[Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Friendliness

Tue Feb 22 17:55:16 UTC 2011

Very true. This little story is very representative of how Commons can
bite newbies (I know, I'm a biter). I believe that it is totally
possible to solve this kind of communication problem on Commons.

But I think the solution is to hire full-time administrators.

An active admin on Commons can easily, in a single day and depending on
his profile, close dozens of regular deletion requests and tag or
speedy-delete one or two hundred pictures. Even if he limits himself to
non-controversial, obvious actions. The workload and the backlog are
really huge, the problematic contents land on Commons at a very high
rate and the active administrators are really few. Contacting a user
each time an action is taken is often simply not an option (in 75% of
the cases, the user won't watch his messages on Commons anyway). I
believe the current role of an admin on Commons is very different from
the role on a Wikipedia, much more technical, much more task-oriented.
The best I could personally do to improve the situation when I was sysop
was to customize my message templates by automatically adding small
textual explanations to them, with an invitation to contact me. I'm not
sure it helped a lot, although I saw other admins using the same system
after me (I think).

I don't think the Commons admin community could do much better, unless
it can be ensured that a number of them spend 8 hours a day doing the
job (and staying friendly all the time).

But I'm naturally pessimistic, so...

Guillaume

Le 22/02/2011 18:32, David Gerard a écrit :
> Food for thought.
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michel Vuijlsteke <wikipedia at zog.org>
> Date: 22 February 2011 16:29
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> 
> 
> On 22 February 2011 14:14, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:
> 
>>
>>> We have to make a profound choice in the culture here:
>>> 1) we continue with the whacking and scaring the newbies away (content
>>> priority #1, people #2), or
>>> 2) we embrace the newbies and we let some spam through (people priority
>> #1,
>>> content #2).
>>>
>>> So far we are steadily moving along the first route. I believe, it is
>> time
>>> we switch the priorities. People are important. It's the people who will
>> be
>>> creating content in the future, and not the other way around. Wikipedia
>>> will
>>> inevitably fail without participation. And content... we are already the
>>> largest and the best...
>>>
>>> Renata
>>
>> To me it sounds too much black and white. Indeed, there are points you
>> better not stumble across as an editor: engaging into battles over disputed
>> content (like Middle East conflict), writing articles on smth with disputed
>> notability, pushing POV or not getting immediately the image upload rules.
>> But I assume this is a relatively minor fraction of editors (though of
>> course it still represents a problem). I can not recall that I ever got any
>> templates in my articles (I have written over 500 of them since 2007),
>> except for a couple of times from a bot that there are no links to the
>> article, and that I ever got any angry comments from admins/other editors
>> concerning the articles I have written.
>>
> 
> I don't think it has to be as obviously annoying as slathering templates all
> over pages or wikilawyering the newbies away -- it's often much more subtle
> how content/data seems to be considered more important than people.
> 
> One interaction I encountered recently is typical. Michiel Hendryckx, one of
> Belgium's best-known photographers, started uploading fairly
> high-resolution, good quality images to Wikipedia (well, Commons) on 3 July
> 2010. Stuff like this 1983 Chet Baker portrait:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chet675.jpg
> 
> The first message on his talk page was a request to confirm his identity
> (which he did).
> 
> The second message was a complaint by Nikbot (no valid license for one
> particular image). A couple of hours later, at 10:51 on 4 July, the next
> message is from CategorizationBot, asking Hendryckx to add categories to his
> images.
> 
> The third message, not six hours later, was this:
> 
> *Please categorize our images !!!*
> You already have been asked by a bot to categorize your images. Therefore I
> don't understand why you keep on uploading images without categories.
> Uploading images without categorizing them doesn't make sense. Only
> categorized images can be found!
> 
> 
> I'm pretty sure the user in question meant really well, but *this* is what
> that focusing on content over people means to me. It's in the small things,
> the interactions that experienced Wikipedians take in their stride, but that
> can end up scaring people away.
> 
> It's like the last message on Hendryckx' talk page, dated 1 February 2011: a
> notification that one if this images is listed at commons:deletion requests,
> and to "please do not take the deletion request personally... thank you!".
> Follow the link to the discussion (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Van_istendael675.jpg):
> turns out the requester couldn't see the image. His/her first action was to
> nominate the image for deletion. Took about three hours for someone to
> confirm that no, the image works perfectly fine for them, and about five
> hours for the original person to close the deletion request ("thanks").
> 
> Again: content over people. No personal interaction with the photographer,
> no message on the photographer's talk page after the deletion request was
> closed, nothing. The last interaction Hendryckx had on Commons -- on 19
> February, almost three weeks after the deletion request was closed -- was a
> baffled question (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Deletion_requests/File:Van_istendael675.jpg),
> asking what on Earth is wrong with the image, and that he'd like to at least
> know why it needed to be deleted.
> 
> Again, I'm sure the user in question meant really well again, but here too:
> content over people. Drive-by templating, shoot first, don't ask questions,
> don't even provide feedback, trust people will read every last word in the
> templates, etc.
> 
> Michel Vuijlsteke
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

-------------- section suivante --------------
Une pi?ce jointe non texte a ?t? nettoy?e...
Nom: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Taille: 554 octets
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20110222/da53cb98/attachment.pgp 