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Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
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Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good way to begin to understand about toxic comments is to look for the "dead" comments on HN. Dead comments fall into a few categories: trolling, advertisements, conspiracy/culture war and toxic. It's pretty easy to figure out which is which.
No the question is how the authors decided which comments were toxic for their evaluation. If they say "gut feeling" then replication will be greatly hampered.
The article explains their methodology for identifying and tracking toxic comments.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#73> For instance, the level of conflict on discussion pages, as assessed by raters, has been shown to negatively correlate with the quality of the corresponding Wikipedia articles. An alternative explanation is that "toxic comments" protect wikipedia from low quality content, acting as defense mechanism against bad editors. So without better study which tries to analyze if the critique (regardless of toxicity) is justi…
Ah, yes, the age old "I'm not an asshole! I just have high standards!" High standards can be communicated without being toxic. It's just more effort. If most people had the same high standards for their answers they have on the contributions of others (whether on Wikipedia or in general) things would be far better.
> High standards can be communicated without being toxic.
Depends on the perception of toxicity. Just not being supportive or pointing out objective flaws is sometimes perceived as toxic by some people, while others take any sh*t and critique and consider it as valuable as long as it's true.
This is especially problematic in an international project, where multiple cultures clash. Though, this is likely only a problem for English Wikipedia.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#74I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…
Reminds me of my experience with Stackoverflow. I tried to solve a very specific problem with Windows installers. I only got some responses from oldtimers that basically said “why would you do such a thing?”and similar. It felt extremely unwelcoming. It’s ok to not answer but why be so dismissive? I guess the only questions they like are things like “how do I calculate 2+2 in python?”. Anything more complicated is no…
Yeah, whenever I ask a question on SO, I literally have to write paragraphs of text exhorting people to answer my question instead of a different question they find easier, or why my question is not the same as some vaguely similar one.
Then I have to constantly remind people about the same stuff in the comments.
That culture problem has been getting worse and worse at SO over time. I only go there as a last resort.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#75I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…
I recently read a page on a 19th century clock maker and found it poorly sourced and very factually incorrect in many places. I thought briefly about putting in the work to correct the page and provide good sources and such, but I read posts like yours and any energy I might have for it just evaporated.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of my experience with Stackoverflow. I tried to solve a very specific problem with Windows installers. I only got some responses from oldtimers that basically said “why would you do such a thing?”and similar. It felt extremely unwelcoming. It’s ok to not answer but why be so dismissive? I guess the only questions they like are things like “how do I calculate 2+2 in python?”. Anything more complicated is no…
Yeah, whenever I ask a question on SO, I literally have to write paragraphs of text exhorting people to answer my question instead of a different question they find easier, or why my question is not the same as some vaguely similar one. Then I have to constantly remind people about the same stuff in the comments. That culture problem has been getting worse and worse at SO over time. I only go there as a last resort.
Sources?
(Edit: Let’s add /s just in case)
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#77I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…
Well duh, that's just what you get for trying to contribute without at least a Bachelors in Wikipedia Law with a minor in Editor Politicking
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#78I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…
I had a similar experience a few years ago. I started a new topic and immediately I had some guy marking it for deletion. In the talk page he made various claims, almost all of them nonsensical, apparently with goal of getting me to go away. Eventually, after some fairly harsh replies, he went away, and the pages stand to this day.
But it worked, I gave up soon after and haven't contributed since.
It's like the existing editors want to keep WP all to themselves and don't appreciate "outsiders" interfering. The irony is I'd been contributing since 2002 off an on, but that made no difference.
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#79Wow, this is a great study and I bet it extends to other volunteer-based activities. In particular: open source software projects.
It seems obvious that toxicity needs to be rooted out of open source communities, and any projects that don't do so or ignore the issue will fail to keep their contributors. But it's nice to have some real studies on this with some objective results (even if not strictly for open source software project contributions).
Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia
#80I have been making small contributions for fifteen or so years. I don’t much feel like doing it anymore after a spurt of bad interactions. About a year ago I created a Wikipedia page for a TV personality and author I enjoy. Spent literal hours on it collecting citations and what have you. Within a couple hours the page was deleted for not being noteworthy. He had his own TV show, has multiple published books and a po…
I expect Wikipedia to collapse under its own weight and hard fork within the next 10 years. I think it would be a shattering like Twitter if the content wasn't under a permissive license. Instead I think it's going to be like WoWWiki being acquired and forking to Wowpedia, and then Wowpedia being acquired and forking to Warcraft Wiki.
The community around it is extremely unwelcoming and has calcified - only the most cynical and bitter editors remain. I know of a couple of the principles of the site, "be bold" and "assume good faith", I don't think those are followed or respected anymore.
And the finances of the foundation, good lord.