User talk:RenamedUser jaskldjslak901/Attract More Editors

Note feel free to contribute, should be moved to namespace once it's done Secret ^account 21:37, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Part of the problem with going out and attracting new members is all the problems thrown at our current members. It seems like Wikipedia has a lot of turmoil, and a lot of committed and even radicalized editors in all kinds of content areas. There are lots of ways to attract new editors, if we were to go out and sort of campaign for them, but what are we bringing them to at this point? Is it to the benefit of the encyclopedia if we attract millions of first time editors and then scare most of them (and anyone they subsequently talk to about Wikipedia) away for good? Avruch ^T 21:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I've been noodling on this for a day or two. I think there are two ways we can bring new editors in and slowly acculturate them:

1. Use the WP:SUP model; bring them to specific articles, notify others that there is an ongoing project of newbs so pls be nicer than usual, and work from there
2. Start them off as slave labour helping to improve in CLEANUP, WIKIFY, UNREFERENCED categories. Would help clear the backlog, and would give a clear lesson in 'this is not a good article, but here are some steps we take to make it one...'

What do you think? //roux   07:35, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that our jargon is the best way to draw users in, "Wikify" in particular requires a some knowledge of how this place works. Fixing typos is IMHO a much gentler entry. If you don't alter quotations and are sensitive to the difference between English and American English and other spelling variants you can edit for months without getting into any drama. Fixing links is an easy second step, and again if you are responsible you can just quietly get on with things, I must have done over a thousand disambiguation edits with zero drama. Copy edit, vandal reversion and reviewing articles are easy and natural developments once you've found your feet. The editors who get into trouble are the ones who start by adding articles or altering POV, before they've learned how this place works. ϢereSpielChequers 11:52, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Facebook?

My initial thoughts are that anyone with a Facebook account should be blocked. Anyone with a MySpace account should be blocked. Anyone with both should be banned. The advantage is that this would stop User:WifeOfPedro from editing Wikipedia. Seriously, I doubt this is the kind of crowd we want to atract. Pedro :  Chat  21:43, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I have both... Although I don't use either. Where does that leave me? Blocked, banned, or on permanent probation? Avruch ^T 21:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just thinking that. More editors who understand what Wikipedia is about and want to help- well, that's a good thing. More clueless children who think Wikipedia is another myspace? That's a bad thing. Friday (talk) 21:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Hope you're kidding here, Pedro -- even Jimbo's got a Facebook. :P GlassCobra 10:13, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

See my comment further down - the point was to block the wife not anyone else :) Pedro :  Chat  10:14, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually most of these users are college students and adults. While we will see a slight increase in vandalism, we will bring more college students and such who can contribute in a positive matter, especially if we list the pros of this project. Whereelse we can bring more contributors in droves anyways. Secret ^account 21:47, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

(ECx3)I think this is a nice idea, if a little bit wishful thinking, I'd be surprised if Myspace of Facebook agreed to this, it would take up valuable advert space, the election was different, by doing that, it made them look really really good. Another comment is that according to that graph, new users accounts is not really at a low, and consider that it is still around two hundred thousand new users a month. My main issue though, is that we don't really need a mass of new users, in my opinion, we have nearly 3 million articles, and new users generally come here to make a new article. What Wikipedia needs right now is an increase in expert editors, professionals who are able to contribute high level stuff, so doctors, engineers, lecturers, scientists etc, thats the kind of group we need to be reaching out to, and facebook and myspace aren't going to do, the best way i can think of to do things like that is contacting universities and the like. And for the record, like 90% of students I spend most of my life on facebook--Jac16888 (talk) 21:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes we also need to bring experts to the field, I agree there, a different proposal for that could be in order. Secret ^account 21:50, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

In seriousness (my opening entry was a bit of a gag) - yes we need more experts / professionals - not just more editors - allthough they are also good news wherever they come from. Pedro :  Chat  21:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Whew! I was wondering what there was on my Facebook page that made you think I should be blocked. ;-)--Fabrictramp | talk to me 09:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

As for college students, I consider them to be the silent editors. They are the ones who contribute heavily to pop culture articles, and areas that they consider as their expertise. They are the ones who mainly do minor edits, and they are the ones who overly depend on this project. Many of our admins are college students, and we are overdependent on them. (edit conflect) Secret ^account 21:55, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Well I can't deny the truth in that when it describes me so well, I started editing Scrubs articles because i know them quite well, and generally don't do major edits, and Wikipedia is passing my degree for me(joke). The point is though, that silent or not, i don't think i would be wrong in saying that college age students make up a pretty large proportion of regular editors, we're the internet generation so its to be expected. That's another reason we need professionals editing, to try and dispel that myth thats we're just a bunch of students writing about pokemon and star wars.--Jac16888 (talk) 22:04, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Students (myself included) aren't generally bad editors, but we're certainly not great ones. I, again, fit the stereotype- a lot minor editing and writing about pop music. More academics would be good, but I think that students will always make up the bulk of editors. Hopefully the students will still contribute when they become the academics, doctors and engineers. J Milburn (talk) 22:13, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, I'm coming to the rescue! I finish my schooling on the 11th, so I'll be a college graduate instead of a student (don't expect me to stop editing Nintendo-related articles (that includes Pokémon), though). In all seriousness, though, I think a good way of attracting new editors is through Meetups. If we had more meetups used to recruit editors, perhaps in libraries or on college campuses, that would help. The trick would be recruiting without seeming like a mob. Useight (talk) 22:17, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

More meetups would be a good idea, especially some at colleges and universities, specifically targeting students. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 22:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

There isn't that much interest in meet ups anyways. Secret ^account 16:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Bigger ≠ automatically better

(Crossposted from WT:RFA)
I always have and still do maintain that the drop in contributors is because we have fewer "easy" problems to fix that a passing visitor would see and think "hey, I could improve that"; it's less likely a passing visitor would decide they could improve this than this, and that's a pattern repeated across all the high-traffic areas. (Until you see them for yourself, it's hard to appreciate just how bad most Nupedia and early Wikipedia articles were – it's less than five years since this was a FA). IMO ten good contributors is better than 20 adequate ones or 50 bad ones; would Myspace or Facebook provide people who'd improve our content as opposed to just adding to it? – iridescent 22:59, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree that bigger is not always better. Perhaps we should contact scholarly blogs/forums instead? Malinaccier (talk) 23:47, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Excellent point about fewer "easy" problems. WP has raised hurdles severely in the last 2 years, and most pre-2007 FAs would now fail GA review. While in some ways that improves the average quality of articles, it also deters new editors. One side-effect of that is to introduce systemic bias against editors in areas where Internet usage is still growing, as they are mostly newbies but are expected to learn all the policies and MOS. One of the gripes of new editors is that their contributions are more likely to be reverted or sent to WP:AfD. If we want to attract new editors we need to make the learning curve easier. I suggest:

• Change AfD to AfI, "Articles for Improvement", and restrict the right to propose deletions to those who've improved articles at "AfI" - initially at a ratio of 1 improvement per 5 deletion requests, as a lot of the stuff at AfD really is rubbish.
• Simplify MOS. The problem currently is that MOS is effectively written by a tiny % of editors. I suggest a policy that, for each new rule introduced in MOS, 2 should be scrapped - in addition to any that are scrapped or simplified as a result of WP:RfC.
• Make some of the other major polices more realistic. WP:N requires that sources have "significant direct coverage" of an article's subject. In popular culture that doesn't happen, as sources assume that readers know the basics. So if several sources say "this is an instance of X" or "Y said this", X or Y should be considered notable even of the sources don't give a detailed description of X or Y or give only a brief summary, e.g. "this is an instance of X because it has features A, B and C." WP:RS works reasonably well for academic topics but has huge problems with non-academic subjects. For example most articles in big-name computer game mags are written under severe time pressure and are subject to commercial pressures from advertisers, but WP:RS assumes that big-name mags have quality control processes that ensure reliability. In fact the best game content is at WP:SPS such as the blogs and other pages of designers and serious enthusiasts.
• Document WP facilities a lot better. I've learned most of what I know by seeing something and wondering "How did they do that?" The "Help" facility is pathetic. For example last time I searched for "image" in Help I got a load of stuff about copyright policy but no actual help on how to present images in articles.
• Assign mentors to newbies, e.g. for their first 500 edits.

Getting academics to contribute will only work for academic subjects and even then will be difficult because academics are busy people. We'd have to have measures in place to make it easy for them to contribute, e.g.:

• Helpers assigned to deal with MOS, image copyright and similar nit-picking issues, and to protect them from POV-pushers and disruptive editors. A helper should keep an eye on specific academics' contributions and watch all pages that these academics edit. Yes, I realise that the helpers will often wind up dealing with good-faith but ill-advised edits by newbies (see above),so they will have to do it sympathetically.
• A tougher attitude to vandals, e.g. 2 warnings then 3-month block, with no exemption for shared IPs (it's the responsibility of schools etc. to control their users).

All that raises the question of how to attract mentors, helpers, etc. and keep them motivated. Since money is probably out of the question, I suggest a really prominent recognition scheme. Designing that will take some thought, so I won't make any half-baked proposals right now. --Philcha (talk) 00:59, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

This is very interesting...Maybe you should bring this up at WP:VP or any more prominent venue. Malinaccier (talk) 01:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Only if it attracts a lot of support there. What I'm proposing involves curbing some established empire-builders. --Philcha (talk) 01:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Then why don't you oppose these one at a time, starting with what you think will be the most accepted. If your first ideas work, your more radical one's may be better accepted. Malinaccier (talk) 01:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Would you like to join in the fun at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Page_of_frequently_made_challenges? --Philcha (talk) 01:47, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

←(outdent) Part of the problems we've had with some academics and experts as contributors in the past is that academic publishing works to a very different model to Wikipedia. Most people with experience in academic writing work within a dialectical model of "publish my views and defend them against people with opposing views". And of course, academic writing is driven by original research.

This system works very well in an academic journal, where papers from differing viewpoints can be published side-by-side or in successive issues, or on a Knol type encyclopedia with multiple articles on the same topic. However someone who is used to the "defend my position" style of debate who then comes to Wikipedia is likely to get labelled as a POV-pusher and hounded mercilessly, particularly if they are a genuine expert but their particular position doesn't agree with what the community considers a neutral point of view. Many of our shrillest critics and/or worst problem users are bona fide experts-in-their-field such as User:Jon Awbrey, User:Sadi Carnot and User:Moulton who have (rightly, in their view, even if wrongly in ours) taken exception to being told they're either incorrect or contributing original research. (Academic journals publish their rejection letters in private; one of the drawbacks of the wiki model is that there's no alternative but to air our dirty laundry in public, leading to flamewars and recriminations.)

This is certainly not to say that we shouldn't be actively trying to recruit academics and other experts ("academic" doesn't always equate to "expert" – I would trust an experienced mechanic more than a newly-graduated engineering student to rewrite Automobile, for example, regardless of qualifications). However, we need a "crash-course" introduction to Wikipedia for experts, of a far better standard than the current "Go read WP:FIVE, WP:MOS and WP:TRIFECTA; anything else you need to know you'll only find out when you get a warning for violating a policy" setup.

Otherwise, we run the risk of recruiting a large number of experts; said experts being flamed off the project by admins who don't really understand the topic in question but see what appears to be POV-pushing or attempts by new accounts to rewrite articles against consensus and automatically reach for the block button; the experts then go back to New Scientist and Nature and write lengthy "Wikipedia is run by a bunch of kids who don't listen to experts" articles which are then picked up by newspapers.

While I wouldn't do so unilaterally (and would strongly recommend getting explicit consent from the WMF before doing so), I think it would actually be a good idea to approach some of those users who've been "victims" of this in the past, and asking for their thoughts on how they think they were ill-done-by and what we could have done differently. An open "fine, you hate the current system; if you were in charge what would you do differently?" thread by Jimbo or someone similar at Wikipedia Review would ideally generate some intelligent commentary on how we could draw new expert writers in without alienating them. Open "How would you improve Wikipedia" letters from Jimbo to the popular-academic magazines like Scientific American, The Economist or BBC Focus might also be good both for generating external input, and drawing potential new writers to Wikipedia as they come to see what the fuss is about and decide to stay. – iridescent 15:53, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Other sites

I agree with above that sites like Facebook and Myspace are probably not the best spots for recruitment. We should probably focus on sites that have a somewhat older and more-likely-to-be-experts-at-something userbase. I'm thinking places like Slashdot, Metafilter, maybe Kottke, places like that. Thoughts? //roux   00:42, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with these sites, but like I said above, any scholarly forums or websites would be great sources of intelligent and helpful users. Malinaccier (talk) 00:47, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree myspace would likely be problematic due to the ... clientele ... it seems to mainly attract. Facebook would probably be better, but if we really want to improve, especially credibility-wise, I think we need to aim a little higher than the high school/college undergrad demographic. Those are the people who are most likely to find Wikipedia and figure things out for themselves without much prodding. European chapters have held "Wikipedia academies" with panel discussions, talks by the Wikimedia executive director, etc. Something like these, or even something much more informal, for the English Wikipedia would be great. We have somewhat informal groups in New York and Pennsylvania, a chapter in the UK, and the office in San Francisco that may be able to help. The internet can only get us so far. Mr.Z-man 05:29, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Grey Power

I agree that we should consider actively recruiting, but I'd suggest a different demographic. There are loads of retired people out there, and not all have found hobbies for their free time. I'm sure we all have elderly relatives who have online access and with a little handholding could be introduced to Wikipedia, and I bet the sort of users we'd recruit by running evening classes on editing Wikipedia would be unlikely to be vandals. All it would take to start that off would be a few templates and maybe a userbox or two "X is a real life Aunt of Y" etc - viral marketing with minimal costs and no commercial deals. ϢereSpielChequers 17:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Now that's clever. //roux   17:30, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

It would certainly help to raise the average level of maturity around here. Doing so would make all sorts of things work better. Friday (talk) 17:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I also agree that the idea isn't bad, do we know any older adults forum, mention the idea in the main page. Secret ^account 18:02, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

We could ask I've asked some of our older colleagues as per Wikimedians by age whether they think this would work, and what else we might need to do to make this site more friendly for their generation, and we could try asking our own relatives - I sounded out my Mum but after decades of marking students essays and exam papers she said this sounded too much like work. I think the village pump would probably be a better start than the main page. ϢereSpielChequers 18:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Support--Once inculturated into the Wikipedia Way, these sorts of editors will likely combat recentism and provide a broad base of personal knowledge that should help in finding sources in ways that search engine will not. Jclemens (talk) 19:18, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Now this is a very sound idea. Hardly likely to generate droves of editors, but quality not quantity would be the outcome. I also like the userbox thoughts, with the slightly strong reservation that there could be potential stalking / harrasment issues for editors identifying RL connections. Pedro :  Chat  22:07, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Support. Retired people have the time to devote to stuff like this. They also have a lot of knowledge (at least some do). One of the problems is that you have to deal with teenage idiots, and not everybody is interested in doing that. I've taught an informal Wikipedia 101 course, and it was very well received. Find retired people who know how to write and who have some familiarity with computer stuff, and you'll find a gold mine. Lou Sander (talk) 00:08, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Pile-on support This is the best idea I've heard so far.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 06:12, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Pileon the pileon - are there large forums for teachers? Sounds like the sort of thing a lot of teachers would be interested in. Can we get the WMF office involved, whoever the PR person is? I suspect there would be likely to be a bunch of "What's going on here?" emails. Perhaps this is also.. oh dear, wordbarf ahead: I know we have projects for helping schools with WP-based projexts, and with Secret's idea here, I think we need a new one: WikiProject Outreach. It can be the central gathering point for reaching out to new potential users (e.g. teachers & seniors), universities and schools, etc. Thoughts? //roux   10:13, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I think a new WikiProject just for this would be a good idea. I had previously thought of calling it "WikiProject Attract More Editors" after this proposal, but "WikiProject Outreach" would be a good name too. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 23:41, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Support Makes me much more comfortable than the idea of trying to recruit on Facebook/Myspace. Yeergh. GlassCobra 10:12, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Idea has been around for a while. some attempts have been made through wikipedia academies (I think that is what they called them) and there is some potential for local chapters contacting local history groups and the like but it is a darn tough nut to crack (although the recently published wikipedia guides may help.Geni 04:37, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Your damed if you do, your damed if you dont. Oh Wait! I was thinking about advertising with the logo. Nevermind. Support --CyclePat (talk) 20:32, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Support - I'd agree that Wikipedia would benefit from more editors, but not all editors are equal. Wikipedia already has plenty of technophile under-40 contributors in the anglosphere; the same kind of people you're more likely to find on myspace and facebook. I think wikipedia would benefit more (particularly in countering systemic bias) if editors could be lured in from different age groups, different bits of society, and different countries. My gut feeling is to agree that older people are less likely to be vandals, but it would be nice to see some evidence for that assertion. bobrayner (talk) 14:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

New project proposed

Hiya. I've gone ahead and proposed that we create WikiPedia Outreach as a WikiProject. The discussion is located here. I'd appreciate everyone's input. //roux   07:08, 28 November 2008 (UTC)