[Foundation-l] content ownership in different projects

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> So, are we doomed to experience such things every once in a while? Or
> does anyone have a bright idea about improving the balance between
> ownership and wiki-ness?
>
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Speaking for the en.wp and OTRS volunteer perspective, this breaks down into
three subtopics:

1. Fancruft, as we impolitely call it.
2. Professional/amateur specialists.
3. Living persons issues.

In each of the three cases, the big warning is intimidating and causes a
negative reaction.  People do not like to be warned when they are invited to
edit, and they do not like to see content removed when they do not even know
how to check a history page- which is simple but complicated at the same
time.  So we do have negative feedback and there are surely unthought of
ways to help this.

The warnings on en.wp, because of its size and notoriety, need such a
warning in some form.  I'd rather have someone look for help pointers (like
we provide) when feeling discouraged to get personal contact.  We don't have
raw data, but I'm sure that most that encounter this just leave and don't
say boo.  Again, we're speaking about the English Wikipedia, where authors
with potential ownership issues are much more community managed because of
popularity.

(All in my opinion from experience) So for fancruft, these users generally
stick around.  Specialists are more accepting of the community and get
frustrated but still don't give up, and BLP subjects are either drastically
confused or bound and determined to own the article.  We work with them no
matter the context when they seek the help.

We don't have a static system, it really depends on the project.

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan