Frank's proposal

Frank Schulenburg, the WMF Head of Public Outreach, has put up a proposal that I think is a pretty good summary of current needs and dreams. It's at Proposal:Improving_our_platform. I wonder what folks on this group think of it?

I think the main reason why many do not edit in WP and other of its sister's project is because of the community itself. Articles written by new users or perhaps registered by an IP address are usually checked again and edit thoroughly compared to articles written by frequent users. There seems to be discrimination and bias in editing articles.

For example, on Wikinews, article written by new users aren't publish directly as they will be check again. If the subject is not suitable, the article is deleted without any acknowledgment to them.

It is the perception in existing users that matters as it affects new users.

I think it looks really great. I'm looking forward to seeing him finish it off. WYSIWYG is a big one. In terms of community health, I think he's missing out on a lot of other complicated tasks that could be simplified.

The jury is still out on social networking, because there's the potential for them to be misused. I see it a lot like creating a bloodbank. If we do it right, there's a huge upside for community health. But if there are already diseases, a bloodbank becomes a vehicle to spread contamination.

Hi all, thanks a lot for your feedback. To me, the situation in a nutshell looks like the following:

(1) For new contributors it's not obvious what kind of support we need. People open a page and all links on that page are blue. And if they find something they can fix, they struggle with the wiki-markup in the editbox. And after they finally pushed the save-button, someone leaves a cryptic message full of abbreviations on their talk page and tells them how many mistakes they made. Or their edit just gets reverted.

(2) The same situation from the perspective of a long-term Wikipedian might look like the following: Thousands of people edit Wikipedia every day without knowing much about its rules and its specific culture. It looks like they ignore all consensus that the community has built over time. These "newbies" just seem to increase the workload of the existing community members – they write articles that need to be wikified, they ask questions about problems that have been resolved 4 years ago and in the worst case they try to push an odd minority viewpoint.

One of the biggest questions from my point of view is: How can we shorten the distance between these two groups? How can we make sure that both groups understand each other's perspektive, needs and worries? How can we help people to understand what kind of help we need? And what is the best way to reach out to people that have the skills and knowledge we need.

Please let me know what you think. I highly appreciate this conversation.

Thanks Frank. I think you've described the problem well: shortening the distance between the two groups. New editors get frustrated when the task is confusing, and the other editors seem arbitrary. Veterans get frustrated when new editors seem reckless, and old disputes keep being revisited by new faces. I mean, this is THE problem as far as community health is concerned, and we're talking about a variety of solutions.

But there is a lot we can do with just the platform.

I was going to say "usability". But that grossly oversimplifies things. There are really multiple stages in the editor lifecycle, and a usable interface will gradually bring people from novice to expert. When an editor shows up and doesn't even understand how to edit and format something, just having WYSIWYG is a huge help. But as time goes on, you want to bridge the gap between new editors and veterans editors by making it easier to do the things that veterans spend a lot of time doing. I think one of the biggest gaps between new users and veteran users is research. I remember having a hard time with that when I showed up, but as I became more diligent with sourcing, I generally encountered fewer problems. There are other things that separate veterans from newbies, like spell checking, certain formatting conventions, and a sense of patience with the process... but tools can help with those too. I'd highly recommend making a list of common tasks and processes, and then think of ways to simplify them.

I have another idea that may seem counter-intuitive at first. To shorten the distance between veterans and newbies, we should limit what new users can do. This isn't to require them to jump through a ton of hoops. It's to give them time to work with the basics before they start getting themselves into trickier areas. The best way to traverse the distance is one step at a time. When new users jump too far ahead -- by modifying a featured article or jumping in on a contentious "POV dispute" -- they almost always get push back from people who have been there a long time. So the platform should work with the idea that certain processes or classes of articles may be off limits at first. (Or if we don't want to be that restrictive, make that stuff available with lots of asterisks and exclamation marks.)

I think you've even identified a step that's more part of reader conversion... before someone is a new editor, they are a reader. Helping people bridge *that* gap will be invaluable.

Randomran,

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I agree with you that improving the usability is only part of the answer. Do you know the Bookshelf Project? The goal is to create a core set of educational materials that help non-contributors understand the basics of Wikipedia. Some of these items will focus on existing guidelines, rules and community culture. I believe that explaining the community culture is a first step to bridge the gap between long-term contributors and newcomers (one step in that direction is a document created by Pete Forsyth recently. It is a case study on how an article evolves on the English Wikipedia).

But you were talking about a list of common tasks and processes and ways to simplify them. I find that idea very interesting. Can you give me some examples?

Thanks again.

You might want to get more feedback from other Wikipedians. There are a ton of external tools that have emerged to help out with Wikipedia. There are also a bunch of internal processes and tools that aren't particularly good. If I were to focus on the ones that veterans have the stomach to use, but new editors often find too tedious...

• Finding reliable research. People link to key searches in the AFD template, but the searches are grossly inadequate. A lot of debate always ensues as veterans try to explain that a blog is not a reliable source. You'd bridge a huge gap between new users and veterans if you had a dedicated search engine that only surveyed a list of reliable sources. (e.g.: a white list approach, as opposed to a black list)
• Doing a proper citation. Have you seen our citation templates? I imagine that even half of new users are willing to find a website that backs up their claims. It's not that different from posting a link in their facebook or their weblog, and then talking about it. But they probably just say "forget it" when they realize that citing stuff is confusing as hell. So a lot of stuff goes uncited, and it leads to disputes over facts.
• Getting feedback on an article. I'm talking about the complicated process of peer review, especially. But I'm also talking about good article and featured article nominations. New editors probably work on an article, and wait for feedback, but then get nothing. Show them how to get feedback. Nominating articles for deletion or for merger too. Feedback is a key way to bridge the gap, and the most experienced editors constantly solicit feedback all the time. Maybe not just peer review, but at least a third opinion. Maybe even create a specialized "my first peer review" feature for new users, so that the veterans know to avoid using jargon, and cover the basics.
• Merging two articles. Let's focus on that, because it could really help new users avoid controversy. New editors often get into trouble by pushing to delete stuff that could be merged, or creating new stuff that gets deleted when it could have been merged. If suggesting a merge were easier, it would happen more often, and solve a lot of conflicts painlessly.
• Creating a discussion. I suppose liquid threads will make it a bit easier to have a discussion about an article. But there ought to be an easier way to create a centralized discussion that crosses several articles. Veterans do this all the time, but these discussions are tucked away in some complicated place that you're lucky to know where to even look.
• Formatting an article. "What You See is What You Get" is only half the battle. The other half is making sure that "What You Get is What You Need". No sense on letting people create all kinds of wonky headings if there is only one established way of doing your outline.
• Understanding a policy. Even just mousing over an acronym like "WP:V" should pop up a tooltip with the nutshell: "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." Key to this, however, is making sure they aren't gamed by veterans who link to mere essays (whether in good faith, or in bad faith trying to fool them into thinking something is policy).

That's just off the top of my head. I might be missing a really important one though. But all of these things will either help new editors function like veterans, help new editors learn what the community expects, or both.