A more social and personal editing experience
I agree with this. I have built working relationships with other editors, and we even occasionally agree in advance to "tag team" in starting new articles, but you have to fight the system to do that. OTOH, I strongly believe in the notion of an anonymous editor from the reader's perspective, whose personal expertise is irrelevant, and I would not be comfortable with an editor community that was so social there was no room for the editor who prefers to remain under the radar.
Perhaps we need an editor's community space that is separate from the current talk page, where people can ask for help, suggest areas that need work, and generally chat. Perhaps we need several of these, loosely federated, around different topics (TV, medieval and renaissance, gaming, [Language] lit). I'd love to see structures less formal than projects - "Hey, gang, who wants to help me knock out some improvements on our articles on medieval paleography over the next few weeks - I have some cool new examples I can scan!". - PKM 18:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
I noticed that many of the articles I have written acquired one or more "within the scope of the XXX project" banners. However, I have never figured out what that meant. I tried to work out how to join these projects (the ones that sounded closest to my interests), thinking that somewhere there would be a mailing list where the group would do some coordination around article-writing (or something) or that I might get advice from them. But, after the banner appears, nothing more happens.
So now I get rather annoyed by these project banners, because it seems to be just about "empire building". Someone somewhere is thinking "Oh, I am a Big Cheese because I've claimed all these Wikipedia pages as being under my control." I've been tempted to delete them (but haven't for fear of the Big Cheese).
So, I would love to know where you go to build working relationships with other editors. I am very happy to collaborate with others, but I can't find them.
Kerry - posting a note on your English Wikipedia talk page.
PKM, thank you but I don't think you grasped what I am asking.
I went to the project you mentioned, but like every project I have visited, I cannot find how to be part of the community. How do I sign up for the mailing list? I tried adding the recommended wiki text to my userpage to say I was a member of a project, hoping that maybe that would somehow initiate my membership but still nothing happened.
Apparently I am part of projects but I don't know how to communicate with them. How can I collaborate with people I cannot talk to?
PS I am also a Women of A Certain Age. And my interest in Lucy Osburn is because (many years ago in a decade far far away - I like SF too) I was in Osburn House at school (named in her honour). I was recently a small player in raising money to Digitise The Dawn, a late 19th century feminist newspaper in Australia. So I am interested in Australian Women's Biography.
There isn't a mailing list, but you can talk to us here.
If you add your name to the member's list, we'll know you are interested, and you can also post on the talk pages of other project members.
There's also some discussion on the WWI task force talk page if that interests you.
Sorry to be stupid, but I still don't get it. That's a page. How do I know if someone has answered me? It is like my Talk Pages. I knew you had written something there only because you told me in this thread. But otherwise I would not have known. How would I know if someone had written something new on the page you pointed me to? How would I know if my question was answered? I tried to write on a page like that once but I got a message about edit conflict, so I don't even understand how to write on one.
I'll answer on your talk page.
I'd say something stronger than "cumbersome". I'd say "inefficient" and "ineffective". Wiki pages are great tools for shared information. They are not communications tools. From what you describe, I have to be logged into Wikipedia to see these updates and I then have to constantly visit various pages and read the entire thing to check to see if things are changed.
I am involved with a lot of projects (outside of Wikipedia) and a mailing list seems to be the most basic tool that every project uses. I find Google Groups works fine for many projects (people receive new messages via email but the WWW page maintains an archive of discussion).
Since you say this is a new project, would it be worth the experiment of creating a mailing list to see if it makes the project more effective?
Please ask the project members on the project discussion page. I am the wrong person to ask. I personally loathe mailing lists, and I don't like having my email full of notifications from WP, Facebook, Yammer, Twitter, and all the other tools I use, but that's my personal style. :-) I know most people feel differently.