Value, respect, and strive for diversity in editors

I am speaking as an editor of the English Wikipedia (16,000 edits) who also has some limited experience with the German Wikipedia (700 edits) and found that it lacks one particular problem. And I am not proposing to take any norms from the German Wikipedia to the English one. But I would like to see the English Wikipedia move slowly in that direction. The project's content is maturing, and its contributors need to mature too. The gold rush is over. We no longer need editors who write a three-line article on "book" without any citations and move on to the next article. This type of editor has nothing constructive to do any more and is looking for different ways to keep busy – often obstructing the encyclopedia builders in their work.

Hans Adler13:13, 5 May 2010

You may have a point. But then, the English Wikipedia isn't getting any new editors at all. And we need new editors who are ready to expand stubs, and reference low quality articles.

Randomran14:55, 5 May 2010

Some promising new editors run away from the hordes of "editors" who wouldn't know how to contribute anything but are prepared to defend the encyclopedia against

  • sockpuppets ("you are reading the policy pages that I have pointed you to and appear to understand them, so you can't be a new user"),
  • POV pushers ("you are using arguments that I can't contradict"),
  • original researchers ("it's original research to say something that a source doesn't say with precisely the same words . . . no, that's not better, that's a copyright violation"),
  • fraudsters ("everybody can use an account named after a Nobel prize winner, stop claiming to be that person as if it gave your arguments additional weight"),
  • users with a conflict of interest ("you are adding links to your highly informative free website with additional information, which is severe abuse because it's yours; go and edit a topic that you don't care about"), and
  • openly disruptive users ("that the five owners of this article take turns to revert all your edits without comment doesn't give you the right to break the three-revert-rule, which you have never heard about; you should have used one of the many dispute resolution methods that nobody told you about").
Hans Adler15:25, 5 May 2010

Hans has this one right and solving it is going to be a difficult battle. If indeed we are really sincere about: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. we really need to come to grips with the issues of OR and Notability because I don't think we mean the Sum of all knowledge that is arbitrarly notable or knowledge that is not OR. Today our filters on what knowledge makes it into the projects and the mechanisms we enploy to enforce those filters are a signficant impediment to growing the population of contributors.--Mike Cline 16:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Mike Cline16:24, 5 May 2010

Once again, I refuse to turn this into a battleground between quality and participation. If we get into that argument, nobody wins. Anyone who wants to make that tradeoff will ultimately lose both. We need to simultaneously improve quality and participation at the same time. It's possible, but it can only be seen by people who aren't entrenched in one camp or the other.

Randomran19:26, 5 May 2010

Time is the key word. How much time are you willing to devote at explaining the tropes to new editors instead of shelling them with message templates. How much time you are willing to spend collecting evidences of the PoV pushing, warlike attitude or vandal like behavior of an editor or even more an admin or an editor with +10K edits.

Globally we need to spend more in inter-personal relationship rather than editing however the long term gain is very worth it.

KrebMarkt19:59, 5 May 2010

Why not set up some type of optional mentoring program. New users who opt in for this could have a specific person to answer their questions and respond personally if they make a mistake early on. Nothing too time consuming for either party, just a way for well intentioned new users to feel like they have a friend in case they get in trouble without meaning to. Make it optional so it doesn't activate on the very first edit, but rather whenever the user feels he/she really wants to become part of the community and is facing a barrier. Wickedjacob 02:27, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Wickedjacob02:27, 6 May 2010

I'm surprised no one has discussed anonymous editors. I think that 99% of all vandalism is from anonymous (IP) accounts, and on several articles I edit I am certain that several editors use single use account names/sockpuppets to argue their points. As an editor, I watch several articles daily that typically have no editor activity, but frequent vandal activity, and it wears an editor out. If you are going to increase quality of editing, these things need to be addressed. Wiki wants to be open to everyone, and I know that is why they allow the anonymous editing, but I think you encourage the same thing even if people have to create an account. Has anyone done any research to ratio good edits v bad by IP accounts? I guess its impossible, but we all know what I am talking about here.

Akuvar17:59, 6 May 2010

It wouldn't be too hard to do a study of edits by IPs. Not a comprehensive study, but to grab a few articles from different topics and different quality, and look over the IP edits to look for vandalism.

Randomran15:27, 7 May 2010
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

You say "The gold rush is over. We no longer need editors who write a three-line article on "book" without any citations and move on to the next article. This type of editor has nothing constructive to do any more and is looking for different ways to keep busy – often obstructing the encyclopedia builders in their work."

I guess I'm a 49er. And I did create a stub or two, although I don't think I did the one on book. WojPob did that at 07:04, June 6, 2001. I didn't edit the article until March 4, 2002, the fifth edit. It was fun back then, but it's not like I stuck in that mode of editing. People grow and change with the work. There is no "that type of editor". And there is no separate class of skilled "encyclopedia builders" that I am not part of. The question is how we can encourage all editors to become more productive in terms of the current needs of the encyclopedia.

Fred Bauder14:37, 7 May 2010

Part of the solution is to revert the problem and from the former editor survey i'm rather on the spot. Wikipedia should make more effort the put in front end areas where anyone can contribute in a meaningful way without having a big "Wiki-culture" to do so and the fear to see its edits reverted at sight.

KrebMarkt21:56, 7 May 2010