On Apr 9, 2007, at 12:21 PM, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
On 4/9/07, Philip Sandifer sandifer@english.ufl.edu wrote:
So what can we do? What can we put into place that facilitates this sort of local engagement?
Work through the relevant WikiProjects more? There's a certain element of disdain for them -- "I don't want to talk to WikiProject X because they're all fanboys/POV pushers/people violating OWN/etc." -- that needs to be done away with; but they're an existing infrastructure for interacting with editors that work primarily in a particular subject area without getting involved in the Wikipedia-wide bureaucracy.
I agree - the WikiProjects were always, at their best, intended to provide exactly this sort of vehicle. They've also long been tied down in a tricky way - on the one hand, we don't want to give them the leeway to create their own policy, or else we get something like, as David called it, WikiProject AfD. On the other hand, we need to empower them at least somewhat.
It occurs to me that this is, in practice, exactly what CZ's system of editors does. It empowers certain trusted individuals to have certain amounts of control in certain subject areas, thus functionally creating micropolicy in certain subject areas. Obviously we don't want to go CZ's route of credentialism, but there may be something we can use here.
-Phil