[Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)

[Michel Vuijlsteke]

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