Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/DR update
Draft post
editThe following is a brief update - keep your eyes on this page where a more substantial update will appear in a few days.
Hi, I'm Steve. I've been an editor on the English Wikipedia for a little over four years - much of that time I've been involved in dispute resolution - both resolving disputes and improving the dispute resolution processes. To do this, I needed more information - since May 2012 I have been a Community Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation, and this has allowed me to focus on researching and improving dispute resolution on the English Wikipedia. By surveying members of the community, I've learned about their thoughts and experiences with dispute resolution. I also analyzed processes to determine their utilization and effectiveness and have presented ideas that will improve the future of dispute resolution. Here, I will briefly outline what I have learned thus far and what I am currently working on, as well as my plans for the future.
In April, I conducted a survey of editors who had participated in dispute resolution, and the results showed a few things - that while some aspects of dispute resolution was positive, there were many areas for improvement. The participants, who were mostly older male participants who held a degree and had been editing Wikipedia for over four years - graded both their personal experiences and their perception of the effectiveness of the processes poorly. Experienced volunteers and co-operative fellow editors contributed to a positive outcome, but the lack of guidance and support from volunteers, and uncooperative fellow editors made the experiences unpleasant. 70% had volunteered with dispute resolution at some point, however only 40% did so in the month prior to the survey - due to the complexity of dispute resolution or a lack of understanding on how to resolve disputes effectively. The complexity of requesting dispute resolution, with a lack of uniform handling was one issue, along with the time-consuming nature of the processes. The lack of volunteers was also a problem.
So, from the survey, I got the message that the community felt that dispute resolution is, overall, inefficient and ineffective, and lacks support from volunteers to resolve disputes. To follow this up, I undertook an analysis of a few dispute resolution forums in May (full results are at this page). A few things that I checked were volunteer counts, response times by a volunteer, the time that a thread was open, and some results were surprising. Response times ranged from 5 to 24 hours, thread time ranged from 2-28 days and the resolution rate ranged from 0-100%.
Thus, I determined that dispute resolution needs some changes to make it easier for volunteers and users alike - by making it simpler to request dispute resolution with a form (see here for an example) and consolidate dispute resolution forums, reduce the amount of time it takes to for a dispute to be resolved by creating templates to display the status of a dispute and the requirement of brief statements so volunteers aren't put off by massive walls of text, and by creating guides so it's easier for a volunteer to get involved.
As the dispute resolution noticeboard was the most used, I focused my efforts on there for August - and set some goals to aim for - decrease the first response time by 40% to 10 hours or less, increase the success rate by 22% to 70%, the amount of active volunteers by 17% to 30 or more, and decrease the resolution timeframe by at least 19% to 7 days. The end of the month is approaching, but halfway through the month here are the results:
| Result for May | Goals for August | % change desired | Results for August so far (1 - 15 Aug) | % change Achieved | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. Response Time | 16.6 hrs | <10 hrs | -39.75% | 2.25 hours | -86.45% |
| # of active volunteers | 25 - 1 to 12 ratio with 207 participants | 30+ | +16.67% | 14 - ratio of 1 to 6.7 with 95 participants (avg.2.34 per thread) | -44% |
| Timeframe discussion open for | 8.6 days | 5 - 7 days | -18.6% to -41.9% | 2.02 days | -76.51% |
| Success rate | 47.61% | 70%+ | +22.39% | 61.54% | +13.93% |
Halfway through the month, the results look promising. Volunteers responded to disputes quicker and discussions were open for a shorter period of time, and more disputes were resolved. The average thread is also 25% shorter, however the lack of volunteers is an ongoing problem - though they have been more evenly spread across participants. This can only be addressed by increasing awareness of the importance of dispute resolution, and making it simpler to volunteer. I will continue to work on promoting the need for volunteers so that we can improve dispute resolution.