Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote
> >So, the cause is ... you don't need a driving licence to use the Internet? Or the open editing policy that has driven WP's success? Both are 'causes'.
>
> The cause is a very low bar to article creation, and very little
> guidance as you create the article as to what we are actually
> looking for.
>
> I think there is some nostalgia here for the days when it was all
> just fields. we now have over 2,000,000 articles, many of them not
> on Pokemon. Well, some, anyway.
>
> But I think you are misunderstanding my point. Speedy deletion
> addresses a symptom, I would rather address the cause, for example
> by helping those new editors who are documenting something other
> than their garage band, to write something half decent.
"Thread" is too strong a word, really - "stream of consciousness"? Well, I would like the filtering to be better, even if slightly less aggressive. You are not going to get the people who create most of the total rubbish to read any instructions.
Charles
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http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Edit_Wikipedia_Week
This is happening.
A perennial press story is "I was bitten as a n00b on Wikipedia" -
every random interaction with a random en:wp editor is taken as
representative and officially sanctioned.
So we need people to be on extra special good behaviour.
(For those about to point out to Mr Pot that he is of similar
blackness to Messrs Kettle, Jimbo emailed me directly asking me to
please be much nicer on wikien-l in particular. And I can't say it
wasn't deserved. *cough*)
Main sticking point I can see is notoriously prickly individuals who
are also notoriously good encyclopedia writers. I won't go so far as
to name any of those who spring to my mind, but I'm sure you have your
own list. If they can be convinced this is a good idea then they
should provide a suitably shocking example of niceness.
Also, have to hit the village pump, the admin boards etc. Those who do
lots of janitorial work cleaning out the sewers of en:wp
(vandal-chasing, newpages patrolling, RC patrolling, etc) and
basically see the bad side of people all the time need to be brought
on board as well. This is somewhere n00bs can really be bitten.
Ideas please? I suspect not doing this is not an option.
- d.
>> I think that many of the people labeled "trolls" on WP aren't "trolls"
>> in the classic sense because they really believe in the positions that
>> they take. They are just very obstinate about their positions and
>> can't take "no" for an answer.
>You mean like Martin Luther King, Jr. was?
Close. Like Jason Gastrich, who *thinks* he's like Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Guy (JzG)
******
Brilliant answer, Guy.
Amateur trollography is not a particularly useful line of discussion. What
we need to focus on is who and what works within the site framework against
who and what doesn't adapt. There are many people who are simply better
suited to other venues: forums, blogs, etc. If we accept Jason Gastrich's
theology at face value for a moment, then what he's doing makes some sense
and it's far more important than building an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia,
however, is all Wikipedia is. We've asked him to adjust accordingly and he
refused to. The same bottom line applies to everyone who hits the "edit"
button, whether they operate from the highest motives or the lowest.
-Durova
Guy Chapman aka JzG
> I've seen CAT:CSD at over 400 before now.
So, more like 4 now. This is not our worst backlog.
> And I don't think denying that there is a problem will make there
> not be a problem either :-)
Oh no. But I was first to saying there's a problem. And I think my problem is (a) more serious than a backlog that isn't backlogged, and (b) speaks directly to the mission, not to people's more-or-less justified anxieties.
Charles
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Guy Chapman aka JzG
> I'm just quantifying the work involved. I do think we are focusing
> too much on the symptom, and ignoring the cause.
>
> The problem being managed is creation of worthless articles on
> worthless subjects.
So, the cause is ... you don't need a driving licence to use the Internet? Or the open editing policy that has driven WP's success? Both are 'causes'.
Charles
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"John Lee" wrote
> But recall, in this case, how would you salvage the article's content? What
> useful article could be made out of the content contributed?
I don't accept the framing. As far as I'm concerned, a deletion is an assertion that the topic is unwelcome. In other words that no useful stub can be made. Not that _no useful stub can be made out of the words on the page_. I'm sure we used to be better at this.
> As I said, in this
> case we aren't working to establish whether we deserve an article on this
> particular topic, but whether this particular article as it stands would be
> a useful article at all (or could be made into one), assuming this topic
> should be covered. In this case, reading the original revision, I don't see
> how we could salvage it.
You are working with the narrow version of "salvage", basically copy-editing only. That is why I think the approach shown is blinkered. That is why I think systemic bias is the background. As I say, we used to be better at welcoming new articles as prompts to create something.
Charles
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Guy Chapman aka JzG
> Yes, and the problem is the overwhelming volume of vanity spam and
> outright nonsense we get. You have a good idea on how to solve
> that? I'd love to hear one.
Well, I was over there a couple of minutes ago, salvaging a Serbian village tagged as "nonsense". By the way, CAT:CSD was almost empty, two dozen dropping to half-a-dozen, almost too many cooks.
Charles
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On 8 Nov 2007 09:38:35 +1100, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> 3. Once a person with sufficient wisdom and
> authority has deemed that a person is a troll, THEY ARE A TROLL. No
> more time should be wasted on them.
That sounds a lot like the Orwellian "Unperson", or Scientology
"Suppressive Person", concepts, and can be really unfair to people
who are unjustly labeled this way. Didn't an early version of WP:NPA
specifically say that labeling somebody a "troll" was an
impermissible personal attack? The Wikipedia culture has changed
since then, and not necessarily for the better.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote
> When did you last go to [[CAT:CSD]]? Even a 1% error rate will
> amount to tens of articles every day, and I don't think 1% is an
> unacceptably high error rate (or rather, shooting for less is
> probably unfeasible, given the rate of pay).
No one is arguing for an error-free system. The first question is, and clear from this thread, do we all agree on what is an "error"? You know, operation was successful, patient died.
> We have deleted over 5,000 articles in the last 24 hours. That
> included an article on a "six foot tall single-celled organism,
> 'nuff said" and "your single source for all things mountain bike".
Fine. Neither sounds like a major Pakistani politician to me.
> Are you sure you are not being perhaps a little nostalgic here? The
> simple fact is, very large numbers of worthless articles are created
> and deleted daily, and slowing down the removal of those will likely
> have an exponential impact.
Well, then, there is a "shoot on sight" policy de facto, and so there is a problem.
>When the CAT:CSD backlog is below 500,
> there is a realistic chance of assessing each article in more
> detail. But it rarely is, at least not in peak hours.
>
> I always look for the biographies first. A fair few of them are
> obvious autobiographies, the username is very often a dead giveaway.
> To userfy, remove the redirect, untag and leave a {{nn-userfy}}
> explanation takes just short of two minutes, including the time to
> verify the username and user's other contribs (generally none, of
> course). I don't mind doing that, but it would be better if the RC
> patrollers did it instead. I'm sure there are admins who don't
> bother, and that's a concern for me per [[WP:BITE]], but even so,
> the problem of vapid self-promotion is one that must be
> acknowledged.
>
> Is vapid self-promotion more of a problem than biting the
> self-promoters? Or does it depend on whether they are promoting
> themselves, their websites or their companies? I honestly don't
> know.
This would be another issue. We have a guideline in WP:COI saying that the site doesn't want this, advises against the whole business. OK, of the three I mentioned, one is possibly under this heading. (The one deleted under A1, quite wrongly.)
Charles
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"John Lee" wrote
> Fundamentally the idea is to build off something; if the article provides no
> basis for improvement (i.e. there is no fundamental difference between the
> article as it stands, and a blank page), then where is the prompt to create
> new content?
Well, I'm with Pavlov on this. The prompt should be to the salivary glands. Good Wikipedians want to write encyclopedic content, not to spend a lifetime as a gatekeeper.
Charles
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