's talkpage. He's not going to quit over this one thing... but he *is* unhappy because something seems wrong. What we really need is a magic wand, that will make everyone good, and then the wikiverse would be a wonderful place. Failing that, it *will* help if we can get some sort of wiki-smoke-detector-tool, which gives us a hint that an editor is smoldering (with some sort of anger/disgust/whatever ... if they are smoldering with passionate love of the wiki-community that is a bit weird but probably not a Bad Thing :-)   so that some human can give them a friendly hey-howzit-going talkpage message, and see if there is anything that can be done to improve their wikiverse existence. *That* would be a very good tool. Plus, anything to spook Epipelagic, right? Hope this helps. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:31, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


User:Piotrus did a survey earlier this year for the foundation about what caused some editors who had earlier been more active to retire or become less active. I assume the WF foundation was presented with the results, if they have been collated yet, and it would certainly be useful to find out what those editors indicated might have decreased the frequency of their editing. John Carter (talk) 03:20, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
While I am certainly happy to share the results before publication, so far the foundation has not indicated they are interested in seeing my results before that happens. I am not sure who, if anyone, is currently working on the editor retention issue at WMF. If anyone here wants to look at my draft paper, email me and I'll send you a copy. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:26, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

almost-too-far-gone situations

Lexein briefly mentioned these situations above. These are the situations that need some calm voice to step in, without taking sides, and move the circumstances from adversary to collaborator. The problem is how do we find these Almost-too-far-gone-situations? I won't get into the particulars but I remember, as a new editor, I was shocked at the level of caustic attack that came my way at an off-the-beaten path article. What saved me was two editors that spoke up and calmed the waves. That, for sure, is one way we can retain editors...by being the calming voice. ```Buster Seven Talk 09:11, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

It seems, as Kudpung has worked so hard to achieve, things are fundamentally past retrieval now and all we are left with is waiting out the gradual final stranding and dissolution of Wikipedia and all it once stood for. Such a shame. --Epipelagic (talk) 10:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I believe that Buster and others have the right idea for an ideal world, but I (we don't all always see everything the same...that's one of the great things about Wikipedia...and something I have only just now seen as a plus and not a minus) feel that at times (like this) one has to take a side. I think that Epipelagic has just now made an outrageous accusation against Kudpung. You see, I know that Kudpung has taken great strives to find solutions for very difficult situations. It is how I became aware of the editor. I feel that the issue here is simple. That accusation was just not called for. Period.--Mark Miller (talk) 10:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Good on you Mark --Epipelagic (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Back to how do we find situations in need of calming - there's the Wikipedia:Feedback request service. This brings more editors into a discussion, and this can be good even if it doesn't end up being "calming" because it spreads the discussion among many editors, making it seem less personal. If more editors who were determined to be impartial signed up for this, and if more editors realized that they could tap into it, that might be one way to detect difficult situations. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:19, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I signed up. I'm curious to see how it works. User:Anne Delong. Can you share some of your experiences with the service? ```Buster Seven Talk 14:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, every now and then you receive a message on your talk page saying that your input it requested on a specific talk page. Usually its because the editors trying to decide what to write on a certain article are not agreeing and want more input. Sometimes the topic is not something I can add to, so I don't get involved. Often, though, it's a NPOV issue, so an uninvolved person can be helpful, because people are more likely to pay attention to someone they're not already finding annoying. You can suggest including both points of view, but attributing them as the written opinions of recognized experts, rather than stating them as facts. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
There are at least two sorts of almost-too-far-gone situations. They are very different beasts. Buster's experience in an out-of-the-way article is a type-one problem, where some beginner is trying to get something done in some area where they have an interest, and Somebody Else rains on their parade. Usually, as in Buster's case, simply another calm voice added to the mix will vastly improve things; there, a friendly passing wiki-monk can help the locals achieve peace. This is not *always* easy, nor perfect, see the burn-the-witch scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the wandering knights of the round table and their king attempt to mediate a dispute in some village. The trouble with this type-one trouble is detecting it, and arriving in time to save the situation, before grudges form.
  The type-two dispute is far more deadly, and far more pervasive than I would have believed, prior to joining WP:RETENTION... there is a list of permanent battlegrounds here.[7] These are articles, *thousands* of them, where the participants are engaged in trench warfare, and in all cases I've seen, war of attrition -- if collaborating with the other side is ideologically impossible, and WP:CONSENSUS insists that content disputes are not decided by WP:POLLs, then the *best* way to win the content dispute is to Drive Away The Other Sides. ...and as long as admins are over-burdened, such WP:9STEPS tactics tend to work very well indeed. But the worst of it, methinks, is that people trained in the trenches tend to be persistent wikipedians (they pretty much have to be to avoid being driven away), and spread out from their initial warfare-article to "fresh territory" that can be WP:OWNed for their cause. Solving these long-term problems requires more than a wiki-monk who travels from village to village; we need wiki-diplomats. There is no 'detection problem' here... just an unsolved 'resolution of conflict' bump in the road. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:22, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Bad faith and drama mongering takes its toll

Due to bad faith and drama mongering I have withdrawn my support and background initiatives from WP:AfC which I have been working hard to find solutions for. I was half inclined to hand my tools in too and join the admin exodus, but that would simply have provided some editors with grounds to rejoice. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:58, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Dear Kudpung: I hope that you will reconsider. I think many of us who are working at Afc are becoming worn down because of the constant backlog, and this may be leading us to spend too much time focusing on the problems and not enough time thinking about all of the new editors that we are helping and the huge number of new articles that the project is adding to the encyclopedia. Interactions by keyboard are awkward, to say nothing of the wide variety of personalities and social expectations one meets on Wikipedia, and AGF is sometimes a challenge. No matter what you do there are bound to be some who disagree. I for one appreciate someone such as yourself who speaks his opinions directly and calmly to counteract some of the "drama" (even when you are disagreeing with me), and then pitches in to get the job done. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and I regret that none of us have taken the time to show appreciation for your work. I can't think of anyone who would rejoice at your leaving, and I don't think even those who have made negative comments intended to discourage your participation. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:57, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I can only second what Anne says. Kudpung, your enthusiasm for driving AfC forward and trying to make a difference has been vitally important and is directed at helping get new editors up to speed and retaining them, which is exactly what we need. Have a break, by all means, but don't make it a permanent goodbye. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:24, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I say keep up the good work Kudpung. I know it isn't always easy when you have others not assuming good faith but there are editors who think your work has merit.--Mark Miller (talk) 20:33, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I will 'third' what Anne says. Looking at the backtrail, this does not look like a huge deal to my perhaps-over-cynical-from-discretionary-sanctions-talkpages eyeballs... a simple case of mistaken identity, that was then taken out of context, twice, and got blown out of proportion by WP:INVOLVED, most already suffering from wikiStress perhaps. No bridges look burned down to me at the moment, although there are some at least partially aflame. This is not (yet) a case of almost-too-late. Folks that are trusted by and familiar to Kudpung and/or Rankersbo, it may help if you step forward and offer them your support now, if you can be supportive in a way which reduces teh_drahmahz, as opposed to mongering them thar dramahz, which will only cause more ekeled-away-syndrome. In the hope, that this will help, save do I now press.
  p.s. Full disclosure, I in particular would be very sad to see Kudpung's AfC proposal[8] go down the tubes due to loss of leadership, especially over this unrelated conflict of WP:AGF-related issues... currently it has nine-and-a-half support !votes, half-an-oppose on grounds of not-quite-stringent-enough, and another oppose arguing for an orthogonal proposal that will likely succeed in a future RfC. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:02, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Dear Kudpung, I hope you will continue in all your roles and editing work. --Greenmaven (talk) 20:06, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Kudpung. I have always seen your efforts to be in the best interest of WP. ```Buster Seven Talk 21:18, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Dec 8-15 Editor of the week

...is WikiRedactor. Sometimes it's the little things that retain editors. Well wishes from fellow editors has a positive result. Visiting the Editor of the Week's talk page the day after to offer congratulations is quick and simple. ```Buster Seven Talk 22:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

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