Grants talk:IEG/"Wikimedia's efforts in order to keep Wikipedia an open and self-organizing network."

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Ready to submit this proposal?[edit]

Thanks for creating this proposal! It looks like you've just about finished drafting it, yes? If so, please update the status (in the Probox markup near the top of your page) from DRAFT to PROPOSED. Let me know if you've got any questions - today is the submissions deadline, so you'll want to mark it PROPOSED to move forward at this point, but you'll still be able to continue editing your page further in response to community feedback over the next few weeks. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2014[edit]

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2014 begins on 21 October 2014, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Jtud (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia vs Wikipedia[edit]

Thank you for this propsoal, which does raise an important question. I appreciate the way that you do not promise to come up with an easy solution, but rather to present us with observations and conclusions which may lead to solutions at a later point. When reading through it, however, I was wondering at some points whether you were referring to Wikimedia (as a movement or as an organisation) or to Wikipedia (as a project), the same goes for Wikimedians / Wikipedians. It would help me to understand your propsal if you could get this a bit more clear in your description. Which steps are specifically looking at Wikimedia/Wikimedians, which steps concern Wikipedia/Wikipedians? How do both interact/relate?--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 12:24, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, "target: Wikimedia Foundation" is clearly wrong. --Nemo 09:46, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for comment, Poupou l'quourouce. I'll make an effort to clarify this in the proposal. We are very interested in how bottom-up organizations - both participants and more or less central steering bodies - deal with issues of openness, accessibility and bureaucratization. Because the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization plays a role here, I specified the Wikimedia Foundation as the 'target' of our research (if that's wrong, could you please give a suggestion how to improve this, Nemo?), but it obviously concerns Wikipedia as a project as a whole as well. --Emiel Rijshouwer

How were the budget amounts determined?[edit]

3000 euros for six interviews, for example, seems like an exceedingly high amount. More insight into how you developed your budget would be appreciated. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:35, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanx for the comments, Calliopejen1 and rubin16. We made an effort to be more precise.

Notification suggestion[edit]

Hoi Justus, Emiel, thanks for getting this proposal together. Retaining editors is something that is discussed widely and often on the Wikimedia projects. Siko asked me to suggest a couple places where you could leave notes about your proposal, and hopefully get feedback, pointers to existing research, and perhaps even some volunteer help. One place on English Wikipedia to look at is WikiProject Editor retention - a note there would be helpful. Also, the Teahouse project was designed to improve the experience for new users. Talking to some of the regulars there might also be fruitful. Best regards, PEarley (WMF) (talk) 00:51, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your help, PEarley (WMF). We left a request to comment on our proposal at the Editor retention Project and the Teahouse Project.

Sprekers Justus Uitermark en Emiel Rijshouwer, met discussie (informeel gedeelte ALV)[edit]

WMNL minutes with discussion mentioned here I was there and found it interesting. Jane023 (talk) 05:57, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

--Thank you, Jane. --Emiel Rijshouwer

What is being funded[edit]

I don't understand what is being asked to fund exactly. I see one of the two proposers is Associate Professor, I suppose this means the funds wouldn't be considered wages? I don't know in your country of course, but in Italy it would be illegal for a (full time) Associate Professor to get other wages on top of it. It would be important to clarify the contractual kind you're imagining and how it fits with university obligations. --Nemo 09:46, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The requested grant is not meant as a wage for a professor, but as a means to support currently unfunded research and researchers, supervised by a professor. --Emiel Rijshouwer
Thanks, this is the kind of information I'm interested in. So it would be interesting to know if this is funding an untenured position of some sort and/or some operating costs you'd have and so on. (Sorry, I don't know all the exact terms for your university system but I hope you can understand.) --Nemo 06:14, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Could be both,--Nemo 06:14, 24 October 2014 (UTC): In order to get part of my untenured work funded I apply for grants. This could support me to perform this research myself and, where necessary, to get assistance from elsewhere. --Emiel[reply]


Any concrete examples of what is meant here by "exclusion?"[edit]

This proposal is a little bit abstract, possibly because it is attempting to fit into a specific sociological model.

It would be useful to see the article the grantees are writing to understand a little more about where they are going with this proposal.

When I think of exclusion on this site, I think about the work of the Gender Gap Task Force and efforts to make the site more comfortable and inclusive for female editors. However, this proposal sounds like it is focused more on identifying the mechanisms that generate too many rules for new editors to write articles.

So far, this self-organizing community of computer enthusiasts is showing far more interest in video games and popular culture than in topics like the African continent or the refugee crisis, which I believe has been said to be approaching levels nearing the years after WWII (Maybe I should look that up on Wikipedia). People on this site, as everywhere, love to organize themselves for the task of self-promotion, and for creating puff and paid articles about their businesses and organizations. Overcoming exclusion by enabling every new editor to write more new English language articles won't help the quality of the encyclopedia in and of itself, unless someone comes up with a way to miraculously turn people with a primary interest in popular culture and self-promotion into authors of serious encyclopedic content.

To give some examples of what this proposal might be about, there are a variety of different types of exclusion, including:

  • exclusion of new editors, by creating too many rules
  • exclusion of women, shy people, and professionals, by creating a hostile editing environment that rewards profanity and sexual content in interactions, and aggressive styles of argument
  • excluding entire continents and major sectors of the world's populations which are of little interest to self-organizing computer enthusiasts
  • excluding serious encyclopedic content in general by diverting editor time and energy to defending the wiki from vandalism and self-promotional content
  • excluding social interventions as out of scope, unless they can be executed by means of funding technical solutions to improve the Wikimedia websites
  • excluding additions of the world's content that has not yet been digitized as out of scope, unless these additions can be executed by means of funding technical solutions to improve the Wikimedia websites
  • exclusion of professionals, academics, and well-informed individuals ...
  • (etc., etc.)

What concrete form or forms of exclusion will be addressed by conducting this study to identify mechanisms of exclusion? Can you describe an example or two? -- Djembayz (talk) 20:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Djembayz, Thank you for your extensive and interesting remarks! We approach exclusion from the sociologist Norbert Elias' theory on established and outsiders: From his research on urban communities he found that despite similarities in ethnicity and social-economic mark-up, established close ranks and create barriers which hinder newcomers to join. They do so, amongst others, by stigmatizing and by explicitly not sharing their culture with outsiders. Newcomers lack social cohesion to break these tendencies. What we ask ourselves is if we would encounter these tendencies in a huge open network as Wikipedia as well. What we have is that substantial amounts of outsiders to this principally open community - which makes every effort to be welcoming participants from all over the world and with every possible background and interest – feel excluded. According Christopher Goldspink Wikipedians are not a strong socially cohesive group because most work very individualistically. In that case, the question is whether exclusion of outsiders emerges from numerous contributions of relatively weak or unconnected individual Wikipedians, or if other mechanisms that play a role here.
Vague generalities about "urban communities" seem useless for making practical recommendations. What SPECIFIC recommendations for Wikipedia might result from the application of this sociological theory? My feeling is the answer to that is "none really" which IMO means this shouldn't be funded. Also, you seem to have already decided you KNOW what the major problem confronting Wikipedia growth is already: namely that the community is not inclusive enough. Perhaps you are correct (I personally am very skeptical) but if you already start with that conclusion what's the point of doing the research? I think there are many other issues, more nuts and bolts kind of issues such as policies for creating links and articles, that need to be analyzed. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:47, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Proposal is Vague and unlikely to lead to any concrete change[edit]

I'm not sure where this proposal currently stands but, while I think the problem is a very real one I'm not convinced that this project will result in anything concrete and I would not encourage funding of this until steps were taken to be more specific about exactly what will be done and what concrete recommendations were expected. I would like to see some actual numbers on various metrics for how sustainable Wikipedia is. I'm going to get real specific here but there are just examples, what I'm saying is I would expect to see information and recommendations like this in such a proposal: Red Links. How many are there? Are they increasing or decreasing? Pages pending review? Articles created but then deleted as soon as they are reviewed? Average time it takes for a new article to get reviewed? Those are the kinds of data I want to see. As for recommendations the same thing: should we change the red link policy? Should we change the policy for allowing anyone to create a new article? Perhaps require you have to be a registered user and have at least X number of non-reverted edits BEFORE you are even allowed to create a new article? These are just examples but those are the kinds of specific questions and answers I would like to see in this kind of study. If it's just going to be touchy-feely philosophical stuff then I don't think precious Wikipedia $$ should be spent on it. Also, there was a reference in the proposal to "Suh et al. (2009))" What exactly is this and where can I find it? It seems odd to me that one would develop a Wikipedia proposal and not even follow standard Wikipedia formats for documenting references. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:37, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikimedia's efforts in order to keep Wikipedia an open and self-organizing network.[edit]

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background) Score
1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential
  • Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities?
  • Does it have potential for online impact?
  • Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?
6.5
(B) Innovation and learning
  • Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem?
  • Is the potential impact greater than the risks?
  • Can we measure success?
5.7
(C) Ability to execute
  • Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months?
  • How realistic/efficient is the budget?
  • Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?
5.7
(D) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
  • Does it support diversity?
4.3
Comments from the committee:
  • This project will look at a key problem. But there's no indication that research will be actionable.
  • Apart from seeing the paper used as a reference within Wikipedia, we would like to see that the researchers actually present their findings to the community - online and possibly also offline - and engage in a discussion with the community on the findings.
  • The budget seems high
  • Measuring success may be difficult.
  • Would have liked to see more community discussion and endorsements.
  • Research that will help to convince Wikipedians to adopt a number of changes in order to be more welcoming and inclusive would be welcome.
  • It would be great to get some updates on the "holy shit graph" in a responsible way that is acceptable to the community. Some concerns that the researchers don't seem to be Wikimedia contributors themselves--presents a steep learning curve.
  • Like the idea of conducting a study and doing the analysis from a wider perspective than just Wikipedia; i.e. including IRC and Facebook

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with its due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by early December. — ΛΧΣ21 17:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Holy shit graph[edit]

As it's mentioned in the aggregated response above: we already know how editor retention is going, more or less, at least for de.wiki and en.wiki: see Research:Surviving new editor. What nobody managed to produce is a proof of the reasons (across all wikis). --Nemo 18:03, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tyranny of Structurelessness[edit]

I think you have to do an analysis of to what extent "en:The Tyranny of Structurelessness" applies here and see the various pros and cons mentioned in that Enlish Wikipedia article and elsewhere. Most importantly the concept of how "this apparent lack of structure too often disguised an informal, unacknowledged and unaccountable leadership that was all the more pernicious because its very existence was denied." Thus in the Wikipedias especially there are groups of editors who take on various topic areas or various functions in an ownership mode and remove material and whole articles by new people in a sometimes hostile manner. (I've gotten impatient myself sometimes in BLPs with those who come to trash those they don't like with non-RS material.)

Below are some ideas for a bit more structure that might end the frustrations of mini-tyrannies throughout the Wikipedias that discourage new editors. Experiments could be started in the English Wikipedia and then adopted or applied to others as necessary. The first paragraph of the below is more carrot for new editors; the second stick for existing ones.

We have to think of editing regimes that might make things less frustrating and hostile for newbies, especially those who want to make substantial edits or create articles. When I started in 2006 I made all sorts of ridiculous errors on mostly non-controversial articles until I became hooked; there were few reverts or comments and they were like big sandboxes for me. So when I got into articles where I got opposition, I was willing to hang in there and learn more about policy. Right now many new editors don't have a chance to edit without opposition, and never get hooked. Encouraging them to put articles of interest into a sandbox and just keep fixing it up til they learn the ropes enough to get hooked might work. Or even have tests where people learn the policies and get to advance in editing status from "sandboxer" to editor, depending on how fast they learn. The Foundation can hire people with educational experience to help create such programs and have at least one staffer making sure community members don't send them too far off track.

Stick-wise, the Wikimedia Foundation could step in to make sure that editors do not unduly impede the legitimate efforts of new (or existing) editors. Proposals recently made include:

  • hiring mediators who also train volunteer mediators and making chronic refusal to engage in an accepted mediation a bad mark on ones reputation;
  • imposing term limits on admins and arbitrators;
  • hiring super-administrators whose only allegiance is to policy and the foundation and not various cliques of editors - they can do unpopular things like enforce civility on long-term abusers and remove admins and arbitrators who enable violations of policy;
  • making analysis tools stronger so they can find patterns of disruption by editors working together;
  • making sure every revert has a menu of check off items of why the revert was done and how much of a problem the editing issue was, resulting in scores that would go on both the reverter and revertees "record";
  • allowing editors more privileges only if they identify themselves via phone or skype to the foundation in order to discourage trolls; this also would be necessary to allow editors to regain legitimately removed editing privileges by that means.

Wikipedia seems to be turning into anarchy in the worst sense of the word. Real community can only happen when people know each other face to face - at least the Foundation has that, even if it also has a hierarchy. Here one doesn't know the males from the females, the professors from the teenagers, the government employees from the corporate employees, etc. etc. It's just chaos. Carolmooredc (talk) 07:05, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Round 2 2014 Decision[edit]

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
Further community engagement is likely needed before embarking on such a study, if this research is to be actionable. We hope to see you continuing to participate in the movement, and share any future ideas you have with us.

Next steps:

  1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
  2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
  3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
  4. Check the schedule for the next open call to submit proposals - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in a future round.
Questions? Contact us.