[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:58 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was chatting with User:Ciphergoth the other week about getting
> people involved in stuff. He occasionally asks people "if you see a
> typo in Wikipedia, do you fix it?" And people *just don't do that*.
> This is something that needs remedying.

Actually, I often see things that need fixing, but I'm in "look up"
mode and using Wikipedia as a starting point for finding some
information I'm after, and often don't have the time to even make a
note to come back to the article later. If I see things that need
fixing when I'm in "Wikipedian" mode, I do fix things then (but even
then, there is a trade-off between temp fix now, or detailed fix that
will take more time). It comes back to that trade-off in time spent
doing other things.

Has anyone ever suggested a way for people to highlight a mistake and
click to bring it to someone else's attention? But without logging any
IP address. I suppose that sort of system would get overwhelmed by
trolls very quickly. Maybe an off-wiki system to allow people using
Wikipedia to generate a note for themselves on corrections to make
later on?

I'm also convinced that the generation that has grown up able to
correct things on wikis or editable bulletin boards after they've
posted them, are more prone to posting typos in the less flexible
media, such as e-mail and non-editable bulletin boards. The number of
times I've clicked "send" and spotted a typo and cursed my inability
to make an instant edit to correct it!

Carcharoth