Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-03-29/Recent research

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• Perhaps a more constructive quote from the last paper listed, on our editorial gender gap:

Practical implications-In order for more women to join Wikipedia, the research offers the implantation of a "Virtuous Circle" that consists of nonymity, connection to social media, inclusionist policy, soft deletion and red-flagging harassments.

I see a future RfC mentioned in this Signpost issue is relevant to the last point. The second one is something that Women in Red has worked on a lot. The third and fourth is something to think about at AfC, NPP, AfD and similar. I'm not quite sure what can be done on the matter of the first, though something I've been thinking for a while is that people should hand out barnstars more liberally. — Bilorv (talk) 22:51, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

The paper goes pretty specific with suggestions on each of those. For the first:

... Insisting on a website based on true names and pictures will also allow a much-needed concept of situated and contextualized aspects of knowledge. ... This step is especially important in regard to the overt identities of bureaucrats and system admins who have tremendous power over others on the website, including erasing entries and banning users. Position holders must be obliged to volunteer in exposed identities in order to contribute to an organizational climate of safety, based on familiarity and accountability.

Didn't finish the paper but would want to see it address the idea that exposing one's identity might make the editor more susceptible to targeted harassment. czar 01:17, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

CC User:שלומית_ליר. Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:13, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, @Czar:. I'd also like to see how they'd handle concerns about just a reduced pool of admins (et al) being less effective at fulfilling their roles, if there was a significant number of resignations, which I believe there would be. I wouldn't have participated in handling the Delhi riots page if I had a public identity. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:37, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I would also be concerned about this particular way of implementing nonymity. It's the central fact about the internet: anonymity leads to many brilliant communities, but also many terrible ones. Nonetheless, I think we can definitely do something about the other four findings. — Bilorv (talk) 18:03, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

I quite agree with Bilorv. Not reaching the goal of 25% participation by women is a huge waste of potential, and the reasons given in this research are really disheartening. I picked out the phrase "the fear of being erased" from the report for The Signpost's teaser blurb, because it was so striking.

At the same time, this research commits an error I've seen before, when it describes the deletion of an article which I located on Hebrew Wikipedia. The paper states it was impossible to request a proper debate and it was deleted without proper discussion. However, unless I'm very mistaken, the article was in fact a copyright violation (copyvio). Not only that, but it was restored after the appropriate people received permission via OTRS. So, a very misleading description. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:45, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments and for the overall interesting discussion. As to this specific remark, the speedy deletion was not related to copyright problems. In fact, the writer's draft was shown to David Shi, who was the head Wikipedian at the time, beforehand. Years later a very similar article under the same name was published in Wikipedia by someone else. שלומית ליר (talk) 07:27, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I was very mistaken, after all. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:32, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

We as a community really have a tough job of keeping our core principles, such as not allowing copyvios or un-referenced additions, also while not kicking new good-faith editors to the curb, and not confronting them with a maze of jargon and legalisms that make them perpetual outsiders. What may seem to the initiated as impersonal and routine procedures is apparently coming across – at least to some – as distancing and unwelcoming, if not outright contemptuous. We need to take that to heart. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:45, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

The paper repeats most of the well-known issues that have been heavily discussed for many years, but talked only to women, and falls into the trap at many points of assuming these are women-specific, which we know they are not. They also use too many old references; papers from before say 2010, and certainly 2007 are likely to be badly out of date and should not be used these days. Johnbod (talk) 15:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

My takeaway is that there is such a thing as norms of interaction that are informed by gender of each participant. The paper has told us several problems with the hard-nosed communication style common in male-dominated STEM fields where many of our early contributors come from. And how that cadre of early contributors has coalesced into difficult-to-influence norms and culture, including our processes, templates, and what have you. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm less than impressed with the recommendations; the author's enthusiasm for social media networks despite their increasingly well documented flaws is rather striking. One suggestion in a footnote is that Wikipedia should have a biography of every single human being. --RaiderAspect (talk) 10:56, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Nevertheless, to be accurate, I recommended a future Wiki project documenting every individual who allows the publication of his or her life story online. As I mentioned in the footnote, I believe that the understanding of what constitutes knowledge will widen with time, and with it the perception of the importance of open-to-all online documentation of more human lives.

As to the flaws of social media that you mention, I am well aware of them. I recommended allowing Wikipedians' user-pages to be associated with their Social Media profiles (if they wish to do so) as a means of achieving a much-needed sense of safety. As research points out, bullying thrives in anonymous online environments. As strange is it might sound, and in view of the long history of anonymity in the website, the principle of nonymity is crucial to overcoming the gender bias in Wikipedia. שלומית ליר (talk) 09:09, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply! I apologise for my misreading, although I'm afraid that I still feel such a project would be more akin to LinkedIn or Facebook than Wikipedia. The fact that no individual 'owns' a page is the essence of Wikipedia, at least in my opinion.

Regarding nonymity, the issue I see is that while it would probably make Wikipedia itself a friendlier place, it would also facilitate more serious harassment of Wikipedia users outside of Wikipedia. Being told that your work is worthless and that your beliefs are nonsense is hurtful, but having someone sending threats to your friends and family or calling your employer to make accusations is an order of magnitude moreso. And for users in certain countries associating their user-page with their Social Media profiles could put them in physical danger.

I realize you may be perfectly aware of these issues and simply didn't have room to discuss them in your paper. Please don't feel obliged to get dragged into a debate here, I'm merely an interested observer. --RaiderAspect (talk) 13:42, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

A very interesting discussion with good points on all sides. For me, the salient point is that Wikipedia combines an increasingly strict insistence on quality (citations, neutrality, non-commerciality, copyright, and all the rest) with rather little in the way of training and apprenticeship for newcomers. Helping even an able, willing, and co-operative newbie into editing an area effectively is quite a lot of work, specially for the first week or two, and such coaching requires expertise, energy and teaching skill, all quantities in quite short supply. But throwing newcomers straight into the rigours of editing live articles with no training seems increasingly drastic; it was alarming being a newbie over a decade ago, and now it's certainly worse. Other measures than apprenticeships and coaching are imaginable: we could encourage people to take an online tutorial; we could have a pop-up box asking new editors to make their suggestion on an article's talk page until they get the hang of things; there could be an automated 20-questions test so newcomers could see what skills they needed to get started; and so on. And of course, a safe place for new female editors in particular would be very welcome. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:01, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Chiswick Chap: As a relative newcomer (although I guess I've now been here for over three years), I can attest that it is not very easy to learn the ins-and outs of Wikipedia. I don't recall having much help figuring things out, and I think I just got lucky by meeting very patient editors like Display Name 99 didn't get angry when I made mistakes. All I remember is that it felt to me like Wikipedia was empty and I was pretty alone. For me, I think that helped because I took my time, writing a draft article first, mainly just adding citations in the mainspace until things started to make sense. With that being said, a lot of my work was definitely sub-par, and I think I'm very lucky nobody scared me away from editing. As I remember, the first automated message I got just seemed very impersonal and didn't help at all because it just overwhelmed me with things I wasn't interested in at all. On the other hand, I remember The Wikipedia Adventure actually as a big help initially. So, in summery, I'd say that the biggest thing we can do is have patience and not not bite the newcomers. Automated messages only overwhelmed me, but more interactive things like the test or box you suggest may have a better effect. Again, this is only based on my experience, and I don't think it's universally applicable. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:35, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

• @RaiderAspect and שלומית ליר: - those are certainly the worst "outside wiki" risks that would come from reduced anonymity, but there are also other possibilities. Employers that do social media checks of employees and/or applicants, could now more easily be found. They might be unhappy in some cases, for myriad reasons, but they could also be too happy - at my previous job (back when I'd barely started editing), a trainee colleague had to do some deft talking to avoid from being basically forced into paid editor status (on the wiki side) and being held responsible for what got added onto the company page (on his employment side). Nosebagbear (talk) 10:38, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial

This research is from 2017, as are the linked discussions. I don't understand why it is listed in A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia [...]. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:40, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Andrybak: The cited revision of the paper is from 16 Aug 2019. That said, you are correct that we interpret "Recent" liberally here - our backlog of papers to cover (writeups are always welcome!) goes back several years, although ideally we want to cover new ones within a few months of their publication. It has never been the intention though to limit the scope to only things from the past month; the assumption is that the highlighted research results will stay relevant for much longer.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:12, 25 April 2020 (UTC)