[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

Thu Jun 8 18:40:56 UTC 2006

On 6/8/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Social activity on Wikipedia is more than just "socializing", in my
> experience. I spent most of my day-to-day time on Wikipedia either
> reverting vandalism or explaining to people why certain edits are
> better than others. A quick look at my own contributions shows that
> out of the last 50 edits, around 80% were to talk namespaces.

I'm very hesitant to apply basic statistics to trying to work out what
sort of editor someone is. Someone with a very low absolute number of
article edits (eg, <200), though, is worth a question mark if they
have a high absolute number of talkspace edits.

> Part of this involved fostering creative collaborations with others,
> getting others on-board with ideas, answering questions, etc. In the
> end all of this does have an effect on article content, but not
> necessarily a direct one.

Definitely.

> Wikipedia content is decided by a lot of back-and-forth between users.
> Any time you have lots of communication, disagreement, contestation,
> etc. between human beings you need a lot of social lubricant. You need
> ways to identify others, you need things to put around your head that
> says, "I know about this, I define myself as this, I am a real person
> and not just some name on a screen, and you should treat me that way."

Fwiw, I don't really do that. I tend to just get on the job and be
nice to people because it gets the job done better. I can only think
of about three or four people that I've made any effort to consider
"the person behind the screen", and one wasn't by choice! The others
are basically photographers - I was curious what sort of people make
the effort to take photos for WP.

So, social lubricant in the "be nice to people" way, yes. In the
"what's your name, neigbour", not necessarily (for me).

> I've nothing against that at all. I don't see any great reason to try
> and root it out. If there are a few freeloaders who are just in it for
> "social" reasons, so be it. As long as they aren't using their
> userspace for anything directly nefarious, then who cares? My time --
> and I assume the time of others -- is better served continuing my own
> business than it is getting into the business of others.

The main complaints are against people who just enjoy arguing, and
they get good value for money here.

> I'm admittedly non-interventionist here. I think it is easier and more
> pragmatic tolerate mild misuse and annoyance than to waste time trying
> to make everyone into ideal Wikipedians. As they say, if it ain't
> (really) broke, don't fix it.

There are ways of shaping a community to get more of the people you
want, and less of those you don't. Ease of access is a classic one -
make it complicated to get in, you end up with smart people. Define
firm but complicated rules, you'll get rules lawers and game players.
Promise everyone that their opinions are equally valid - you'll get
frustrated academics. (for example)

Steve