Communal enabling of quality

@Piotrus (point for point):

• I started a new section (see above). I think the topic you started is the right way to proceed, but I think we should separate the definition of quality from Philippe's questions.
• I agree.
• Initially, most constructive users are prepared to do maintenance, though there is a group which is only interested in writing too. Actually, I didn't mean only gnomes, the 'classical' gnome type is supposed to be low-profile and uninterested in wikipolitics. There are a lot of users who do a lot of maintenance, don't add content, yet work themselves up to admins and have high social statuses. The thing is, just like it is easier to start a new article than it is to revise an existing article, it is easier to 200 times revert a vandal than it is to remove POV from one long article. Many users that start doing some maintenance will do more and more, for this reason. I'm not saying that doing maintenance is a bad thing, at the contrary. I just think the difference in the amount of 'award' the system gives for maintenance (enough) and editing content (too little) is a problem if we want to have projects growing faster.
• 1) I agree rewarding or at least protecting non-anonymous users is a very good idea, as long as constructive critique remains possible. This could at least increase the amount of quality content added by this group. Anonymous users can be 'quality users' too though.
• 2) I'm sorry, I forgot to give my arguments. I have two: my theory of wiki-erosion and my assumption that quality users are motivated by constructive cooperation.
  • Wiki-erosion is the reduction of quality by maintenance edits (or the absence of maintenance reverts), because the community's maintenance users don't have enough specialist knowledge. As an FA writer (we all have more or less compatible wikiprofiles, that's perhaps why we're in this task force together :) ) I know this natural erosion rate from watching my own FA being victims to erosion every so often. The 'natural' rate of wiki-erosion is related to the community size: the smaller the community, the smaller the chance specialist knowledge to identify erroneous edits exists. Thus, specialist/quality content at small projects has a higher risk of being 'eroded' than at larger projects. Wiki-erosion decreases the quality of the content to a level related with the size of the community. We can prevent this by identifying isolated quality users and reaching out to them, to help them move quality content to places where the risk of erosion is smaller. From my own experience, I know the example of Pelex, who mainly edits the Slovakian Wikipedia. He understands other languages but finds writing in English more difficult. I encouraged him to translate some of his articles to wp-en and helped to correct grammatical errors. There must be many users of this type (I only understand so many languages and my specialist knowledge is limited to geology so I can't identify most of them). At the moment, the Slovakian Wikipedia contains some nice material about geology not available in other languages. The language barrier keeps this quality content in isolation. Unlike its big English brother, the Slovakian Wikipedia doesn't get translated often (furthermore, translation of quality content requires a translator familiar with the subject) so the chance that this content will stay isolated is higher too. Imagine the specialist user stops editing after some time, the content is then in the hands of the maintenance users of the Slovakian Wikipedia. Due to the natural rate of wiki-erosion, errors will slip into it.
  • There is one more reason why we should get isolated quality users out of their isolation: I think it prolongs their life time. Let me cite Ortega again: he expresses some surprise at the fact that departure rates aren't related to policy and hints that it is probably rather related to the general style of social interaction. The fact doesn't surprise me at all. Quality users don't contribute to wiki-projects because they want to change policy, but because they want to show the world their knowledge. What all wiki-users crave for is some sort of 'applause' (all users are, in a way, like trolls, they seek some form of attention). If you wouldn't have written an extensive answer, I wouldn't have given this reply or at least I would have become less interested. The process of adding content to projects works the same way. What all wiki-users hate is the opposite of constructive cooperation: non-constructive cooperation, obstructive or rude behaviour and fights - according to your own model these things make users radicalise or leave.
• Third and last point ( :-) ). I don't agree vandals are a non-issue. Regular vandals are because they form a small group and will easily get caught. Being non-vandalistic is the easiest quality requirement to recognize and projects have been successful in battling vandalism (though I occasionally see something slipping through the net). Looking at the 'content-related factors of quality' I've identified, I'd say other forms of non-encyclopaedicity are the next easiest to identify (for example, a list of unknown family members is added to a biography). NPOV and verifiability are yet harder to identify, yet the most difficult is balance. This is maybe the reason that no project has a guideline about balance alone. The type of user you refer to ('true believers') mainly reduces NPOV, verifiability and balance. I agree with you: these are bigger problems than vandalism and we should focus on them.

Randomran said it for me - "there's a real systemic problem with how disputes are settled... Ortega suggests that there is a problem with consensus-building falling off, and more people pushing their personal opinion. I suspect that consensus building is falling off simply because of scale, if nothing else. It's easy for 2 or 3 people to agree about how to change a couple of sentences on an article. But it's hard for 50 or so people to come together and figure out the best way to cover an entire topic area. And yes, those two person debates escalate into WikiProject discussions or RFCs or policy discussions, which attract entire cartels of opinion pushers. And sadly, many of those opinion pushers are not interested in consensus building. They've actually realized that they can accomplish more by filibustering..."

Woodwalker also - "This is imho one of the biggest problems our task group has to find solutions for... 1) How can we ensure quality users get more respect and/or influence in communities (and in that way prolong their life time)? 2) How can we get quality users at local projects out of their isolation?"

I'd add a third aspect: big problems often need outside help -- and on enwiki we have problems so difficult, so extended in some areas, that by the time you exclude involved users, people who will be accused of bias, users unwilling to endure attacks, and only users with very high experience and capability, there's nobody (including its Arbcom) able, capable and willing to address these.

As our mandate is to produce a few recommendations, we need to think hard, what one change here is most likely to succeed and make the biggest incremental difference. I think having a way to formally recognize "trusted content editors" (noted before) is actually the one biggest change that could help. I post below, my thoughts why.

I would not disagree with saying that content creation is not valued high enough, but as a major content creator, I may be somewhat biased here :>

Anonymous users certainly can be high quality contributors. The problem is two fold: 1) when anonymous users quarrel with/harass non-anonymous experts 2) when anonymous experts lack incentive to become non-anonymous, while the fact that we have non-anonymous, verifiable experts would boost Wikipedia standing in the eyes of its readers.

Wiki-erosion occurs everywhere; you make an interesting point that it would be larger in smaller communities than in the larger ones - I am not necessarily convinced by it. In smaller communities, there is also less editor who can contribute to erosion. You are assuming that as community grows, the ratio of experts to non-experts improves - I am not necessarily convinced it is the case. That said, I do think we should be encouraging content translation and editor migration into English Wikipedia (the biggest, the best...). Invinting quality editors from lesser project will improve our quality, but in the end, its a zero sum game (they write for us - they don't write for their projects).

"Quality users don't contribute to wiki-projects because they want to change policy, but because they want to show the world their knowledge. What all wiki-users crave for is some sort of 'applause'". Certainly. This is why positive reinforcement is important, and negative reinforcement is so bad (IMHO, the major cause for vanishing of editors).

If we classify POV-pushers as vandals, than I agree, vandals are a problem. I meant the the "wheely on wheels" or "YOU SUCK" type of vandals are a non-issue; I think we agree on that :) Discussing the type of advanced vandals, I think there are two groups, both dangerous to quality, but one of them much more than the others. The first group are POV pushers who don't engage in harassment of their opponents, the other group does. The first group can be controlled by the community, as other than being slightly annoying they don't cause other editors to leave. It is the other group - the "true believers" who POV push and harass their opponents, often resulting in their burning out and leaving - that is a serious problems (as they cause quality contributors to disappear). --Piotrus 20:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

@Piotrus: about wiki-erosion: it is indeed also dependent on the amount of 'bad edits', on the project size. However, this only determines the erosion rate. So, at the English Wikipedia the erosion rate is higher than on the Greek Wikipedia, because there are more edits (on average of course, having patrolled both projects for vandalism I can assure you there's more vandalism at wp-el than at wp-en at some specific times of the day ;-) ). Sadly, this fact doesn't help. I assume Wiki-erosion is a hyperbolic function with time. It levels the quality of content to a certain level. That level is (in my assumption) directly related to the amount of specialist knowledge in a community. Therefore, even though it will take (on average) much more time to erode quality at wp-sk, the erosion will in the end be way more destructive than at wp-en.

Concerning the translations: I once made a suggestion on Meta a couple of years ago, but as with all Meta suggestions it did not go anywhere. I think translations of good and featured articles should be encouraged by all means. The problem is mostly to monitor the quality (not all projects, including en.wp, maintain high standards for FA and GA, and not all really good articles get selected since the authors do not bother about the status). We may think about bot monitoring the size of the articles, and if an article has been greatly improved and not reversed (to exclude vandalism) it gets checked manually and makes it to the list of articles for translation. This could be a Meta-wide list with individual projects encouraging the translation. Usually there are manu users willing to translate articles, they are just not sure where there is quality stuff.