On 08/10/2007, Gwern Branwen <gwern0(a)gmail.com> wrote:
You old-timers, cast your minds back to 2003/2004 (everyone who joined
after that, close your eyes and try to fake it).
You are reading an interesting or important article when something
suddenly strikes you as odd and untoward. Let's stipulate that you
read the entire article and you are yet unsatisfied. Being a good
Wikipedian, you consider correcting this apparent error - how could
the Battle of New Orleans have been the last battle of the War of 1812
when the treaty was signed long before it took place? shall be your
query, say. And being a good Wikipedian, you happened to notice that
the talk page was blue.
Now let's just pause a second. These days, why would anyone click on
the talk page link? Essentially every talk page has been created just
because of bots going around adding assessment tags and project
banners and all that bric-a-brac. People are slowly being trained to
ignore talk pages - the signal to noise ratio used to be 1/0, as talk
pages *always* had something a human had written. It might not be
relevant to your current question, it might be on an entirely
different issue (the exact number of casaulties as this old NY Times
copy handed down in my family claims 2 less than does this
Encyclopedia Britannica article, &etc..), but quite often it was quite
germane (Yo peeps leave the date alone, remember the crazy-ass
communication delays back then) or at least interesting.
I do think it'd be nice if the talk link showed up a different colour or
something for a recent post by an actual real human rather than a bot.
Actually many talk messages I've left recently haven't gotten responses,
even semi-controversial subjects on reasonably major topics. I really think
that back in 2004 they would have.
Perhaps I'm just getting too old and grouchy.
Of course, the truth is that talk pages have always been inefficient and
cumbersome, and really rather pathetic for disputes etc. However, it's not
like I have a suggestion for an alternative, and I doubt anyone else has! I
mean, in the wider world people are havign to put up with the social
difficulties arising from communication by email, SMS text message, etc. All
in all, a pretty pathetic way to communicate and express ones views and
emotions.
Zoney
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