>
> If those new users would have got a message in the Visual Editor during
> the editing, a lot more contributions would be able to stay in Wikipedia,
> less new contributors would get demotivated, and it would reduce the
> workload of existing users who do the maintenance every day.
>
Romaine – and everyone here who resonated with what Romaine expressed above
– I thought you might value knowing that a recent A/B test
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check#Reference_Check_A/B_Test> of Edit
Check <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check> (the idea Benoît shared
here
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/RWQIXLQEBNC62THG5J4TY7OCHCKRAPUF/>)
supports the assumptions you're making above and in this thread more
broadly.

Specifically, the A/B test showed:
* People [i] shown the Reference Check are *2.2x* more likely to publish a
new content edit that includes a reference and is constructive (not
reverted within 48 hours).
* The highest observed increase was on mobile where people are *4.2x* more
likely to publish a constructive new content edit with a reference when
Reference Check was shown
* New content edit revert rate decreased by *8.6%* if Reference Check was
available.
* Contributors that are shown Reference Check and successfully save a
non-reverted edit are *16%* more likely to return to make a non-reverted
edit in their second month (31-60 days after).

You can read the full report that Megan Neisler
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:MNeisler_(WMF)> prepared here: Reference
Check AB Test Analysis
<https://mneisler.quarto.pub/reference-check-ab-test-report-2024>.

If anything you see brings questions/ideas
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check/Ideas> to mind, now is a
wonderful time to share them. Reason: the Editing Team is actively planning
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Edit_check#5_June_2024> how to expand Edit
Check and needs volunteer expertise to shape this experience.

---
i. "People" defined as people who are unregistered or published <100 edits.


-- 
Peter Pelberg (he/him)
Lead Product Manager, Editing Team
Wikimedia Foundation


On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 7:48 AM Paulo Santos Perneta <
[email protected]> wrote:

> For 10 years or more, already, reliable sources have been mandatory in
> the Wikipedia in Portuguese, and any unsourced edit can and should be
> reverted and the user warned.
> Adding to that, since at least 2016, we use the abuse filters to block any
> edition lacking sources. Newbies like the one described by Romaine would
> receive a daunting red warning from the abuse filter system about the
> necessity of adding reliable sources in order for their edit to be saved -
> and the opportunity to go back and fix the problem. This has greatly
> improved things there, in that subject.
>
> Back in 2009, about 1 month after joining Wikipedia I found myself in a
> serious conflict with other, well established users, about a well sourced
> edit I wanted to add, which was being reverted by the veteran users in
> favour of unsourced (and false) information. At the time, I had to comply
> and swallow it, as the newbie I was. One year later, now with a reputation,
> I returned to the theme, reverted the whole thing and opened a public case
> there about falsification of information by said veteran user(s) - and that
> time it stood. This whole episode deeply marked me, and made absolutely
> clear that in Wikipedia there can be no tolerance for whatever lacks proper
> sources - something we actually often indulge in in paper encyclopedias, in
> my own experience. I'm very glad that the era of rampant tolerance with
> people adding unsourced content - something that was already against all
> good practices back in 2001 - is now a distant, sad memory. The quality of
> our Wikipedia skyrocketed since then, changing the paradigm from "Wikipedia
> is not reliable" to "Wikipedia is actually quite reliable, so much that I
> actually want to be there" all over the Lusophone world - and bringing new
> problems of its own. But that's undoubtedly the way to go, and it's sad it
> took so much time to actually implement what should have been there already
> from day 1.
>
> Best,
> Paulo
>
>
>
>
> Romaine Wiki <[email protected]> escreveu (quarta, 6/03/2024 à(s)
> 13:59):
>
>> In the past days, a new Wikipedia contributor edited Wikipedia and made a
>> great contribution, except... This user added zero sources, and the article
>> in what the edit was made was about a living person. So the verifiability
>> is a problem and in conflict with the policy Biographies of living persons.
>> This was just one example of thousands that have to be dealt with every day
>> in Wikimedia. And every day the community tries to maintain the quality of
>> Wikipedia and has to deal with this kind of edits.
>>
>> I asked myself the question: why did this new contributor not add any
>> sources?
>>
>> I logged out, went to an article and clicked edit. Made some
>> modifications (in the Visual Editor), and then clicked Publish changes. In
>> the steps I took to edit the article, I got nowhere a message that
>> Wikipedia wants to have sources for the information I added. Nowhere!
>>
>> I hope that every experienced user by now understands the importance of
>> adding sources. But we cannot expect from new contributors to already know
>> this. They need to be informed that adding sources is needed. They do not
>> go first read the manual of Wikipedia with all the help and project pages,
>> they just start editing right away. They think, link in many other
>> platforms, that if they do something wrong, they get a message while
>> editing/uploading/etc.
>>
>> For some strange reason, if you edit Wikipedia, you get no notification
>> at all that you need to add sources, even while this is one of the most
>> important pillars of Wikipedia. The result is that a lot of work of these
>> new contributors gets lost, because the information is removed from the
>> articles because of a lack of sources. If those new users would have got a
>> message in the Visual Editor during the editing, a lot more contributions
>> would be able to stay in Wikipedia, less new contributors would get
>> demotivated, and it would reduce the workload of existing users who do the
>> maintenance every day.
>>
>> As with the influx of edits without sources nothing is done, the Dutch
>> expression "mopping with the tap open" (Dutch: dweilen met de kraan open)
>> applies here.
>>
>> Romaine
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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