On 3/7/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm sick and tired of people misunderstanding what an "administrator" of Wikipedia is. It was a misnomer to begin with, and we've had nothing but trouble with this name ever since. Users misunderstand it (and ask admins to make editorial decisions). Media misunderstand it (and either do not explain it, or connect it to power and influence). And it's no wonder. "Administrator" could refer to a manager, or someone appointed by a court; it typically describes someone in an important official position.
I think this is a case of techies never stopping to worry about what things are named.
"Administrator" is a piece of Wikipedia in-jargon. The only reason we don't notice it is that it is also a piece of computer-related technical jargon.
In an IT context, everybody understands that a computer's "administrator" is something like a bus driver: someone who has the ignition key and the technical capability to drive the bus. In a sense he controls where the bus goes in a trivial way (lane changes) or even a not-so-trivial-way (staying on a bridge or driving over the side into a river), but he doesn't decide the schedule or the route or what color the bus should be painted.
I'm not sure why techies use a word that usually means "manager of other humans" to mean "operator of a machine;" perhaps it's a handy analogy or perhaps it involves anthropomorphizing the machine.
Another example is "edit" and "editor." To a techie, an "editor" means something like Notepad. To "edit" means "to perform the technical task of changing a piece of text." An editor _really_ means a bit of software, not a person, although by extension it can mean a human being when he is using an editor... much as, circa 1900, the people who sat at the keyboard of an L. C. Smith circa 1900 were called "typewriters."
When we say "edit this page," all we mean is "you have the technical capability of making a momentary change in what's on this page. There's no guarantee it will stay that way for more than thirty seconds."
To an average person, an editor is someone who supervises publication... a person who gets to _decide+ what's going to be on the page and have it stick. A person with a fairly high management or (well) administrative position.
If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite different from "I edit Wikipedia."
On 3/11/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite different from "I edit Wikipedia."
Exactly. However, if the Wall Street Journal writes "Daniel Smith is a Wikipedia editor", what do you think it means? What do you think they mean? How do you think most people interpret it?
Rename "editors" to "writers" or "contributors".
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/11/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite different from "I edit Wikipedia."
Exactly. However, if the Wall Street Journal writes "Daniel Smith is a Wikipedia editor", what do you think it means? What do you think they mean? How do you think most people interpret it?
Rename "editors" to "writers" or "contributors".
Any renaming we do is unlikely to affect the practices of the Wall Street Journal.
Ec
On 3/12/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/11/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite different from "I edit Wikipedia."
Exactly. However, if the Wall Street Journal writes "Daniel Smith is a Wikipedia editor", what do you think it means? What do you think they mean? How do you think most people interpret it?
Rename "editors" to "writers" or "contributors".
Any renaming we do is unlikely to affect the practices of the Wall Street Journal.
Ec
So if we refer to our article writers as writers instead of editors, the WSJ will continue calling them editors? I have my doubts.
Johnleemk
On 12/03/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/12/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/11/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite different from "I edit Wikipedia."
Exactly. However, if the Wall Street Journal writes "Daniel Smith is a Wikipedia editor", what do you think it means? What do you think they mean? How do you think most people interpret it? Rename "editors" to "writers" or "contributors".
Any renaming we do is unlikely to affect the practices of the Wall Street Journal.
So if we refer to our article writers as writers instead of editors, the WSJ will continue calling them editors? I have my doubts.
I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right word for what they do.
- d.
On 3/13/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right word for what they do.
Disagree. Publications have editors and writers (and possibly subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be much truer to say we have writers, but no editors.
Steve
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be
Ugh, I'm tired. I meant, "If you say that we are all editors, then who are the writers?"
Steve
On 12/03/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be
Ugh, I'm tired. I meant, "If you say that we are all editors, then who are the writers?"
Do we really have regular contributors writers who do no editing/subediting at all? A few maybe. Not many.
In any case, "editor" is IMO the right word for what most people do on Wikipedia most of the time.
- d.
On 3/12/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/03/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be
Ugh, I'm tired. I meant, "If you say that we are all editors, then who are the writers?"
Do we really have regular contributors writers who do no editing/subediting at all? A few maybe. Not many.
In any case, "editor" is IMO the right word for what most people do on Wikipedia most of the time.
- d.
IIRC, there is a difference between an editor and a subeditor or copyeditor. It's one thing to make minor changes to text; it's another to approve ideas for articles and suggest major changes. Traditionally in the print world, the former is the role of the copyeditor, while the latter is the role of the editor, isn't it?
Johnleemk
On 12/03/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
IIRC, there is a difference between an editor and a subeditor or copyeditor. It's one thing to make minor changes to text; it's another to approve ideas for articles and suggest major changes. Traditionally in the print world, the former is the role of the copyeditor, while the latter is the role of the editor, isn't it?
Johnleemk
Indeed there is a difference between those two. But on Wikipedia the border between the two is blurry most of the time. Sometimes on subjects that don't really interest me personally, or when I don't have enough time to write something bigger, I'll just copyedit an article. Other times when time isn't an restricting issue I will write new paragraphs and such things which are more in the realm of a "real editor". So while people sometimes behave as copyeditors, subeditors and/or editors, the thing they all have in common is the editing.
So I think editor is a perfectly fine name for the thing we do.
Regards, Christof Sperl a.k.a. Aetherfukz
On 3/13/07, Christof Sperl christof.sperl@gmail.com wrote:
So I think editor is a perfectly fine name for the thing we do.
If I tell you about a friend who is a writer for thiscoolmagazine.com, what assumptions do you make? Is he paid? Does he have any responsibility? Does he report to someone? What if I said he was an editor? Would your assumptions be different?
Anyway, I think I've made my point - I'll leave it there.
Steve
On 3/13/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Do we really have regular contributors writers who do no editing/subediting at all? A few maybe. Not many.
In any case, "editor" is IMO the right word for what most people do on Wikipedia most of the time.
In a book or newspaper, the editor has the final word. No Wikipedia *ever* has the final word. From a functional perspective, "real" editors and Wikipedia editors are similar. From an authority perspective, they're vastly different. And it's the authority side that is misreported all the time in newspapers.
Steve
On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
No Wikipedia[n] *ever* has the final word.
Not even Jimbo "800 pound gorilla" Wales?
Seriously though, "office actions" seem to come the closest to the "final word", at least for a long time.
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right word for what they do.
Disagree. Publications have editors and writers (and possibly subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be much truer to say we have writers, but no editors.
Radical solution: Let then be called whatever they want to be called, and WSJ can use whatever term it wants.
Ec
On 3/13/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 3/13/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right word for what they do.
Disagree. Publications have editors and writers (and possibly subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be much truer to say we have writers, but no editors.
Radical solution: Let then be called whatever they want to be called, and WSJ can use whatever term it wants.
Ec
Jimbo, et al would still have to pick a term to use when explaining WP to the press. Our policy/guideline/etc. pages would also have to decide on one term. As nice as this idea sounds, I don't think it's very practical.
Johnleemk
On 12/03/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Jimbo, et al would still have to pick a term to use when explaining WP to the press. Our policy/guideline/etc. pages would also have to decide on one term. As nice as this idea sounds, I don't think it's very practical.
I have no trouble explaining it. "We have 1000 administrators on the English Wikipedia. They're like message board moderators - they're not senior editors, they do nuts-and-bolts stuff like deletions, blocking vandals and so on."
They do the job the title reflects, it's just we have rather a lot of them ...
(And I know they frequently are 'senior' editors, or highly experienced ones ... please excuse the slight oversimplification.)
- d.