see below:
On 9 Aug 2004, at 09:09, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
Message: 7 Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 00:09:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephen Adair SWAdair@computermail.net Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Sub-stub city To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 20040809070901.92DFAE4B9@sitemail.everyone.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Thank you, Jens, for some very good advice.
No thank you! :-) You're the one who's been doing a lot of hard work in the trenches. :)
Specialization is needed for a project this large, but maybe I've been specializing too much. Maybe what I need is to branch out more, spending less time on New Pages and more time elsewhere. Calling all volunteers -- 20 minutes a day, New Pages wants --> YOU. :-)
I have just had a look at [[Wikipedia:New_pages_patrol]], thinking that maybe I could dig in for a bit. Reading through that page, I'm astonished at the "sign up for the new page patrol in 15-minute chunks" rule.
Is that /really/ required?
It seems seems to be a bar to (patrol duty) empty to me -- it's almost as if it was "too official" -- any new patrol volunteer (including me) will want to have a look at one or two new pages at a time and see how s/he is getting on. Then /maybe/ progress from there. Again, is this "signing off" really required? It seems to me that a decent flagging system (as Timwi is implementing) will obsolete that, and I would think that to be a huge step forward.
Any thoughts on that, anyone?
Frankly I'm amazed by all the thought given to this topic already, both pro and con. I agree with Timwi that a minimum byte count will not rule out someone holding down a key to make a really long test page, but I do think fewer people would do that. I think a significant percentage would stop testing when they realized "Oh, wow. It was actually about to create an article. The only reason it didn't was that what I wrote was too short." Maybe that's just me being naive, placing too much trust in the good intentions of others. Maybe not. I still think a (low) minimum byte count would reduce the overall maintenance load for new pages without driving away potential new contributors.
Oh, and I *love* the new Recent Changes Patrol feature Timwi is developing.
Yep. Good job, Timwi ! :-)
Anything that will reduce redundancy in maintenance is wonderful. Personally, I would pass on checking anything that had been reviewed by two admins. Sure, there is a wide range of opinions even among admins, but that would satisfy my criteria for trust.
Thank you, Stephen W. Adair
P.S. I had never encountered a word-wrap problem before. 'Sorry about the last e-mail. For this one I've been hitting "Enter" at the end of each line. I hope that improves readability.
Yea, weird one, that. (Luckily /my/ Mac OS X Mail hasn't got a problem with your emails -- it's happy to wrap them at the window border. ;-) Just curious: What email program are you using?
Thanks and regards, Jens Ropers
There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the ones who watch progress bars. http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683