The "holy shit" slide on editor retention, Sue Gardner on Wikipedia's death spiral Options

[Peter Damian]

A video http://bambuser.com/channel/pigsonthewing/broadcast/2140682 of Sue talking about the difficult issue of editor retention. I haven't followed everything she's said in public, but she seems much more open here and less reserved than I thought.

She talks about what WMF call the the 'holy shit' slide, showing that editing peaked at 2005. She says she is not going to use the words 'death spiral' in public (but then goes on to use the term not a few times). It is essentially "endless September".

Below is what I summarised from listening to the first hour, which was enough. I have a lot of time for what she is saying, in particular her point that it is the drive to quality that seems to be pulling the numbers down. I don't agree that it is possible to draw a compromise between those two, as she seems to think. Sue is essentially a tree hugger, witness her visit to Occupy Wall Street a few weeks ago. Her idea that you can resolve problems by sending pictures of kittens and just being generally huggy and pink and glittery is generally misconceived.

Interesting that there seems to be general acknowledgment at the Foundation that there is a rogue admin problem. Do they have the guts to do anything about it though?

-----------------------------------------------
New editors aren't making it to their first year anniversary. People are coming in large numbers as they always have, but they are getting rebuffed. Why are they failing to enter community. Warnings have gone up, criticism is 'way up', and praise and thanks have been in decline. People join and then it's warning template after template. The templates are well-intended but they make new editors feel like 'Wikipedia hates you'. Pre-2006 there were no automated warning. Established editors would talk to new editors and help them through. Now, 4 out of 5 messages are bot-delivered.

Someone asked about the 'goldrush' hypothesis - early gains are over. The low hanging fruit has all been picked. Sue said that "There is very little evidence to support that. On the contrary, we see the same pattern on other Wikipedias.Even the Hindi Wikipedia, which has only 5,000 articles.After a couple of years a Wiki gets filled up with rules and templates. Deletions and reversions stop people hanging around."

The indicator of good Wikipedian is to make lots of edits in first few days. But these are the most disincentivised. "People think the website is yelling at them. "

In 2005-6 the wall started to go up. She discusses FA and how the bar has got so high that certain articles will never go to FA. "I honestly think we have lost our way, I really do right. I sometimes think we have become Nupedia, and we need another Wikipedia to feed into it. I just think we are really really rigid ... We have lost sight of what makes the project special, which is that everybody really does have something to contribute, it's not just a priesthood".

Someone comments about a user who started an article on their user page, and told that if they did not stop their disruptive editing they will be blocked. Sue thinks this came out of the Seigenthaler thing, when Jimmy insisted there must be a focus on quality, also the same time as Essjay. "There was a moral panic created around quality". This gave a whole lot of people license to be jerks. People are playing Wikipedia like a video game, shooting down vandals, and every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the AK47 and just gets murdered. "What we think now is that it's all nuns and tourists. There's a massacre and there's one vandal in the background running away. And meanwhile everyone else is dead."

"I deliberately kept out the phrase 'death spiral', because I didn't want to put it in writing. It's too depressing".

So what shall we do. The WMF rarely speaks directly to editors. It used to be Jimmy who would proclaim something. As an movement develops matures it needs institutions, not individuals. Jimmy still plays a role as an individual, but the board, the institution plays much more of a role today. The first time was the BLP resolution. The board said on March 2011 that editor retention was its top priority. (At this point they read something which is not spoken aloud).

Are admins the problem, particularly rogue admins? (32:00) Sue mentions someone on Foundation-l (or internal l?) who was being 'a real jerk', and a number of people even called him on it. He told her "I don't think I was being uncivil, I was being icily sarcastic". Is icily sarcastic what we aim for? Is that success? "I would interpret our requirement for civility as a flaw. You cannot get worse than that". "As though I can be barely civil and that's what we are supposed to do here".

She then goes on about Occupy Wall St, where she was (at Manhattan) a few weeks ago. The think she liked most was that everyone there took responsibility for maintaining a good tone. She does think that Arbcom should play a role. Not banning, but maybe 'taking a role'.

She notes that the smaller projects have a big problem, e.g. Wikiversity.

What is WMF doing? The analysis comes first, on Wikimedia. She thinks there is a false dichotomy between quality and retention, as though there is a conflict between 'good' and 'open'. She looked at the abuse filter. She thinks this is great for participation, and great for quality.

40:48 - have they tried to identify who the top newbie killers are? They can't, but they have been thinking about mechanisms. "There are people we call 'moth people'. They are drawn to the flame. And some people are drawn to the flame in a good way (they negotiate, they mediate), others in a bad way, they like fighting. "Its really hard for data to tell you things like that". They had thought about a flag to identify the bad moth people.

The volunteers tend to increase complexity. The job of the WMF software engineers is to reduce complexity. [And 55 minutes was as far as I got - mostly questions and answers by this stage].

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sun 20th November 2011, 1:13pm

[Ceoil]

''Her idea that you can resolve problems by sending pictures of kittens and just being generally huggy and pink and glittery ''.

Lol. Nice way with words Peter.

This post has been edited by Ceoil: Sun 20th November 2011, 4:08pm

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Sue is essentially a tree hugger, witness her visit to Occupy Wall Street a few weeks ago.

Were they hanging Jimbo in effigy that day?

[HRIP7]

A video http://bambuser.com/channel/pigsonthewing/broadcast/2140682 of Sue talking about the difficult issue of editor retention. I haven't followed everything she's said in public, but she seems much more open here and less reserved than I thought.

She talks about what WMF call the the 'holy shit' slide, showing that editing peaked at 2005. She says she is not going to use the words 'death spiral' in public (but then goes on to use the term not a few times). It is essentially "endless September".

Below is what I summarised from listening to the first hour, which was enough. I have a lot of time for what she is saying, in particular her point that it is the drive to quality that seems to be pulling the numbers down. I don't agree that it is possible to draw a compromise between those two, as she seems to think. Sue is essentially a tree hugger, witness her visit to Occupy Wall Street a few weeks ago. Her idea that you can resolve problems by sending pictures of kittens and just being generally huggy and pink and glittery is generally misconceived.

Interesting that there seems to be general acknowledgment at the Foundation that there is a rogue admin problem. Do they have the guts to do anything about it though?

-----------------------------------------------
New editors aren't making it to their first year anniversary. People are coming in large numbers as they always have, but they are getting rebuffed. Why are they failing to enter community. Warnings have gone up, criticism is 'way up', and praise and thanks have been in decline. People join and then it's warning template after template. The templates are well-intended but they make new editors feel like 'Wikipedia hates you'. Pre-2006 there were no automated warning. Established editors would talk to new editors and help them through. Now, 4 out of 5 messages are bot-delivered.

Someone asked about the 'goldrush' hypothesis - early gains are over. The low hanging fruit has all been picked. Sue said that "There is very little evidence to support that. On the contrary, we see the same pattern on other Wikipedias.Even the Hindi Wikipedia, which has only 5,000 articles.After a couple of years a Wiki gets filled up with rules and templates. Deletions and reversions stop people hanging around."

The indicator of good Wikipedian is to make lots of edits in first few days. But these are the most disincentivised. "People think the website is yelling at them. "

In 2005-6 the wall started to go up. She discusses FA and how the bar has got so high that certain articles will never go to FA. "I honestly think we have lost our way, I really do right. I sometimes think we have become Nupedia, and we need another Wikipedia to feed into it. I just think we are really really rigid ... We have lost sight of what makes the project special, which is that everybody really does have something to contribute, it's not just a priesthood".

Someone comments about a user who started an article on their user page, and told that if they did not stop their disruptive editing they will be blocked. Sue thinks this came out of the Seigenthaler thing, when Jimmy insisted there must be a focus on quality, also the same time as Essjay. "There was a moral panic created around quality". This gave a whole lot of people license to be jerks. People are playing Wikipedia like a video game, shooting down vandals, and every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the AK47 and just gets murdered. "What we think now is that it's all nuns and tourists. There's a massacre and there's one vandal in the background running away. And meanwhile everyone else is dead."

"I deliberately kept out the phrase 'death spiral', because I didn't want to put it in writing. It's too depressing".

So what shall we do. The WMF rarely speaks directly to editors. It used to be Jimmy who would proclaim something. As an movement develops matures it needs institutions, not individuals. Jimmy still plays a role as an individual, but the board, the institution plays much more of a role today. The first time was the BLP resolution. The board said on March 2011 that editor retention was its top priority. (At this point they read something which is not spoken aloud).

Are admins the problem, particularly rogue admins? (32:00) Sue mentions someone on Foundation-l (or internal l?) who was being 'a real jerk', and a number of people even called him on it. He told her "I don't think I was being uncivil, I was being icily sarcastic". Is icily sarcastic what we aim for? Is that success? "I would interpret our requirement for civility as a flaw. You cannot get worse than that". "As though I can be barely civil and that's what we are supposed to do here".

She then goes on about Occupy Wall St, where she was (at Manhattan) a few weeks ago. The think she liked most was that everyone there took responsibility for maintaining a good tone. She does think that Arbcom should play a role. Not banning, but maybe 'taking a role'.

She notes that the smaller projects have a big problem, e.g. Wikiversity.

What is WMF doing? The analysis comes first, on Wikimedia. She thinks there is a false dichotomy between quality and retention, as though there is a conflict between 'good' and 'open'. She looked at the abuse filter. She thinks this is great for participation, and great for quality.

40:48 - have they tried to identify who the top newbie killers are? They can't, but they have been thinking about mechanisms. "There are people we call 'moth people'. They are drawn to the flame. And some people are drawn to the flame in a good way (they negotiate, they mediate), others in a bad way, they like fighting. "Its really hard for data to tell you things like that". They had thought about a flag to identify the bad moth people.

The volunteers tend to increase complexity. The job of the WMF software engineers is to reduce complexity. [And 55 minutes was as far as I got - mostly questions and answers by this stage].

Good summary. I watched that earlier today as well.

Today was her meeting in Germany. It was relatively uneventful. (No one was wearing white paper bags on their heads.)

Slides.

She reiterated that a category-based image filter was off the agenda. There was a live video link, and I think there will be a video of the meeting at some point, but it isn't up yet.

[Peter Damian]

A video http://bambuser.com/channel/pigsonthewing/broadcast/2140682 of Sue talking about the difficult issue of editor retention. I haven't followed everything she's said in public, but she seems much more open here and less reserved than I thought.

She talks about what WMF call the the 'holy shit' slide, showing that editing peaked at 2005. She says she is not going to use the words 'death spiral' in public (but then goes on to use the term not a few times). It is essentially "endless September".

Below is what I summarised from listening to the first hour, which was enough. I have a lot of time for what she is saying, in particular her point that it is the drive to quality that seems to be pulling the numbers down. I don't agree that it is possible to draw a compromise between those two, as she seems to think. Sue is essentially a tree hugger, witness her visit to Occupy Wall Street a few weeks ago. Her idea that you can resolve problems by sending pictures of kittens and just being generally huggy and pink and glittery is generally misconceived.

Interesting that there seems to be general acknowledgment at the Foundation that there is a rogue admin problem. Do they have the guts to do anything about it though?

-----------------------------------------------
New editors aren't making it to their first year anniversary. People are coming in large numbers as they always have, but they are getting rebuffed. Why are they failing to enter community. Warnings have gone up, criticism is 'way up', and praise and thanks have been in decline. People join and then it's warning template after template. The templates are well-intended but they make new editors feel like 'Wikipedia hates you'. Pre-2006 there were no automated warning. Established editors would talk to new editors and help them through. Now, 4 out of 5 messages are bot-delivered.

Someone asked about the 'goldrush' hypothesis - early gains are over. The low hanging fruit has all been picked. Sue said that "There is very little evidence to support that. On the contrary, we see the same pattern on other Wikipedias.Even the Hindi Wikipedia, which has only 5,000 articles.After a couple of years a Wiki gets filled up with rules and templates. Deletions and reversions stop people hanging around."

The indicator of good Wikipedian is to make lots of edits in first few days. But these are the most disincentivised. "People think the website is yelling at them. "

In 2005-6 the wall started to go up. She discusses FA and how the bar has got so high that certain articles will never go to FA. "I honestly think we have lost our way, I really do right. I sometimes think we have become Nupedia, and we need another Wikipedia to feed into it. I just think we are really really rigid ... We have lost sight of what makes the project special, which is that everybody really does have something to contribute, it's not just a priesthood".

Someone comments about a user who started an article on their user page, and told that if they did not stop their disruptive editing they will be blocked. Sue thinks this came out of the Seigenthaler thing, when Jimmy insisted there must be a focus on quality, also the same time as Essjay. "There was a moral panic created around quality". This gave a whole lot of people license to be jerks. People are playing Wikipedia like a video game, shooting down vandals, and every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the AK47 and just gets murdered. "What we think now is that it's all nuns and tourists. There's a massacre and there's one vandal in the background running away. And meanwhile everyone else is dead."

"I deliberately kept out the phrase 'death spiral', because I didn't want to put it in writing. It's too depressing".

So what shall we do. The WMF rarely speaks directly to editors. It used to be Jimmy who would proclaim something. As an movement develops matures it needs institutions, not individuals. Jimmy still plays a role as an individual, but the board, the institution plays much more of a role today. The first time was the BLP resolution. The board said on March 2011 that editor retention was its top priority. (At this point they read something which is not spoken aloud).

Are admins the problem, particularly rogue admins? (32:00) Sue mentions someone on Foundation-l (or internal l?) who was being 'a real jerk', and a number of people even called him on it. He told her "I don't think I was being uncivil, I was being icily sarcastic". Is icily sarcastic what we aim for? Is that success? "I would interpret our requirement for civility as a flaw. You cannot get worse than that". "As though I can be barely civil and that's what we are supposed to do here".

She then goes on about Occupy Wall St, where she was (at Manhattan) a few weeks ago. The think she liked most was that everyone there took responsibility for maintaining a good tone. She does think that Arbcom should play a role. Not banning, but maybe 'taking a role'.

She notes that the smaller projects have a big problem, e.g. Wikiversity.

What is WMF doing? The analysis comes first, on Wikimedia. She thinks there is a false dichotomy between quality and retention, as though there is a conflict between 'good' and 'open'. She looked at the abuse filter. She thinks this is great for participation, and great for quality.

40:48 - have they tried to identify who the top newbie killers are? They can't, but they have been thinking about mechanisms. "There are people we call 'moth people'. They are drawn to the flame. And some people are drawn to the flame in a good way (they negotiate, they mediate), others in a bad way, they like fighting. "Its really hard for data to tell you things like that". They had thought about a flag to identify the bad moth people.

The volunteers tend to increase complexity. The job of the WMF software engineers is to reduce complexity. [And 55 minutes was as far as I got - mostly questions and answers by this stage].

Good summary. I watched that earlier today as well.

Today was her meeting in Germany. It was relatively uneventful. (No one was wearing white paper bags on their heads.)

Slides.

She reiterated that a category-based image filter was off the agenda. There was a live video link, and I think there will be a video of the meeting at some point, but it isn't up yet.

Thanks - nice to see you last Sunday, by the way. The slide show contains the 'holy shit' slide that Sue was referring to in the first presentation, plus some other slides in similar, er, shitty vein.

[thekohser]

Slides.

Page 9, Moeller's trying to hide behind someone else in the photo (under the "d" in "Foundation", back row).

[Peter Damian]

Slides.

Page 9, Moeller's trying to hide behind someone else in the photo (under the "d" in "Foundation", back row).

You can tell by the hairstyle?

[mbz1]

-----------------------------------------------
New editors aren't making it to their first year anniversary. People are coming in large numbers as they always have, but they are getting rebuffed. Why are they failing to enter community. Warnings have gone up, criticism is 'way up', and praise and thanks have been in decline. People join and then it's warning template after template. The templates are well-intended but they make new editors feel like 'Wikipedia hates you'. Pre-2006 there were no automated warning. Established editors would talk to new editors and help them through. Now, 4 out of 5 messages are bot-delivered.

Here's an example to illustrate her point:

1.A new editor made a few contributions.
2.He was warned he has to use sources
3.So in his next two edits hi tries to use sources.In this edit he provides the source like this "(Marks, "Lost Paradise", page 292.) " because he is not sure what is the right way to list references. In his next and the last edit he inserts the external link to the article in Guardian, which of course is a reliable source
4.The user is blocked by a bully administrator gwen gale
5.Nobody cares, the user is gone.

Conclusion: The user has done nothing wrong. He was warned to use reliable sources, and he used reliable sources because This book is a reliable source. Instead of explaining to the user how references should be written, the user was blocked.

But honestly I am not sure why Sue is only talking about new users. How about old users who left wikipedia in disgust because they got sick of being threaded unfairly? Nobody cares about these users either, including Sue herself. I emailed her a few times, asking for help to catch the user who hacked my email account, and then contacted a useful idiot sol via wikipedia email to make sol its voice. sol of course got itself banned under directions of the hacker, but Sue has never bothered to respond to tell me what IP was used to contact sol.
Generally speaking I despise WMF employees, members of arbcom and administrators who do not respond polite, legitimate questions. Yes, it takes a time, but nobody forced them to become an admin, and/or a member of arbcom, but, if they do, they should find the time to respond questions of the editors.

This post has been edited by mbz1: Sun 20th November 2011, 9:05pm

[melloden]

I think a big factor in the HSS, however, is the perception that Wikipedia is essentially "complete" now, as opposed to its state in 2005. Nowadays, there are petty arguments over "notability" this or "deletion" that; they're always attempting to close off Wikipedia to further expansion. As a result, people just don't want to stick around to maintain something--it's far more fun to help build something up rather than try to keep it from going to hell.

[thekohser]

You can tell by the hairstyle?

Nah, it's my Pedo-Detector 3000.

Okay, okay, it's actually pretty clear from hairstyle and the eyeglasses frame.

This post has been edited by thekohser: Mon 21st November 2011, 12:46am

[TungstenCarbide]

You can tell by the hairstyle?

you should delete your post, Greg

[SB_Johnny]

I haven't followed everything she's said in public, but she seems much more open here and less reserved than I thought.

She's actually said a lot of impressive things over the past year or so, but it's hard to get past the "Jimmy's never done anything wrong" interview.

[HRIP7]

Thanks - nice to see you last Sunday, by the way. The slide show contains the 'holy shit' slide that Sue was referring to in the first presentation, plus some other slides in similar, er, shitty vein.

Likewise. And thanks for helping us find the place – it would have taken us twice as long without you. The wife says hi.

[thekohser]

You can tell by the hairstyle?

you should delete your post, Greg

What do you have against walking?

[Cla68]

-----------------------------------------------
New editors aren't making it to their first year anniversary. People are coming in large numbers as they always have, but they are getting rebuffed. Why are they failing to enter community. Warnings have gone up, criticism is 'way up', and praise and thanks have been in decline. People join and then it's warning template after template. The templates are well-intended but they make new editors feel like 'Wikipedia hates you'. Pre-2006 there were no automated warning. Established editors would talk to new editors and help them through. Now, 4 out of 5 messages are bot-delivered.

Here's an example to illustrate her point:

1.A new editor made a few contributions.
2.He was warned he has to use sources
3.So in his next two edits hi tries to use sources.In this edit he provides the source like this "(Marks, "Lost Paradise", page 292.) " because he is not sure what is the right way to list references. In his next and the last edit he inserts the external link to the article in Guardian, which of course is a reliable source
4.The user is blocked by a bully administrator gwen gale
5.Nobody cares, the user is gone.

Conclusion: The user has done nothing wrong. He was warned to use reliable sources, and he used reliable sources because This book is a reliable source. Instead of explaining to the user how references should be written, the user was blocked.

But honestly I am not sure why Sue is only talking about new users. How about old users who left wikipedia in disgust because they got sick of being threaded unfairly? Nobody cares about these users either, including Sue herself. I emailed her a few times, asking for help to catch the user who hacked my email account, and then contacted a useful idiot sol via wikipedia email to make sol its voice. sol of course got itself banned under directions of the hacker, but Sue has never bothered to respond to tell me what IP was used to contact sol.
Generally speaking I despise WMF employees, members of arbcom and administrators who do not respond polite, legitimate questions. Yes, it takes a time, but nobody forced them to become an admin, and/or a member of arbcom, but, if they do, they should find the time to respond questions of the editors.

I get the impression that the WMF hopes that the en.Wikipedia's administration will fix itself so they won't have to make any effort, such as by providing actual hands-on leadership, to do it themselves. Perhaps they are scared of liabililty if they get involved in project affairs, or they want to stay fully occupied with marketing, networking, and attending conferences and symposiums, or they just don't have any leadership qualities or ability. It's probably a combination of all those factors.

The fact that Sue Gardner would make an effort to say something positive about the anarchic, left-wing OWS protests is also telling. If I were the WMF board, I would want a chief executive who was a dedicated free-market capitalist.

[Rhindle]

The fact that Sue Gardner would make an effort to say something positive about the anarchic, left-wing OWS protests is also telling. If I were the WMF board, I would want a chief executive who was a dedicated free-market capitalist.

Because free-market capitalists always have everyone's best interests in mind.

[Cla68]

The fact that Sue Gardner would make an effort to say something positive about the anarchic, left-wing OWS protests is also telling. If I were the WMF board, I would want a chief executive who was a dedicated free-market capitalist.

Because free-market capitalists always have everyone's best interests in mind.

As a member of the board, I wouldn't care if the chief executive had everyone's best interest in mind, just Wikipedia's.

[EricBarbour]

40:48 - have they tried to identify who the top newbie killers are? They can't

I can. I already have.

They don't want to do anything, because they would have to ban some very powerful admins.
There would be chaos and endless bitching. Plus, I've seen a rumor that a couple of those
"evil patrollers" are Anonymous members who do a lot of hacking on the side. The fear is if
they were kicked out, they would mount a series of DDOS attacks on the WMF servers, try
to crack server passwords and then trash the hard drives, etc.

"There are people we call 'moth people'. They are drawn to the flame. And some people are drawn to the flame in a good way (they negotiate, they mediate), others in a bad way, they like fighting. "Its really hard for data to tell you things like that". They had thought about a flag to identify the bad moth people.

More BULLSHIT from the COWARDS. I predict nothing will be done, the bastards will force out all
new editors and most of the old ones, and the whole thing will start to decline.

[mbz1]

The fact that Sue Gardner would make an effort to say something positive about the anarchic, left-wing OWS protests is also telling. If I were the WMF board, I would want a chief executive who was a dedicated free-market capitalist.

Because free-market capitalists always have everyone's best interests in mind.

As a member of the board, I wouldn't care if the chief executive had everyone's best interest in mind, just Wikipedia's.

But who are wikipedians? Most of them are young men, which means, most of them are liberals.
As Winston Churchill said:

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart”

So Sue does what is in the best interests of wikipedia by attracting more liberal young men, who have hearts
Of course Churchill ended up his thought with:

“ if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

but this is already a different story

This post has been edited by mbz1: Mon 21st November 2011, 3:00am

[Tarc]

As Winston Churchill said:

Perhaps the most misattributed quote in history, Churchill never said anything of the sort.