Angela wrote: I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating experience I have. My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few are interested in. It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback. I doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your grammar, let alone improve something. Peer review is fairly close to a waste, GA doesn't really review much of anything, and FAC is the only place I've ever gotten decent feedback from a group, and that's not what FAC is for. Extremely frustrating. I don't know the answer to this, by the way, but if anyone's had any better luck, I'd love to hear it. -Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: Yeah, I tend to be in obscure places too. Mostly because I start articles when I see redlinks, so by definition if no one has created an article in the 5+ years that Wikipedia has been going, it's going to be fairly obscure. Yeah, there are a few peer review systems and they don't seem to operate well. Peer review for featured picture is another one. Yeah, GA almost overnight turned from something useful into something as bureaucratic as FA. Ultimately I guess feedback comes from large numbers of people stumbling upon an article, and a lot more people pass through FAC than other processes. Often I don't even want proofing or feedback or whatever - but just the occasional recognition that all the stubs or shortish articles I've written are worth something. Or maybe I'm just gripey at people who award dozens of barnstars for having a nice userpage while other more constructive contributions get overlooked. Steve

On 1/24/07, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: I recall saying this before in a prior thread, too, and it didn't prompt anyone to show up and help with the subject matter, either. ;-) -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 25/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else they help give an idea of what's still out there. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Guettarda wrote: I just added about 20 to my userpage this morning. Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

On 1/25/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hey, I've learned about two great places to go to find things to do just today on the mailing list... Demoralizing if you think we're already complete. Invigorating if you think there's a lot more to be done and want to do it 8-) -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 26/01/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: As an aside, this is the other use for redlink farms - they're a really good way to find places to put sensible redirects. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

I get feedback on my new articles by posting a request in the edit summary. This way my stalkers know I've posted something new, go to it, and beautify it for me. It works well for me, as I'm spelling-challenged (I swear I use my word processor and spell check before posting, it doesn't help) and couldn't format a picture if my life depended upon it. Also I'm code-challenged (although I once wrote an operating system and can debug anyone else's code). People correct my formats, format my articles, add details where necessary. lately but being contentious in AfD. Time to move back to the sciences, and FACs. It does help to join a Wiki project, though, that's how you get personal stalkers who know you're likely to use turgid prose that should be corrected even when you don't make a spelling error. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brown_algae&diff=prev&old… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Don%27t_stuff_beans_up_… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silas_Kopf&diff=prev&oldi… KP

On 1/28/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: It doesn't need a project; one sufficiently motivated individual can populate a matrix of needed stubs rapidly by hand, for n up to 100 or so. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 1/29/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ah, yes, this is true to an extent. WikiProjects are definitely better than nothing. Their two weaknesses are their self-inflicted lack of teeth (that obsequiously inoffensive nonsense "We're just a bunch of people who came up with some ideas that we would love you to just ignore, thanks!") and the lack of a meta-WikiProject. That is, WikiProjects are self-declared managers of a particular domain. But who manages the WikiProjects? Who decides "Our coverage of Iranian dung beetles is inadequate, let's fix that?" Also, where is it written that all WikiProjects should obey a couple of defined conventions? And what happens to articles that aren't covered by any WikiProject at all? I have a feeling that the Wikipedia 1.0 project is supposed to answer some of these questions but I haven't heard from them much lately. Probably because they're actually getting on and doing good work rather than being noisy and annoying like AfD. :) Is this true? Is W1.0 doing what I described? Steve

On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yeah, that's true actually. On a slight sidetrack, I've also started to notice that while we have many articles about individual products in certain categories (cameras and phones, for example), in non-geeky fields such articles are often quickly designated "spam". This may be fair enough, if we think about sales volume, but I'm going to pay closer attention and see if it's actually reasonable. In IT as well...our articles on stuff like data warehousing, business intelligence, database design etc are pretty rudimentary and not very well organised. Even someone sitting down with a first year textbook and getting some basic, even coverage would be a great help. As opposed to the very evident biases (often just caused by particular interests of contributors) causing lopsided coverage atm. Steve

On 1/24/07, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: Not before it was merged with a somewhat unrelated idea, about what to do if you don't know a relevant piece of information. This touches on a basic contradiction that we haven't really come to terms with -- on the one hand, this is an open collaboration, intended to let people see when something is unfinished, help them verify its accuracy, and quickly contribute what they know. On the other hand, many want the project to "look professional", to have a certain polish, to be respected as a brilliant resource. It would be awfully nice if there were some simple differentiation in skin that could distinguish articles at different stages of development, so that leaving questions and unfinished statements in an article would not be unexpected or 'unprofessional' in an article written on lightly crumpled recycled paper; and unfinished ideas would not be unespected on some slightly grenapkin paper... ++SJ

On 1/24/07, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: More evidence of Wikipedia's inexorably tendency towards lameness. It may be getting better, but also more tediously humorless and bureaucratic. So goes the world...