[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Phil Nash]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Walling" <steven.walling at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 10:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New 
editor engagement experiments team!


> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 3:49 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And it turns out the new editors often assume the templates are
>> completely bot-generated.
>>
>> That is: the editors using templates are, literally, failing the Turing
>> test.
>>
>>
>> > I know the solution is not
>> > to just stop using templates.
>>
>>
>> I think it should be given serious consideration. I realise why
>> Twinkle and Huggle exist, but they turn Wikipedia into a first-person
>> shooter with the newbies as the targets. I suggest that this is not
>> the sort of gamification that is useful.
>>
>
> If anyone wants to help work on these template-related issues, Maryana and
> I are still in the midst of work on this in a couple wikis...  I don't 
> want
> to flood the thread with a report on its status, but let me know if you
> want to join in our not-so-secret effort to make the current user talk
> template system more human.
>
> Steven

I don't know what you're doing, or where, but it seems to me that templates 
often seem to be trying to do too much. One solution might be to have some 
generics for particular issues with a mandatory freetext field, in which the 
templater would be required to explain exactly what is wrong with the 
templatee's edit, in the templater's opinion. I realise this might be a 
hostage to fortune in possibly amplifying discord, but good templaters 
should be happy to help and explain their reversions, and it would focus the 
minds of those others who issue templates willy-nilly.

I think the above comment about Twinkle and Huggle is perfectly valid; after 
all, if you can push a button rather than engage and educate an editor, 
those tools make it all to easy so to do.