Outsider's view re: contributions - more granular approach needed?

Randomran - thank you for kind comments!

It's a 2-dimensional table: (kinds of contributors) x (kinds of articles). Each "cell" has to have the right process set up for it in order to work well. Right now Wikipedia is like a single cell table: (18-30 year old males) x (all articles).

On a more general note, it would appear to me that this is one of the tasks that are central to Wikipedia/Wikimedia core mission. If Wikipedia wishes to stay relevant it has to develop new tools and processes for knowledge management. Editable web pages were a great breakthrough -- 15 years ago! And no, adding embedded video players and color tags does not count. There is such a room for improvement - graphical visualizations, realtime collaboration, information theory based reformatting, etc. There is a similar level of untapped potential in human development - i.e. training. I understand that doing something like that would be a major software development effort (and expense), but given the other choice (stagnation and decay), I think it's worth the risk.

24.254.83.17310:31, 1 February 2010

Well, I realize that this is not the main point, but this assumes that the gradual-growth-by-spontaneous-collaboration-premise holds water. This has been part of Wikipedia propaganda from the beginning (just like the awful you-cannot-damage-Wikipedia-myth) but I have never actually seen it work in practice.

Of course I wholeheartedly support the idea that putting in meta-tags is not only pointless but counterproductive. - Brya 05:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Brya05:34, 2 February 2010
 

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Spontaneous collaboration was very effective to build up the encyclopedia initially. Now that the encyclopedia is more mature, it's obvious that spontaneous collaboration is more effective for some tasks than others. Stubs definitely benefit from that kind of attention, whereas featured articles require something more deliberate. I think this idea is brilliant, personally: there is this wave of unfocused volunteer effort that could be much more effective if it were nudged in the right direction.

Randomran19:47, 2 February 2010

Yes, I am sure that there were places where spontaneous collaboration happened and was effective. However, I doubt that is all that frequent. I meant what I said "I have never actually seen it work in practice", and I mean that literally: in my experience 'collaboration' all too often means some editors getting together and deciding that the core values don't apply to them or 'their' topic ("consensus"!). Certainly, given how diverse Wikipedia is, the model is nowhere near the norm. - Brya 05:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Brya05:08, 3 February 2010
 

Firstly, I think that this argument only supports the need for a better process. The only way to really find out if spontaneous collaboration works is to apply it to a problem that is suitable (such as a stub article, specifically, with proper guidance, etc.), get some data, and see what can be improved. Secondly, if there were to be no spontaneous collaboration, there would be no Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia does exist, some degree of collaboration did occur. How efficient was it - probably not superbly... but that's why it needs to be improved. It is a valid concern, no more, no less.

Besides, the spontaneous collaboration issue is just a part of the problem. In my opinion, the solution lies in establishing the framework that supports granularity, flexibility and careful refinement. Then, start addressing this smaller issue from within something that is moving in the right direction, as opposed to presenting the spontaneous collaboration as a "show stopper". That's not helpful. I can come up with 100 arguments as to why Wikipedia will never work. Heck, even if it is a show stopper - figure out a way to make it less of a show stopper and move forward from there. This is not going with the "gospel" - I am not suggesting ignorance, rather the opposite: take the problem into consideration, build a process that helps to isolate and study it. Do that while achieving the main goal, which is to grow Wikipedia, not to resolve the collaboration issue, although that may happen too.

Alexkai05:53, 3 February 2010
 

In my experience, spontaneous collaboration happens all the time.

  • There's the asynchronous pattern, where one person creates a stub, another person expands it, another person researches and cleans it up, and someone else brings it to good or featured quality.
  • There's the "we both like this article" pattern, where two editors both care about the article and feed off each other. Here there are more conflicts. But when people are working in good faith, a little discussion can resolve the issues.
  • There's the "hey everybody, let's do something about this" pattern, where a bunch of disparate editors all end up working on an article. Lots of WikiProjects have a "collaboration of the week" that looks like this.

The only thing you're talking about is the canvassing-type collaboration -- a bunch of editors with the same viewpoint working together to enforce that viewpoint. I agree it happens too often, but I think the other types are at least as frequent.

What Alexkai is proposing would not feed into that. It would match editor skills with content needs. That's much more effective than throwing editors into the deep end, where they might not have the skills to improve certain articles, and there is no guidance about what those articles need.

Randomran00:13, 7 February 2010