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More research on newbie editors; Baidu plagiarism; bin Laden coverage; brief news

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By Chaser, Saqib Qayyum and Tilman Bayer

New editors on the English Wikipedia: More warnings and malicious edits, but majority still in good faith

As part of the ongoing discussions about improving participation and newbie friendliness in Wikimedia communities (see previous Signpost coverage), and in preparation for the WMF Summer of Research, the Foundation's Community Department prepared another random sample of several hundred edits made to user talk pages of new registered users on English Wikipedia from 2004 through 2011.[1] These edits were made by other contributors within 30 days of a new person’s first edit. The results show "a marked decrease in praise for contributions (anything from a simple “great job on that article!” to a barnstar), and a simultaneous increase in warnings and criticism delivered via templates (e.g., third- and fourth-level vandalism warnings, copyright violation warnings with aggressive images like stop signs or red X marks, and threats of block or bans) since 2006."

Praise versus Negative templates, English Wikipedia 2004-2011

The results prompted Hungarian Wikipedian Bence Damokos to do a similar study on the Hungarian Wikipedia, restricted to the current (April-May 2011) state. Examining a sample of messages from all user talk pages, including those of experienced editors, he found that 48% of them were positive and 41% neutral. For a smaller sample of new editors, 75% of talk page messages were positive (including standard welcome templates). He concluded that "the situation seems to be better on the Hungarian Wikipedia than on the English Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this means that other explanations are needed to find out why is the retention and 'conversion rate' of new editors on the Hungarian Wikipedia very low."

Percentage of new good faith and bad faith editors, English Wikipedia 2004-2011

A few days later, the Community Department followed up with another study, extending their above mentioned study from April to a sample containing all years from 2004 to 2011, and this time coding all of the newbies' contributions instead of just their first edit, as either "good faith", "vandalism", "spam" or as coming from accounts later blocked as "sockpuppets". Similar to the April results, the ratio of good faith edits showed mostly a decrease since 2004, with a partial rebound since 2009. The study's authors highlighted the good news: "a clear majority of new editors in the sample participated in good faith" (still 66% at the lowest point in 2009).

As summarized in English by the website China Media News ("After literature and MP3: Baidu’s encyclopedia accused of copyright infringement in China"), "Baidu’s open online encyclopedia Baidu Baike ('Baidupedia') was accused of copyright infringement by unofficial members of Chinese Wikipedia recently". Their press release lists examples of Baidu Baike entries which are based on articles from the Chinese and English Wikipedia or were translated from the Japanese Wikipedia, without attribution and with a note "©2011 Baidu". According to one participant of the Chinese Wikipedia, Baidu copied "1636 articles from Chinese Wikipedia, including 74 FA, 44 GA, 126 DYK and 1397 normal articles". Drafts of the press release, including an English version, were circulated last month on the Foundation-l mailing list, where Wikimedia Chair (and Chinese expat) Ting Chen commented on the futility of legal action: "Fact is that Baidu doesn't care. We don't know who backs Baidu in China but with its prominent position it cannot be anyone very small. Maybe some of you remember that a few months ago there were media coverage [ cf. Signpost coverage ] about Hudong is going to sue Baidu because of copyright infringement, but that also just disappeared somewhere in the Chinese jurisdiction system. Rumor say that Hudong did it only to get some publicity. At this moment there is no point to sue Baidu, neither for any Wikipedian nor for WMF."

Coverage of bin Laden's death lauded; article approaches page view record

Wikipedia's coverage of Osama bin Laden's death received positive comments. On the blog of the Department of War Studies, KCL, a researcher wrote on May 2nd: "Who’s got the best coverage? Believe it or not, but Wikipedia is one of the candidates. In less than five hours and in an impressive 400 edits, a dedicated team of self-appointed authors and editors has come up with a pretty good (and protected) article. Of course it is largely a complication [sic] of press articles and official announcements. But the result has more detail and better sourcing that [sic] most news stories." A day later, on American Public Media's "Tech Report Blog", US journalist John Moe stated that "For bin Laden news, it's not Twitter's moment, it's Wikipedia's", dismissing claims that the event had established Twitter as a news medium, and instead recommending Wikipedia:

Wikipedia's biographical article on Osama bin Laden got 4.8 million page views on 2 May 2011, the day of his death. The new article Death of Osama bin Laden also got almost one million page views that day, the first day of its existence (it was previously a redirect). The main bin Laden article's nearly five million page views in one day made it second in page view records, behind only Michael Jackson, which got 5.9 million page views on the day after his death. A sharp spike in traffic on the day of Jackson's death caused Wikipedia to briefly go offline (see previous Signpost coverage). No technical problems were reported this time.

Briefly

  • Wikimedia Foundation's blogs overhauled: As part of a general overhaul of the Foundation's official blogs, two new blogs have been added to WMF blogs family, namely the Community blog, and the Global blog (corresponding to the Foundation's Community and Global Development departments"). These blogs have been created to categorize the posts posted on the Wikimedia Foundation official blog to increase transparency, understanding and collaboration. Previously, the Tech blog (corresponding to the Tech department) was created in March 2009. Its goal stated then was to be "much more technical than the Wikimedia Blog (which covers Foundation issues and news)" and to cover "software updates, server changes, and other such issues".
  • New Volunteer Development Coordinator: The Wikimedia Foundation has hired Sumana Harihareswara as Volunteer Development Coordinator (job description). As reported earlier, she had been hired as a contractor in February, to help out with preparations for the Google Summer of Code 2011 and this week's Berlin Developer meeting.
  • Wikimedia chapter report: Wikimedia Sverige (Wikimedia Sweden) announced in their April 2011 report that they appointed Hoger Motzkau as treasurer and reappointed Axel Pettersson as press contact. The chapter got a grant of €1,000 for sponsoring a photohunt.
  • Mobile traffic statistics: A report on mobile traffic to Wikipedia servers was published by Erik Zachte, Data Analyst at the Wikimedia Foundation, on his personal blog.
  • Milestones: The Basque Wikipedia reached 90,000 articles on May 1.
    "This month in GLAM" next to Wikimedia logo
    Logo of the GLAM newsletter

  • New edition of GLAM newsletter: The fourth edition of This Month in GLAM, a newsletter produced to help keep track of collaboration between Wikimedia projects and galleries, libraries, archives and museums, has been published on the Wikimedia Foundation's Outreach Wiki. Among various other items covered previously in the Signpost, it contains a more detailed report on collaborations with Derby Museums in the UK.
  • Board election candidacies: Candidate submissions opened last week for the 2011 Board Elections, wherein members of the Wikimedia community will elect three of the ten members of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, from May 29th through June 12th.
  • Grant Advisory Committee: Volunteers are currently being sought to form the ‎ (GAC), which is "to help evaluate grant requests [to the Wikimedia Foundation, cf. m:Grants:Index ] and to benefit from a wider movement perspective"
  • New chapter: Wikimedia Macau: The WMF Board of Trustees has provisionally recognized Wikimedia Macau as the newest Wikimedia chapter.
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  • New editors: Pardon me for saying the glass is a third empty, but a mere majority of new editors participating in good faith is "good news"[editorial opinion] of only the "well, it could be worse" variety. Wikimedia faces tremendous challenges in trying to be more open and welcoming to people of good faith when it has to deal with so many who are up to no good. It is remarkable that any enterprise open to the general public could long survive when as many as a third of newcomers have to be shooed away. The diligence and persistence of good contributors in the face of so much interference is nothing less than astounding.

    I look forward to a time when the widely held perception that Wikipedia is full of nonsense fades away, so that newcomers arrive with a preconceived expectation that this is serious business and very few even consider wasting their time with activity that is not to be taken seriously. Being friendlier is very important indeed, but I believe it is being taken seriously what will ultimately turn the tide. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:00, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • New editor analysis oversimplified: Blatant vandalism is only part of the problem. Because I use the NewPagePatrol script to patrol new pages (duh) I only occasionally see blatant vandalism, it having been zapped by bots or by those editors who patrol within seconds after pages are created (there's a 5 minute delay in NewPagePatrol). Nonetheless, there is a constant flood of inappropriate new pages coming on board which are purely spammy, wholly non-notable, or attempts to use WP as Facebook or MySpace. These are, in most cases, pages created in good faith in the sense that the posters simply do not understand the purpose and limitations of Wikipedia. These editors, just like vandals, are given short shrift, but to believe that some worthwhile percentage of them can be converted into ongoing dedicated editors is a pipe dream. One need only read the discussion page, and read behind the lines a little, at the current Strategic Plan update to see that the vast majority of those who do stick around after having their article deleted do so only to either assert reasons for undeletion which are clueless as to WP standards or to grind an axe about how WP is wrongheaded about those standards, or both. Only a tiny fraction are interested in learning the skills which it takes to be a successful editor, or do anything more than promote their commercial or personal interest with the least possible effort. To restrict new page patrollers' ability to deal with those articles quickly and unemotionally will just be a disincentive to leave the wikidoor further unbarred and to, in effect, change the motto of Wikipedia to "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit about anything they please". It would, therefore, be interesting to see what the study numbers would look like with those not-vandalism-but-hopeless articles segregated. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:19, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • If only a "tiny fraction" of new editors are interested in learning the ropes, isn't it even more vital that we make sure that those few editors feel welcome and aren't driven away in short order? Otherwise in a few years we may not have any page-patrollers to speak of. Kaldari (talk) 23:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Kudos to the news editors who covered the Bin Laden story. Tony (talk) 14:50, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • You misread me and missed my point. The reference to "tiny fraction" was not in reference to all new editors, but was made in the context of my discussion of the editors of the flood of new pages which are not vandalism, but which are inappropriate and doomed to deletion, and whose editors — except for that tiny fraction — have no interest in editing Wikipedia beyond getting their spam, quasi-Facebook, garage band, or homage to their girlfriend published. If your argument is that even that tiny fraction ought to be treated with kid gloves, my response is that if the Foundation can find a way to do that without in the slightest impairing or giving a disincentive to new page patrollers to deal with the articles created by the part of those editors that aren't in that tiny minority, then more power to them and I'll be the first to welcome it. But I'm not going to hold my breath until that happens and I'll oppose any plan or trial which isn't absolutely sure to work without creating such an impairment or disincentive. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:33, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • You keep describing this as if it's a zero-sum game: that for more newbies to succeed, we have to lower our quality standards and keep new page patrol or similar community mechanisms from working well. But that's simply not true, and no one at the Foundation operates under that premise. If you take a look at the ideas listed at the feature map made by Erik and others you'll see that. The new editor-specific features are things like tutorials and mentoring (which, as one effect, will help keep people from writing more articles that cause npp headaches). Most of the features in the idea map are not newbie-specific, and will help everyone, whether they've made 1 edit or 100,000. Steven Walling at work 17:57, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry if I gave that impression and the zero-sum analysis you give is not what I meant or intended to imply. As I said above, if we can increase new user participation and retention without making NPP more difficult, then I'm all for it. If we're going to keep NPP effective and easy to do, however, I do have some considerable doubt about our ability to obtain that result through tutorials or mentoring or other education devices unless their use is made a prerequisite to bringing up an article in live mainspace. The Article Wizard and Your First Article already do a pretty good, albeit imperfect, job of providing that education, but the kind of editors I'm describing either ignore them altogether or ignore the parts which they don't like because they would prevent them from doing what they want to do. Making them or something like them a prerequisite would certainly deter most of the casual authors who make up my concern, but will also, I'm afraid, deter editors who really do have, or can be developed into having, an ongoing good faith interest in editing WP. With all the drama over solutions such as pending changes and only allowing autoconfirmed editors to edit, unless the Foundation chooses to merely impose these reforms from on high I'm also concerned that you'll never achieve consensus for anything other than some kind of non-mandatory education. If that kind of non-mandatory training is where you're going, I — truly — wish you the best of luck with it and hope that it works. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 20:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    There is one very quick gain, which, in my opinion would make the newbies-who-start-with-an-identified-dubious-edit feel more welcome. And that is replacing the carefully crafted user-talk templates with simpler ones that look like a message from a person rather than a bureaucracy (however relatively informal). So n boxes and icons, no bolds or italics, hardly any links. "Hi! I saw you created an article on My Amzaing Band. Thanks for starting the article, Wikipedia doesn't usually have articles on bands unless they have a certain number of published albums with a major label (you can read more about this at Wikpedia:Band notability requirements. For this reason the article will probably be deleted fairly soon - see top of the page for how to discuss or contest this. Wikipedia does need help with coverage of music and bands - see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music for some places we need help."
    I'm sure the wording could be made more friendly still, and a host of other improvements - but the key is that this is, as the Germans say "Friendly greetings" from another person. Rich Farmbrough, 23:19, 11 May 2011 (UTC).[reply]
    I have no objection to that, so long as I can continue to use a template and don't have to write a personalized message every time I do a A7 speedy deletion nomination on a page whose content is, "Hi, I'm Jake Jones. I was born in 1991. I'm the pitcher of the Joe's Hardware softball team." I do think, however, that we have to carefully balance (at least) three competing considerations in the formulation of those templates: friendliness/welcomingness vs education vs verbosity. We've had a cautionary lesson recently resulting in the discontinuation of use of the {{hangon}} tags. Until recently the speedy deletion templates said that page creators could contest deletion by placing the hangon tag directly under the CSD tag. In practice the creators put them everywhere except under the CSD tag. The most logical explanation for that behavior is that they didn't thoroughly read the CSD tag. The hangon explanations, both then and now, which do get given by page creators far more often than not betray a total ignorance of what was said in the CSD tag. This is, perhaps, saying the same thing in a different way, but templates must strike a balance between brevity (or they won't read it) vs the giving of due notice (for fairness) vs encouragement and education. I've tried to strike that balance with the new user tips I leave when a new user asks for help and when I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're really asking for help and not just gaming the system or obfuscating. If I'm uncertain about their bona fides, I give them my short form of those tips, example here, which is a bit less friendly but fairly short; if I think that they're really trying to contribute I'll give them a link to my Full Monty advice page and/or to my Wikipedia, Bicycles, and Wagons essay, both of which are long on nice and education, but verbose. I don't do either one very often because I only rarely believe that the editor really wants to become invested in WP. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:06, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Baidu Baike: Regarding massive copying of content by Baidu Baike, if it at all is possible to take the case to court, then Wikimedia Foundation should do it. It is not something we should accept, we try our best ourself to respect copyright and as we use large amounts of time to produce free content for all who want it, it is very little to ask that they say where that content came from.
This also has wider consequences in that China is the only larger or developed country where Wikipedia is not among the most popular web sites, according to Alexa it is number 98. I do strongly hope that Wikimedia Foundation takes this challenge and do what they can to defend what we all have created here. Ulflarsen (talk) 11:42, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I started Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Baidu Baike to centralize the discussion on this issue. That page still needs some work but the main points are already summarized. OhanaUnitedTalk page 15:56, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Warning / Praise statistics To be honest i don't find those numbers very striking - or very worrisome to be honest. When Wikipedia started in 2004 there were few editors, no vandalism patrol tools and little readers. Over the years Wikipedia gained popularity, which meant more editors who didn't always have good intend. Equally we developed patrol tools such as Huggle which makes patrolling a lot more efficient.

In other words, this research says little if one does not consider the vandal to good user ratio, or cross-reference it with the amount of vandalism that was caught in an early state. Since editor retainment is also somewhat down, the drop in praise could possible be explain due to having less good editors joining up. In other words, i am somewhat reminded of " There are lies, there are damn lies and there are statistics", since the deduction behind the graph seems to be oversimplified (As far as i can read here that is) Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 21:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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