Here here, I am often enthralled by folks in the "community" who seem to know what's best but rarely participate in helping the people they seek to help (newbies).
There's a lot of that though :) 80/20 rule ;)
This conversation motivated me to join back in at the Teahouse. But darn, people answer questions so quickly I'm not much help (yet) :)
-Sarah
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:53 PM, Emily Monroe emilymonroe03@gmail.com wrote:
On top of that, it seems that you, Pine, are very enthusiastic about directing people to #wikipedia-en-help, therefore increasing the burden on helpers, but you are often not a helper yourself.
From, Emily
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Sarah Stierch sarah.stierch@gmail.com wrote:
Cynicism can be a powerful tool. And you aren't the first person to tell a shitstarter like me that ;-)
But seriously - its challenging for all of us when I feel like our concerns aren't being considered. So take that as you will. We don't get emails from UX folks on this list anymore....I wish we did. I feel like WMF employees dropped off this list as contributors as staff (not volunteers like Kaldari and Swalling - they seem to write here more as volunteers than staff) after I lost my job and Sue left. I always feel like people forget there are a lot of changemakers and passionate people on this list.
We had to prove the need for the Teahouse with data. The community did not want us to Implement it without proof of need and data on how this type of project was able to change things. I do this daily with my job in grant writing and evaluation - I have to show proof that someone needs to spend money on whatever my nonprofit clients want.
So it's not cynicism in that regard - if we want to show "the community" and WMF that there is a problem and a change needs to occur and we have the data perhaps people will invest time and money in IRC and other things.
We need to prove that there is a demand for IRC help and that newbies are failing to get oriented with it. I know there are problems with it...but knowing is not proving.
Proof is in the pudding and we need some tasty pudding to get people to pay attention :)
Sarah
I On Aug 12, 2014 10:19 AM, "Pine W" wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Sarah, the cynicism in your comment is depressing and unnecessary. I don't think I can convince you of the value of incremental change so I'm not going to try.
Pine On Aug 12, 2014 7:49 AM, "Sarah Stierch" sarah.stierch@gmail.com wrote:
pine when you say "plenty' of people what does that constitute? Does anyone actually track how many needy people come into IRC - let alone those who can't pass the threshold of typing into the chat box?
Data is a way to convince people of the need or demand and to spend time investing in IRC. One reason why the Teahouse is so success is because people do not have to leave the wiki to find help. That's one no no in business...
I noticed that WMF staff are less interactive on this mailing list these days, for months actually.
So who knows if anyone with "influence" is paying attention to this.
Sarah On Aug 12, 2014 7:44 AM, "Emily Monroe" emilymonroe03@gmail.com wrote:
I often help out at en-help. Often, people who are new at IRC need to be told where to type. I would think this would qualify as "failing hard".
From, Emily
On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 6:45 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
That proposal could be considered in the long term, but right now we have plenty of people who seek and get help on IRC, and we can make incremental improvements to their experience faster than we can build a new tool from scratch. Few newbies fail hard at IRC. The basics are similar to texting and private instant messaging software. Let's improve the newbie user experience.
Pine On Aug 11, 2014 1:48 PM, "Nathan" nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
> Newbies are going to fail hard at IRC. Pretty much all of the > questions Seb > poses for a built-in newbie chat still exist with a built-in Freenode > interface, with the addition of a complicated and often difficult > (not to > mention culturally... unique) environment. Much better to think > along the > lines of the Teahouse, but live. You can jump into a chat queue, and > people > who want to help chat with you, and you can close the chat whenever > you > want, and you can't contact people outside of the queue using chat. > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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