On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Nathan <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > It's not just changes that draw petty, sarcastic and juvenile replies > for Wikipedians. We have a pervasive problem of burnout, wherein our > more experienced contributors became jaded and disillusioned and make > a practice of appalling behavior. > <snip>
> Unfortunately this type of interaction isn't even unusual. In some > respects it appears to be the norm, in fact, and there doesn't seem to > be any effective way of addressing this problem. I can no longer > recommend people to become involved in editing, because frankly I > refuse to subject friends and colleagues to the risk of this type of > treatment. Perhaps the Foundation should put some effort into this > issue before soliciting new participants who are likely to be shocked > at the editing culture. > > > Nathan > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fastily#SYS_logo.png > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Fair_use > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > Interesting point to follow up to David's. I've gone a rounds about your point and David's, and how it integrates. Data is good, data is useful. When discussing the operation of a collaborative, volunteer environment, data does not always say what we want it to unless we want it to. Let's use BLPs on the English Wikipedia for an example. No, I don't have refs, this is off the top of my head but I've been up to my eyes in it since September. The English Wikipedia has 3.5 million articles. Of those, /only/ 50,000 of those were unreferenced BLPs. So numerically, very small. To break that down further, of the BLP tagged articles on the English Wikipedia, less than a thousand get in touch with the volunteer response team about issues per year. Again, statistically small. So what we have are four salient questions: How many people don't care, how many people care and don't know what to do, how satisfied are they if they figure that out, and how much volunteer resource is spent on these issues. The thing is that this can all never be quantified to the extent of the human condition. All we can do is work toward helping and enticing new consumers of Wikimedia projects. There are new users that are eager, ones that don't care, and others that are initially openly hostile. The fact of the matter is that dedicated contributors stay, the truly dedicated ones get it, and we do need a way to promote a more friendly, welcoming environment. Reading over the new Public Policy intent is a good step in that direction. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
