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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

#3
Who leaves the toxic comments? Rando readers some of the time I'm sure, but most probably come from other editors. Other editors are the ones who are well accustomed and most inclined to track down other editors associated with some article and give them a piece of their mind.

Most of the public seems to be range-banned when not using an account anyway.

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#4
This seems a bit to be a - water is wet article.

I think the more interesting question is what is the impact of these volunteers leaving. Are the toxic comments directed at people who tend to get in the middle of flamewars, or are they innocents? Do these people do good work? Or are they just annoying people until someone snaps at them in a fit of toxity?

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#6
post #5

edit: Misunderstood TFA. Leaving the original comment. ~~On the other hand, the only toxic comments I experienced on Wikipedia were from an editor.~~

> On the other hand, the only toxic comments I experienced on Wikipedia were from an editor.

Isn't everyone an editor on Wikipedia? By definition, you need to be an editor in order to leave comments. Who other than editors would leave toxic comments?

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#7
post #6
post #5

edit: Misunderstood TFA. Leaving the original comment. ~~On the other hand, the only toxic comments I experienced on Wikipedia were from an editor.~~

> On the other hand, the only toxic comments I experienced on Wikipedia were from an editor. Isn't everyone an editor on Wikipedia? By definition, you need to be an editor in order to leave comments. Who other than editors would leave toxic comments?

Am I a marathon runner because I'm theoretically capable of it, or do I need to actually run one first?

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#9
post #6
post #5

edit: Misunderstood TFA. Leaving the original comment. ~~On the other hand, the only toxic comments I experienced on Wikipedia were from an editor.~~

> On the other hand, the only toxic comments I experienced on Wikipedia were from an editor. Isn't everyone an editor on Wikipedia? By definition, you need to be an editor in order to leave comments. Who other than editors would leave toxic comments?

I took this to mean those with special rights, so everything beyond automatically granted standard access: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels

Re: Toxic comments are associated with reduced volunteer activity on Wikipedia

#10
>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 justified, it's absolutely useless to make any conclusions from the article.

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