On 22 February 2012 12:44, Mike Christie coldchrist@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:05 AM, Thomas Morton < morton.thomas@googlemail.com
wrote:
Realistically *we are all part of the problem*. You, me, etc. because the problem is the entire ecosystem. Even stuff we think is polite and
sensible
might be incomprehensible to a newbie. Simple things like linking to, or quoting, parts of policy instead of taking time to write a simple explanation. The use of templates. The resistance to listen to arguments. It all adds up into a confusing user experience.
This is not a new problem; many online communities suffer, and have suffered, from it.
All of the things I mentioned are useful once your dealing with editors aware of the workings - it's not "new and scary" at that point and acts
as
a useful shortcut to streamline our interaction. The key thing to work
on,
I think, is easing newbies into that process without bombarding them with too much of it at once.
This is part of the reason why I have been advocating that the education programs take an active role in encouraging the academics who teach classes on Wikipedia to become contributors themselves. If we can provide high-quality one-on-one mentoring to academics in the workings of Wikipedia we could increase the percentage of users who have a foot in both worlds. Editors without subject matter expertise will always be needed but to solve some of the problems on Wikipedia, particularly those regarding undue weight and comprehensiveness of coverage, we have to attract experts and help them become editors.
That sounds like a great idea! I've always wondered about how our eduction programs focus on students, but not on the academics that teach them - or on professional organisations.
During the last Board elections one of the things I kept saying is that we need to focus on subject matter experts; be they academics or professionals and get their input.
Tom