[Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and the rest

Wed Jan 25 10:39:53 UTC 2006

I like your idea Notafish ....... I would certainly volunteer for this

Waerth/Walter

>crossposting to wikipedia-l as this is an international issue
>=========
>Hi all,
>
>as a totally non-en person, admin on other wikis and actually working
>"behind the scenes", I would like to give my view on what I believe is
>needed, and why an en-admin-only channel and list won't help to the
>extent that is needed. This is long, but please bear with me.
>
>Let me try to make this more concrete.
>
>OTRS (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS) receives a lot (and here I
>mean "A LOT") of complaints.
>
>Those range from:
> "there's a mistake in this article, please fix it", to:
>"You're defaming me, delete this article/those revisions, or I will
>sue you!"  through
>"this page is an enormous copyvio from my site!"
>
>with as Sam Korn already pointed out, various degrees of civility.
>
>The problem is the following:
>
>Only a few people have agreed to help on OTRS. It's one thing to spend
>hours editing wikipedia, it's another to want to spend hours alone on
>a boring screen answering (most of the time) crazy emails. We have
>appealed to the en population several times (why en? because it is the
>one most attacked, but actually, other wikipedias are suffering from
>the same problem, and as we grow, these will get bigger and more
>numerous) and have gotten only very few answers. Fine, I can
>understand that.
>
>The people who *are* working on OTRS are for some "good editors", for
>others "better e-mail answerers" than "editors" (me, for example). In
>the end, I think anyway that we *will* have to pay someone to answer
>those emails. As I speak, there are 280 unanswered emails in the
>info-en queue. Probably most of these are spam, but even sorting spam
>takes an awful lot of time.
>
>What happens is this: you get an email with a complaint, you go see
>the page, realize there's about 2 hours of work on the page, and get
>discouraged. Because on one hand, you can't really go "public" with
>the complaint (it's, after all, an email, gives personal information
>etc.) and on the other, you *know* that something needs to be done.
>Here you have two options:
>-either you take the two hours to fix the article, but then, there are
>still 279 emails to be answered in OTRS.
>-or you go to a person you know, who you think could be good at fixing
>the article.
>Here two options again:
>-the person you chose to tell does have two hours and can fix the article
>-they don't and it gets forgotten
>and maybe a third one:
>-They don't have the time, go to other people, the "issue"  is somehow
>broadcasted, makes the front page of USA Today... and you know the
>rest.
>
>So what's the solution?
>
>I don't think that the solution is en-admin-only anything. I think the
>solution is something that would be more like:
>- The wikipedia community at large realizes that there *are* problems
>with some articles
>- The wikipedia community at large *knows* who is: "good at NPOV",
>good at "speedy deleting", good at "cleaning histories", good in
>"Famous people stuff", good at "sourcing an article".
>-The wikipedia community at large *does* agree that something needs to
>be done to clean up Wikipedia in a (sorry, but it's true) hidden kind
>of fashion.
>-The wikipedia community at large decides to "appoint", "elect",
>"designate" (whatever suits the wikipedia community at large) a few
>trusted users who are reknown for the things listed above and agrees
>that they should all get together on one list where the people working
>behind the scenes (in OTRS) can just forward the email and are *sure*
>that it is going to be taken care of in a timely and discreet fashion.
>
>NB. This list should not be of 800, it should not either be of 20, I
>am thinking something along the lines of 50-70 people from all across
>the wikipedias (because there are problems that may be repercuted from
>one language to the other- see tron for example), admins and
>non-admins (I can cite at least 5 people on fr who are not admins whom
>I would trust to do that kind of stuff better than many admins).
>
>I am not sure how we can do that without ever falling in the "clique"
>type thing. But how different is it from all the "associations" of
>every kind that I have come across on en? Not sure.
>
>What I am sure of is this: either the wikipedia community at large
>acknowledges the problem and tries to find a solution *together*, or
>we'll end up (not tomorrow, but soon enough) by having to "pay" some
>"NPOVers", or "history-cleaners", or choose them in a cabal-fashion,
>to do the work. Because the work to be done is there and most of it
>has to stay a little private.
>
>The idea is to have people who know how to do this stuff (NPOV,
>sourcing), who are recognized for doing it well, who can get together
>on an article and work together on it when the complaint comes in, who
>are ok with doing it as part of their "normal" participation on
>wikipedia. The only thing is that their "work" will be a little
>directed. ie. "Please look at these 20 articles, that are a copyvio of
>this site". They can be tasked with asking people outside the list to
>help them etc.
>
>This is what it's all about.
>
>Hope this long email helped a little, and that it will spark ideas...
>I am for my part, short on ideas about how to deal with this stuff,
>and afraid that some day it will backfire in a much nastier way than
>just the front page of USA Today.
>
>
>Delphine
>--
>~notafish
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