User:Guillaume (WMF)/Dynamics of Wikimedia systems

Next version: 0.1.0

Context

Historical background:

• 2010 strategy process
  • Editor Trends Study (talk page)
  • Interface and tools for community health
  • Openness and Participation
  • strategy:Top risks 2009
  • strategy:Former Contributors Survey Results
  • strategy:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Increase_participation, strategy:Attracting and retaining participants
  • strategy:Product Whitepaper
  • strategy:March 2011 Update
• 2011-04-08: foundation:Resolution:Openness
• Research:The Rise and Decline
• E3, Growth

• 
  Why do editors leave Wikipedia? Howie Fung, Wikimania 2010, 2010-07-10
• 
  Attrition Pipeline: Impediments to editing at each stage of the editor life-cycle. Wikimedia Foundation staff, 2011-03-17. (source)
• 
  Decline Theories And Support. Wikimedia Foundation staff, 2011-03-17. (source)
• 
  The user lifecycle. In Editor Engagement Experiments: Quarterly Review, January-March 2013. Steven Walling, 2013-04-12
• 
  Summary: Forces that Shaped English Wikipedia (Hypergrowth phase). In Wikimedia Foundation Product Strategy Offsite: Background materials. Howie Fung, 2013-07-22
• 
  Edit & Reversions: Current Feedback Loop. In Wikimedia Foundation Product Strategy Offsite: Background materials. Howie Fung, 2013-07-22
• 
  “Career Path” of a Wikipedian. In Wikimedia Foundation Product Strategy Offsite: Background materials. Howie Fung, 2013-07-22
• 
  Decline is offset by growth. In Wikimedia Foundation Product Strategy Offsite: Background materials. Howie Fung, 2013-07-22
• 
  Aaron Halfaker, Research showcase, 2014-03-19
• 
  Wikipedia as a socio-technical system. Aaron Halfaker, Research showcase, 2014-10-15
• 
  A call for Open Collaboration Systems Theory. Aaron Halfaker, CSCW'15, 2015-03-14
• 
  VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors. Aaron Halfaker, Research showcase, 2015-07-29
• 
  Anon productivity and productive efficiency in English Wikipedia. Aaron Halfaker, Research showcase, 2016-01-20
• 

More recently:

• Research:Harassment survey 2015
• Interaction principles for online collaboration, Training modules

Problem articulation

Purpose

• Until now, focus mostly on unidirectional "pipelines" and "life cycles"
• Until now, focus mostly on the English Wikipedia
• Take a step back to get a more global view
• Reframe issues in terms of interdependent systems with feedback loops
• Looking at the system avoids blaming the agents, whose actions are mostly guided by the structure of the system.
• Building conceptual maps (or models) collaboratively contributes to changing mental models, and therefore behaviors.

Time horizon

• backward boundary: start of WIkipedia (2001) or Nupedia (1999)
• forward boundary: ~2050, i.e. roughly 3 times the time elapsed since the creation of Wikipedia

Dynamic hypothesis

Subsystems

• life cycle of contributors
• life cycle of articles
• unproductive contributions

Other possible subsystems:

• social norms
• coordination and life cycle of groups

Subsystem: Life cycle of contributors

Life cycle of contributors: Problem articulation

• Purpose
• Key variables
• Time horizon
• Reference modes

Life cycle of contributors: Dynamic hypothesis

• Current theories
• Hypothesis
• Boundaries

Life cycle of contributors: Model

• Causal loop diagram
• Stock and flow map

• 
• 

Subsystem: Life cycle of articles

Life cycle of articles: Problem articulation

• Purpose
• Key variables
• Time horizon
• Reference modes

Life cycle of articles: Dynamic hypothesis

• Current theories
• Hypothesis
• Boundaries

Life cycle of articles: Model

• Causal loop diagram
• Stock and flow map

Subsystem: Unproductive contributions

Unproductive contributions: Problem articulation

• Purpose
• Key variables
• Time horizon
• Reference modes

Unproductive contributions: Dynamic hypothesis

• Current theories
• Hypothesis
• Boundaries

Unproductive contributions: Model

• Causal loop diagram
• Stock and flow map

Integrated model

• Causal loop diagram
• Stock and flow map

Staging area

• Mw:Feature map

Very early draft