Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Survey/February 2012

Gender scrubbing
We are releasing the raw data behind this survey, albeit separately and in a slightly "sanitized" form; gender and contact information have all been scrubbed, the former due to European Union law (which some respondents are subject to) and the latter in compliance with the Foundation's own privacy policy.

I don't understand this. People subject to European Union law are not allowed to provide their gender when asked? Or is it that European Union law doesn't allow the collection or reporting of gender information by people or entities under its jurisdiction? If the latter is the case, the WMF, as an American foundation operating from the United States, is not subject to European Law, and it is irrelevant if the respondents are or not, so gender information should not have been "sanitized". Or am I misunderstadning something? Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, it's the latter, and we try to comply just for a "best practices" POV. I've actually dropped counsel a note about this anyway, so I'll find out her precise rationale and get back to you :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:14, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. If it does turn out to be the latter, I wouldn't expect the data to be "unscrubbed", but at the least the description in the report of why it was "sanitized" should be updated to be more accurate. Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:44, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ahh, gotcha. I shall add a footnote or something when Legal gets back to me :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It is probably a misunderstanding of the European Data Protection Directive. This defines a number of types of "sensitive" data and puts additional restrictions on their collection and processing with regard to identifiable people. Information on people's Sex Life and Sexual orientation are among the types of sensitive data. But I haven't heard people argue that gender alone is "sensitive", and of course anonymising the data is in itself enough to make it legal. If you don't have anything which would identify the people about whom you hold data then it is no longer personal data.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * As said elsewhere, I've contacted legal. Hopefully they'll get back to me soon. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The lack of multi-variable analysis
The lack of this means that the results don't indicate the "demographic" finding. Density of involvement needs to be matched against demography on a per-individual level; there may be demographic problems at very high individual or very high group volume levels of participation in NPP. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:02, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If I'm understanding correctly; you mean breaking down the patrol rate by things like age, level of education, etc? I'm happy to do some of that - or if you want, you can do the analysis yourself. Always happy to have more findings :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My methodological background is discursive methods so I'm not trained to conduct quantitative analysis. Testing patrol rates against correlation with impressionistic claims would make this survey work. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure; I'll generate graphs with patrol rate over age, gender, education...pretty much everything the stereotype points to. You want it over patrol rate, raw number of patrols, what? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, done some basic mapping. So, people under 18-ish (well, born in 1994 or later, with numbers as of November/December 2011) do 5.23 percent of the patrolling. Curiously, people with educational qualifications < undergraduate degree do 30.4 percent; I'm thinking this is probably a result of, well, undergrad students ;p. They'd register as < undergraduate, and account for quite a bit of the difference. Do give me a poke if you want me to run through more numbers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest, given that the top 25% seem to have a distinct work pattern, that this group needs demographic analysis, and a comparison against the base population? Fifelfoo (talk) 03:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I've actually already done that: it seems that somewhere between writing it and having it published the WMF staffers editing it snipped bits out. I can say from memory that there's no major distinction (except for the obvious - people in the top 25 percent spend more time per week patrolling) but I'm happy to go grab the data if you want it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Gratuitous geographical reference
"'...obviously inaccurate results (the 10 year old from Africa with a PhD being a classic example)'"

Umm. Ten-year-old PhD recipients from other continents presumably being more plausible? Rivertorch (talk) 06:56, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Marginally more so (but still horribly implausible) given our geographic distribution. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:12, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

bad graph
In the "How often do you do the following tasks on Wikipedia?" section, the qualifiers on the graph are blurry to the point where I am finding them illegible. I can make out everything else just fine so I don't think it's just me... Beeblebrox (talk) 18:44, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, someone else has brought this up. I'm going to be regenerating a few of them tomorrow morning, so I'll update when I can :). Problem is the software I was using; I'm going to play around with SPSS in the hope it produces something more useful. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Positive NPP motivation
This is just my personal opinion of course, but I'd think that it would be worth reconsidering the statement: "The vast majority of patrollers do their work for positive reasons: they want to keep bad articles out of Wikipedia (83 percent)". I think that the blanket characterization of "keep bad article out of Wikipedia" as a positive is a huge mistake. This is actually the root cause for most of the angst concerning NPP, from comments about the subject that I've read. Who decides what a "bad article" is, exactly? The NPP'er? Based on what rational(s)? Who gave this person, or these people, the right to make those value judgements? (I don't necessarily agree or disagree with those questions, I'm simply offering them as a window into a train of thought)

There's a lot of data here, but it seems to me to be glossing over the key issue that many people speak out about, against New Page Patrol. As with the vast majority of conflict on Wikipedia, the problems revolve around differences in personal values rather than age, education, or geography (although, all of those factors certainly play a role in determining various people's personal values). I believe that this and quite a bit of other effort along similar veins, both by the WMF and the community, is a bit misplaced (not that gathering demographic data is completely wasteful. Performing a periodic census is a good idea for many reasons). Wikipedia needs some mechanism to allow people with more diverse world views, regardless of what they may be, to work better together. Somewhat simplistic attempts to identify what those world views may happen to be at some moment in time has limited utility. — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 00:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Apologies for my failure to reply to this so far; I've got a load of re-graphing to do :). Hopefully I'll have time in a tick. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that we need to do some detailed research into understanding the mentalities of editors; I'm not quite sure how although it would be fantastic :D. Perhaps something like the Enneagram test, which asks the same X questions in Y different permutations to catch people out? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Keeping bad articles out of Wikipedia is not really the contentious bit. The contentious bit is the definition of bad articles, and much of the problems at NPP are down to differences between editors, including admins, as to how closely one sticks to the speedy deletion criteria. I would hope that all of us are happy to see NPP used to keep badfaith articles such as attacks, hoaxes and vandalism out of the pedia. But there are some who will stretch the speedy deletion process to articles that are "bad" in the sense of being unreferenced, poorly formatted, or that would probably be deleted at AFD. This survey won't detect such differences, whereas a speedy tagging test could, as could a study of an editor's deletions or deletion tagging. Some of those whose motive is to keep Bad stuff out of the pedia will have an accuracy of tagging or deletion that even the most ardent inclusionists will accept that their motive to keep Bad articles out of the pedia is a positive one. Others are deleting or trying to delete "bad" articles which have problems that could be readily resolved via normal editing.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  00:15, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * "things ardent inclusionists will accept" and "problems that could be readily resolved via normal editing" is, perhaps, the sort of false dichotomy that has kept this silly feud between the two "sides" burning for so long. There are a lot of grey areas. Interestingly the interpretation of deletion policy was one of the areas that people identified as "the most difficult thing about NPP". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:04, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The deletions that even the most ardent inclusionists will accept are not part of the deletionist inclusionist feud, it is very rare for a deletionist to object to a deletion that an inclusionist would support. Whilst not deleting articles which have "problems that could be readily resolved via normal editing" is very much at the core of our deletion policy, hence the concern about those who wish to keep bad articles out of the pedia but only use deletion as their way of achieving that. I don't dispute that our deletion policy has some grey areas - but those two examples far from being a dichotomy, false or otherwise, as they are two areas that we almost all agree on.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:12, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My point was about the creation of a false dichotomy through language, not substance ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Interesting replies so far. For the "record", I was in no particular rush for replies. I'm satisfied that a couple of you are thinking about this, if even for only a moment. Besides that, I don't visit here more than every couple of days any longer, anyway. That most commentary here on Wikipedia is of the "heat of the moment" variety (even if there's no real "heat" in the discussion) is a whole other issue that should be addressed somewhere. There's not enough long term, reasoned, and thought out discussion around here (even "perennial" discussions happen quickly, and are normally dismissed with the rational that they are "perennial" and therefore not worth spending much time discussing).
 * Anyway, back to the point at hand. I don't see this subject area as being particularly tied to inclusionism or deletionism, although that is one aspect of conflicts that occur with NPP (and it's probably the most visible, at that). Rather, the core problem has to do with allowing people to work together here. Actually, it's probably even simpler than that: it's about giving participants in conflict the sense that their voice is being heard. Part of my point here is that the distillation down to deletions and dichotomies (false or otherwise) is glossing over the real problems that hamper participation and the continued growth or improvement of Wikiepdia. — V = IR (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 18:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Stereotypes
I'm not particularly surprised that the stats show a North American Majority, or that they indicate that most patrollers are mature and experienced. My assumption is that most speedy deletion tags are correct or at least borderline, and the incorrect ones are not evenly spread amongst our patrollers. I'm fairly confident that the stereotype of " immature and ignorant of the rules surrounding deletion" does apply to a small minority of patrollers who I suspect make a substantial proportion of the mistakes at speedy deletion. But I doubt that this survey will give us an effective test of that. It would be interesting to see if the error rate was related to the speed of tagging, or if instead a closer match was between those who when patrolling solely focussed on tagging for deletion and templating articles, whilst those who also categorised and otherwise improved articles were spending longer on each article.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That'd be good to test. I'm thinking of doing a quantitative follow-up on a similar theme; hopefully I'll have the time :S. Workwise a lot is going on (I'm going to be posting a regular schedule, so people can see what I'm doing and when they can expect requested tasks to be completed by. This should highlight the timesink which is foundationwerk ;p) and I'm about to start an RfC study for my own curiosity. But hopefully I'll have time, and if not me, someone else :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've struck the bit about immature as on second thoughts that is very much the exception. We do get the occasional "ITGOTDELETEDATAFDWHYDIDYOUDECLINEMYSPEEDY" merchant, but the vast majority of taggers respond constructively to guidance. On a very non-scientific study, of the last five speedies I declined 2 were tagged by editors who started in 2010, 2 in 2011 and 1 this year. I didn't check whether any of the more experienced ones were new to NPP. But I think that rather reinforces my suspicion that some patrollers are far more tag happy than others, and that newer taggers tend to make more mistakes. Some of that could be resolved by a better tagging system, for example one that didn't allow an A1 tag on a 1 minute old article. But some of it would benefit from some CSD training modules for new taggers.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  19:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed, on both points. I think we're looking into some training materials (or at least providing guidance) as part of New Page Triage. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Another useful feature we could do with is a warning that an article has previously survived AFD. That won't be relevant at NPP, but it does seem odd that our processes don't automatically alert admins and taggers in such situations.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed; the talkpage notes really aren't good enough :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well of course we don't know how often they do deter an incorrect tag. If we want to make this place a nicer place to be then it would help if the system just asked people to think again before doing something like prodding an article that had already been prodded, or tagging or even deleting an article per A7 when it had previously survived AFD. My belief is that people would feel they lost far less face if the system jogged their attention and asked them to think twice before they made such a mistake instead of as at present either it isn't spotted or someone corrects them and points that out.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  22:09, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Really this needs to be twofold, though; it needs to come with stronger opportunities for oversight as well. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see part of the problem as being that it is difficult to currently answer simple questions such as how many AFD's have been overturned by speedy deletion.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  22:36, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * For training materials, see SoWhy's two excellent essays WP:10CSD and WP:A7M, which I often point NPP-ers to. JohnCD (talk) 11:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Confused less-than and greater-than symbols
In the graph for hours per week patrolling, the less-than (<) and greater-than (>) symbols are reversed. Lady of  Shalott  03:13, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed; correcting that later today, actually :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)