Research talk:Develop a working definition for moderation activity and moderators

Feedback

Hi Diego (WMF), thanks for this new research that brings a few earlier initiatives together. I have a few questions and remarks:

• According to the logged action section, you don't seem to include classical admin actions like imports and content model changes which are easily countable in local logs and tools like xtools. Similarly, edits in particular namespaces that can only be edited by admins (like MediaWiki namespace everywhere, CNBanners on Metawiki, etc.) don't seem to be included either, although they should be countable.
• I am very much confused by the term “messagebox” which doesn't seem to be very common in English Wikipedia either. Do you mean cleanup templates? User warnings? Can you please add a definition or glossary?
  • In any case, the tables imply a comparability that does not exist. Moderation action on German Wikipedia (my first home wiki) are fully different from English Wikipedia: Instead of spreading tons and tons of citation needed templates (there is community consensus that they should not be used), the community has decided to use other means of moderation, first and foremost flagged revisions. I'm not sure whether you have taken these into concern when you were talking about the “review” log (see local statistics). The use of cleanup templates is also very much limited by policy.
  • For user warnings, German Wikipedia has a different usage, too. All talk pages of (dynamic) IP addresses are deleted withing 24 hours, making it the most used delete reason (>770k log entries per this statistic). Dewiki doesn't want to confuse people who later use these IP addresses as we can see on English Wikipedia even after more than a decade, e.g. see this comment. Both these processes should be taken into concern when comparing moderation actions. I assume that other Wikipedias have different processes, too.

Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 20:07, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Dear @DerHexer, thanks for reaching out.

Thanks for your feedback, we have discussed it with the team, and found it very useful. Let me answer your questions:

• logged actions:
  • We were trying to identify actions that are taken that relate directly to user or content moderation, which usually means actions that relate back to user or content policies. There's no clear definition of what falls into that category but we were explicitly trying to not count things that might be perceived as being more akin to maintenance work, which is also important but a different type of activity.
  • For the logged actions related to admin, it's true that it would be extendable, but right now other metrics such as the Wiki Comparison database base "admin activity" on those four specific logged actions. At the initial stage it made sense to restrict our definition of "administrator actions" to the same four being used in other completed/ongoing studies, for cross-comparison purposes, and we can probably say that we could consider extending admin activity to the other metrics you are mentioning.
• clean-up templates: We have used them. The reason we call them messageboxes is because it relates to how we detect them in content.

Regarding the different norms around usage of these templates, thanks for your input, it is very useful. Right now, the reason we're measuring is not to say what the right amount is but to better understand usage and how it relates to aspects like whether FlaggedRevs is used heavily or not.

Best, Diego (WMF) (talk) 09:52, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

@Diego (WMF): Thanks for the clarifications.

• The definition of logged actions meets my expectations due to the linked admin survey which I have read in full. However, as far as I understand your definitions there, these are called “admin actions” there while this page describes them with the more broader term “moderation action” (where I would also include the before-mentioned admin actions but also active use of flagged revisions, for example). More clarification with the definitions/terms could be helpful here, I think.
• A module, makes sense, I should have recognized that. :) Did you take into concern that only 189 wikis use this module while others like German Wikipedia have a different module with similar functionality (1.5 million transclusions in dewiki alone; there is no Module:Message box on dewiki)? This should give different results when they are compared against each other. — However, I am not an expert on modules, so I'm asking PerfektesChaos who wrote the other template to take another look here.

Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 13:57, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

I just caught the ping now.

I do not understand what module is needed for; in more general terms a template may be used for some messageboxes. Whatever they may tell. Anyway, Lua and “module” is one particular method to implement something but all other solutions are possible.

I am overtaxed to understand purpose and target of the research page related to this talk.

• The view point seems to me very English Wikipedia. This is not really a pattern for the entire world.
• Indicating quality may be indicated directly visible in article text, but this is not the only way. In German Wikipedia there are some very obvious warning boxes, but their frequent usage is undesired and limited to severe cases. Notes on article talk page, invisible HTML source comment and informing a thematic editorial panel are invisible means of communication. In general silent methods are preferred to broadcasting to all readers. Thereby vanishing from your data set.
• In German Wikipedia sysops are not permitted to decide on content, with exception of deleteing pages. They are law enforcement, might protect pages or block users, but they keep discussions within borders only. They might comment on content as regulars, but not in the role of sysop.

Since the evaluation seems to be based on mechanisms of English Wikipedia, others were not caught nor evaluated. Therefore your figures are not comparable.

• On POV there is de:Template:Neutralität if an entire section or article has severe bias, and some more.
• There is no Citation needed permitted for one single statement, but only on entire section or article level by de:Template:Belege fehlen if major issues are not based on external sources.

Greetings PerfektesChaos (talk) 15:26, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Diego (WMF): Any thoughts on our input about different workflows in different Wikimedia projects and why it doesn't make so much sense to compare them when they are to different? :) Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 15:32, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your question :) Imo, it would make sense to have a general definition that works as backbone for defining moderation, and then another piece that we can adapt per project. But this is work in progress, the goal of this report was to show the feasibility of defining/measuring moderation activities, but there is still work needed to be able to operationalize this. The follow-ups for this work are being tracked in Phabricator: T384600

Diego (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 24 March 2025 (UTC)