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Editing team Community Conversations: 2022, 2023, 2024

Information
Date: Tuesday, 28 November (19:00 - 20:30 UTC)
Subject: Edit check
Video conference link: Google Meet
Main meeting language: français
Notes-taking
Objective
  • Reference Reliability: learn what user experience volunteers favor among the four directions the team is considering
  • Multi-Check: learn what questions and concerns the multi-check user experience brings up in volunteers' minds
Sign up (optional)
  1. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Dyolf77 (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 16:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. User:NAyoub (WMF)
  5. --Geugeor-WMF (talk) 20:13, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

Mockups of four design directions of the reference reliability edit check user experience.
Edit Check (Reference Reliability) design explorations

~15 French-speaking volunteers with varying levels of wiki-experience joined the 28 November 2023 conversation to review and discuss:

  1. Design directions for the Reference Reliability check, the next check the team will introduce
  2. Initial mockups for the user experience that will enable us to present volunteers with multiple checks within a single edit

The questions and ideas that emerged during the meeting are documented below.

Questions/Reactions

  • Volunteers present expressed general support for presenting people with feedback about the reliability of the source they are attempting to cite.
    • The key question volunteers raised in response to seeing the designs was what would determine whether Edit Check considers a source to be reliable or not.
    • In response, the team shared that, to start, reliability feedback will only be offered if someone attempts to cite a domain that is listed on the MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist (support for MediaWiki:BlockedExternalDomains.json.
  • Volunteers emphasized the importance of finding the "right" number of checks to present to people.
    • Volunteers shared the above in response to the potential of newcomers becoming overwhelmed by the number of "checks" they need to respond to before being able to publish the changes they arrived to make.
    • With the above said, the volunteers present seemed to agree in seeing the value in showing feedback about the edits they are making before they publish them as opposed to receiving this feedback after-the-fact by way of blocks, reverts, and talk page messages.
    • The Editing Team will ensure we are not presenting people with too many checks by:
  • At smaller wikis, Edit Check helps users to learn about citing their sources.

Ideas

  • Volunteers entered the idea of revealing checks in a progressive manner
    • The thinking here being that if people are shown checks one-at-a-time or more gradually, they might feel less overwhelmed/burdened and subsequently, more likely to respond to the checks and follow through with publishing the edits they were in the process of making.

Wikimania

The Editing Team will be sharing Edit Check during two conversations at this year's Wikimania:

Session Name Date Start time (UTC) End time (UTC) Info.
Supporting moderators at the Wikimedia Foundation Thursday, August 17 2:15 3:15 https://eventyay.com/e/8f889410/session/8333
Let's put policy in peoples' hands Thursday, August 17 3:15 3:45 https://eventyay.com/e/8f889410/session/8463

Information

Objective

Identify what about the Edit Check prototypes (desktop + mobile) might need to be added, removed, or revised before the feature is offered to people in production.

Sign up (optional) for July 2023

  1. User:Dyolf77 (WMF)
  2. User:NAyoub (WMF)
  3. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Buidhe (talk) 20:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  5. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Bart Terpstra (talk) 17:54, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

5 English-speaking volunteers joined the 14 July 2023 conversation to try out and discuss the Edit Check desktop and mobile prototypes.

This meeting focused on UX details of the current prototypes and broader questions that will be important for us (collectively) to answer as the project progresses.

While there is a great deal for us still to learn about how impactful the reference check is and the approach to the user experience we've implemented thus far, the Editing Team left the conversation continuing to feel like the hypotheses the wider Edit Check project rests upon are sound.

The questions and ideas that emerged during the meeting are documented below.

Questions

  • "Are you considering adding templates or changing policy [that would make it easier to communicate intent and lower false-postive reverts?"
    • Editing Team response: while we can see a potential future wherein Edit Check makes it easier for people to start conversations about policies with other volunteers, we do not see it as within the team's remit to directly intervene with on-wiki content policies.
  • "Considering how difficult it can be to add references on mobile, might there be value in analyzing the percentage of people who abandon edits that involve them attempting to add citations?"
    • Editing Team response: Yes. As part of the analyses we have planned, we will be evaluating the proportion of people who abandon an edit after beginning to add a citation. The first analysis we have planned will happen in T342404.
  • "Will we be comparing how platform (mobile / desktop) impacts how people engage with Edit Check?
    • Editing Team response: Yes.
  • It's important that people know the reason they are deciding not to include a reference will be made public, how will the current UX be adapted to make this clear?
  • To what extent will the software be capable of accommodating many checks?
    • Editing Team Response: we are designing Edit Check for a future where it is capable of accommodating many checks and being equipped with the internal logic needed to decide if, when, and how to show said checks in ways that will be most impactful. We'll start thinking about this in T329596.
  • How will we design for a potential future where people will expect the interface to tell them when they've done something that warrants reconsideration and if they don't hear anything, they assume the changes they're making are all good?
    • Edit Team Response: this is a great question and not one we've considered to the extent that we can offer a meaningful response. Here is a ticket to hold ourselves accountable for doing this work: T342406.

Ideas

  • In cases where people decide to decline to add a reference when Edit Check invites them to do so...
    • What about including the reason people provide in the edit summary that accompanies said edit?
      • Editing Team response: Great idea. To start, we're going to implement this approach. This work will happen in T341533.
    • What about automatically inserting hidden comments or the Citation needed template?

Poster publicizing the Community Call the Editing Team will be hosting on 14 June 2023 at 17:00 UTC.
Community Call Details. Please feel free to share this!

Information

Objectives

This meeting will be an opportunity for new and experienced volunteers, especially those who edit the French Wikipedia, to:

Project overview

A set of features for the visual editor to help new volunteers make constructive changes to Wikipedia.

The Editing Team sees this project being helpful to:

  • Campaign Organizers interested in helping event participants make edits they are proud of and projects value
  • Newcomers and Junior Contributors arriving on the wikis motivated to add content about topics they are interested in
  • Senior Contributors motivated to ensure the content newcomers and Junior Contributors are adding is verifiable

Sign up (optional) for June 2023

(Please sign up on the original page, not on translated pages.)

  1. Habib Mhenni
  2. Nixon Mukoko
  3. Gilbert Ndihokubwayo (talk) 18:48, 11 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  4. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  5. User:NAyoub (WMF)

Notes

12 French-speaking volunteers from Sub-Saharan Africa joined the 14 June 2023 conversation to try out and discuss the Edit Check mobile prototype.

People seemed optimistic about the potential Edit Check has to encourage newcomers to add more sources to articles. Specifically, in university contexts where people may not be as familiar with Wikipedia policies.

The questions the volunteers in attendance raised were oriented around the following topics:

  • When the feature will become available
  • What – if any – data Edit Check generates patrollers will be able to access
  • What editing interfaces the feature will be available within

Here are a few things people expressed during the meeting:

  • “... If it works, it will be a very nice feature and will help patrollers in their job!” – Saliou Abdou
  • “Will patrollers have access to the data generated by this tool?”
  • “This tool is very interesting, can it check the quality of sources?” – Lingabo Junior
  • “Scholars don’t trust on Wikipedia because of lack of sources. This tool will encourage people to add more sources to articles, so Wikipedia will be more integrated in research.” – Frank Akouete

Poster publicizing the Community Call the Editing Team will be hosting on 3 May 2023 at 15:00 UTC.
Community Call Details. Please feel free to share this!

Information

Objectives

This meeting will be an opportunity for new and experienced volunteers, especially those who edit the French Wikipedia, to:

Project overview

A set of features for the visual editor to help new volunteers make constructive changes to Wikipedia.

The Editing Team sees this project being helpful to:

  • Campaign Organizers interested in helping event participants make edits they are proud of and projects value
  • Newcomers and Junior Contributors arriving on the wikis motivated to add content about topics they are interested in
  • Senior Contributors motivated to ensure the content newcomers and Junior Contributors are adding is verifiable

Sign up (optional) for May 2023

(Please sign up on the original page, not on translated pages.)

  1. User:VPuffetMichel (WMF)
  2. User:Dyolf77 (WMF)
  3. User:NAyoub (WMF)
  4. User:CapitainAfrika
  5. User:Waltercolor

Information

Objectives

  1. Equip Wikipedia volunteers with the context they need to evaluate and participate in the ongoing development of Edit check
  2. Understand what gadget and script authors have learned, through developing a series of related features, that could increase the impact of Edit check
  3. Define how the Editing Team and volunteers will collaborate on the underlying rules/logic/heuristics that will determine when the initial reference check will be triggered

Project overview

A set of features for the visual editor to help new volunteers make changes to Wikipedia that align with project policies.

The Editing Team sees this project being helpful to:

  • Patrollers/Reviewers interested in solutions designed to increase the quality of edits and as a result, increase their capacity to think about more complex/high impact moderation challenges
  • Newcomers and Junior Contributors arriving on the wikis motivated to add content about topics they are interested in and in ways that other volunteers are likely to consider useful
  • Gadget and Script Authors interested in helping to shape a new tool being designed to proactively educate and guide newcomers to make changes they feel proud of and changes that improve Wikipedia

Notes

Overall

  • The volunteers in attendance felt, at a high level, the Edit Check project is moving in a positive direction in so far as:
    • Edit Check is being designed with configurability in mind from the start. This will enable individual projects to customize the experience in ways that meet their needs
    • Introducing a "check" that prompts people to accompany the new information they're adding to wikis with a source aligns with core Wikipedia policy
  • With the above in mind, volunteers identified aspects of the user experience, the theory of change the project is built atop, and the potential for abuse/misuse latent within the current design that require more thought. More details about each of these dimensions below.

Questions about the overarching theory of change

  • Volunteers wondered whether people editing from within Sub-Saharan Africa (read: the people whose needs Edit Check is currently being oriented around) will experience Edit Check as being more disruptive than it is helpful.

Initial availability

  • Volunteers named Edit-A-Thons as a context many newcomers begin editing within. In these Edit-A-Thons, many newcomers draft edits in their sandboxes. This led the group to wonder whether Edit Check would be available within them. Note: the Editing Team will be addressing the question about how/where Edit Check will be available to start in T324355.

The user experience, inclusive of the language and calls to action within it, ought to feel motivating and inviting

  • Volunteers noted how the current copy within the "Add a citation" prompt could be improved. It currently reads  "Citing your work helps ensure reliability." Note: the work to refine and improve upon the copy that appears within the Edit Check user experience will happen in T331948.
  • Volunteers adeptly identified how the moment Edit Check is presented to people within will be key. Present the check too early and newcomers and Junior Contributors may be more likely to abandon the edit they arrived seeking to make. Present the check too late and they may be more likely to breeze past the check and proceed on to saving.

Potential for abuse and misuse

  • Volunteers named a couple of ways they could see people using Edit Check in ways that harm projects. E.g.:
    • Prompting people to add too many sources. As is happening already on 2023 Nigerian presidential election article (700+ citations; some statements have 10+ references associated with them)
    • People "sneaking" in vandalistic statements by sourcing them with references that already exist within the article. This happened on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_redheads where people were copying citations and changing the name of the person.  This can be difficult for humans to notice and perhaps impossible for software to detect. The Editing Team will audit the user experience – with help from volunteers – in T331949.

Source quality/reliability

  • Volunteers noted how the current Edit Check user experience does NOT prompt people to consider whether the source they're attempting to add is one other people are likely to consider reliable.
    • While providing feedback about reliability is currently out of scope for the first version, the Editing Team is thinking this would be a feature we prioritize work on in a later version. See T276857.

Impact on people who are reviewing edits

  • Volunteers raised the potential for Edit Check to increase the likelihood that RecentChanges patrollers, and other reviewers, to improve content instead of reverting it.
  • In response, we talked briefly about how the Edit Check experience is intended to prompt people who decline to add a source to articulate why which could make it easier for people reviewing edits to asses the intentions of the person making the edit and the validity of the information they're adding. Note: the Editing Team is thinking about how to prompt people who decline to add a source to articulate why in T329593 .
  • Related to the idea, two other ideas that surfaced in the context of people who elect NOT to add a source when prompted:
    • Might it be useful to be able to specify cases when Edit Check will automatically add a {{citation needed}} template on behalf of people who decline to add a source? We'll explore this idea in T331951.
    • Might it be more useful to ask people where the information they're adding comes from as opposed to why they think the information they're adding requires a source. Note: the work refine the copy that appears within the UX will happen in T331948.

Setting expectations around "asking for help"

  • Volunteers warned against exposing generic "Ask for help" calls to action within the Edit Check experience citing the potential for:
    • People to exploit/abuse the "Ask for help" input form thereby creating more vandalism for experienced volunteers to clean up. See Article feedback.
  • Volunteers suggested that it become necessary to introduce some kind of "ask for help" functionality, that that functionality be tightly scoped. E.g. "I need help finding a source," "I need help formatting this citation," etc.

Sign-up (optional)

February 2023

The Editing Team has been hosting conference calls with volunteers. In February 2023, we also began a series of discussions on wiki with experienced volunteers. At the start of this project, we are centering experienced volunteers at the English and French Wikipedias who are:

  • familiar with existing project policies and conventions, and
  • practiced with applying project policies and conventions in a reviewing/patrolling role.

The Editing Team is approaching these conversations seeking to learn things such as:

  1. How could this general approach go wrong? What fundamental assumptions/constraints might this project be at risk of "running up against"?
  2. What actions should trigger the reference check?
  3. What aspects of the initial reference check experience can you imagine projects wanting to configure? How do you think we ought to configure them initially?
  4. Whom do you think the reference check should be enabled for?
  5. It might be possible for you to evaluate/audit how Edit Check is performing and the impact it is having. Would that be useful to you? In what ways?
  6. The current project will encourage inline references. What other kinds of checks can you imagine being useful/valuable?

Once complete, the Editing Team will share a synthesis of what we learned through these conversations in the Findings section above.

Outcome of past meetings, January 2023

Between October 2022 and January 2023, the Editing Team hosted seven community conversations with volunteers living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

These conversations were held with two key objectives in mind:

  • Learn what contributing to Wikipedia has been like for people living in and from Sub-Saharan Africa so that we, the Editing Team , can make improvements to the visual editor that hopefully make this process easier for future newcomers from the region.
  • Verify whether the conclusions the Editing Team is drawing from the initial set of conversations they hosted align with what volunteers in Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced contributing to Wikipedia.

What follows is a summary of what surfaced in these conversations and what the Editing Team is planning to do in response.

We anticipate learning new information in the future that could cause us to see themes in the conversations that we hadn't noticed at initial time of writing or to see themes we did document differently. Should something like this occur, we'll update the below accordingly.
Finding Description Resulting Action
No Firm Rules It is important that the Edit Check experience embody the No Firm Rules pillar. There is some information that does not require an inline citation (e.g., simple common knowledge; summarizing information cited in another paragraph). Sometimes, it may be necessary to supply a citation in a subsequent edit (e.g., if someone editing from a mobile device needs to close the editing window to copy the URL for the intended source). The Editing Team is committed to ensuring Edit Check does NOT inhibit people from contributing content they consider to be encyclopedic, while accepting the possibility that other people will disagree.
Encourage Interaction Miscommunications and misunderstandings often result from the fact that the people who are reviewing the edits volunteers from within SSA are making are not likely to be people with deep familiarity of Africa themselves. They also see the edits they make and articles they create patrolled quickly, which can cause people to question whether the reviewers are taking sufficient time to consider the content of the edits people are making and the intentions behind them. The Editing Team will ensure the Edit Check user experience includes features that are likely to increase interaction and understanding between the people who are making edits and the people who are reviewing them.
Learn By Doing Over time, "telling" newcomers how to edit in ways that align with what projects expect seems to be less effective than introducing workflows that guide people towards the outcome they arrived on the wiki seeking. Organizers and mentors notice that newcomers often disregard instructions and just want to get going. The Edit Check project will alter the publishing workflow so that simply by attempting to publish an edit, newcomers and Junior Contributors will be prompted to improve the edits they're motivated to make in ways that align with Wikipedia policies.
References Are Necessary and Not Sufficient As the "Encourage Interaction" finding alludes to, there are upstream/systemic issues (e.g. the lack of admins from Africa at the English Wikipedia, lack of non-African media coverage for notable topics and people, IP blocks, etc.) that volunteers from within SSA posit contributes to them feeling misunderstood, drained, and ultimately, the changes they are attempting to make excluded, even if they "follow all of the rules" like adding references. The Editing Team is acknowledging that Edit Check is a first, small step in addressing the wider systemic issues people volunteering in SSA experience. We see this project, in part, as a way to start evaluating the theory of change that this project is built atop. A theory of change that suggests that in order to evolve towards a future where wikis' policies and cultural norms (and ultimately content) reflect the diverse experiences of the people these projects are intended to serve, we first need to make legible and explicit the norms and standards that are currently in place. This way, volunteers can develop shared awareness of cases where these norms and standards are not having the impacts they were intended to have.
"If not us, then who?" Volunteers from within SSA are motivated to contribute knowledge about the contexts, histories, and cultures they are a part of, so that it is not forgotten and so that this knowledge is available to the entire world. As part of the Edit Check project, the Editing Team will propose ideas for how edits might be contextualized in ways that prompt the people reviewing edits to consider the level of rigor they apply to edits to topics that are underrepresented within projects.
Explicitness is Important Volunteers report patrollers scrutinizing the contributions they make more rigorously than contributions other people make. This can cause people from SSA, who are a minority on the projects they are most often contributing to (English and French Wikipedias) to feel unwelcomed. It can also make people from SSA question whether, despite understanding the written rules, they can predict how patrollers will apply these policies in practice. It is important that Edit Check cause the volunteers who encounter it to feel more confident in being able to predict how other people are likely to react to the contributions they make.
Help Is Hard To Find Volunteers report the wikis as being difficult to navigate. The interface uses – what they consider to be – unfamilar terms for familiar functions (e.g. "Talk" instead of "Discussion" or "Inbox”) and communications are filled with jargon which can feel exclusionary and disempowering. It is important that Edit Check meet people where they are and bring relevant guidance and help to them in the moment they have an opportunity and the motivation to apply it.

Information

Objectives

This meeting will be an opportunity for new and experienced volunteers, especially those from Sub-Saharan Africa, to:

Project Overview

A set of features for the visual editor to help new volunteers make constructive changes to Wikipedia.

The Editing Team sees this project being helpful to:

  • Campaign Organizers interested in helping event participants make edits they are proud of and projects value
  • Newcomers and Junior Contributors arriving on the wikis motivated to add content about topics they are interested in
  • Senior Contributors motivated to ensure the content newcomers and Junior Contributors are adding is verifiable

Sign up (optional)

  1. User:PPelberg (WMF)
  2. User;;MMunyoki(WMF)
  3. User:Yaw tuba
  4. User:Joris Darlington Quarshie

References

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