Last week saw an extensive discussion on the Foundation-l mailing list about the "Friendliness" of Wikimedia projects to new users, a perennial topic that is seeing several new developments currently.
Discussing the effect of using pre-formulated templates to communicate with newbies, the Wikimedia Foundation's Deputy Director Erik Möller (User:Eloquence) suggested a "dedicated community effort to 1) catalogue the most widely used templates on talk pages, 2) systematically improve them with an eye on the impact they can have on whether people feel their work is valued and the environment in which they're contributing is a positive and welcoming one".
The English Wikipedia's new page patrol and its use of automated tools such as Twinkle and Huggle was subject to scrutiny too. The Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner said that she had "spent some time this weekend on New User Contributions on the English Wikipedia, reading the talk pages of new people who'd been trying to make constructive edits. I was trying to imagine the world through their eyes", but also "I used Twinkle to nominate an article for speedy deletion (or something like that, I don't remember exactly) and immediately felt awful about deterring the poor newbie, who was maybe misguided, but not a vandal" and that it had made her "wonder if patrollers find themselves over time starting to dehumanize new people, as a kind of coping mechanism, or just because they feel beleagured. The experience, for me, felt a bit like a videogame. ... To belabour the videogame analogy a little further: Zack Exley and I were talking about new article patrol as being a bit like a first-person shooter, and every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the rifle [sights]. We need patrollers to be able to identify nuns and tourists, so that they don't get shot :-)" David Gerard asked whether one should "Ban Twinkle? The tool seems to directly encourage problematic behaviour." But several users including Philippe Beaudette (WMF Head of Reader Relations) and Keegan defended the need for automated tools.
The subject was discussed in Sue Gardner's IRC office hours on February 25, too, which also touched on the idea of an article incubator, experiences from the Russian and German Wikipedia's dealing with newbies, and finding better ways of motivating Wikimedia volunteers. Sue Gardner cautioned that "one issue for us though is avoiding dark patterns, and avoiding extrinsic rewards, which are demotivating to intrinsically motivated people. [cf. motivation crowding theory ] ... we know money is out. ... I think extrinsic rewards that work for us and are authentic in our world include things like tenure support letters, or scholarships to Wikimania."
The inherent tension between efforts to improve new user experience and the work of new page / recent change patrollers became visible in an already ongoing activity by the Foundation's Outreach team last week: Its "Account creation improvement project" is currently testing different versions of the "landing page" that greets newbies after they create their account (as mentioned in last week's "News and notes"). One of them, which invited new users to create their user page according to a suggested pattern, generated much confusion and disruption for new page patrollers (discussion). Lennart Guldbrandsson, the Wikimedia fellow responsible for the tests, apologized for the inconvenience and invited feedback on a new page.
A new project called Wiki Guides is currently being set up and inviting participation, stating that "as a community we have many ideas but we’ve been thwarted by too many options and too little data. We want to run a study over the next couple of months to craft strategies, develop new users, and to get data on exactly how our new users are finding their first, and later, experiences on Wikipedia."
On his personal blog, Shijualex has published a statistical report on the Indian language Wikipedias for 2010, based on the data provided by the Foundation at http://stats.wikimedia.org/. The Nepal Bhasa/Newari Wikipedia (new:) had the largest number of articles, but most of its articles were created by bots, like on several other Indian language Wikipedias – a practice criticized by Shijualex, if it is not accompanied by the building of a community. As an extreme example, the Bishnupriya Manipuri Wikipedia (bpy:) was cited, which had more than 24,700 articles in the beginning of 2010 but only grew by 10 articles during the entire year, and does not have a single active user. On the other hand, he observed that "more language wiki communities have started focusing on the quality than on the quantity". A positive example is the Malayalam Wikipedia, which had the most edits per article (30.1) and the most active (90) and highly active (16) editors among Indian language Wikipedias at the end of 2010, and also has a high ratio of new accounts who actually make edits. Shijualex argues that this example shows that "we need to have some good program to convert many registered users to actual wikipedians... The importance of advocacy programs like Wiki workshops, seminars, exhibitions, wikipedia CD, wiki meetups, participating in various programs, and so on can help to popularize wikipedia among the speakers of the respective language."
An article titled "Wikipedia to open Arab office" in The National, a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, reported statements by Jimmy Wales about the Wikimedia Foundation's plans to expand to the MENA region, with a "50–50 chance" that its second international office would open there (after India; Brazil is another option). While cautioning that this is "still a good year away" and that "we've not really entered into the beginning of a process of identifying the best location", Wales named Egypt and Jordan as the most likely countries, having called them possible "leading contenders" on Twitter. He rejected an earlier article in the Saudi Gazette that had claimed "Wikipedia chief hints at office in KSA" (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), calling it "completely untrue and based on a fabricated quote", and stating that the country's "human rights record is unacceptable". The Saudi article had been published on the occasion of his keynote speech at the "2nd International Conference on e-Learning and Distance Education" in Riyadh.
An extensive interview with Larry Sanger (known for his role in starting Wikipedia until 2002) was published this month by Dan Schneider on his website Cosmoetica (www.cosmoetica.com/DSI27.htm, currently available at [1]). Apart from long parts about Sanger's philosophical views, it also touched on topics such as citations, verifiability and credentials on Wikipedia and Citizendium.
Recalling Wikipedia's early history, Sanger said that "When it became obvious that Wikipedia was growing like gangbusters, I spent most of my limited time on it, leaving Nupedia, unfortunately, to wither."
Many questions were informed by Schneider's own criticism of Wikipedia (frequent linking of his web site has led to its inclusion in Wikipedia's URL blacklist), which Sanger even rejected at times. Asked whether he agreed with Schneider's belief that "a term called agnotology, which is about the love of ignorance, for a variety of reasons [is] prevalent in modern society, and [is] a Prime Directive of both the Internet and Wikipedia", Sanger replied: "The Wikipedians themselves seem, for all their faults, to be highly curious and frequently well-informed, even if the know-nothings sometimes make spending time there unbearable."
Answering another question, Sanger said: "It does seem that Wikipedia is ripe for replacement. But what will replace it? Maybe Citizendium or something else—that remains to be seen. And maybe it will enjoy its now-dominant position for a long time. Many deeply flawed institutions live on for centuries, as you know. Like it or not, Wikipedia has a chance for long-term hegemony because it’s just so huge."
In his closing remark, Sanger said: "I shudder to think how many words I’ve written [40,000 according to his estimate on Twitter ]. This has been the weirdest interview I’ve ever had".
The analysis of case duration counts the number of days it took for a publicly heard case to reach a motion to close, after being opened for evidence submission and workshop input. The graph averages all cases closed during a specific two-month period. This means that a spike in case duration for September and October 2008 probably accounts for cases opened several months earlier.
Starting in January/February 2008, we find an average of 30 days for cases to be resolved. In these two months a total of 12 cases were closed, all of which were resolved in less than two months. The duration of cases in days steadily increased during each two-month interval (climbing from the 30s to the upper 40s) until it spiked in September/October 2008 with an average of 68 days. This can be accounted for by two cases (one which took 131 days and another taking 99). But 2008 saw another long case. The well-known Eastern European case took 115 days. Not only that, its evidence page had submissions from nearly 30 editors, in stark contrast to a case like John Gohde 2 which was resolved in less than two weeks with a third of the number of evidence submissions of the EE case.
Thus, with the first year of data reviewed we can see a clear (and understandable) correlation between large complicated disputes and the length of time to decide a case. An example of this issue is the Scientology case, which took an astounding 169 days to resolve. But the bigger question is not whether these long cases will always happen, but whether this is becoming a trend in regard to all Committee proceedings.
Going back to 2009, we see two cases at the start that already took longer than the longest average for the first half of 2008. For the entire year, only three cases took less than a month to resolve, and the duration of the shortest case approached the higher average of the year before.
While there was a decline in the average duration of cases at the beginning of the year 2009, that average remained consistently higher than for the first half of 2008. With three complex cases resolved in the middle of the year, the average jumped to 72 days. With another election on the horizon, cases were gradually resolved more quickly as the number of days dropped to the 40s by the end of the year.
The year 2010 then becomes intriguing as the number of very large cases began to decline, and the average sank (in March/April 2010) to 33 days, the lowest since the beginning of 2008. But this trend has not continued. By the end of the year, the average jumped back up to 70–80 days, with the longest case at 123 days.
From this data, as the trendline indicates, the duration of cases has significantly increased since 2008.
The data on the number of opened cases each month was calculated in a very simple counting of when cases started. The trend here is easier to discern than in the first graph: a steep decline in the cases the Committee hears each year.
By today's standards, a surprising number of 11 cases were opened in January 2008, at the start of the graph. Comparing The Signpost's archives before 2008 also shows this high number of cases resolved by the Committee. This number very quickly dropped to only three accepted in February, and to only one or two a month by the middle of the year.
The numbers then remained in the same range throughout the whole of 2008. The only times the number of accepted cases a month rose to three or more was at the start of each year, when a new slate of Arbitrators came in (shown by a rise in January–March 2009 and the acceptance of three cases in February 2010). After August 2009, the Committee has always accepted one or two cases a month, with only one exception.
In December 2009, the Committee accepted no cases, for the first time in at least 23 months (my record goes back to 2008). Again, for four months between July and October 2010, ArbCom did not accept a single case. A deeper look at records in this long "no-acceptance" period shows that only one arbitrator voted to accept in one of the more than 10 declined cases.
The Signpost's weekly coverage of ArbCom cases is interesting to compare, as it exemplifies a dramatic decline in decisions before the Committee (2006 coverage, 2007, and 2010).
Arbitrator Newyorkbrad says that the declining number of Committee cases is due to a greater reliance on community mechanisms to resolve disputes, such as community sanctions at the ANI board and through the blocking of a user by a single administrator, without a disagreeing admin unblocking. "Today, we get relatively few of those types of cases, and when we do get one, it's typically because there has been disagreement among administrators as to how to handle the situation." He pointed to the complexity of the issues that do make it before the 18-member Committee, which is arguably a cause for the length of decisions. While public perception may be that the Committee is too slow, Newyorkbrad says they always "[try] to keep the case lengths reasonable." In the Signpost's interview with several arbitrators last October, Roger Davies had made the same point about the changing nature of the cases ("these days, it's mostly intense, hard-core disputes that end up with ArbCom—the things the community isn't really set up to handle"), and Kirill Lokshin, while observing that the ArbCom "has traditionally been quite bad at keeping to deadlines", had noted that "an ever-increasing fraction of our workload consists of 'behind the scenes' work" that is not visible in the formal proceedings.
Whether due to an evolution of the dispute resolution process on Wikipedia, or just a tightening of the requirements for the Committee's acceptance of cases, or (partly) due to a decrease in overall editing activity, the trend is unmistakable. But what does this really mean for Wikipedia and the Dispute Resolution process? In a few years' time, how much work could the Arbitration Committee have? We can only speculate as to the long-term effects.
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This week, we listened to WikiProject Classical Music, a mid-level project under the umbrella of WikiProject Music (see our 2009 interview). WikiProject Classical Music was started in May 2004 to expand articles, sort stubs, source statements, and document historical and musicological analysis of classical music from many time periods (not just the classical period). It does not rate articles by quality or importance, although child projects like WikiProject Composers are allowed to maintain their own rating systems. The project maintains a portal, task forces on composition and contemporary music, and a variety of to-do lists.
We interviewed three project members. Gerda Arendt "came to Wikipedia to fill the red link for a composer and cellist, then proceeded to related articles." When not editing Wikipedia, she sings in three choirs and plays piano. She likes Bach and rues the fact that about 100 of his cantatas are missing from Wikipedia. Melodia is a (bass) clarinet and former piano player, among other instruments. She listens to a lot of classical music, but if she had to pick just one composer, it would be Sibelius. Ravpapa is an amateur violinist and violist who plays a lot of chamber music. He is also interested in the music of Israel.
The talk page at WikiProject Classical Music is very active. What attracts people to discussions at the project? Do you have any tips for projects that might have a less social atmosphere?
What are some of the challenges of finding media for classical music articles?
The project does not assess articles, instead relying upon daughter projects to provide assessments. Why was this decision made? How has it impacted the project's goals and direction?
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
Next week, the Signpost will chat with the women of Wikipedia. Until then, visit the archive.
Reader comments
The Signpost welcomes The Bushranger (nom), from the US, as our newest admin. He is an active member of the MilHist and Aircraft WikiProjects, participates in the battleships project WP:OMT, and has many DYKs under his belt. He has expertise in templates and categories.
At the time of publication there are three live RfAs: Boing! said Zebedee, Kudpung, and Neelix, due to finish on 1, 2 and 3 March, respectively.
Eight articles were promoted to featured status:
Seven lists were promoted:
Two featured lists were delisted:
Six images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
Seven featured sounds were promoted.
Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
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The Committee opened no new cases during the week. Two cases are currently open.
During the week, another 20 kilobytes of content was submitted in on-wiki evidence. Several proposals were submitted in the workshop by several editors; drafter Elen of the Roads commented on some of the proposals, while drafter SirFozzie proposed a standard discretionary sanctions remedy as well as three standard principles.
During the week, another 5 kilobytes of content was submitted in on-wiki evidence. Several proposals were submitted in the workshop by several editors. Earlier today, David Fuchs and Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry were assigned as drafters of the decision.
Two days ago, the Committee announced that it passed a motion: Rodhullandemu (talk · contribs)'s administrator privileges are revoked and he may apply for adminship by the usual means to the community. As background, it noted that the "user has engaged in conduct unbecoming an administrator...." As with other announcements by the Committee, a link to discuss the announcement was provided which sparked discussion. Active arbitrators added that this action was taken in accordance with interim desysop procedures, and that Rodhullandemu may, if he desired, make a request for a public arbitration case or for Jimbo Wales (talk · contribs) to intervene.
Seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Wikipedia:Audit Subcommittee (AUSC), the Committee made a call for applications last week.
AUSC is a subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee which should review and act upon concerns received by the community about CheckUser and Oversight activities. AUSC is made up of three arbitrators (who typically serve six-month terms) and three non-arbitrator members who are appointed for one-year terms. All AUSC members are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight. Active and/or sitting AUSC members:
Applicants must be at least 18 years old and willing to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation. Applicants should self-nominate by email to arbcom-en-b@lists.wikimedia.org and will receive an application questionnaire which should be completed and returned to the same email address. This should include a nomination statement, to a maximum of 250 words. Applications will close on 7 March 2011.
The Committee will have one week (after applications close) to review the applications, and notify the applicants who will be candidates going forward for community consultation. The candidate's nomination statement (which was submitted with the application) will be posted on a candidate subpage on-wiki.
In the following week, in addition to a few standard questions, the Community may pose additional questions which candidates will answer. While there will be no formal voting, comments will be invited publicly, or privately by email to arbcom-en-b@lists.wikimedia.org. Ideally, community members will outline in detail their rationale for supporting or opposing a candidate in either case.
Should a sufficient number of suitably qualified candidates apply, the committee will appoint three primary non-arbitrator members along with a number of "standby members" (who would stand in, should a primary member become inactive or be unable to hear a particular case). Successful candidates will be required to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation prior to receiving AUSC permissions.
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HTML5-mode was briefly switched on for Wikimedia wikis this week, from the afternoon of February 23. This would begin the process of Wikimedia supporting features available in the newest browsers, and would generally put it on a better footing for the future. HTML5 had been the default for external installs since MediaWiki 1.16, but had been disabled on WMF sites due to the nature of some custom code in use. Version 1.17, now used on WMF sites, was thought to be much more stable in this regard (bug #27478).
However, after deployment, a number of errors were soon noted. As expected, virtually every tool which relied on "screen-scraping" (analysing the HTML source of Wikipedia pages) broke in some way. Though this method has been known to be vulnerable to changes in the underlying source code for many years – and MediaWiki provides an alternative, the much more stable API, for this purpose – no-one had yet seen a need to update many of the tools frequently in use on Wikipedia sites, including Twinkle and Friendly on the English Wikipedia. Even after HTML5-mode was reverted, work continued on these gadgets to move them over to the API before another attempted deployment. Just as pressing was a knock-on problem where the encoding used in citations and anchors changed subtly, breaking links which relied on them (bug #27694). It is not known when HTML5-mode will be tried again.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
