Disputes Regarding Edits

Well, you don't have to take me at my word (since Wikipedia has page histories and my Wikipedia username as the same as here, you could do a search for my contribution history), and I'm not actually saying the editor that reverted my contribution was acting like an asshole. He wasn't rude, I just felt like I had nowhere to turn to to get an unbiased set of eyes on the two possible photos, both of which were added by the photographers.

I didn't feel mistreated, just discouraged, like I was the newbie and in the absence of a third party, I would just have to allow my edits or contributions to be reverted. I'm also saying that this might be one reflection of the retention data Wikipedia is seeing. I started out enthusiastic, and then lost steam after this experience.

I mean, what if there was just a simple page built into the MediaWiki code that could flag pages as asking for a third-party opinion? Similar to the "Recent Changes" or "Wanted Pages" Special pages, this page could just present you with a list of outstanding requests for a third-party opinion on an edit. It could be useful, and I imagine that it could be an interesting and useful way to contribute, just like proofreading, watching for vandalism, or evaluating new pages.

The Help desk should work for requesting eyeballs to do a simple image comparison.

Also see commons:COM:EIC#Gallery. You can make gallery pages on Wikimedia Commons, and link to them from articles on the English Wikipedia with en:Template:Commons. Commons has room for an unlimited number of photographs on any topic, and there are lots of different language Wikipedias. If the cabal on one Wikipedia does not use your image, some other Wikipedia might.

I know now, and I'm sure that I could have done the research then to figure out how to use Wikipedia more fluently. And since then, I have become much more committed to the kinds of things Wikipedia and other collaborative media do. But if we're talking about why people leave, then my experience is an example. I'm not saying it's Wikipedia's fault, or the editor's fault, but it's true that volunteer organizations often have to go out of their way to make it easy to at least get started volunteering.

So, maybe the solution is better, or more user-friendly orientation to the possible issues that might come up as a new editor? Maybe that is already there, but I just didn't peruse it well enough. Again, not blaming Wikipedia for my experience, but trying to figure out what could have made the two-years-ago me reconnect after having contributions overwritten.

The new Wikipedia user faces the problem of unknown unknowns. For many types of negative or unproductive interactions a new user might have on Wikipedia, remedies are available somewhere on Wikipedia, but the new user doesn't know where to find them, or even that they exist. And the software is still too dumb to have any idea of what the new user is trying to do, much less advise the new user on the best way to go about it.

Instead, the Wikipedia interface is optimized for people who know what they are doing. We may not solve this problem until human-level intelligence is available in a personal computer. According to Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, that might happen sometime between 2030 and 2040.

Editing on Wikipedia would be fun for the new user if an experienced user with vast knowledge of Wikipedia arcana was looking over his or her shoulder and offering timely advice at every step. It is very difficult for the new user to start with some arbitrary editing goal, and construct the optimal procedure for reaching that goal on Wikipedia, without any expert help. Once we can put the expertise into the software, instead of parking it in manuals that have to "run" on the user's brain, Wikipedia will effectively become simple again.

We don't need to trust a computer to guide the user through unknown unknowns; really, Wikipedia doesn't stand out of the cognitive intelligence of its programming. The code itself is elegant, relatively simple, and well-designed. The intelligence of Wikipedia is in its collective editors and contributors.

What if we just set up some groups for new users? You could be added to a group of new users possibly based on a very short, optional questionnaire, and these groups could be assisted voluntarily by editors. The editors could act as mentors to these groups, possibly with a special page that tracked the changes made by their group members.

By making all of this voluntary, we could allow new users who want to get started on their own to do so, and only those editors interested in helping out new users would act as mentors. It seems then much less likely to get a conflict of interests between a voluntarily helpful mentor editor, and a new Wikipedian. By breaking these folks up into groups, veteran editors who are interested in helping newbies could be easily networked with a small group of newbies who want help, perhaps combating what would otherwise undoubtedly be an overwhelming sea of new faces.