[WikiEN-l] Googley comments

[Charles Matthews]

Bod Notbod wrote:
> One of the proposals on the strategy wiki has recommended an
> adjustment to talk pages. I added that perhaps the tab should be
> called "discussion/feedback" to encourage people who are primarily
> readers to let us know what they thought of an article without it
> necessarily sounding like they had to be knowledgeable.
>
> I'm afraid I can't link to the proposal cos I can't remember the name
> or whether I watchlisted it.
>
> But I imagine this kind of proposal is fairly common:
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13573
>   
The introduction of Talk pages was, it should not be forgotten, one of 
the most brilliant innovations of the early days of Wikipedia. The idea 
that the Talk page is specifically for discussions aimed at improving 
the article in its current state is actually a pillar of how we work. 
Feedback of the "like it/hate it" kind (which is what voting would be) 
cuts across all that: I think that is obvious based on experience of how 
people (readers - most of the world doesn't edit) react to articles. A 
single annoying aspect is likely to get negative votes, and whether 
voting is commented or not, there are going to be problems.

So before some strategy genius decides that whole namespace is for 
something other than its traditional role, I think there should be a 
pause for reflection. Perhaps there could be a way of encouraging 
comments which were general (not specific to an existing thread or 
starting a new topic), and simply filed in a dedicated "general comment" 
archive, running in parallel with the traditional slug-it-out 
editing-related comments.

Charles