Proposal talk:Publicize reference desk services and article readership statistics
People are usually discouraged to use reference desk: we actually are not a reference desk. There are professional services for this, we are not able to cover all such requests. Nemo 01:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
- Really? Have you tried sharing that opinion with the people who enjoy volunteering at the reference desks to learn their perspective on it? 99.56.136.133 06:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yes. On it.wikipedia, they don't like at all these requests (nor on it.wikiquote – that's all the projects I actively work in). And I'm myself flooded with them by reading "OTRS" e-mails. Nemo 12:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- That seems quite different than actual practice or the documentation under "Factual Questions" on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Questions -- my experience has been that when people who normally enjoy working the reference desk are unhappy with a reference desk request, they ignore it and let others answer it. 75.55.199.5 20:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- Historically, on it.wikipedia the reference desk is only a "dump" for unwanted generic requests for help. In fact, his name is "oracolo" (oracle). See also w:it:Template:WNT, w:it:Template:BNA, one and two standard reply from an admin of this project. Sorry but I don't have time to translate. Maybe someone consider this a important service offered by Wikipedia, but at least on italian projects the majority thinks very, very different. Anyway, this doesn't mean they're right and you're wrong. I'm simply reporting. :-) Bye, Nemo 21:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- Wow! I wonder if Italians with reference questions would get better results posting in Italian to the English Wikipedia's reference desks. That would be an interesting experiment, but I wouldn't want to waste volunteer time finding out. 99.60.0.26 23:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- Historically, on it.wikipedia the reference desk is only a "dump" for unwanted generic requests for help. In fact, his name is "oracolo" (oracle). See also w:it:Template:WNT, w:it:Template:BNA, one and two standard reply from an admin of this project. Sorry but I don't have time to translate. Maybe someone consider this a important service offered by Wikipedia, but at least on italian projects the majority thinks very, very different. Anyway, this doesn't mean they're right and you're wrong. I'm simply reporting. :-) Bye, Nemo 21:54, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- That seems quite different than actual practice or the documentation under "Factual Questions" on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Questions -- my experience has been that when people who normally enjoy working the reference desk are unhappy with a reference desk request, they ignore it and let others answer it. 75.55.199.5 20:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
- Yes. On it.wikipedia, they don't like at all these requests (nor on it.wikiquote – that's all the projects I actively work in). And I'm myself flooded with them by reading "OTRS" e-mails. Nemo 12:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Impact?
Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
- The worst that can happen would be the reference desk might get more questions than answers. At least on en.wikipedia, they have a large imbalance in favor of answers, so I don't see that as being a problem; if it is for other languages we can experiment with shunting them towards the English reference desks using automatic translation or something. On the other hand, it has a huge potential advantage in terms of recruiting new happy volunteer editors. 99.35.130.5 17:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)