Talk:Question of the week/Archives/2009-12-07
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Contents
| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| You don't know if contributors are coming back | 1 | 19:47, 5 December 2009 |
| empower the community to resolve major decisions | 0 | 19:41, 5 December 2009 |
| Create a pool of volunteer mentors | 0 | 18:00, 5 December 2009 |
| Police the behavior of users | 5 | 08:04, 5 December 2009 |
| And the people left still wonder why editors, even long-time editors, quit and how to retain them. Looky Here | 0 | 04:56, 5 December 2009 |
| Why is this happening on any message I wish to make a reply to? | 0 | 00:40, 5 December 2009 |
| Dumb down Wikipedia | 13 | 11:18, 4 December 2009 |
| The word "whilst" | 11 | 19:46, 3 December 2009 |
| Draw contributors in by having them feel a part of the community | 5 | 04:51, 3 December 2009 |
| More feedback | 1 | 20:05, 2 December 2009 |
| Turning trolls into editors | 0 | 19:25, 2 December 2009 |
| welcomers crew | 0 | 19:09, 2 December 2009 |
| How bad is the problem, really? | 1 | 18:51, 2 December 2009 |
As an established user, it's hard to know how "nice" to be to a newbie, because you have no idea if they're actually still around. You see an edit they made, but especially if they're an IP, you really don't know if they will ever get any message that you send them. So you end up just treating them like a random stranger: fix their edit, move on.
Wikipedia would work better if there were more socially aware features: allow us to build and maintain relationships with new editors, even if they don't visit Wikipedia again. Give us more information about them, like how many edits they've made, how recently etc, without us having to dig for the information.
I suggest you should behave as if they are coming back. That will never be wrong.
I do agree that it would be good to have the software automatically generate default homepage for each user with useful statistics would be a good idea - with the qualification that the user could of course edit this if they wanted to.Filceolaire 19:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia is based on the idea that ordinary common sense people will be able to fix problems as they go. The truth is the community is already working on these things:
- How to make Wikipedia a simpler place
- How to deal with trolls
- How to help educate newbies
But answering these questions once and for all is literally impossible. One person makes a proposal, and the other person reverts it. They get a third opinion, and here come the disruptive groups ("cabals", "opinion cartels", "true believers", we all know them by different name). Then there's an RFC. Surely, one side makes a radical proposal, and gets shouted down. The other side makes a radical proposal, and gets shouted down. Then someone in the middle tries to find a compromise, but they get shouted down from both sides. After three RFCs, you have no consensus, no progress, no solution.
The community is choking on its own antiquated processes. People recognize the problems, but they are unable to work out a solution. That's because self-serving jerks recognize that settling the issue would cause them to lose out to the greatest good of all Wikipedians. Better to keep a battleground, where a self-serving jerk can get his way with the right combination of persistence, passive aggressiveness, and stealth canvassing.
This is THE root problem with the community. Why do we even need an external "Strategic Planning task force" in a community that can invent its own solutions? Because opinion pushers have made it impossible for the reasonable people on Wikipedia to work out a compromise. If we change our processes so that opinion pushers don't get their ideal choice, or don't even get to participate in the discussion, the community would be able to move on. We can empower the community to work out its own solutions.
Set up a pool of experienced users that volunteer to be mentors to new editors. Mentors could be assigned randomly, or by request.
Advise new editors to discuss their proposed edits with a mentor before they start editing. Mentors can advise new editors of various ways to approach the edit, point out any obvious issues the edit might raise, and what kind of response the new editor should expect. Setting expectations can help minimize frustration.
Also, if the new editor's edit does get reverted, the mentor can help them understand why, and how to proceed. Advising the new editor to approach the user that reverted their edit with a open minded request for an explanation is always good start. If met with rude or mean behavior, the mentor can advise how that should be handled.
Wikipedia is quite big on policing: They police copyright violations, "irrelevant" articles, changes by new users...
The one thing that matters most for the community however, the behavior of users, is left largely unchecked. There are unbelievable idiots and people who don't care about new users' feelings at all, especially among experienced editors and even administrators (even more extreme on the German Wikipedia).
Stop accepting such behavior as if it was god-given. Having a page titled "Don't bite newbies" simply doesn't suffice.
I don't think behaviour should need to be policed. If people are behaving in a "bad" way, it's because something about the environment is leading them to do that - most likely, lots of frustrations. Plenty of online communities function really well without "policing" anyone. Stevage 17:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
administrators who have a bad behaviour toward a new user should lose his privileges.Nevinho 19:34, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This presumes that you can determine what is bad behaviour and what isn't. I propose that figuring that out is the entirety of the problem. And why extend that protection only to new users? Why only extend the enforcement to administrators? The special privileges of admins on WMFs wikis are very narrow and have little to do with the treatment of users. No one should receive bad treatment, new or old users, from admins or anyone else.
Not everyone is a unique and special snowflake. Some people are just jerks. Wikipedia is not psychotherapy: We can't expect the project to cure bad behaviour. I think some aspects of Wikipedia do tend to bring out the worst in people, so you're right that changing the environment can help, but there still needs to be a mechanism to deal with people who are unable to control their own behaviour.
The success of that mechanism, at least on English Wikipedia, is largely determined by how many friends the person has on the projects. Many friends and you are untouchable, few friends and you are cannon fodder. It's only workable because the worst jerks usually have few friends. If fails when the reverse is true. The whole process favours people who invest a lot of time in socializing and politics rather than editing the encyclopedia.
And the people left still wonder why editors, even long-time editors, quit and how to retain them. Looky Here
Why is this happening on any message I wish to make a reply to?--Brother Officer 04:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
"As an established user, it's hard to know how "nice" to be to a newbie, because you have no idea if they're actually still around. You see an edit they made, but especially if they're an IP, you really don't know if they will ever get any message that you send them. So you end up just treating them like a random stranger: fix their edit, move on.
Wikipedia would work better if there were more socially aware features: allow us to build and maintain relationships with new editors, even if they don't visit Wikipedia again. Give us more information about them, like how many edits they've made, how recently etc, without us having to dig for the information."Stevage
Template:RuleTemplate:Rule I attempted to reply to the above message and others but get Greek &c. I started a new thread and did a copy/paste just to place this question and seek the solution. This had not been happening until now. --Brother Officer 00:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)2nd time--Brother Officer 04:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
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17:50, 2 December 2009 Greek: Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ • Template:IPA
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Merge into another thread Brother Officer00:40, 5 December 2009 Greek: Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ • Template:IPA
As an established user, it's hard to know how "nice" to be to a newbie, because you have no idea if they're actually still around. You see an edit they made, but especially if they're an IP, you really don't know if they will ever get any message that you send them. So you end up just treating them like a random stranger: fix their edit, move on.
Wikipedia would work better if there were more socially aware features: allow us to build and maintain relationships with new editors, even if they don't visit Wikipedia again. Give us more information about them, like how many edits they've made, how recently etc, without us having to dig for the information.
I attempted to reply to the above message and others but get Greek &c. I started a new thread and did a copy/paste just to place this question and seek the solution. This had not been happening until now. --Brother Officer 00:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
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Merge into another thread Stevage17:50, 2 December 2009 Greek: Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω Cyrillic: А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я IPA: t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ • Template:IPA
- How? ...by implementing Proposal:Dumb Down Wikipedia. As Wikipedia has matured articles have become more complete, comprehensive, and higher quality. Norms for citations, neutrality, grammar, etc. have been established. 'Easy' topic areas have received comprehensive coverage, leaving more difficult areas left to be done. As a natural and obvious result, Wikipedia has become more difficult to edit because the easy work has been completed already. A random person off the street is less likely to have the sufficient skills, knowledge, and patience to contribute to the work ahead.
- I do not have any idea what proportion of the increase in difficulty is as a result of this natural process as opposed to other possibilities (like an over-active immune system) as no real research that I am aware of has even provided a hint on this matter. But since the increasing quality and complexity is obviously a factor, dumbing down the project would obviously help.
- More seriously, before your question is even worthwhile we need some serious study of the issue. Anecdotes are seductive but frequently misleading. The people that Wikipedia has pissed off, rightly or wrongly, are far more likely to be heard of than the enormous silent mass of *billions* of people which do not edit Wikipedia.
- If you must have ancedotes, I just loaded English Wikipedia's recent changes, hid logged in users, filtered to the article space, and brought up some of the top most difflinks: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. As far as I can tell the one edit of this set that wasn't bad was itself reverting a low quality edit from November 20th.
- This doesn't look good for keeping the reversion rate for new contributors down. --75.196.42.46 18:16, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This forum software is broken. It crashes my browser most of the time. And when I try to edit the above quote to restore the external links it simply fails to save the edit. After three tries it finally saved the changes. I don't think I did anything differently in the attempt which finally worked.
If you want to dumb down Wikipedia, make everyone use North America English. The word whilst has no place in Wikipedia and everyone should use the more common word while instead.
First, we're not suggesting dumbing down Wikipedia. Second, the word may be more common in the US, but as others have told you, whilst is in common usage in other parts of the world. Third, how does that help with friendliness? Sounds like a writing pet peeve to me. :)
It's only a matter of time before Godwin's Law is invoked.....
Well, I'm sitting across the desk from him, so shall I ask? :)
Put in a good word for me while he's there please Philippe. I fancy I may be on the wrong end of a lengthy prison sentence if this spurious nonsense about while/whilst persists....
For starters, don't allow editors to use the word whilst. The word while suits the article just fine and we don't need that antiquated English floating around in the 21st century. If an editor types in the word whilst and saves it into to article, ban him for using that garbage. GVnayR 04:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
NOTE: This is not a post from JohnF. I'm adding this to migrate to LiquidThreads for this page.
We don't think that banning is maybe a little harsh? This doesn't really strike me as a comment to make Wikimedia projects a friendlier place, it strikes me as a little bit soap-boxy. :)
It's a peculiar thing ... I have noticed people at work using the word "whilst" lately, then I started noticing it on some Wikipedia articles. I agree banning is too harsh. Explaining why it isn't the best choice of word is better.
Outside of Shakespeare and the Holy Bible, I have never been exposed to the word "whilst" before I saw it on Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia. Canadians believe in using the word "while," that other word (whilst) has never appeared in books sold in Canada. Whoever writes the word "whilst" on Wikipedia articles are either stodgy and/or British.
Or European.. English taught in school tends to be UK English. Thanks,
"Whilst" is a perfectly legitimate English word. As the 'near-trolling' comment indicates, it has a distinguished history which includes Shakespeare.
Those who are unaware of the word, and appropriate usage thereof, perhaps lack the required foundation in classical literature.
In any case, this entire thread should be deleted; it serves no purpose in relation to the corresponding question of the day.
What an absurd suggestion. What, are we going to ban 'whilom' and 'anent' and 'aught' next? Gwern
This is after all the 21st century. Old fashioned words like those you mentioned don't belong in a 21st century encyclopedia.
We have a need for inclusiveness. We have a need for being friendly to each other because we need to cooperate better. Do you consider that this attitude helps, or polarises people into factions, does it help us with writing a Wikipedia, a Wikitionary or a Wikibooks?
As you have been told, there are people who use these words and do not think twice about them. It is their English as much as yours. Thanks,
George Orwell's Minispeak is a very close approximation of this sort of nonsense. Whilst is not an old fashioned word (sic), and you can say it is until you are blue in the face and it really won't change the reality of the situation for the millions of people who use it. This form of cultural fascism really is quite appalling. Maybe we should call for the banning of the spelling of the word grey? And make every one sing the Star Spangled Banner? I think not.
In my opinion, what keeps many contributors around is the sense of being part of the Wikimedia community.
What can we do to make people feel included in the Wikimedia Community? Here are my ideas:
- Improve opportunities for socialising, although we should ensure that people are not just socialising.
- Make access to private / real-time discussion fora more obvious (such as IRC).
On Wikinews we discovered dramatic improvements in retention when we dispensed with the original laborious publication process. Contributors stuck around when they had the gratification of seeing their articles published. (This initial success has largely been reversed by slow but steady instruction creep.)
Similarly, contributors like to see their contributions in every field. Systems need to be responsive in real time to provide the necessary gratification/feedback to be successful. en.WP has found an (imo) obnoxiously high level of politeness and 'cuddly' critical feedback is useful in their retention campaigns.
However, I'm not sure that really implies social networking tools will be successful as a retention strategy. Even if they are one must examine whether they are effective in achieving the given project's goals/mission.
Wikipedia is "niceness extreme"; you feel like you're being asked to sit at the back of the short bus whilst the teacher lectures in words of one syllable.
Wikinews' adoption of a reviewing process was needed to stop nonsense and attack articles appearing on the main page. deWP has similar, I take it for granted it will creep into place on enWP too.
I agree with adding social features as do the WMF and its advisors, but I think "privacy" should be avoided. We want all discussion out in the open to stop cabals and strategising amongst interest groups. So by all means supply people with the equivalent of bars and lounges where they can hang out, and let people have means by which they can 'follow' each other and see friends' updates but don't give them tools that may be used for evil.
(posted by Bodnotbod, who has failed to log in again).
If good editors are being driven away by unexplained edits, then one solution is to make edits be explained. It won't help us with editors who make a change and come back later to see the article as before, and without looking at the history, go 'I HATE WIKIPEDIA SO MUCH!!!!', but do we really want editors who will jump to conclusions like that?
And it'd be so easy to boost the number of explained edits: just change Special:Preferences so the options to prompt for an edit summary and to disallow empty edit summaries both default to being on rather than off. People will change it back, some won't write good summaries - but many will write the good summaries they know they should.
If an edit summary is written in the wiki and no one reads it, was it really an explanation?
It takes a rather high degree of site competence to go find the edit summary explaining why your edit was removed. I would guess that most people just reload the page and see that their contribution is gone.
Of course the key to your statement is the leading "If". While I don't doubt that it happens, it may not be a significant issue. The most fundamental issue is that we don't know— and we hardly even know what we don't know.
What trolls want is to be seen and probably very well would like to be normal editors. But as a newcommer it is easier to destroy than to contribute constructively, especially if you don't have any ideas where contributions would be constructive. Just like a teenage hacker who probably would love to work for the game industry or any other software developer, but whos best chance to show his skills at the moment is to create some virus or to hack computers.
If anyone has sugestions or experience about how to turn trolls into normal editors I think that would be intresting.
(Forgot to log in) --Dafer45 19:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Firstly the idea of rewarding contributions may have a undesirable effect. I think that WMF should launch a huge campaign amongst editors for welcomming new users and create a profile of welcomers who would be assigned to give new users the support. For them - the welcomers crew - a reward could fit better.
I'm not sure there really is a problem - throwing out statistics like '25% of new edits are reverted' is sort of only relevant if more than 75% of new edits shouldn't be reverted; and that latter detail seems to be lacking. And we've all run into trolls and other people who damn well deserved banning but were in high dudgeon anent't anyway.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." — Salvador Dali.
It can be difficult to revert and give a reason; the most convenient links/buttons to do so with often automatically put in a "revert" description where offering a quickly-accessible choice of reasons and a template to add to the user's talk page would see there be more feedback.
