In response to my suggestion,
A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while, say a day or two, and then delete the problematic text after the user had forgotten about the page.
Rick writes,
<sarcasm> Sure. People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted. </sarcasm>
In this case, that wasn't happening. Reality is always the winner.
One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to babysit their own text on a collaborative work.
SS
On Sunday 08 February 2004 02:09 pm, Sunir Shah wrote:
In response to my suggestion,
A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while, say a day or two, and then delete the problematic text after the user had forgotten about the page.
Rick writes,
<sarcasm> Sure. People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted. </sarcasm>
In this case, that wasn't happening. Reality is always the winner.
One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to babysit their own text on a collaborative work.
Lots of vandalism and copyright violations sneak past the RecentChanges patrol.
Characters whose single goal it is to insert their bias roam Wikipedia.
New additions of content are often accompanied by significant spelling or grammar mistakes.
Best, Sascha Noyes
On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 20:01:49 UTC, Sascha Noyes sascha@pantropy.net wrote:
On Sunday 08 February 2004 02:09 pm, Sunir Shah wrote:
...
One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to babysit their own text on a collaborative work.
Lots of vandalism and copyright violations sneak past the RecentChanges patrol.
Characters whose single goal it is to insert their bias roam Wikipedia.
New additions of content are often accompanied by significant spelling or grammar mistakes.
Quite true -- but in addition, how about good reasons that involve no actual wrong-doing on anyone's part? People do sometimes insert stuff that one doesn't consider up to par sometimes with the best of intentions. If other people never created sub-standard stuff, why would you ever make revisions on an existing piece? (Stubs and your own creations would be the only things you'd work on.) When I've put effort into a piece, I know more about it than I do about a Random Article, and probably more than does a random WIkipedia editor; and it's not _just_ ego that inspires me to keep track of whether improvements to it are actually improvements.
Although I, personally rarely use my Watchlist (I tend to use it only to go back to pages whose names I forget all the time), there are many people who have made mention here on the mailing list, that they found it virtually impossible to work with Wikipedia without their Watchlists. Perhaps they can shed some light on the why?
RickK
Sunir Shah sunir@sunir.org wrote: In response to my suggestion,
A cheaper solution would have been to wait a while, say a day or two, and then delete the problematic text after the user had forgotten about the page.
Rick writes,
Sure. People don't EVER use their Watchlists to make sure the garbage they put on a page didn't get deleted.
In this case, that wasn't happening. Reality is always the winner.
One might also first ask why a person feels compelled to babysit their own text on a collaborative work.
SS _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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RickK writes:
Although I, personally rarely use my Watchlist (I tend to use it only to go back to pages whose names I forget all the time), there are many people who have made mention here on the mailing list, that they found it virtually impossible to work with Wikipedia without their Watchlists. Perhaps they can shed some light on the why?
For me, personally:
1. Stuff on my watchlist (since I have my preferences set to put on the watchlist everything I edit) is the stuff I know about, and thus the stuff I'm knowledgable enough to detect vandalism on. 2. My watchlist tracks the articles I'm working on and in most cases those that need some work. If there's collaboration, one needs to keep track of the work of one's collaborators. 3. Talk pages only really work with watchlists, otherwise you never know when an issue has been raised or answered. 4. I'd rather the pages I've put effort into continue to improve. I don't get the idea that I should just cast my words out into the wild and never check back on them. I'm not invested in my personal text; I do care that my work not be 'undone' in the sense of the article becoming a worse, rather than better, treatment of the topic. I'd love my text replaced anywhere -- IF the replacement is better.
Probably a few more reasons too, and I'm sure others have their own reasons as well.
-Matt (User:Morven)
On Mon, 9 Feb 2004 10:38:50 UTC, "Matthew Brown" morven@byz.org wrote:
For me, personally:
- Stuff on my watchlist (since I have my preferences set to put on the
watchlist everything I edit) is the stuff I know about, and thus the stuff I'm knowledgable enough to detect vandalism on. 2... [other good reasons snipped]
What he said.
Also, there's the delight, when one has just created an article or expanded on a stub, in seeing that somebody has picked up on it within the hour, and made a real improvement. Makes a person feel good about Wikipedia.