It's all down to technicalities, isn't it?
It's all down to technicalities, isn't it?
I understand that execs have to play their own ritual and cannot speak out the real deal ... but this ritual has gone too far - reducing problems and solutions to "delightful" technical gizmos won't get you anywhere. I say you because I myself de facto quit wikipedia (English and Russian) for different reasons. You should have ran into these during your audit, but apparently dealing with real people isn't nearly as "exciting" as throwing in new widgets. NVO 08:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi NVO. Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience and quit. Why are you posting here, right now? Are you glad to have an opportunity to vent your frustration? Are you hoping to start a dialog based on your experiences? Is there another reason?
This is exactly the kind of demeaning attitude from "oldbies" towards less experienced or less smart ones. This comment by 'Eloquence' basically sounds "bug off, let real wikipedians do their job, I don't care about your little personality issues", only in an eloquent way. Even your "sorry" sounds as an insult, like in "your sorry ass". For the purposes of this talk page the only phrase "Are you hoping...?" would have done just fine. But no, you had to slam a door in his nose first, then open it again to say "OK, do you still want to talk?" And you sound like you are expecting a reply. ORLY?
NVO expressed an opinion which is basically sound: quite a few would agree that the real issue is not adding a new piece of text into wikipedia, but pushing it through watchdogs. For example, a saw a nasty case when a reasonable edit was reverted for the sole reason of poor grammar. And following the lead of NVO, it is much easier to click some gizmo to revert the edit in a microsecond, rather than to go through pains and fix the grammar of the contributor you don't know, don't like and don't care about.
P.S. What the heck does "[checkbox] Bump this thread" above the button "Save page" mean? Talk about newbies experience...
Hi Lothar, it wasn't intended to be rude - sorry if it came across that way.
Yep, this the root of the problem. When you are not face to face, you don't have an instant feedback, and you don't "watch your mouth" ("mixaforically speaking"). The same is with "oldies/newbies": your first order of care is wikipedia, and when patrolling newpages and clicking this gizmo 15 times/min your brain is not tuned to sensitivities of all these nasty ignoramuses which deface your pretty article. There is quite a few jokes about a janitor who locks the restroom to keep it clean :-) Lothar Klaic 20:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Lothar, I'm about as cynical as a human can be, but not even I saw Eloquence's reply as rude or demeaning. I can, however, understand the difficulty of phrasing any text-format question in a way that won't sound insulting to someone who had a bad experience on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.
This supports my assertion that Wikipedia editing is best done by robots, or by people who can train themselves to think like robots. That is, never taking anything personally, and viewing every correction as an opportunity to learn something new.
Most people are not robots. They are going to write about things they care about, and then care about what they wrote. They won't enjoy having someone call it "cruft" and revert or delete it. But that's all part of editing on Wikipedia. Everybody who has many edits has a lot of deleted edits.
I try to look at Wikipedia as an experiment. When I edit an article, I am thinking, what can I write that will stick? I'm not thinking how do I make Wikipedia "better" because who knows whether my definition of "better" agrees with the definition of everyone else who might revert or delete what I wrote? Wikipedia is a game to see what sticks. People can enjoy playing games even if they do not always win. Winning too much makes a game boring.
Vulcans would also be good at editing on Wikipedia, since our system is unusually logical and rule-based. The rules of Wikipedia are so comprehensive that they eliminate most of the need for personal taste or judgment. But obviously, most new users are not prepared to read and internalize enough of the rules before they edit. That contradicts the original idea behind wikis, which is to be quick.
In the very early days, Wikipedia almost certainly was quick. By the time I got here (in 2006) things had gotten pretty complicated. Today things are more complicated. Complexity is what humans do, because complexity is necessary to get power. For example, compare the Wright Flyer to a Boeing 747. The Wright Flyer was so simple that a couple of bicycle mechanics could build it. But it is not nearly as capable as a Boeing 747 with its several million parts. You can make similar comparisons with modern medicine vs. 19th century medicine. Back then, medicine was far simpler, and far more lethal.
If people were happy with simple things we could keep Wikipedia simple - no graphics, no templates, plain text, no rules. But if we make Wikipedia truly simple to edit, it would probably suck.
Complexity can't be wished away, only managed. We have to find a way to show new users only as much of Wikipedia's complexity as they need to know. This is difficult because each new user has slightly different goals and needs to know slightly different things about Wikipedia. Only intelligent intervention seems to be a solution, and that is expensive because only skilled human brains can do that (until computers become intelligent enough). Our current method is dismal because we rely on late intervention - let the new users sink hours and hours into creating new articles, then come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Well said! Intelligent intervention is indeed expensive. I'm participating in the Online Ambassador program on the English WP, mentoring a couple of students. Doing a good job of mentoring new editors (and I am not claiming to be doing a good job) takes time and effort, which comes out of the time I could be spending on adding content, maintaining articles and other tasks. I doubt we will ever have enough experienced editors willing and able to help even a small fraction of new editors. We need to look for a way to help new editors that doesn't require more time and commitment from established users than they are willing to undertake. I don't see the solution, yet. I eagerly await a viable suggestion. -- Donald Albury 00:52, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Donald, I am sure your mentoring is far superior to the usual default of presenting the new user with a blank editing window.
Writing centralized instructions for new users to read is the time-tested method for multiplying the effectiveness of an organization's scarce supply of expertise. Wikipedia has the best manuals I have ever seen for any type of system (and I have seen my share). So even though reading the manuals is laborious, on Wikipedia it's about as good as it gets.
The main problem with this method is that outside the rather small community of computer programmer types, not many people have a cultural expectation to read manuals. That's one of the important things to get across when mentoring new users. You can give the newbies their first fish, but you have to teach them to fish for themselves by learning how to navigate the manuals. The Editor's index to Wikipedia makes a handy reference tool.
teratomis, you have answered the question. You have said it is compulsory to learn lots before editing. ergo, most do not bother. Wikipedia is no longer the encyclopedia anyone can edit. You have also said you want it this way. so no problem there, either.
You have missed the point that while companies might use rules to compel people who are paid to work for them to do what is wanted, wiki does not work that way. People, anyway the ones you want, are not paid to work here but do it for pleasure. therefore your task is not to compel them to work a certain way, but to make the experience enjoyable.
Every single manual you write makes it harder to become an editor.
with regard to eloquence's post; you really believe 'Why are you posting here, right now? Are you glad to have an opportunity to vent your frustration?' is a welcoming way to encourage someone annoyed with you to explain why? Personally i clicked the wrong button while the screen was refreshing.
My point was that proposals for more hand-holding of inexperienced editors would depend on having a lot more (100x?) experienced editors available and willing to work at it than I think we can ever hope for. The present system may seem inadequate, but it has gotten WP to where it is now. I would also raise the question of whether we are trying to build an encyclopedia, or are we trying to build a warm and fuzzy social environment? I favor an encyclopedia that becomes more and more comprehensive and reliable with time. I see a number of editors reverting without bothering to post any message. I do use the user page message templates when I revert, both to clue in naive editors, and to document patterns of edit problems. Those template messages are often criticized, but I do not have the time to compose personalized feel-good messages, which are likely to be less clear and to the point than the templates, when I'm working through my watchlist (now approaching 6,000 articles).
I think the point of this debate is that you (someone) is trying to build a warm and fuzzy social environment.
The issue is whether the place wiki is at is a terminal spiral.
Despite appearances of success.
I think the encyclopedia exists because it was already a sufficiently warm and fuzzy environment for people to want to take part. If you give people the feeling they are unwelcome, well, why stay? This debate is because the reasons for falling numbers of contributors is unclear. My take is to state what I see myself. It sounds as though you are spending a lot of time on artcle maintenance, so it is hard to see how you can give sufficient attention to every edit - or even any edit- made to those 6000 articles to be friendly to people contributing. Instead they get (usually in my experience) a snotty message. I know it is time consuming to discuss an edit. I dont patrol articles, I tend to become involved in one at a time so I dont experience it, but I can see i would not spend every day politely chatting to people about edits. I think this argument is getting close to saying that with current staff levels and the current approach it is impossible to do anything except alienate anyone who might join that staff and reduce the shortage. When it comes down to it, wiki only works if there are enough contributors who will adopt articles. The perceived problem is that the current way of doing things is not working.
Wikipedia is so enormous that it's hard to imagine quitting it altogether. If you have a bad experience editing in one topic area, editing in another topic area can be like going to a completely different project. Or you can try many other things besides article editing, for example answering questions on the Help desk, Reference desk, etc. Responding to other users' requests for help can be almost relieving, because you get to observe someone else experiencing the pain instead of you. The main point is to try not to approach Wikipedia with too many preconceived ideas, such as a determination to slant the coverage of one certain topic in one certain way. I also recommend editing on more than one wiki, such as trying some of the small wikis outside the Wikimedia Foundation family. A large wiki like Wikipedia has a mix of advantages and disadvantages similar to a big city: lot of excitement, great infrastructure, but with millions of people in one place the scope for conflict is enormous, so the rules have to be very detailed (everything which is not compulsory is forbidden). A small wiki is like going to the frontier: no infrastucture, and lots of freedom, so you can have a lot more influence on what the rules will be. You learn pretty fast that a small wiki is likely to stay small unless it develops a comprehensive set of rules like Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia study is certainly short of human input. How about some training for deletionists in tact, manners and respect?
I found Wikipedia: the missing manual very useful when I was starting - much easier to read, learn, consult and use for introducing others to WP. Do newbies need an updated but similar reliable printed source? Vernon39 09:32, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Vernon39, I doubt training for deletionists would help much. First, I suspect Wikipedia's deletion industry attracts a personality type that would resist such training (i.e. bureaucratic, officious, unempathetic, vengeful - even if only a small percentage are like this, it's enough to negate any training you give the other 95%), and second, by the time a new user has invested hours of editing under the encouragement of the software to keep editing, with no corrective early feedback about the acceptability of the content, the damage has been done. Our system is a honey trap for new users. Nobody should attempt to start a new article until they are at least aware that Wikipedia has a thriving deletion industry that eats newbies for lunch (making a mockery of en:WP:BITE in the process).
The Main Page shows a count of Wikipedia's articles. Why does it not also give the count of deleted articles? Why do we try to hide the truth about that, and let the parade of new victims keep marching blindly to their doom?
A possible way forward might be to implement some sort of interactive chat feature, such that when a new user tries to create their very first new article, an experienced user immediately opens an interactive chat session with the new user to find out what sort of article they want to create. Many new users will want to create new articles on topics that are only marginally notable, or lacking in reliable sources, and so on. It would be better to give the bad news early than let the new user sink hours of work into writing an article that gets speedily deleted. Early intervention is usually cheaper than late intervention.
I second Teratornis' suggestion regarding mentoring a new user in the creation of their first article.
Another thought is to be able to classify an article as, for example, "beta quality", ie it is not of sufficient quality to qualify as a mainstream Wikipedia article (eg. it doesn't have sufficient referencing) and yet is still of merit. In fact, all new articles could initially be classified as "beta quality", and then promoted to a mainstream article once reviewed? That would definitely provide the encouragement for new users to create new articles (they will at least exist as "beta quality" ones) whilst at the same time providing a strong incentive to produce quality work (the acceptance of the article into the mainstream). Alexandrews 13:16, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
So, who gets to move a "beta" article to "mainstream"? And what are the standards? I kind of like the idea, but I have also seen what has happened on Citizendium, where they have "live", "developed" and "approved" articles, and only about 10% of "developed" articles have reached "approved" status. If we quarantine new articles in a beta status, we will need a process to review and approve those articles. It would be unfair to leave beta articles sitting un-reviewed for long periods (or else the status would lose its meaning). A possible model for beta article review is the DYK process, but that deals with only a small percentage of new articles, and has recently changed its rules to require editors who have submitted more than 5 articles to DYK to review a submission for every new article they nominate. While such a model for moving beta articles to "mainstream" might be possible, would you want the decision to be made by one editor? Or should we require a discussion, ala AfD, for each beta article. And what happens to beta articles that are not approved for "mainstream"? Are they then deleted? That would be equivalent to sending every new article to AfD. If we treat the beta status as an opportunity to improve an article, how long do we wait for it to reach "mainstream" quality? And ho many times and how often would an article be reviewed before determining it would not reach "mainstream" status?
Yes, I would be happy for one editor to make the decision. As for beta articles, if they do not satisfy the criteria for immediate deletion then they are free to stay as beta articles until such time as they are good enough to become mainstream. The criteria for being a beta article is that the material is of merit, but is not of sufficient encyclopaedic quality to become mainstream. BTW, beta articles should have this emblazoned (maybe as a page background, a bit like "duplicate", and a big banner at the top?), so that users viewing it are fully aware that the article has not met the requirements to be mainstream.
Remember: the purpose of this discussion is to encourage new contributions from new contributors.
This link for The Missing Manual may work better: The Missing Manual
My own thought on the matter is that everything needed for a novice user to create a new page should be condensable to one printed sheet. Everything else can be learned later (or never). The central concepts of editing boldly and contributing now are well-enshrined in Wikipedia guidelines; however, the infinite tangle of rules and proceedures makes these more ideal than reality for most new users.
I don't know about training deletionists in "tact manners or respect" but I have had some success at getting deletionists to change their ways. My favourite tactic know is to encourage them to use hotcat and adopt a policy of "if in doubt categorise". My theory is that many new page patrollers are looking to see which deletion tag most closely applies to the article they see, that attitude is fine for categorisers but less helpful for patrollers.