[WikiEN-l] Googley comments

[Samuel Klein]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 6:28 AM, Charles
Matthews<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> But I imagine this kind of proposal is fairly common:
>>
>> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13573
>>
> The introduction of Talk pages was, it should not be forgotten, one of
> the most brilliant innovations of the early days of Wikipedia. The idea
> that the Talk page is specifically for discussions aimed at improving
> the article in its current state is actually a pillar of how we work.
> Feedback of the "like it/hate it" kind (which is what voting would be)
> cuts across all that: I think that is obvious based on experience of how
> people (readers - most of the world doesn't edit) react to articles. A
> single annoying aspect is likely to get negative votes, and whether
> voting is commented or not, there are going to be problems.
>
> So before some strategy genius decides that whole namespace is for
> something other than its traditional role, I think there should be a
> pause for reflection. Perhaps there could be a way of encouraging
> comments which were general (not specific to an existing thread or
> starting a new topic), and simply filed in a dedicated "general comment"
> archive, running in parallel with the traditional slug-it-out
> editing-related comments.

+1   That would be handy.  Many talk page comments today would better
fit into that sort of 'general comment' archive -- having a place to
organize each would help improve relations with casual commenters as
well (who often get ignored, or brushed aside with a comment that it's
been mentioned previously... which isn't such a great reason to
proscribe new comments).

Sj