I'm also concerned about gaps in coverage. To an extent we have some
protection built in from the time zone differences and world-wide
distribution of editors in enWP, but there are times of the day (or
week) when problems tend to accumulate, times when there may be
nobody watching AN/I, times when newpages is not being watched as
carefully,certainly times when there aren't enough people looking at
recent changes --which goes so fast that it needs constant attention
to be effective-- and although I try to focus a little attention on
this & I know others do, it would be good to have some sort of regular
schedule for this.
On 10/15/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote:
Hmmm... For people who feel like they have no idea what the hell I'm
talking about -- a legitimate feeling, I'm sure -- let me take another
swing at explaining. With pictures of actual chore wheels, even.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
I don't believe I'm alone
in saying I would react with disinterest (or even umbrage) to
anybody's "you do this" list, whether it's hand-delivered or not.[1]
"Hobbyist" is, after all, a more comforting identity than
"uncompensated laborer".
Right. And what I'm thinking about building would not include anybody
getting bossed around. It's entirely voluntary -- just a different sort
of voluntary.
The notion is that there would be a list of task categories. Things like:
* Patrol new edits.
* Participate in AfD
* Clean up articles marked for cleanup.
* Categorize pages lacking categories.
* Create requested articles.
* Merge articles to be merged.
* Etc, etc, etc
Then I can declare that I want to put time in on particular tasks. I'd
do this because I think *somebody* should do more of it, and that
somebody might as well be me. E.g., I can say "I aim to spend an hour a
week either cleaning up articles or patrolling new edits."
Then, once a week, ChoreBot says, "It's time! Fewer people have signed
up for cleaning up articles and there's a big backlog, so why don't you
do an hour of that?"
And then maybe when I'm done, I tell ChoreBot. So that way it can keep
some nice statistics that a) show off that I'm doing a mildly unpleasant
task, and b) show me that others are doing it too, so I don't feel like
one guy trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
Really, I'm just looking to capture the spirit of a chore wheel. Which I
thought was a universal concept, but if it doesn't have a Wikipedia
entry, perhaps I should explain. They look like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinaphotos6/450415330/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelbylee/1059314867/
http://www.mommarama.com/essay/chorewheel.html
The notion is that there are a bunch of things nobody wants to do, but
are necessary for a tidy household. So you find a fair way to divide up
the responsibility, and you all commit to doing something on a regular
basis.
The problem it solves is that otherwise the person with the highest
standards does all the cleaning. Because they always notice the mess
first, you see. And this goes on until they burn out, freak out, and
shout at everybody for being utterly lazy bastards with no regard for
anyone. Which makes things better for about a week, and then you're back
to the neat guy doing all the cleaning again.
Of course, that never, ever happens here, but I'm thinking just in case,
ChoreBot (or perhaps ChoreWheelBot) might be a good idea.
William
--
William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri
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