Garion1000 wrote:
On 6/22/06, Cobb wrote:
In summary, the system is broken. But you won't get any sense on this mailing list, because most of the people here don't actually edit Wikipedia these days. They just pontificate and have faith in some mystical power of the Wiki.
Excuse me? I know editcount doesn't mean everything. But I would hate counting the editcount of regular posters on this mailing list. Even if only counting (main) edits.
"These days".
Some of the pontificators here should throw themselves back into editing from a newbie's point of view. Pick some craphole area of Wikipedia and try editing, and imagine that you don't know anyone else... don't have tame admin buddies to call on. Imagine facing up to a group of editors who know the ins and outs of the process and how to game it. It might wake some people up.
Regarding my point about AFD... which seems to be misunderstood by Jesse W.
The Wikipedia AFD process is complicated and crufty. Putting an article up for AFD should be easy as adding {{afd|reason}} (don't make technical arguments in response to this. I'm just telling you how it should work). Putting something up for deletion should be almost as easy as creating a new page. Currently the AFD process is obscure and technical. It doesn't help that there are inclusionist editors who seem to want to make it as unintuitive as possible and keep it that way, and frustrate any attempts to change it. Pure wiki deletion might offer an improvement... but something tells me that it's going nowhere due to being too simple and easy to use.
JesseW wrote: Also, as I mentioned above, we have a number of areas that are well-patrolled by non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines, and editors who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave
the work of defending the articles against crazies to others.
And this is an argument against what? Some bits of Wikipedia aren't too bad, so that's ok.
Cobb wrote:
Garion1000 wrote:
On 6/22/06, Cobb wrote:
In summary, the system is broken. But you won't get any sense on this mailing list, because most of the people here don't actually edit Wikipedia these days. They just pontificate and have faith in some mystical power of the Wiki.
Excuse me? I know editcount doesn't mean everything. But I would hate counting the editcount of regular posters on this mailing list. Even if only counting (main) edits.
"These days".
Some of the pontificators here should throw themselves back into editing from a newbie's point of view. Pick some craphole area of Wikipedia and try editing, and imagine that you don't know anyone else... don't have tame admin buddies to call on. Imagine facing up to a group of editors who know the ins and outs of the process and how to game it. It might wake some people up.
I wonder how the people with "tame admin buddies" got that way? Not possibly from being Good Editors perhaps?
Regarding my point about AFD... which seems to be misunderstood by Jesse W.
The Wikipedia AFD process is complicated and crufty. Putting an article up for AFD should be easy as adding {{afd|reason}} (don't make technical arguments in response to this. I'm just telling you how it should work). Putting something up for deletion should be almost as easy as creating a new page.
It is. Stick {{prod|reason}} on it.
Currently the AFD process is obscure and technical. It doesn't help that there are inclusionist editors who seem to want to make it as unintuitive as possible and keep it that way, and frustrate any attempts to change it.
Calling someone an "inclusionist" or "deletionist" doesn't help. There are two reasons why:
- Inclusionists will inevitably vote "keep" for some bad articles, and have bad articles undeleted because the closing admin didn't listen to their whinging - Deletionists will inevitably vote "delete" for some good articles, and have good articles not undeleted because the closing admin didn't listen to their whinging
Pure wiki deletion might offer an improvement... but something tells me that it's going nowhere due to being too simple and easy to use.
Deletion is too hard in some cases and too easy in others. Short of putting deletion debates before a panel of experts, deletion will always get it wrong on occasion.
JesseW wrote: Also, as I mentioned above, we have a number of areas that are well-patrolled by non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines, and editors who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave the work of defending the articles against crazies to others.
And this is an argument against what? Some bits of Wikipedia aren't too bad, so that's ok.
Could you rephrase that so it's coherent?