I got a call yesterday from a press officer for a major UK bank. My number was one of the few contact numbers they could find.
They spent lots of time yesterday morning adding stuff to the bank's article from their websites and having it reverted as a copyright violation. They couldn't work out what she was doing wrong, so they called me. They hadn't heard about the Microsoft mess at all. Oh dear.
I explained that editing the article about yourself is a conflict of interest, and pointed them at the talk page and said this was the right place to put stuff - that they should introduce themselves, etc. And that people might argue, but that happens on the Internet. I also said I'd have a look myself.
Well, that's one more innocent disaster averted ...
But we really need something to handle this sort of thing and make it widely known. Something as n00b-friendly as possible - just type on a page (or in a form) or send an email.
Which will mean another firehose of crap to find volunteers to deal with. This is the tricky bit. Compare to OTRS, which has the twin problems of (1) a firehose of crap with a few important things in it and (2) too few volunteers, who then get (understandably) tetchy and close to burnout, and not great success at recruiting more.
So:
0. I submit that we really do need this. 1. Most n00b-friendly interface possible. This is not a big problem. 2. How to get volunteers interested in wanting to look at this? This is the tricky one.
Ideas please!
(I'm tempted to submit this to Ask Slashdot for ideas ... any objections?)
Another bad publicity storm such as happened last week to Microsoft is absolutely not in Wikipedia or Wikimedia's interests. We don't want to make organisations fearful of coming near us.
- d.
On 1/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
But we really need something to handle this sort of thing and make it widely known. Something as n00b-friendly as possible - just type on a page (or in a form) or send an email.
Yes. I suggested in the past adding a "submit review" form for external editorial reviews, which is a similar use scenario to complaints and corrections. However, I don't think that just adding a tiny new feature is going to cut it. If we want this to be used, it needs to be visible and tie into the existing talk page process.
The real underlying problem is that our talk page process is essentially broken. And I don't just mean broken as in "newbies don't get it, everyone else does"; it lacks all the functionality one would want from a threaded discussion system. For this particular use, tracking and categorization of single threads (and assignment of threads to volunteers who need to look at them) is especially important.
There exists a prototype system that could largely replace talk pages; LiquidThreads. It combines wiki elements with threaded discussion, treating essentially every comment as a wiki page with its own history. It was developed by David McCabe as part of the Google Summer of Code. Unfortunately, it appears to be no longer in active development as David has been caught up in school work, unable to continue the project. I think WMF should hire a skilled developer to continue this work, and lead towards integrating our communication systems.
There are a number of people who would come to mind for this work. I don't think Slashdot's wisdom, may the IPU bless them, will help us here; like so many other things, it's really a matter of investing the resources in getting the tech work done.
On 31/01/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
There are a number of people who would come to mind for this work. I don't think Slashdot's wisdom, may the IPU bless them, will help us here; like so many other things, it's really a matter of investing the resources in getting the tech work done.
Mmm. I don't think the tech side is a problem - a web form that goes to a publicly-viewable or somewhat-viewable queue maybe.
The big issue in my mind is how to get people interested in even dealing with such a queue. wikien-l, the most likely first source of volunteers, was pretty tepid about the idea, some even questioning it was appropriate at all. I still think we do need something like this to avoid the next media silliness.
- d.
On 1/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Mmm. I don't think the tech side is a problem - a web form that goes to a publicly-viewable or somewhat-viewable queue maybe.
What is this web form going to say, and where is it going to be? How do you avoid people using it for general article feedback that _really_ should be on the talk page where the right people see it? A "complaints" tab that goes to OTRS & cross-posts to the talk page might be an intermediate solution, but I don't think it's a good long term strategy.
On 1/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I got a call yesterday from a press officer for a major UK bank. My number was one of the few contact numbers they could find.
They spent lots of time yesterday morning adding stuff to the bank's article from their websites and having it reverted as a copyright violation. They couldn't work out what she was doing wrong, so they called me. They hadn't heard about the Microsoft mess at all. Oh dear.
Eh normally that kind of person doesn't have permission to release the companies property under the GFDL.
I explained that editing the article about yourself is a conflict of interest, and pointed them at the talk page and said this was the right place to put stuff - that they should introduce themselves, etc. And that people might argue, but that happens on the Internet. I also said I'd have a look myself.
Well, that's one more innocent disaster averted ...
But we really need something to handle this sort of thing and make it widely known. Something as n00b-friendly as possible - just type on a page (or in a form) or send an email.
Which will mean another firehose of crap to find volunteers to deal with. This is the tricky bit. Compare to OTRS, which has the twin problems of (1) a firehose of crap with a few important things in it and (2) too few volunteers, who then get (understandably) tetchy and close to burnout, and not great success at recruiting more.
So:
- I submit that we really do need this.
- Most n00b-friendly interface possible. This is not a big problem.
- How to get volunteers interested in wanting to look at this? This
is the tricky one.
Ideas please!
How pragmatic are you prepared to be? From a purely PR viewpoint It doesn't matter so much if a minor company screws up.
Thus we are only interested in making sure major companies have some way to make contact.
One approach would be to launch a new service for them to moan at us and see if we can get mentioned in the various trade magazines (there is a Financial Director magazine I assume there is a PR person magazine)
Try and directly mention it to as many of the fortune 500, FTSE 200, whatever the equiv is for other countries companies as possible. Probably going to have to throw in most media groups as well.
This should get the word out while keeping the whole thing as focused on the group we are interested in as possible.
As I said before your best bet for recruiting is to go and ask newbie admins directly on their talk pages and see if any sensible people have failed RFA of late (has the side benefit of annoying the RFA regulars).
(I'm tempted to submit this to Ask Slashdot for ideas ... any objections?)
You think you will be able to pick them out between the the anti Microsoft rants and the fights between the pro and anti wikipedians?
Remember whatever we do we can't stop companies being stupid.
On 31/01/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/31/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I got a call yesterday from a press officer for a major UK bank. My number was one of the few contact numbers they could find. They spent lots of time yesterday morning adding stuff to the bank's article from their websites and having it reverted as a copyright violation. They couldn't work out what she was doing wrong, so they called me. They hadn't heard about the Microsoft mess at all. Oh dear.
Eh normally that kind of person doesn't have permission to release the companies property under the GFDL.
Yes, and I pointed that out too! That submitting it under GFDL means a loss of control over the material. And to be really sure they wanted to do that.
How pragmatic are you prepared to be? From a purely PR viewpoint It doesn't matter so much if a minor company screws up. Thus we are only interested in making sure major companies have some way to make contact. One approach would be to launch a new service for them to moan at us and see if we can get mentioned in the various trade magazines (there is a Financial Director magazine I assume there is a PR person magazine) Try and directly mention it to as many of the fortune 500, FTSE 200, whatever the equiv is for other countries companies as possible. Probably going to have to throw in most media groups as well. This should get the word out while keeping the whole thing as focused on the group we are interested in as possible.
Heh, maybe.
You can be sure word will get out and every malcontent on teh intarweb will flood it with complaints about their Time Tetrahedron article. But anyway.
As I said before your best bet for recruiting is to go and ask newbie admins directly on their talk pages and see if any sensible people have failed RFA of late
Ah yes, sorry, I forgot *ahem*
(has the side benefit of annoying the RFA regulars).
:-D
(I'm tempted to submit this to Ask Slashdot for ideas ... any objections?)
You think you will be able to pick them out between the the anti Microsoft rants and the fights between the pro and anti wikipedians?
I would happily look through 500 comments of stupid if the right idea is lurking in there. I don't expect anyone else to ...
Remember whatever we do we can't stop companies being stupid.
Indeed. "Whoops, you hit the electric fence. Better not do that. Do this instead."
- d.
Could the answer be in adding another line just above the save button? explaining the idea to the editor and telling him/her that there is a conflict of interests and if you wish to add content to the article, add it to the talk page instead? and if you have more to say, add a link too.
You don't need super technologies to deliver such a simple message. by the way, how could Microsoft's incident be a bad publicity for wikipedia? please refer me to the appropriate archived messages if that a duplicate question.
Mohamed Magdy
On 2/1/07, Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com wrote:
Could the answer be in adding another line just above the save button? explaining the idea to the editor and telling him/her that there is a conflict of interests and if you wish to add content to the article, add it to the talk page instead? and if you have more to say, add a link too.
You don't need super technologies to deliver such a simple message. by the way, how could Microsoft's incident be a bad publicity for wikipedia? please refer me to the appropriate archived messages if that a duplicate question.
How many places to we want to say this, and how enthusiastically?
Referring to en.wikipedia for the sake of argument...
The "Contact Wikipedia" link on the left already goes pretty directly to [[Wikipedia:Contact us]] to [[Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem]] to [[Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from enterprise)]]. This chain seems appropriate. We could clarify the message on the last page there a bit.
Would having something above or near the edit "Save" button make sense as well?
Would having a "Contact Wikipedia about this article" tab at the top make sense?
A "Contact Wikipedia about this article" tab on the left, in the navbox?
Doing all these things seems silly overkill. I agree that more clarification than the one existing path makes sense, though.
On 01/02/07, Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com wrote:
Could the answer be in adding another line just above the save button? explaining the idea to the editor and telling him/her that there is a conflict of interests and if you wish to add content to the article, add it to the talk page instead? and if you have more to say, add a link too.
There's so much visual noise on the edit page already that it's likely to be ignored, I fear.
(Mind you, the MediaWiki user interface needs all sorts of attention.)
[I'm going to have to learn to code, aren't I.]
- d.
On 2/1/07, Mohamed Magdy mohamed.m.k@gmail.com wrote:
Could the answer be in adding another line just above the save button?
Sure, but what's the question?
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