[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[wiki]

I see where you're coming from Tony, but ultimately, you can't herd cats. A
campaign against jargon is only going to make minimal headway.

The are some structural things that Wikipedia needs to do:
1) WYSIWYG would be fantastic, but I've no idea what that would meet in
practice.

Sticking to the achievable:

2) That need for posts to be signed with ~~~~ is counterintuitive. If I
create an account on any other site, a sig in a discussion is unnecessary. I
assume liquid threads would rid us of this? Is there another way?

3) The growing use of protection on high profile articles needs more
discussion. There used to be a principle that the more an article was
visible the less we should protect it. (After all people are told "anyone
can edit" and high profile articles are watched enough to revert quickly.)
We now seem to have reversed this - with the attitude that the article is
now fairly good, and most IP edits are unhelpful. But the outsider comes in
by experimentation. Actually, I'm a supporter of more liberal
semi-protection (particularly on BLPS) but I'd use it on marginal articles
where incoming edits are under-scrutinised - not one those where it is a
hassle to vandal-fighters, but we always catch them.

4) Perhaps we need more integration with other social network and internet
platforms. I mean, Amazon has seen the potential for someone reading a
Wikipedia article to buy a book - but the reverse is true. Please buying
books on Italian History are precisely the people we need to help us with
articles on Italian history. Facebookers with an interest in Pokemon are
precisely the people who can (and have the time to) help improve out
deficiency in Pokemon articles...(ok, maybe not, but you get the point!)

5) I see the growing use of {{talkback}} templates. Personally, I hate them.
However, the assumption that everyone masters watchlists and knows how to
find discussions - and sees replies people make to them in any one of 27
noticeboards, talk pages etc is also counter intuitive. Could we develop
software that flagged a user when someone replies to their post, wherever
the reply might be? So if I post anywhere and someone posts indented below,
I get some form of automatic notification? I don't know how it would work -
but Facebook's beauty is that wherever I comment, or wherever someone
comments about me, I get notified - that tends to keep me interested in
continuing the discussions rather than drifting off. Watchlists were great
in 2002, but they are part of an increasingly tired looking infrastructure. 

Just some thoughts. I suspect to solve these problems would need some
serious investment - but I just see Wikipedia slowly becoming dated. (Of
course those who grew up on it will say it is "fine" - but then that's the
way with everything.)

Scott


-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway
Sent: 22 December 2010 10:55
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

The single best way to improve usability of Wikipedia would be to
scale back the use of jargon.

if you look at early discussions in those days they were usually held
in plain English, with very little jargon.  I've tried to keep up that
style, but it is now quite rare.

I don't see why this should be. Our policies have perfectly good
English language names, "Neutral point of view", "What Wikipedia is
Not", "Verifiability", and so on.  There's absolutely no need to
replace these English phrases with gobbledygook.

We have no strictures against this exclusive practice, mainly because
it was seen as obviously undesirable in the early days.  But
communities inevitably acquire exclusive practices as they
develop--it's seen as one way to identify yourself to other people as
a member of the "in" group. And so now when I discuss matters on
Wikipedia talk pages even I, an editor since 2004, find myself
shuddering inwardly at the impact of all the alphabet soup. If the
damage this practice does to the openness of the community were more
widely recognised it would be possible for us to agree to scale it
back, but it just isn't on the map.

in all conscience I cannot see anything wrong with our user interface.
 It's exemplary, and its having changed so little in all this time is
good evidence of that. If we were to try to emulate monstrosities like
the ever-changing Facebook it would be a step backwards from our
unflinching commitment to a good, clean, simple interface.

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