Research:Centralized contributions for moderation activity
Tracked in task T387462
Moderation processes on Wikipedia are difficult to discover. Rather than finding out about moderation processes through proactive searching or discovery, editors seem to find out about moderation in an uneven and unexpected manner. We assume that this is a missed opportunity to introduce more would-be moderators to processes that would benefit from more moderators. Additionally, the lack of discoverability means that it is difficult for existing moderators to balance their current moderation workloads, as it is difficult for moderators to collaborate with each other when moderation processes and actions are difficult to discover and prioritize.
While not strictly universal, it is extremely common to see some form of community-created moderation hub for different moderation processes. From this, we can reasonably infer that larger wikis, that have greater moderation needs, also need more sophisticated moderation discovery, prioritization, and organization tools.
Our hope is that creating a more streamlined and accessible on-ramp to moderation activity will increase the overall number of users taking moderation actions on our wikis. This, in turn, should increase the number of users who are socialized as moderators, with the long-term aim of increasing the pool of candidates for administrator, extended rights editors, and other functionary positions.
Definition of "moderation"
[edit]We know that "moderator" is not a term in widespread use within the Wikimedia community. For this project, we are specifically interested in contributions to Wikipedia that are not directly content-related, that do not require administrator rights to perform. We are following the definition of "moderator" proposed in Research:Develop a working definition for moderation activity and moderators.
Goals
[edit]The primary goal of this research is to answer two questions:
- Is a central homepage a concept that experienced editors who are settled in their ways of work would adopt? (Context: the success of the central location relies on the fact that experienced editors adopt it.)
- If a central homepage is a concept that they would adopt, what are the actions, workflows, or motivations we must offer in the central homepage that will motivate moderators (very experienced or not) to come to it?
Methods
[edit]We aim to combine participant interviews with an open card sort. These interviews covered:
- What moderation processes participants know about, and actively participate in
- How they initially discovered these processes
- How they would prefer to learn about these processes
- How well they understand moderation processes generally
We provided a curated list of moderation-related activities that do not require extended rights as the basis of the card sort. The aim of the card sort exercise was to understand what types of moderation actions are related to each other, in editors’ opinions, to figure out what groups of activities make the most sense to promote together.
We conducted this combined interview and card sorting exercise with 8 participants, from April - May 2025. 6 were English Wikipedia editors, and 2 were Italian Wikipedia editors. All participants were experienced editors, though they had a range of moderation experience, and said they had not used the Newcomer Homepage before.
Timeline
[edit]- Apr 2025: Preparatory phase
- May 2025: Data collection
- Jun 2025: Analysis, conclusion, results share
Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research
[edit]This study is subject to our Userlytics Tests privacy statement, our Data publication guidelines and our Privacy policy.
Results
[edit]Our research uncovered the following key points:
- Participants unanimously desire a centralized hub to access, tailored to their interests or most common contribution types
- Participants also want a centralized hub to discover new moderation activities and relevant wiki policies that they can learn about
- It is easier for editors to understand why they should perform moderation actions, if they are described as an extension of editing, rather than as a separate category of activities entirely
- Explicitly calling such activities “moderation” is more likely to confuse users, as opposed to labelling them as “additional editing actions”
- The moderation activities of almost all study participants is limited to the articles on their watchlist or contribution history
- Therefore, it is likely easier to encourage editors to moderate articles and topics based on articles and topics they have previously engaged with
- Their motivations for engaging in moderation tend to center around a desire to maintain the quality of articles they have previously edited or created
- Users use off-wiki channels to find on-wiki help articles, suggesting a need for better discoverability for help articles and policy pages
- Users typically found personalized impact metrics (e.g. pageviews on pages they edited or created) more meaningful than site-wide ones (e.g. number of pages in the Articles for Deletion category)