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1. Embed this notice
   John Mark Ockerbloom (jmarkockerbloom@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 05:49:16 JST John Mark Ockerbloom

   More than funds, what Wikipedia really needs is more good editors. The number of people who regularly edit articles in English Wikipedia hasn't grown substantially in years, while the number of articles has, and editor demographics remains skewed. The foundation itself largely stays away from editing, leaving it to volunteers. While articles that get a lot of attention are often good, it's not hard to find ones with biased and promotional content in less-visited topics, and in other languages.

   • Yuchen Pei and Rocketman repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Eric Ireland (erici@social.sdf.org)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 06:05:50 JST Eric Ireland

     in reply to

     • David Gerard

     @JMarkOckerbloom @davidgerard I wrote an article a couple of years ago about Rowden White library at Melbourne Uni. It was edited down to a husk and then deleted for being not important enough or something. 75 years of history and a few references in actual books. I never bothered with it again.

   • Embed this notice
     Rhode PVD (rhodepvd@romancelandia.club)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 07:40:27 JST Rhode PVD

     in reply to

     @JMarkOckerbloom Pointing out thousands of women editors have left due to the toxicity and misogyny of the editor culture there. The reason Wikipedia’s editor pool doesn’t grow much is its own fault.

   • Embed this notice
     Ponder Stibbons 🇧🇷🇩🇪 (blackcoffeerider@social.saarland)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 11:44:37 JST Ponder Stibbons 🇧🇷🇩🇪

     in reply to

     • Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC

     @JMarkOckerbloom

     At least in the German Wikipedia the problem of "not enough editors" is self made because the people with high reputation have no interest in guiding new people into making meaningful changes. Instead they give oppinionated feedback and revert edits (thereby increasing their activity score and increasing their own reputation). The random mentor system only works on paper. After ignoring the warnings of several people I had that exact same experience.

     @LordCaramac

   • Embed this notice
     John Mark Ockerbloom (jmarkockerbloom@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 11:44:38 JST John Mark Ockerbloom

     in reply to

     • Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC

     @LordCaramac That may depend on how you get active. I'm also a white nerd, and do some editing of articles that are of interest to me, but I also try to keep an eye out for what's going on with topics not on my usual beat and editors who don't resemble me, and try to make the Wikipedia environment more amenable to them.

     (E.g., there are ways to watch for articles in danger of deletion because the usual demographics don't know much about them, and are more likely to consider them "non-notable".)

     Bob Jonkman repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC (lordcaramac@discordian.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 11:44:39 JST Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC

     in reply to

     @JMarkOckerbloom I'm just another German with a STEM background, so if I became more active on Wikipedia, it would just become a little bit more white and nerdy.

   • Embed this notice
     Bob Jonkman (bobjonkman@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 11:53:24 JST Bob Jonkman

     in reply to

     • Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC
     • Ponder Stibbons 🇧🇷🇩🇪

     Yup. I've had too many Wikipedia articles I've created marked for deletion as "not notable" or edits reverted by people who have no knowledge of the matter (local things, reverted by outsiders).

     At a Wikipedia meetup over 10 years ago with the (then) Executive Director I complained about the Deletionists (and was chorused by others), but things have only become worse. I've given up on making substantial contributions, and only rarely fix typos.

     @blackcoffeerider
     @JMarkOckerbloom @LordCaramac

   • Embed this notice
     Nemo_bis 🌈 (nemobis@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 19:37:27 JST Nemo_bis 🌈

     in reply to

     • naught101
     • WikiResearch

     @naught101 Yes, we need more research. Serious ethnographic research is expensive and easy to skew; it would probably need to be conducted by a publicly funded research university. There are a few dozen studies mentioned in the @wikiresearch archives https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter , you can help by reviewing more.

     #Wikimedia #research

   • Embed this notice
     naught101 (naught101@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 19:37:28 JST naught101

     in reply to

     • Wikipedia

     @JMarkOckerbloom

     @wikipedia really needs to do some user/editor #ethnography

     https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_studies_about_Wikipedia contains lots of info on studies, but I can't see anything about how editors interact with the site. It would be be particularly useful to interview people who have been editors in the past and have stopped. And ideally block that across demographics

     I used to edit a lot, but I lost interest after an mildly obnoxious edit war over the interpretation of a low-n metaanalysis (also lack of time)

   • Embed this notice
     Nemo_bis 🌈 (nemobis@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 20:13:43 JST Nemo_bis 🌈

     in reply to

     • bignose

     @bignose I'm sorry about this experience. I've run into such issues myself sometimes and it took some effort to get overbroad VPN blocks lifted. For someone with less social capital it may have been impossible. If you're still interested in editing, I'd like to see if I can help with your specific situation. Contact me in private if interested.

   • Embed this notice
     bignose (bignose@theblower.au)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 20:13:44 JST bignose

     in reply to

     Having been a fairly active #Wikipedia editor in its early years, I loved the experience and wish it for more people.

     Since those days, I need to use a #VPN to avoid omnipresent snooping on our network traffic. More and more people will need this to be safe online.

     Wikipedia categorically blocks anyone like me from editing, unless we beg individually for an exemption. I understand the need to fight spammers and other malicious behaviour, but this blanket ban of VPN users forces an unfair choice between remaining safe versus editing Wikipedia. It's a bad policy that doesn't address the problem.

     @JMarkOckerbloom

   • Embed this notice
     Nemo_bis 🌈 (nemobis@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 20:19:35 JST Nemo_bis 🌈

     in reply to

     • naught101

     @naught101 Fair enough! Following the newsletter is a good first step. The reviewers need some encouragement too. :)

   • Embed this notice
     naught101 (naught101@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 20:19:36 JST naught101

     in reply to

     • Nemo_bis 🌈
     • WikiResearch

     @nemobis @wikiresearch

     Thanks! That link as heaps more than on the link I found.

     I would love to review, but I'm not a social scientist of any kind, so I think I might be a bit useless.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 26-Dec-2024 21:08:36 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @JMarkOckerbloom This is kinda tangential, but being that the reason a lot of people *don't* get involved in editing Wikipedia is the feeling that bigoted ideologue edit warriors are just going to undo their work:

     The contribution I'd really like to see to WP is rigorous research on edit histories documenting this, identifying the culprits, and pressuring WP to get rid of them.

   • Embed this notice
     Stewart Russell (scruss@xoxo.zone)'s status on Friday, 27-Dec-2024 03:42:33 JST Stewart Russell

     in reply to

     • Bob Jonkman

     @bobjonkman @JMarkOckerbloom

     Likewise. Occasional typo correction and resolving citations needed is about my limit. Last major edit I did I needed to call in the help of a very connected editor to stop climate change-denying editors deleting the content.

     Yet some of my ancient and entirely non-notable articles persist. I guess they become notable if they are in Wikipedia for long enough.

     And I'm a white guy writing about easy mode stuff. Editing intersectional content must be hell.

   • Embed this notice
     bignose (bignose@theblower.au)'s status on Sunday, 29-Dec-2024 18:19:04 JST bignose

     in reply to

     • Nemo_bis 🌈

     Thank you for this kind response @nemobis.

     I don't so much need an exemption for only myself. What I need is the #Wikipedia policy changed so that people who use #VPN are treated equally and allowed to edit while preserving #privacy.

   • Embed this notice
     Nemo_bis 🌈 (nemobis@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 29-Dec-2024 18:19:04 JST Nemo_bis 🌈

     in reply to

     • bignose

     @bignose Yes, we need better defaults. Especially better options than VPNs for privacy (most VPNs out there are a privacy catastrophe).

     Equality isn't a particularly helpful principle here. Open proxies (some of which are open VPNs) are blocked in the name of equality, namely the equality of ease of being IP-blocked just like dynamic home internet IP address users.