[WikiEN-l] Templates for the masses

[Zoney]

On 08/10/2007, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You old-timers, cast your minds back to 2003/2004 (everyone who joined
> after that, close your eyes and try to fake it).
>
> You are reading an interesting or important article when something
> suddenly strikes you as odd and untoward. Let's stipulate that you
> read the entire article and you are yet unsatisfied. Being a good
> Wikipedian, you consider correcting this apparent error - how could
> the Battle of New Orleans have been the last battle of the War of 1812
> when the treaty was signed long before it took place? shall be your
> query, say. And being a good Wikipedian, you happened to notice that
> the talk page was blue.
>
> Now let's just pause a second. These days, why would anyone click on
> the talk page link? Essentially every talk page has been created just
> because of bots going around adding assessment tags and project
> banners and all that bric-a-brac.  People are slowly being trained to
> ignore talk pages - the signal to noise ratio used to be 1/0, as talk
> pages *always* had something a human had written. It might not be
> relevant to your current question, it might be on an entirely
> different issue (the exact number of casaulties as this old NY Times
> copy handed down in my family claims 2 less than does this
> Encyclopedia Britannica article, &etc..), but quite often it was quite
> germane (Yo peeps leave the date alone, remember the crazy-ass
> communication delays back then) or at least interesting.
>

I do think it'd be nice if the talk link showed up a different colour or
something for a recent post by an actual real human rather than a bot.
Actually many talk messages I've left recently haven't gotten responses,
even semi-controversial subjects on reasonably major topics. I really think
that back in 2004 they would have.

Perhaps I'm just getting too old and grouchy.

Of course, the truth is that talk pages have always been inefficient and
cumbersome, and really rather pathetic for disputes etc. However, it's not
like I have a suggestion for an alternative, and I doubt anyone else has! I
mean, in the wider world people are havign to put up with the social
difficulties arising from communication by email, SMS text message, etc. All
in all, a pretty pathetic way to communicate and express ones views and
emotions.

Zoney

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