And a final follow-up poll in this thread, for anyone who responded — would folx be interested in filling out a larger (anonymous & privacy-conscious) survey on their experiences?

[nb. I am doing this as a personal/volunteer thing, this ain't work, I don't bring work on fedi, but I will explicitly note that I work for the WMF]

@theresnotime I sporadically edit, usually in flurries as I rabbithole my way through a particular topic.

So I went with once or twice
But it’s probably more like a dozen or so things every six months for the last ten years

@theresnotime what if it was neither? I used to edit semi-regularly but then stopped about 10 years ago?

@theresnotime
I fall in a 3rd catagory - used to do a lot of editing now rarely make a snide comment about some obvious error

one BIG block for me is the markup language, which I find grotesquely difficult to use

@theresnotime I used to be an active editor for the Chinese language Wikipedia, though nowadays I just edit occasionally when I spot something.

@theresnotime I was sporadically active from 2008-10, then it kinda fizzled out. I did corrected some minor date a little over two years ago. And a few months ago I was pretty bummed to realize that someone had deleted a list of editors for "privacy reasons" as they stated. I've had quite some work with typing it from the book it was published in.

@theresnotime Years and years ago, I googeld the word "libido" because it was in some lyrics. There was no wikipedia entry in the German wikipedia yet, but somehow I came to the blank page. After I found out what "libido" was, I created the page. (I don't think it's still visible in history).

I edited some minor details here and there. Most articles I'd like to edit I don't think I can because I'm involved

@theresnotime None of the above. I do it from time to time, but very seldom, and mostly very tiny edits.

@theresnotime That once made me realize that some times information can be accepted in an area, like say science, but the general population does not have a good grasp on that info yet. I tried three times to edit info on climate change, it was a clarification on the term climate change, and other editors kept changing back.

A year later I rechecked the page and low and behold, the info I had tried to edit had been edited. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@theresnotime it was definitely not a one off thing. I was a regular editor. Now that I use my phone for the Internet however, I don’t edit as much. It’s just not as easy on my phone.

@theresnotime I used to edit very regularly, until someone picked a fight with me (they wanted to delete History of Astronomy in favor of the History of Astrophysics article), and I edit pretty rarely, and minor edits only, since then.

@theresnotime fixed typos once or twice. Maybe a broken link one time, but I don't remember. Nothing major.