Talk:Wikimedia Conference 2011/Documentation/Editor Trends Study

I would like to make some comments and present some questions about this discussions, if I may –

1. It is hardly surprising that WP lags behind social networks. Social networks are for different purposes and they are more appealing to people who prefer expressing opinions and conversations, who constitute the majority of people. WP should not be concerned about this issue, and yet it should be concerned about becoming unwelcoming community. The chances of getting banned on FaceBook, for example, are very slim, and one usually can return within short period of time. WP is very intolerant and there are no rules about how a ban is imposed (or to be more exact - there are so many possible pretexts for a ban, which makes banning practically unlimited).
2. The interface is still somewhat complicated, but this is not the problem. The question is why veteran users who master the Wiki-system do not help the newbies. Suppose a newbie enters a sentence in the wrong format - most chances are that the change be reverted rather than checked for relevancy and properly formatted.
3. Is there going to be a survey among "retired" contributors? Is there a possibility to collect e-mails of users who stopped editing after several productive months, or even users who were banned for reasons other than plain vandalism. Is it possible to send a friendly e-mail to these users and ask them a few questions about their experience? I think it would give some very interesting insights.
4. Wikipedia is defined as an encyclopedia. This format is limiting, and that's fine – this good old format serves certain purposes and serves them well. Currently we witness unnecessary split and forking of many articles. We also see good articles being changed for the sake of change or due to wrong reasons. This energy should be channeled to other projects.
5. Wikipedia never meant to become a monopoly. Quite the contrary - being a free-content project, one of its goals is to serve as "raw material" for other initiatives. Therefore, the Wikimedia Foundation and its chapters should encourage such local free-content collaborative initiatives. When asked how to edit Wikipedia, chapter members should also explain how to use WP's content outside WP in new similar projects. When a Greek polis reached a certain size and population, it sent some of its citizens to establish a new independent polis. I think the same is relevant for WP too. Dror_K 05:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Re: surveying former contributors, see strategy:Former Contributors Survey Results.--Eloquence 07:59, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Reading this page I realized that I have read it before, but forgot about it (I have to delete files from my brain every now and then to make room for new influx of date :-) ). I think the results of the two surveys emphasize the social problem (so to speak) that WP experiences. I said it before and I say it again - this problem is very much expected, and actually it would have been too surprising had it not come into being. And yet, so far, the attempts to deal with it are not successful. I would like to bring this issue to public discussion on this year's Wikimania [1]. Dror_K 15:33, 26 March 2011 (UTC)