Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Project goals

Project Goals

A part of increasing retention of editors at Wikipedia is to encourage new editors to continue editing in a positive and constructive manner. We therefore encourage you to:

Greet and help new editors: stop and help them when you know they may be stuck, misguided, incorrect or just stumbling, but continue to encourage interaction if/when you get a less than thankful response
Advise and encourage new editors to learn how to be a Wikipedia editor before they are discouraged by some early pitfall
Patrol Special:Log/newusers to identify newer users who already have made contributions and put a Welcome Template on their talk page along with a personal note telling them to feel free to contact you if they have a question
Scan "Recent changes" searching for either new editors to welcome or situations to which you feel you can contribute from a "retention viewpoint"; soften the blow of speedy deletions, etc.

Even experienced editors can get discouraged, and we should always consider ways to retain those who have been here awhile. Many editors become semi-retired or just stop editing without declaring so for various reasons, some of them more obvious than others. With regard to them, our project goals are to:

Establish methods for use to prevent editor loss, such as promotion of the project and its suggestions
Encourage departed editors to return. Even many retired editors will watch their user talkpage for passing comments, so consider leaving an encouraging, personally written comment and suggest an edit they might be interested in making
Promote a more positive environment in which editors will want to participate
Review Wikipedia:WikiProject_Editor_Retention/FA_editors_list to find Featured Article (WP:FA) contributors who appear to have stopped contributing recently-- perhaps by contacting them you can encourage them to return to editing. WP:Good will lead you to Good Article (GA) contributors.

Document ways in which all editors can achieve these goals and organize them within the project's subpages

Sign up and participate with the various Help Projects located through Wikipedia:Help Project. This project is undergoing substantial reorganizing to make it easier for editors to find the appropriate help,^[when?] especially in high traffic areas where applicable, such as WikiProject Directory. Feel free to contribute to that project.

Reasons editors leave

Not all reasons that editors leave can be "fixed", as many simply move onto other interests or have lifestyle changes that limit their participation. This list focuses on the reasons that can be addressed at Wikipedia. These problems, in no particular order, are within the scope of this project. Feel free to modify.

Negative behavior of other editors

Interaction with biased, reckless editors with POV issues
Ownership of articles by one or more editors
Uninformed but relentless 'Randy in Boise'-type editing, with WP:OWN regularly cited to justify it, leaving editors to watch their work deteriorate
Civil point of view promotion
Tendentious editing. For articles that lack a significant following, it is difficult to find enough editors (particularly in a way that avoids accusations of canvassing) to establish a consensus. If a problematic editor does not respond to reasoned argument, time can be wasted trying to build a greater understanding but with no net result. Tendentious editors can ignore Wikipedia's bold, revert, discuss cycle and re-introduce their problematic edits; in cases where they are not amenable to dispute resolution mechanisms, there is no clear way to resolve the content dispute, and their edits become fixed in place.
Sockpuppeting causing insurmountable obstacles to editing enjoyment
Edit warring from other editors
Personal attacks, accusations, incivility, and wikihounding, with the targets often discouraged from speaking out in case they are blamed
Outing of personal, off-site information
Perceptions of an anti-social atmosphere within a clique
Regular templating of user talk pages

Negative pressures from the wider community

Deletion, threatened deletion, and the ubiquitous tagging of articles ("nag tags")
Frustration caused by the plethora of policies and guidelines
Poor dispute-resolution processes
Too many editors who focus on dispute-resolution discussions (AN/I, RfC, RfAr), as opposed to content creation; their involvement can cause requests for dispute resolution to become bogged-down and protracted
Experience of peer review processes as confrontational and hierarchical rather than collaborative
Claims that long-term editors are "vested contributors" in a negative sense, which suggests that the project has no respect for experienced volunteers
Lack of a supportive community
Creating an account only results in negative feedback, easier to edit without an account

Pressures related to admins or admin actions

Frustration caused by bad blocks, threats of blocks, or other administrative actions, particularly against long-term editors
Regular attacks on administrators both as individuals and as a group, leaving them unwilling to deal with anything contentious, which in turn leaves editors to cope with disruption without support
Permanence and indelibility of the block record. Admins make bad blocks. Once an editor has a block record s/he is obliged to sport it in perpetuity. Blocks do not expire from the record, and they cannot be removed from it.

Entropy

Failure to defend high-quality work, leaving it to deteriorate over time
Difficulty attracting or retaining expertise
Experienced editors leave because others do, leading to a deterioration in the quality of discourse, which in turn dissuades potentially serious editors from joining.

Personal feelings

Boredom
Exhaustion of patience
Lack of recognition of contributions, or negative feedback for time spent editing in good faith
Attempts to fight an addiction to editing

Wider perceptions

Perception that Wikipedia has been used for political or monetary gain (e.g. the SOPA initiative, Russian trolls, and the paid editing/advocacy/COI debates)
Perception that the Wikimedia Foundation focuses more on bringing in new editors, than on finding ways to encourage experienced editors
Perception that involvement in Wikipedia is pointless: a bottomless pit
Frustration that poor BLP editing continues to cause problems for living people

More data on this issue is available from the Former Contributors Survey Results.

Some information can be gleaned by looking in the retired editors list at the final edit summaries retired users left

Damage to the editorial climate

Things causing damage to the editorial climate

Tags that are more BITEY than necessary.

See Wikipedia talk:First contact#Un-intentionally biting a New Editor for an example.

Having a generally constant but limiting "We are Adversaries" mindset rather than a habitual far-reaching "We are Collaborators" mindset.

One is a closing. The other, an opening.

Choosing words that degrade or attack the other editor or their edits vs. taking the time to realize the fragile nature of the novice editor.
Forgetting that conversation is the natural way that humans think when they are together and that, at times, it can get messy.
Sarcasm.

Sarcasm rarely works in real life. It is certainly out of place here. It leads to confusion, hurtfulness and trouble, even when tagged as sarcasm. It is an aggressive, dishonest form of communication.

Alienation through use of aggressive idiolects or slang.

Highly personalized or slangy writing styles are fine for friendly chats but not when debating serious issues with other editors, for whom such productions, which are not even amenable to machine translation, may turn out to be effectively more obscure than a different language.

The interplay between (1) our affirmative and prompt deletion of certain types of articles (copyvio, unref BLP, attack, etc.) and (2) the complete lack of guidance to new article creators of those critical requirements before or during the article creation process.

The combination of these two factors is the moral equivalent of a 20-foot pit lined with punji sticks. We can cover the punji stakes, but the problems remains; the pit, the lack of warning signage, and the stakes themselves. Please read Attractive nuisance doctrine. Suggestion; Since we are unlikely to give up the punji sticks (the copyvio deletions, etc), we put up a "sign" i.e., give new editors instructions in our policies before they create an article.

Most times the new editor is concerned only with the article. But, the experienced editor is more concerned with the encyclopedia.

The new user holds the article and their edits and their word choices as precious and can't bear to see them changed. They have great pride in their work and saving it becomes a mission. They need to be reminded that editing is not just a matter of deciding what to include. It's more a matter of what NOT to include. Because they misunderstand this fact, they see experienced editors as having a "cruel hand".

Not enough praise for a new editor's hard work. Sorry to say but some veteran editors think new editors are clueless noobs with a burr under their saddles.

Everyone likes to be appreciated. When the new editor feels attacked instead, sparks start to fly and somebody gets burned (usually the new editor).

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Project Tasks

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests: Start a project "style guide"
Cleanup: Check all lists and bullet points for stale proposals, pages, etc.
Infobox: Create a Project Infobox
Maintain: Maintenance of the Discussions section. Update listed discussion and archive stale discussions.
Map: Create an Index.
Merge: Merge relevant content.
Photo: Create an Image Gallery

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