Being a linguist i am often asked how many languages do i speak. I don't like that question, because that's not exactly what Linguistics is about.
Being a Wikipedian i am often asked how many articles did i write. I don't like that question either, because most work on Wikipedia is about improving existing articles, not about creating new ones.
On the discussion about the "Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles" in the English Wikipedia some people commented that creating articles is not so important anyway, that the growing amount of articles makes it harder to maintain them and that there should be more effort to explain people that they should join Wikipedia to improve the existing articles and now just to create new ones.
This is not a strong argument to support this anti-wiki proposal to further restrict article creation in en.wp, but it is true by itself. There have been attempts to tackle it: SJ's lightning talk about The Best Page On Wikipedia (WP:BACKLOG) in the NYC meetup last August and advertising WP:BACKLOG in the en.wp watchlist are examples of that. The Hebrew Wikipedia conducts "no new articles" days every now and then, where the editors are encouraged - not enforced - to improve existing articles rather than create new ones; unfortunately, i have no data about how well it works.
I would be happy to hear about such efforts in other projects.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
Дана Sunday 10 April 2011 08:53:58 Amir E. Aharoni написа:
The Hebrew Wikipedia conducts "no new articles" days every now and then, where the editors are encouraged - not enforced - to improve existing articles rather than create new ones; unfortunately, i have no data about how well it works.
I would be happy to hear about such efforts in other projects.
On sr.wiki we had an extremely positive experience when we organized a competition in article cleanup where the user who would clean the most articles up received a wikireader that was donated to Wikimedia Serbia. This has resulted in some 30% (total 300) of articles in need of cleanup being cleaned up, no user dissatisfaction known to me, and one very happy Wikipedian.
Being a linguist i am often asked how many languages do i speak. I don't like that question, because that's not exactly what Linguistics is about.
Being a Wikipedian i am often asked how many articles did i write. I don't like that question either, because most work on Wikipedia is about improving existing articles, not about creating new ones.
On the discussion about the "Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles" in the English Wikipedia some people commented that creating articles is not so important anyway, that the growing amount of articles makes it harder to maintain them and that there should be more effort to explain people that they should join Wikipedia to improve the existing articles and now just to create new ones.
This is not a strong argument to support this anti-wiki proposal to further restrict article creation in en.wp, but it is true by itself. There have been attempts to tackle it: SJ's lightning talk about The Best Page On Wikipedia (WP:BACKLOG) in the NYC meetup last August and advertising WP:BACKLOG in the en.wp watchlist are examples of that. The Hebrew Wikipedia conducts "no new articles" days every now and then, where the editors are encouraged - not enforced - to improve existing articles rather than create new ones; unfortunately, i have no data about how well it works.
I would be happy to hear about such efforts in other projects.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni
Creating new articles is a matter of mood and opportunity. You must have found a notable subject which is not included. One I just found yesterday is "Catalyst (NGO)" (Catalyst.Org), a substantial thinktank which researches women's employment. In that case, I can't see how we missed it, so far. There is no point in embargoing an article that needs to be created. But, yes, I, and others, especially new users, sometimes try to create articles that are meaningful to us but to hardly anyone else.
Fred
Personally, I am a Wikipedian who prefers the creation of new articles to the maintenance of old ones. I'd guess I've created several hundred. It's not that I don't see the value in improving existing articles, I simply find it more rewarding to make new ones. And efficient - being a person who reads encyclopedias recreationally, I'm often starting from a point of "Here's an interesting thing, and I've already got sources and a researchable bibliography right in front of me." It's just what floats my wiki-boat.
That being said, I think explicit drives and events that encourage non-creation and article cleanup are great ideas. How is the community at large to know about our backlog if we don't try to communicate it to them?
FMF
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Being a linguist i am often asked how many languages do i speak. I don't like that question, because that's not exactly what Linguistics is about.
Being a Wikipedian i am often asked how many articles did i write. I don't like that question either, because most work on Wikipedia is about improving existing articles, not about creating new ones.
On the discussion about the "Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles" in the English Wikipedia some people commented that creating articles is not so important anyway, that the growing amount of articles makes it harder to maintain them and that there should be more effort to explain people that they should join Wikipedia to improve the existing articles and now just to create new ones.
This is not a strong argument to support this anti-wiki proposal to further restrict article creation in en.wp, but it is true by itself. There have been attempts to tackle it: SJ's lightning talk about The Best Page On Wikipedia (WP:BACKLOG) in the NYC meetup last August and advertising WP:BACKLOG in the en.wp watchlist are examples of that. The Hebrew Wikipedia conducts "no new articles" days every now and then, where the editors are encouraged - not enforced - to improve existing articles rather than create new ones; unfortunately, i have no data about how well it works.
I would be happy to hear about such efforts in other projects.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni
Creating new articles is a matter of mood and opportunity. You must have found a notable subject which is not included. One I just found yesterday is "Catalyst (NGO)" (Catalyst.Org), a substantial thinktank which researches women's employment. In that case, I can't see how we missed it, so far. There is no point in embargoing an article that needs to be created. But, yes, I, and others, especially new users, sometimes try to create articles that are meaningful to us but to hardly anyone else.
Fred
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 10 April 2011 13:14, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
That being said, I think explicit drives and events that encourage non-creation and article cleanup are great ideas. How is the community at large to know about our backlog if we don't try to communicate it to them?
Site notices?
For that matter, the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_ads might be nice for the site notice.
- d.
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 8:37 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 April 2011 13:14, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
For that matter, the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_ads might be nice for the site notice.
Yes, we should start doing this. Most wikiproject banners are fun for me to read as a (logged-in) user, and reader-focused banners can be made for everyone.
SJ
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Samuel Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 8:37 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 10 April 2011 13:14, David Moran fordmadoxfraud@gmail.com wrote:
For that matter, the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_ads might be nice for the site notice.
Yes, we should start doing this. Most wikiproject banners are fun for me to read as a (logged-in) user, and reader-focused banners can be made for everyone.
This would be totally amazing on about 15 different levels- I"m all for fun reader-focused outreach banners on the site notice :D
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
David Gerard wrote:
For that matter, the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikipedia_ads might be nice for
the
site notice.
As long as they all use class="obnoxious-wikipedia-ad-banner". ;-)
At one point there were "anon tips" above the tabs in Monobook. These were text-only snippets that appeared only for logged-out users. For example one snippet was, "Have questions? [[Wikipedia:Questions|Find out how to ask questions and get answers.]]" The old code is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=288720468. It might make sense to implement something like that again.
There needs to be serious consideration of not further diluting the potency of banner messages and of not annoying users. It'd be nice if there were an easier way to grab edit count from the page source when displaying banners like these (wgEditCount or something). This could be used to more accurately target users. I filed https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28484 to track this.
MZMcBride
On 10 April 2011 22:56, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
At one point there were "anon tips" above the tabs in Monobook. These were text-only snippets that appeared only for logged-out users. For example one snippet was, "Have questions? [[Wikipedia:Questions|Find out how to ask questions and get answers.]]" The old code is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=288720468. It might make sense to implement something like that again.
Yes, that's the sort of thing. What happened and what do we need to put those back?
There needs to be serious consideration of not further diluting the potency of banner messages and of not annoying users.
Would user tests measuring annoyance help?
We could have the banners just for anons and have switching them off as a user option!
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 10 April 2011 22:56, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
At one point there were "anon tips" above the tabs in Monobook. These were text-only snippets that appeared only for logged-out users. For example one snippet was, "Have questions? [[Wikipedia:Questions|Find out how to ask questions and get answers.]]" The old code is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=288720468. It might make sense to implement something like that again.
Yes, that's the sort of thing. What happened and what do we need to put those back?
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=390494501#Anontips_banner
What's needed is that there needs to be smarter logic to avoid multiple banners (i.e., disable the anon tips when CentralNotice or the local sitenotice or anonnotice is active) and there needs to be new content.
There needs to be serious consideration of not further diluting the potency of banner messages and of not annoying users.
Would user tests measuring annoyance help?
We could have the banners just for anons and have switching them off as a user option!
Maybe. More importantly you would need someone to actively act on widespread annoyance, though. I think disabling the banners automatically is preferable to requiring user interaction (even if it is just a user preference update). If you were putting up a banner about how to add references to an article, don't display to users with wgEditCount > 1000. If you were putting up a banner about a vote that requires more than 500 votes, don't display to users with wgEditCount < 500. And of course individual banner disability would be nice (similar to the current English Wikipedia watchlist notices). This avoids the problem of people hiding all banners with a JavaScript gadget (binary options suck).
MZMcBride
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org