Does anyone know of a central location for article content queries and requests? I'm not necessarily talking about emergency fixes or vandalism, but more subtle problems about content that may need discussion but where it can be difficult to find people willing to tackle the request. The reason I'm looking for something like this can be seen in the discussion here (static page version):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Reques...
The article talk page is almost certainly the first place to go, followed by additional notes to the article editors and in other locations in case no-one is watching the article. But even then, it would be nice to have a location where such requests can be posted (or automatically listed) to draw more attention to them and to allow people to help answer them (similar to how the edit request template works).
Would something like that have any chance of being useful?
Carcharoth
Wasn't this part of what the Content noticeboard was intended for? < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_noticeboard%3E
--Ed
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 2:08 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
Does anyone know of a central location for article content queries and requests? I'm not necessarily talking about emergency fixes or vandalism, but more subtle problems about content that may need discussion but where it can be difficult to find people willing to tackle the request. The reason I'm looking for something like this can be seen in the discussion here (static page version):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Reques...
The article talk page is almost certainly the first place to go, followed by additional notes to the article editors and in other locations in case no-one is watching the article. But even then, it would be nice to have a location where such requests can be posted (or automatically listed) to draw more attention to them and to allow people to help answer them (similar to how the edit request template works).
Would something like that have any chance of being useful?
Carcharoth
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Not really sure, the noticeboard as I know it was used for dispute resolution a bit and was depreceated back last year due to inactivity. Help desk maybe? Steven Zhang
On 03/07/2012, at 1:13 AM, Eddie Erhart the.ed17@gmail.com wrote:
Wasn't this part of what the Content noticeboard was intended for? < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_noticeboard%3E
--Ed
On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 2:08 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
Does anyone know of a central location for article content queries and requests? I'm not necessarily talking about emergency fixes or vandalism, but more subtle problems about content that may need discussion but where it can be difficult to find people willing to tackle the request. The reason I'm looking for something like this can be seen in the discussion here (static page version):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Reques...
The article talk page is almost certainly the first place to go, followed by additional notes to the article editors and in other locations in case no-one is watching the article. But even then, it would be nice to have a location where such requests can be posted (or automatically listed) to draw more attention to them and to allow people to help answer them (similar to how the edit request template works).
Would something like that have any chance of being useful?
Carcharoth
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Does anyone know of a central location for article content queries and requests?
That would have been Wikipedia:Content noticeboard However, hardly anyone used it or monitored it, so it was a neglected corner. We need central places which are used and monitored even if the stuff on them is not finely differentiated. If it is brought back it would need to be more effective.
Fred
On 3 July 2012 12:27, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
That would have been Wikipedia:Content noticeboard However, hardly anyone used it or monitored it, so it was a neglected corner. We need central places which are used and monitored even if the stuff on them is not finely differentiated. If it is brought back it would need to be more effective.
This would have been the right place for corporate editors too. Looks like the bottleneck is people who care enough to watch it.
- d.
On 3 July 2012 12:27, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
That would have been Wikipedia:Content noticeboard However, hardly anyone used it or monitored it, so it was a neglected corner. We need central places which are used and monitored even if the stuff on them is not finely differentiated. If it is brought back it would need to be more effective.
This would have been the right place for corporate editors too. Looks like the bottleneck is people who care enough to watch it.
- d.
I think we are experiencing a decrease in volunteer activity; there are ways of measuring that of course, but it is particularly noticeable in editing. Consolidating the areas of focus would probably improve our responsiveness. It is possible the title of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard should include the word content to clarify its purpose. Also, often a content issue is not a dispute, just a request to improve content.
Fred
On 3 July 2012 08:08, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
The article talk page is almost certainly the first place to go, followed by additional notes to the article editors and in other locations in case no-one is watching the article. But even then, it would be nice to have a location where such requests can be posted (or automatically listed) to draw more attention to them and to allow people to help answer them (similar to how the edit request template works).
Would something like that have any chance of being useful?
There is the RfC mechanism for attracting attention, but that tends to imply a level of "importance", or of it being a contentious issue, that I'm not sure you're wanting here. Ditto the smaller-scale third-opinion system.
As Kudpung notes, it'd be lovely if we had some kind of issue-tracking system, but in practice we probably don't have the number of people needed to handle that...
On 03/07/2012, at 5:01 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 3 July 2012 08:08, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
As Kudpung notes, it'd be lovely if we had some kind of issue-tracking system, but in practice we probably don't have the number of people needed to handle that...
You mean like an OTRS system or a robot or something?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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Steven Zhang
On 03/07/2012, at 5:01 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
On 3 July 2012 08:08, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
As Kudpung notes, it'd be lovely if we had some kind of issue-tracking system, but in practice we probably don't have the number of people needed to handle that...
You mean like an OTRS system or a robot or something?
I suppose there is some obscure section of OTRS that does that already. Not that even someone who has OTRS access could find the stovepipe.
Fred
On 3 July 2012 13:11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
I suppose there is some obscure section of OTRS that does that already. Not that even someone who has OTRS access could find the stovepipe.
I thought there was a boilerplate response on content issues (other than legal or BLP) that said "so fix it".
- d.
On 7/3/12, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 July 2012 13:11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
I suppose there is some obscure section of OTRS that does that already. Not that even someone who has OTRS access could find the stovepipe.
I thought there was a boilerplate response on content issues (other than legal or BLP) that said "so fix it".
That is encountered on-wiki as well. As I said in the on-wiki discussion, when looking things up on Wikipedia, I notice more things that could be corrected than I have time to deal with, but (sometimes) have enough time to jot a note down. Maybe something like twitter? Notes of less than 140 characters, with pointers towards possible work to do on an article?
Sometimes I get round to it later myself, one example was:
"Paul Fischer: Add Paul Henri Fischer to dab page."
A note I left for myself on 13/01/2012 while looking up something on this person, which led to this edit four days later (when I found time to get back to this):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Fischer&diff=471800198&am...
Admittedly, that is an example where it is quicker to do the edit than make a note about it. But there are other examples where a note can be jotted down to be looked at later at leisure. Are there public notepad facilities available? I suppose I could just continue jotting notes down, dealing with simple stuff myself (per sofixit), and transferring notes on more complicated stuff to a page in my userspace to ask others about.
Carcharoth
On 3 July 2012 13:11, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
I suppose there is some obscure section of OTRS that does that already. Not that even someone who has OTRS access could find the stovepipe.
OTRS could be set up to work in this way, as a tracking system for reported problems, but it's not currently used for it. Likewise, we could use Bugzilla. Neither of these would be a very *useful* tool for it, though! ;-)
We have a surprising number of ways of tracking issues in articles. To name all the ones I can think of in a few minutes...
1) Tags inside the article 2) Tags on the talkpage 3) Comments on the talkpage 4) Discussions on related pages 5) Central maintenance reports 6) Individual to-do lists 7) Project to-do lists 8) OTRS correspondence 9) Bugzilla 10) AFT comments
Some of these generate logs (ie categories or OTRS queues), some don't. None of them talk to each other very well; it's quite possible that a given article could have different problems flagged in different places. Very few of them have a clear mechanism for marking as resolved, and so can remain as open tasks long after the issue is resolved - we've discussed the problem of "tag lag" before. All of these make our to-do worklists unfriendly, disorienting, and somewhat unpleasant to use.
It is possible to imagine a workflow management system which absorbed several of these mechanisms, to provide a centralised list of all open issues and manage the relationship between articles and problems.
("This page is [[John Smith]]. The following issues are currently open: * the page is marked for cleanup; * it needs a photograph; * there is an ongoing RFC about the scope of the article on talk; * there is a related move discussion at X; * it is in the death anomalies report; * 3 users have marked it for followup; * it is on a cleanup list at WikiProject Biography; * there is an OTRS ticket at Y; * there are two unresolved AFT comments pending")
...but, the sheer scale of the number of articles and the relatively limited number of users suggest that any such system would be fairly ineffective. It's an awful lot of bureaucratic overhead, especially for something that is fundamentally still a wiki and continually under change!
Most articles belong to a Wikiproject (or can be given to one with a little tagging), and if a wikiproject is even semiactive it will have people with specialist knowledge. So I'd suggest if you need help on an article, post a query on the relevant WikiProject page. And if there isn't a Wikiproject tag already on the talkpage feel free to add one that seems relevant.
Alternatively put a query on the talkpages of people who've edited the article or relevant related ones.
SoFixIt doesn't always work, sometimes it helps to seek out experts, but in my experience such people appreciate a query that is relevant to their expertise. That's why IMHO the content noticeboard and similar overcentralised mechanisms won't work.
Patience also helps, not every expert will be here every month.
WSC
On 3 July 2012 08:08, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
Does anyone know of a central location for article content queries and requests? I'm not necessarily talking about emergency fixes or vandalism, but more subtle problems about content that may need discussion but where it can be difficult to find people willing to tackle the request. The reason I'm looking for something like this can be seen in the discussion here (static page version):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Editor_assistance/Reques...
The article talk page is almost certainly the first place to go, followed by additional notes to the article editors and in other locations in case no-one is watching the article. But even then, it would be nice to have a location where such requests can be posted (or automatically listed) to draw more attention to them and to allow people to help answer them (similar to how the edit request template works).
Would something like that have any chance of being useful?
Carcharoth
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 7/3/12, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
Most articles belong to a Wikiproject (or can be given to one with a little tagging), and if a wikiproject is even semiactive it will have people with specialist knowledge. So I'd suggest if you need help on an article, post a query on the relevant WikiProject page. And if there isn't a Wikiproject tag already on the talkpage feel free to add one that seems relevant.
In the case of Georg Andreas Böckler I asked the article creator (only two edits here in 2011 and none in 2012, probably more active on the Dutch Wikipedia, where I may try and contact them). I could also ask on the German Wikipedia. I have (only recently) asked on the WikiProject Biography page, but am a bit stuck as to what other WikiProjects to ask at (History of Science? Architecture?).
Alternatively put a query on the talkpages of people who've edited the article or relevant related ones.
Hadn't thought of the 'relevant related ones' approach.
SoFixIt doesn't always work, sometimes it helps to seek out experts, but in my experience such people appreciate a query that is relevant to their expertise. That's why IMHO the content noticeboard and similar overcentralised mechanisms won't work.
Patience also helps, not every expert will be here every month.
Good point. Patience *is* a virtue. :-)
Carcharoth
As long as the query is relevant to the Wiiproject I don't see a problem in asking more than one Wikiproject.
Another method I use for non-obvious things is to put a note at the top of my guestbook - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/guestbookWhich reminds me, I need to refresh that list as there is currently only one task available.
WSC
On 3 July 2012 14:14, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On 7/3/12, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
Most articles belong to a Wikiproject (or can be given to one with a
little
tagging), and if a wikiproject is even semiactive it will have people
with
specialist knowledge. So I'd suggest if you need help on an article,
post a
query on the relevant WikiProject page. And if there isn't a Wikiproject tag already on the talkpage feel free to add one that seems relevant.
In the case of Georg Andreas Böckler I asked the article creator (only two edits here in 2011 and none in 2012, probably more active on the Dutch Wikipedia, where I may try and contact them). I could also ask on the German Wikipedia. I have (only recently) asked on the WikiProject Biography page, but am a bit stuck as to what other WikiProjects to ask at (History of Science? Architecture?).
Alternatively put a query on the talkpages of people who've edited the article or relevant related ones.
Hadn't thought of the 'relevant related ones' approach.
SoFixIt doesn't always work, sometimes it helps to seek out experts, but
in
my experience such people appreciate a query that is relevant to their expertise. That's why IMHO the content noticeboard and similar overcentralised mechanisms won't work.
Patience also helps, not every expert will be here every month.
Good point. Patience *is* a virtue. :-)
Carcharoth
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There has been some response now at the article talk page. It would be nice to know exactly what caused it, hopefully it was the WP:Biography note that drew more people towards this.
I have found a source from 1998 (i.e. pre-Wikipedia) that gives the 1617 and 1687 dates. So presumably there is some basis for that. Though possibly this is one of those cases where earlier scholarship was too precise, and later scholarship has made things vague again.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bizrAAAAMAAJ&q=B%C3%B6ckler+1687
That source is "The Mark J. Millard Architectural Collection: Northern European books, sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries".
"Comprised of nearly 750 volumes housed at the National Gallery of Art, the Millard Collection is one of the finest private collections of rare illustrated books and bound series of prints on European architecture, design, and topography. This series catalogues each of these beautiful and influential books, carefully describing and illustrating them."
That sounds reliable.
Carcharoth
On 7/3/12, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
As long as the query is relevant to the Wiiproject I don't see a problem in asking more than one Wikiproject.
Another method I use for non-obvious things is to put a note at the top of my guestbook - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WereSpielChequers/guestbookWhich reminds me, I need to refresh that list as there is currently only one task available.
WSC
On 3 July 2012 14:14, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On 7/3/12, WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@gmail.com wrote:
Most articles belong to a Wikiproject (or can be given to one with a
little
tagging), and if a wikiproject is even semiactive it will have people
with
specialist knowledge. So I'd suggest if you need help on an article,
post a
query on the relevant WikiProject page. And if there isn't a Wikiproject tag already on the talkpage feel free to add one that seems relevant.
In the case of Georg Andreas Böckler I asked the article creator (only two edits here in 2011 and none in 2012, probably more active on the Dutch Wikipedia, where I may try and contact them). I could also ask on the German Wikipedia. I have (only recently) asked on the WikiProject Biography page, but am a bit stuck as to what other WikiProjects to ask at (History of Science? Architecture?).
Alternatively put a query on the talkpages of people who've edited the article or relevant related ones.
Hadn't thought of the 'relevant related ones' approach.
SoFixIt doesn't always work, sometimes it helps to seek out experts, but
in
my experience such people appreciate a query that is relevant to their expertise. That's why IMHO the content noticeboard and similar overcentralised mechanisms won't work.
Patience also helps, not every expert will be here every month.
Good point. Patience *is* a virtue. :-)
Carcharoth
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Encouraged by the response I got on en-Wikipedia after asking around enough, I was encouraged to ask at the German Wikipedia page. See here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Georg_Andreas_B%C3%B6ckler#Birth_and...
Goodness only knows if anyone will see that. Anyone know if there are places on the German Wikipedia to draw attention to that sort of thing?
Carcharoth