On 4/9/07, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com 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.
WikiProjects have actually been pretty receptive (in my experience) to the guideline on in-universe perspective ([[WP:WAF]]). The only sustained opposition has been relatively tangential issues like plot summaries and succession boxes for fictional entities. Many of the articles I tag with {{in-universe}} get cleaned up, and most others just sit around for lack of active editing but don't incite fanboy opposition.
I think a more concerted effort to have policy wonks assess topic-specific problems and make suggestions to WikiProjects (or on the talk pages of central articles, for when there is no WikiProject) could be pretty successful. As long as it's done with wikilove (or at least a veneer of it), it shouldn't cause too much culture shock.
-Sage