There's sort of two components to this problem. There's the human behavior component, which is a super tough nut to crack. And then there is the institutional component; among the most common complaints about Wikipedia are its bureaucracy and the complexity of contributing. Solving the institutional, systems issue is complex... but a lot easier than getting people to act nicer. Take a look at the newest dispute noticeboard WP:DRN, or even arbitration enforcement, or SPI, etc. These are unimaginably complex for people new to Wikipedia, and only the starkest examples of a problem that also afflicts articles and article talkpages.

on 12/3/11 11:27 PM, Steve Bennett at stevagewp(a)gmail.com wrote: What is the Foundation doing to solve, or at least alleviate, the problem? Marc Riddell

On 4 December 2011 16:58, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Thanks, I hadn't seen that. That's very good coverage. The wiki model of content production makes no distinction between reader and editor. I think you're missing my point that the processes we're running on the wiki--not the content--are what the tool is unsuitable for.

On 12/04/11 1:10 PM, Will Beback wrote: Do we get anywhere when we approach a problem with such an attitude of defensiveness? Instead of trying to figure out why this happens so often, this response merely seeks to justify the status quo. Whether somebody is notable depends entirely on one's Point of View, yet the entire premise of the argument is the subject's notability. How is the subject any less notable than [[Cy Vorhees]]? Ec

On 5 December 2011 09:52, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: <snip> I don't know. Will's comment seems to be empirically accurate. It's an ad hominem argument (as yours is); and ad hominem is sometimes a fallacy. We do tend to hear in the blogosphere about the cases where someone is vested in some way in having Wikipedia cover something; we tend to hear on this list about the principle of the thing. Either way, I prefer analyses that start from premises that are the mission's own. AfD can get it wrong: I suppose that is common ground. "Notability" as a concept is broken, always has been, always will be (my view, not necessarily the majority view given the status given to the GNG by some). In some cases it is really not a big deal whether a topic is included or not: there obviously is a level at which quite a number of reasonable people are pretty much indifferent to the outcome. The same people would not, presumably, be indifferent to the decision not being by "due process". There is an appeal against AfD's process aspect. Anyone can navigate there. I think we first need to analyse whether this is a "manual page" problem or a "complaint procedure" problem. (Actually I'm going to put in a plug for "How Wikipedia Works" at this point: look in the index under "deletion", "deletion review" is on p. 226 and the page tells you what to do. If the guy really wanted to impress his colleague he could have done that.) If he'd mailed OTRS and got an unhelpful answer, I really would worry. Look, the whole point of HWW or any other serious explanation about how we got this far that people are so bothered about our content is that you have to admit that: (a) the system does work, and is fit for the main purpose for which it was set up (contra Tony's view); and (b) it's complicated. There are no doubt people out there, in millions, who don't realise that you probably can't have (a) without (b). You surely could have (a) if you had enough paid staff, a skyscraper full of them (well, maybe 5000 graduates); and if you paid yet more you could give an impression that (b) didn't apply. The service would not be free at the point of use unless a large charitable foundation was picking up the bill. The complication in (b) is to do with decentralisation: multiple processes running in different places, as the only solution that is known to scale. I can quite see why people do think Wikipedia "Byzantine", which is the basic message of what we are talking about. Probably trainee medics curse the immune system as unreasonably complicated. The metaphor doesn't seem to me either too defensive or too stretched. I think we should bear in mind that more and better written "manual pages" would only work better if people had the basic humility to read instructions, at least in the context of complex systems they don't understand. Charles

On 6/12/2011 4:02 a.m., Fred Bauder wrote: WP may on occasion be an unfriendly experience but it is far from closed. The ease of being able to make edits is well known, which is why we are continually getting rid of spam, vandalism, non-notable info, and trying to maintain balance within articles. But on the other hand, as Fred points out, it is hard editing WP since it has become a complex, bureaucratic behemoth. That is not a criticism - in order to develop and improve the project we need all manner of policy, guidelines, MOS, etc and we have to interact with other editors (of varying expertise about wikis and about the subject material). Alan

Its also the case that even our complex systems are not easy to navigate and that the wiki system can be very confusing for new users beyond just the complexity of our bureaucracy. In the example that sparked this conversation, the new editor struggled to understand the difference between deletion review and requests for undulation. There are good reasons for both these pages - but even their staunchest defenders would have to concede that these pages are hardly a model of clarity and design. We could probably help the situation a lot by putting in some effort to improve the user experience of our bureaucracy and thinking about how each "wikipedia" page appears to new editors and attempting to make them simpler to grasp - without changing any of our underlying policies. -- Alasdair On Monday, 5 December 2011 at 23:08, Nathan wrote:

Our own internal discussions have long reflected on the unfriendliness and undue bureaucracy of Wikipedia. Generally we're good at the trade-off but if we start claiming with a straight face that it's benign rather than a necessary evil we'll have lost something important. While the complainant here might not have prevailed on the merits, his complaints about the spikiness of the interface were legitimate and should not have been met with defensive comments that sought to reflect the criticism back onto him.