What next?

Edited by another user.
Last edit: 00:10, 17 March 2011

Thank you for replying Sue: I was about to give up on my query as being lost as an uninteresting comment in a threaded discussion. This in itself is a good demonstration as to how "newbies" react: even as a seasoned Wikipedian, navigating this slightly different site requires some adjustment.

I'm a UK based academic professional, but on Wikipedia, I am most noted for my involvement since 2007 in stabilizing, encouraging and supporting its Good Article process, begun by Worldtraveller in October 2005, and emulated on many other wikis. This process may have a role in encouraging new editors, as it is one of the first content review processes that new editors encounter. It similarly has the potential to deter new contributors, for example, when they discover that their good faith efforts to cut and paste material from other websites is not well-regarded!

I'm not a big fan of barnstars, or scripted "Wikilove". In my experience as a newbie, barnstars seemed to be a somewhat daft US thing, and so I contributed instead to a half-joking medieval European parody alternative at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Minestrone_Soup/Knightly_order. The style of awards is a significant "systemic bias" issue, and I am not sure it has been seriously considered as such.

Anyway, I much prefer personally written messages of appreciation, such as the penultimate sentence of your post, than scripted or formulaic "awards".

However, I may be untypical, in that many editors maintain pages devoted to awards and/or "bling". There are many interesting sociological phenomena going on here. They have benefits and hazards associated with them: be sure when you try to tap into the benefits, you don't enhance the hazards.

I'll think about whether any of the other ideas you raised can help improve the friendliness of GA. -Geometry guy


Just a quick note: I formerly rejected barnstars until I realized it was like rejecting a gift someone gives you ("Thanks, but I will throw this barnstar in the trash"). Ever since, I try to keep a dedicated list of awards, as valued gifts from others. Just a different perspective. -Wikid77 00:10, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Geometry guy23:01, 11 March 2011

I even replied without knowing I was logged out.

Geometry guy23:10, 11 March 2011
 

Actually, it's so funny you would mention GA: what a coincidence. I just saw that Laura Hale said in a different forum that she's having trouble navigating through the GA process for an article she's written on Netball. I believe she's a relatively new editor, and she's having some difficulty understanding the comments and figuring out how to make the article better. So if you have some free time, maybe you could help here there, or introduce her to someone who might be able to help. If you can, the discussion's here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Netball/GA1.

Steven Walling --a Wikimedia Foundation fellow, here in the office-- just told me he thinks you're great too! So there you go: more non-scripted appreciation :-)

Sue Gardner23:21, 11 March 2011

Ha! Yeah, I did that. I just remember Geometry guy putting up with all my complaining at GA back in 2008. :-)

Steven Walling at work23:24, 11 March 2011

I've watchlisted a few pages on-enwiki in case I can help.

I know Steven from the days when he was "VanTucky", and even supported his RfA: what a mistake that was ;) Thankfully he has moved on to greater things :)

Geometry guy02:05, 12 March 2011

So YOU'RE the one. We've got some people who want to have words with you. All this "encouragement" of Steven... it's just resulted in no-good, clearly. <grin>

(Disclaimer for those who don't know - I'm very fond of Steven, and sit across the desk from him. If only he'd get better music to listen to.)

~Philippe (WMF)02:07, 12 March 2011

That's what I use headphones for!

Steven Walling at work23:29, 13 March 2011
 
 
 

It looks like Laura now has a whole bunch of support, some of which may have happened anyway, but thank you for the heads-up.

Geometry guy23:06, 13 March 2011
 

Barnstars are one of the few concrete payments that editors get, the other being various bureaucratic powers. The less tangible cognitive rewards are:

  • promotion of topics of personal or professional interest
  • demotion to topics of personal dislike or professional conflict

There is no bright line distinction between WP:BATTLEGROUND and "people edit topics that interest them". I have even seen one academic edit Wikipedia biographies of other academics with whom he had a professional disagreement in order to belittle them. (Amazing chutzpah and COI.)

The peer review initiative on Wikipedia is admirable, but larger issues limit its effectiveness. I don't know (or care much) about GA, but I have seen advertorials on DYK and hardly-above-average (which in Wikipedia means pretty bad) articles as FA. In general, the peer review is mostly at the WP:MOS rather than content level, regardless of the process involved. It has everything to do with having few editors per topic area. And when you can get more than a few eyeballs on some non-popular-culture article, they may have vastly different approaches and even ultimate goals. One of your fellow mathematicians said something along the lines of: wikiproject FA and wikiproject mathematics have different goals.

85.204.164.2611:18, 16 March 2011