Communal enabling of quality

Yeah, it's a correlation and he's careful to note that it requires further investigation.

Randomran18:20, 25 November 2009

Having written ~20 FAs - and this is my subjective experience - in vast majority of cases I was doing the work alone. Other editors helped a little, particularly with improving by non-native English, and of course there were hundreds of tiny additions/improvements over time. Did the article become better with more contributors editing it? Yes. But if I were to quantify it, I'd say that if on average my contribution was 100, than the contribution of 100 other editors was 0.1 each (*100 meant they improved the article from 100 to 110). In other words, in my experience as a FA (and GA, and DYK) creator, one user does most of the work, others do only a little bit that even if added together does not exceed the contributions of a single, main creator (that said, I am familiar with exceptions to this rule - I've seen FA/GA/DYKs which were truly collaborative - but they are, I again stress this, exceptions to what I've usually observed).

Piotrus19:38, 25 November 2009

My experience with FA's is that actually after the certain level of quality has been achieved (for instance the article has been selected as FA) the majority of subsequent edits are actually detrimental and substandard - they only make the article worse and lower the quality. In my opinion, protection of the quality id one of the major issues we need to discuss at some point.

Yaroslav Blanter14:42, 8 December 2009
 

I'd say the same thing. Usually I'm working on a FA by myself, or at most in a "tag team". Maybe one or two peer reviewers will contribute a pile of copy edits. The correlation is likely attributed to the fact that FAs have usually existed for a much longer time, and something that's been around that long is bound to have more editors. Also, a FA is likely to be a high-attention topic, so it wouldn't be surprising to see more readers *and* more contributors.

But I think the broader point linking community health to quality is valid.

Ortega notes that "core" editors are definitely the main contributors to featured articles. And I think there is widespread agreement (although no conclusive evidence) that good editors are burning out. The closest thing I've found to definitive evidence: Ortega studied all the different language Wikipedias and found that "core" editors slowly fall out of the core, and fade away with time. But on the English Wikipedia, "core" editors go from being highly active to suddenly disappearing. I think that's the difference between someone who left Wikipedia because they were just running out of time and interest, versus someone who left Wikipedia because they had suddenly gotten fed up.

Randomran21:20, 25 November 2009

I understand the reason for sudden disappearances quite well. Fading users may be losing interest or get busy with RL and so on - I expect that's normal, and I am sure we have our share of those on en Wikipedia as well; vanishing ones are those who get sufficiently antagonized by negative reinforcement (read: PAs, harassment, etc.) that they say "that's it, I am outta here". --Piotrus 19:56, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Piotrus19:56, 26 November 2009

Just a personal perspective about online discord, I hate to say how long I have been online, (LOL) and I have literally left a ton of communities because of the discord factor, because things like my clients or my business or my daughter are just more important than watching people arguing or having them diss my opinion, whether valid or invalid. And I think it likely that is a common thread for the exact people we want to attract and retain as contributors and editors. So the whole supermajority/consensus issue is probably more important than I originally thought, having had more time to think about it. I believe we need subject matter experts who are dedicated to different sections who can help vet and edit. Those subject matter experts are likely to have the same kind of zero tolerance I have for unnecessary conflict. Just mho.

Bhneihouse03:36, 27 November 2009

Agree 100%, this is likely a very major cause.

Important observation #1: This isn't just experts, it's most mature and capable users.

Important observation #2: "They are likely to have zero tolerance for unnecessary conflict"... yes, but also may not be entirely happy that others will have zero tolerance for theirs too. A lot of people expect their standards and others' to differ (usually leniently to themselves!). Same thing said elsewhere, even experts need induction/newcomer handling, "This is how we work, these are the expectations..."

FT2 (Talk | email)03:54, 27 November 2009

some of this is, of course, going to be cultural. Across the en-wiki, we have how many countries/cultures speaking English? and even in the US, we have so many different ways that people interact, specific to geographic locations.

I think these factors, especially when dealing with a wiki that encompasses a large culturally diverse population, can be mitigated by the kinds of policies we have been discussing. let people know up front what the expectations are, let them know that Wikipedia takes protecting their rights and contributions seriously and we will attract and keep the mature and capable users. (I wasnt just meaning experts, btw.) I think the ideas we have been tossing around of creating a kind of incubator for a wiki prior to stamping it "launched" may also attract the kind of contributors we are talking about.

Bhneihouse20:23, 28 November 2009