User:Isaacl/Community

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Discussions to improve Wikipedia editing environment[edit]

Essays[edit]

Decisions and problem resolution[edit]

Advice[edit]

Personal behaviour:

Process:

Voting:

Instructional[edit]

Miscellaneous[edit]

Proposals[edit]

Process proposals[edit]

Arbitration process[edit]

Requests for administrative privileges[edit]

Two-phase requests for administrative privileges[edit]

Proposals for Wikipedia principles[edit]

The following principles for collaborative behaviour were originally proposed as part of an arbitration case.

Be accommodating to less experienced editors[edit]

To foster a collaborative community, editors should accommodate contributors who lack experience in a specific aspect of Wikipedia's processes, guidelines, or practices. As much as practicable, editors should work with less experienced editors to help them improve the quality of their contributions, and seek to preserve their contributions when appropriate. Additional flexibility should be given for edits that beneficially update Wikipedia and are likely to be correct.

– derived from original on proposed decision discussion page

Strive to follow community consensus[edit]

Less experienced editors should strive to learn community practices and follow them, whether or not they personally agree with the consensus view. Once less experienced editors are made aware of the bare minimum requirements for their changes, they are expected to eventually comply in order to alleviate the workload of others.

– from proposed decision discussion page

Recruiting volunteers[edit]

  • Idea for volunteer weeks: have editors host "open house" activities where they engage potential volunteers for specific initiatives. They could discuss the work involved and field questions, or set up more elaborate activities if they wish.

Miscellaneous[edit]

Comments on "!vote" as unnecessary jargon[edit]

Personally, I think the use of programming jargon is overly precious. It's an in-joke to those in the know, but confusing to those who aren't. I think it would be better to just use terms like comment, commenter, and so forth. (I know, the real connotation is "this isn't supposed to be a vote, but nudge nudge, many people will treat it as one", but I just don't think it's worth it to keep this specialized argot.)

...the "!vote" terminology is particularly opaque: only programmers understand the negation terminology; most other people will think of it in the exact opposite manner as an intensifier, as per the usual meaning of an exclamation point. It's hardly ever linked in RfA discussions, so there's no indication that it means anything other than vote, particularly since most people use it to mean "I'm paying lip service to the idea that this is not a vote, but everyone knows the number of people supporting a given position is counted at the end", so the sentence still makes semantic sense when it is replaced with "vote". Furthermore, using it doesn't help facilitate discussion. It's not significantly shorter than saying "my opinion" or "comment" when used in the literal sense of a not-vote. If used in the wink-wink sense, it can generally be dispensed with. There's enough discussion generated by the actual issues; a meta-discussion on the contradictions of English Wikipedia's consensus-forming process isn't required.

...Taking [ Wikipedia:Advice for RfA candidates ] as an example: every use of "!vote/voter" is using it to mean participation in a request of administrative privileges. No additional expressiveness is being gained by calling this "!vote" instead of "participate/participant".
— from Wikipedia talk:Advice for RfA_candidates#!voters means something?

Typically it's used in two manners: either to say "I know this isn't supposed to be a vote but I'm framing my comment as a support/oppose vote anyway", or "I know this isn't supposed to be a vote, but we all know that the closer is going to treat the supports/opposes as a straw poll". It's an affectation that is only accessible to programmers, and personally I think it would be better to use "discussion" if you want to emphasize that this isn't supposed to be a vote, or "viewpoint" (or something similar) if you're expressing your support/oppose view.
— from Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 248#"Vote" vs "!Vote" terminology

Encouraging editors to help with admin tasks for a fixed term[edit]

If we were starting from scratch (so let's say with a process that only applies to new administrators), I'd consider flipping the question around: have editors who are approved to receive administrative privileges sign up for a fixed term to help out (they can, of course, choose to leave the role early). Once the term is complete, they could decide if they wanted to continue for another term, and an opportunity for providing feedback would occur. Of course, nothing prevents anyone from giving feedback earlier, as desired or deemed necessary. Having an explicit checkpoint, though, often helps prod people into action. (The same goes for recruitment: it can still happen any time, but having someone choose not to continue in an admin role can help trigger a search for replacements.) This would foster the idea of sharing the workload across the community and encourage new editors to pitch in.
— from Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adminship term length

On copyright for editor messages[edit]

I agree that copyright concerns [for messages in open discussion forums] are overblown. (I feel there is a good case to be made for an implicit licence being provided for many group conversations. Plus copyright enforcement is about protecting the author's rights for commercial exploitation, which is non-existent for the vast majority of messages.) ... a writer does own the copyright to every specific expression of ideas in a message that is written, and explicitly quoting someone is literally copying their words. The writer doesn't own the underlying ideas, though, so paraphrasing is fine, and even using the same words is fine when there are limited ways of saying the same thing.

... People routinely quote entire message exchanges on mailing lists and bulletin boards. As this is the norm, expectations are set appropriately and thus anyone participating is implicitly agreeing to this behaviour. In the general case, people communicating with each other haven't consented to posting the contents in other venues, but in specific cases, such as people working up a proposal, the nature of the work implies an agreement. But the issue isn't really copyright, which as I said is more about protecting the author's rights to profit from their work and doesn't prevent paraphrasing, but privacy. Open discussion forums should make it clear what the ground rules are regarding privacy.
— from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 169 § Discord logs

Technical discussion[edit]

Data collection[edit]

Structural issues[edit]

Managing interpersonal interactions[edit]

Shortcomings of current Wikipedia principles:

...Wikipedia's principles are double-edged swords. They've led to a huge influx of content from many sources, but struggle to shape this flow into effective articles. It's a basic problem with every large community in existence: some people will always seek to promote their own goals, and managing interpersonal interactions is hard. If you haven't read it already, Clay Shirky's talk, "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy", is an excellent dissertation on this subject.
— from discussion on user talk page

Examples of some problems with current policies, and discussion of structural problem with consensus:

...Assume Good Faith policy hinders frank discussion of editor behaviours, or how anonymous editing keeps some preventative actions from being enacted, or how Wikipedia's consensus model (in its current form) makes it easier for discussions to be derailed. All of these have their positive points, particularly when everyone in a community is there to help, as is the case upon its genesis. But as any community becomes popular, it attracts new people with different goals, and the original rules that served well at the time may no longer work effectively.

There is also a structural problem with trying to make all decisions by consensus: good-faith editors can have genuine differences in opinion on how Wikipedia should operate, where one view is not preferable to another, just different. For example, one editor might think English Wikipedia should be written at a grade 5 level, to broaden its appeal, while another might think it should be written at a grade 8 level, to allow for greater concision when discussing complex topics. Neither view is wrong; they're just proceeding from different assumptions. A large group discussion typically isn't an effective way to make these kinds of decisions (witness the endless debates on writing style; because ultimately the choice is arbitrary, it's really hard to build a consistent view by trying to aggregate the arbitrary choices of everyone else's style guides)
— from discussion on user talk page

Self-selecting communities:

Ultimately, all communities depend on its members to want to get along in order to function effectively, which typically means either the community becomes self-selecting (if you don't think you'll fit in, you leave), or some group will do the selecting. English Wikipedia has been pushing the first option as far as it can. Although it's not hard getting agreement on wanting the vandals to leave, it's a lot trickier with many other conflicts when all sides have good-faith intentions, but are simply proceeding from different assumptions and goals. At some point, for better or worse, it's likely that Wikipedia will have to codify more specific guiding principles in order to resolve this.
— from discussion thread on Gender gap task force discussion page

On the community providing feedback:

Regarding community feedback: I believe it should be borne in mind that most editors have no desire to confront others over their behaviour. Personally, I don't like to give feedback unless I can glean some indications that the editor will be receptive to it. It's particularly daunting to raise an issue with a long-time experienced editor that has many friendly talk page watchers, as they'll quickly defend the editor, sometimes in aggressive ways. And I understand why that's a natural impulse, when many trolls or biased editors show up on the talk pages for active editors: with editors who truly aren't here to improve Wikipedia, a brusque response can be the more time-efficient way to deal with them. For well-connected editors, this sheltering effect extends to the incidents and administrators' noticeboards as well. As a result, it's hard for legitimate concerns to be raised, and most editors find it easier to just avoid the editor or avoid discussing issues that may trigger them. I agree ideally we'd sit down and talk out the issues in all cases, but realistically there are situations where the moving pieces (such as a clear incident, feedback from respected editors, a receptiveness to understanding the point of views of others, few mitigating circumstances that can be used to excuse behaviour, and so forth) don't quite fit together well enough to enable this to happen.
— from talk page for a proposed decision in an arbitration case

Professional mediation[edit]

  • Discussion from Gender Gap task force discussion page:

    I think there can be a role for a paid moderator who would not contribute content but just defuse disagreements and work at building consensus. The only reason to make it a paid position versus a volunteer one is so they would be dedicated 100% to resolving conflicts, day-in, day-out. Informal mediation shut down because of a lack of volunteers to staff it.
    — from [1]

Problems with consensus[edit]

See an analysis of Wikipedia's consensus tradition (initially based on statements presented at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender Gap Task Force/Evidence#Evidence presented by isaacl).

From Wikipedia:Community response to the Wikimedia Foundation's ban of Fram/Archive 12:

I'll agree the community should bear in mind what it's learned through experience. But as a project grows and evolves, its needs change as well. English Wikipedia's success has made it a magnet for editors pushing a particular point of view, be it for advertising or just in support of their favourite topic. I imagine there was a greater uniformity of purpose amongst contributors at the start, making a consensus-based decision making process more manageable. The community is too large now to have the strong alignment of goals required for consensus to work, and so it struggles with making decisions if there isn't a large majority in favour of one option, or if there are highly aggressive opponents. Unco-operative behaviour is, as a result, a viable strategy, as it takes advantage of the good faith of more collaborative editors, and can discourage their participation. Clay Shirky has discussed the problems of online communities; attempts to make them non-hierarchical by replacing human judgement exercised by administrators with rules interpreted by everyone eventually fail as the rules become overly complex. Sound familiar? We need to unlock the stalemate produced by English Wikipedia's current decision-making traditions.

...

Even small changes are hard to enact if there are a few vociferous opponents. Most editors seek solutions that approach real-world consensus, and so are loathe to push for a change when they know some are strongly against it.
— from [2] and [3]

Incentive for undesirable behaviour[edit]

From Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 34 § Conduct dispute resolution systems, how failing to deal with unco-operative editors provides an incentive for poor behaviour instead of desired behaviour:

These situations with recalcitrant editors are why I don't like to edit articles that don't have a lot of watchers or an active associated wiki project. Every edit has the sword of Damocles hanging over it: without warning it can turn into a protracted, seemingly endless discussion, no matter how trivial the edit. And even when there is an active associated wiki project, if you can't draw their interest in responding to the discussion, the conflict will remain unresolved. Both of these cases could benefit from a revisit respite to reach a semi-binding resolution. This would free up the other editors, while unfortunately imposing an added burden to the closing administrator. I know no one like to tell someone a difficult truth; I don't like to do it either. But uncooperative editors is one of the key reasons I have difficulty getting motivated for editing articles, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. If we can't deal with editors unsuitable for collaborative projects, then we continue to provide incentives for poor behaviour rather than desired behaviour.
— from [4]

From Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC § 7. "Unblockables", how better dispute resolution is needed to encourage collaborative behaviour:

At the root of the problem is that brusque, aggressive behaviour is effective at driving other editors away, and so there is an incentive to behave this way, either knowingly or unknowingly of the end result. Closers interpret rough consensus (linked to from Wikipedia:Closing discussions § Consensus) "by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on unsubstantiated personal opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted." In combination with the principle that consensus can change and that closers should be evaluating the consensus reached by the participants, and not interjecting their own views on the strength of the arguments, closers often only make use of guidelines to the extent that the participants do. Accordingly, a small number of dissenters can block progress in any discussion, and guidelines only get followed if sufficient numbers of supporters participate in all related discussions. (It can be different people, but there needs to be enough in each discussion to re-establish consensus.) As a result, more often than not, the deadlock is only broken through attrition of participants.

If we want to curb uncollaborative behaviour, we need to resolve content disputes in a way that doesn't provide a motivation for it. Decisions need to be made in a more timely manner, and be less prone to reversal, so that editors can adapt to a settled consensus, rather than being rewarded for driving editors away. On the flip side, we need to be able to deal with recalcitrant editors effectively, so that others aren't driven to frustration. As noted by other commenters, some people aren't well suited to engage collaboratively on English Wikipedia; we need to identify them and gently ease them towards other pastimes. isaacl (talk) 00:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
— from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC § 7. "Unblockables"

Also see § Summary of problems with content-dispute resolution.

Problems with multi-threaded conversation[edit]

Discussion thread on Wikipedia talk: Requests for adminship:

I think a more ideal approach would be what is typically done in the real world: build up a consolidated summary of pros and cons, and then the closer can evaluate the strengths of each, considering the support they received in the discussion thread. To further facilitate judging support, there can be a list of those who believe the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and a list of those who believe the reverse, where each person can make an optional, brief summary statement, but all discussion would be kept to separate sections. This format can help prune redundant subthreads and limit repetition, which should make the whole discussion more readily accessible to more participants. ...many people drop into a discussion and say, the previous discussion's too long so I didn't read it, but here are my thoughts, thereby kicking off another cycle of the same point-counterpoint discussion (and really I had RfCs and other contentious discussions in mind, which I agree are generally far worse than RfAs in this respect). Trimming down the repetition of the same points over and over will make it easier for prospective participants to understand the whole conversation and contribute positively.

...My suggestion was to have a separate discussion section where you can counter whatever points you like. This should maximize the chances of consolidating discussion, so a given point can be countered once, rather than repeatedly. (It of course won't guarantee it, but it should be easy to close down redundant subthreads by pointing to the main subthread.) Yes, some people feel it's harder to respond to other people when they can't do it immediately below their comments. Personally, I think the benefits gained in reducing repetition and having fewer subthreads to follow (all under a discussion section, rather than under each person's comments) make the tradeoff worthwhile. The 2012 pending changes RfCs followed this format, and I think were the better for it.
— from Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 229#Per Votes

Discussion thread on Wikipedia talk: Requests for adminship:

I think the current structure is unduly repetitive, with each person expected to state their viewpoints even if it duplicates the reasoning of others, and as it is now, often forks off into numerous multi-branching threads, making it hard to follow. My personal preference is to build up a consolidated list of pros and cons for a given candidate which can then be weighed, rather than each person having to repeat this process individually.

...As I previously discussed, I suggest that editors can add their names to a list of those who believe the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, or vice-versa, with a brief summary statement. Currently citing the arguments of others repeatedly still drags out the length of the discussion, discouraging participation.
— from [5] and [6]

Problem with how Wikipedia closers determine outcomes[edit]

Discussion thread on Wikipedia talk: Requests for adminship:

... the evaluation of consensus, generally speaking, isn't being done correctly in nearly all discussion threads involving a large number of participants. The structure of most of them—a list of people stating their preferred option, with threaded conversation underneath each—is not conducive to determining consensus. A participant needs to keep track of dozens of threads, often covering redundant territory. There's a reason why the typical bulletin board format remains popular on the web: there is one place to continue a conversation, and catching up is a simple matter of continuing after the last post you've read. Consensus decision-making should not be done via a straw poll and then trying to re-balance the votes to favour one option. It should decide what option will satisfy the most persons, including the large silent majority to whatever extent is possible, or, conversely, dissatisfy the fewest, since often the best choice is just the one that manages the negatives sufficiently. To that end, these discussions need to solicit opinions on what characteristics are desirable and undesirable in the option to be chosen, and their relative importance. That way, someone summarizing the discussion can determine that benefits A, B, and C are of highest priority, outweighing drawbacks D and E, and thus select the option that is most suitable (or in the case of a request for adminship, determine if the candidate is suitable based on the advantages versus the disadvantages).
— from [7]

Problems with good-faith editors being outnumbered[edit]

Discussion from user talk page:

Wikipedia consensus system, in its current form, makes it at least ten times harder to follow the existing rules than to break them. For example, someone can add an unattributed sentence about some occurrence into an article in a couple of minutes; if it's not obviously wrong or vandalism, by Wikipedia rules, I'm supposed to try to find an attribution myself, which can take me twenty minutes or more if I need to hunt down a couple of reliable sources in the online periodical archives available to me. Filibustering editors who choose to, say, contest relatively straightforward copy edits can drag out what should be a quick in-and-out process to days of discussion, and if the article isn't a popular one, a consensus may never get reached. Though it doesn't happen often, after just a few incidents of this, all the joy of editing is sucked out of it, knowing that your next edit may turn into interminable discussion. Who wants to lend their editing expertise to produce a featured article, when it's always just an edit away from drawing you into a protracted, contentious dispute?
— discussion thread on user talk page

Discussion from user talk page:

Wikipedia is the largest experiment to-date in trying to run a mostly consensus-driven community, with no hierarchical decision-making, and it's amazing how far it's gone. But after awhile, you can only patch the conventions and traditions that have accreted for so long before they start breaking down. I've said before that following the rules is at least five times the effort than not: someone can drop in a plausible-sounding, yet erroneous statement into an article in a minute or two; and I have to spend at least five to ten minutes searching for corroboration. If I'm still uncertain, I can request a citation, and then I have to remember to come back some day and check on it. If I find a citation, I've got to spend another couple of minutes adding it to the article, and possibly another three to five minutes rewriting the text to better integrate the original edit. So if ratio of editors aligned with Wikipedia's principles to misguided editors drops below 5 to 1, the battle is being lost.

The price of success is that it attracts everyone. It's good for extending coverage into new areas, or being able to get enough opinions to vet article content. It's bad for trying to continue with a pure consensus approach. Even if everyone is acting in good faith, they can have disagreements that cannot be reconciled due to contradictory assumptions or underlying principles, which is one of the reasons that consensus decision-making scales poorly. As a result, there will be a point some day where Wikipedia's editing population will have to shift in some way. It might get overrun by non-neutral advocates, or some kind of registration may become mandatory to try to force editors to maintain an identity and associated reputation (one of the steps recommended by Shirky), or the consensus process for article content may be modified to include some form of editorial oversight, or something else. The only thing certain about communities is that they will always change.

... Wikipedia has never been a friendly environment to real-world specialists, as a result: in the real world, you establish a reputation, and thus earn credibility for your work, whereas Wikipedia (as long as I've been here) has a tradition of requiring editors to justify their changes to anyone who challenges them. This can be quickly wearisome, and discouraging to editors. For example, some editors, for various reasons, will challenge routine copy edits, and it's a huge time and energy sink to have to explain standard writing principles and best practices. And unless there are others watching the article who chime in, the conversation will frequently wane without a consensus being established. I understand why it has to be this way with Wikipedia's current environment, but I think burnout of good editors could be reduced if some concept of reputation could be managed, or if some kind of editorial oversight/binding mediation could quickly resolve disputes.

...It's the nature of any rapidly growing group, though, for average skill level to decrease: even companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google have to deal with this, particularly when they initiate large hiring sprees. It's a tradeoff made to increase capacity to accomplish more, at the cost of doing it somewhat less efficiently.
— Discussion thread on user talk page: [8] and [9]

Discussions need sustained participation, and a way to make binding decisions[edit]

Regarding the statements made by some supporters that talk page discussions and RFCs are generally successful in resolving content disputes if there are no conduct issues: there are many discussions that fade out and fail to reach a conclusion due to a lack of sustained participation, and many RFCs that do not achieve a consensus, in many cases because there are equally valid opposing views that are just based on different underlying assumptions or interpretations, which English Wikipedia's decision-making model is not well equipped to resolving. This is a gap in content dispute resolution that needs to be filled. (Unfortunately, the mediation process as it is currently implemented by the mediation committee doesn't strike me as being a particularly effective way to deal with these types of disagreements in English Wikipedia: its voluntary nature doesn't help with the problem of sustained participation, and unless the community agrees to have representatives of major viewpoints enter in mediation on its behalf, it's too hard to have formal mediation with large disputes.) It is demotivating for editors to know that any edit they make could get challenged and trying to resolve it can mean long, protracted discussions, with possibly no definitive resolution ever arriving.
— from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 154#RFC:Close MedCom?

Price of non-hierarchical decision-making traditions[edit]

Clay Shirky's talk "A Group is its own Worst Enemy" discussed problems with online communities. Attempts to make them non-hierarchical by replacing human judgement exercised by administrators with rules interpreted by everyone eventually fail as the rules become overly complex. Yes, there are advantages to the mostly flat decision-making framework used by the English Wikipedia community, but they come at a price. The community will one day have to face the question if having all significant changes stalemated, non-stop revisiting of disputes, and an environment that provides incentives for poor behaviour is worth it.
— from Village pump (idea lab)

Summary of problems with content-dispute resolution[edit]

As I have written previously, there are challenges with collaborative, online decision-making:

  • A small number of voices can dominate conversation, drowning out others.
  • Circular arguments, repetition of the same points, and irrelevant information, including overly-emotional appeals and personal criticisms, cause people to lose attention.
  • Agreeing upon appropriate criteria to bring the discussion to a conclusion can be difficult.

English Wikipedia's unmoderated discussions have additional challenges:

  • Participants can write unduly long responses that in a face-to-face conversation would be controlled through appropriate interruptions.
  • At any given time, immediate responses are only possible by those in neighbouring time zones. This reduces the efficacy of dialogue.

Also the voices heard are only a small, self-selected sampling of the entire community. Even amongst those who are aware of the conversation and are motivated to participate initially, there is a large percentage who do not have sufficient interest to maintain engagement throughout the entire discussion.

I've also written about the problems with using consensus as a decision-making approach in a large group. When an entire group is strongly aligned in its goals, consensus decision-making can be effective in maintaining a unity of purpose. Unfortunately, as a group increases in size, it also becomes increasingly unlikely that all members will be strongly aligned. Consensus decision-making favours those who are less accommodating over those who are more accommodating, and so Wikipedia's discussion environment selects for less collegial editors over more collegial ones. Asking for proof with on-wiki diffs that it is the more collegial editors who are leaving is a catch-22: first, it would not be collegial to discuss someone else's lack of social graces; second, most people who stop posting to a web site just do so, without bothering to tell anyone about it.

Wikipedia's group-discussion process gives additional weight to the most outspoken editors and gives incentive for uncollaborative behaviour. As I've discussed at User:Isaacl/Community/Fostering collaborative behaviour and User:Isaacl/Community/Content dispute resolution toolbox, we should be trying to craft our processes and procedures so they reward desired behaviour, and make undesirable behaviour a losing strategy. For example, providing mechanisms to resolve content disputes in a semi-binding way (perhaps with a revisit respite) would encourage everyone to work towards a best-compromise solution, as opposed to trying to win through repetition and participant attrition. Improving content dispute resolution so it is more effective and doesn't reward poor behaviour will reduce the need for conduct dispute resolution. isaacl (talk) 22:22, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
— from Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 34 § Conduct dispute resolution systems

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