Mitar
Gadzooks! The comments you made about friendly editors to a large community
of Wikipedia editors, maybe re-think saying that. I'm having a hard time
getting past these comments. *I* am a friendly editor, and am actually able
to help you. But you have basically said you have too much of a life to
engage, IRC is HARD, etc. Huh.
Quite frankly, without specifics about the entry -- and the citations used
-- there's nothing anyone can do to help you. It seems this is more about
discussing the process and your experience than finding a solution. Which
is fine, but I was trying to help solve the problem.
As others have said, this is not a new issue, or a newly discovered issue.
Saying the problem is systemic and not taking responsibility for yourself
as an editor by learning some of the requirements and rules of Wikipedia
seems to be a bit of an evasion of responsibility, perhaps?
Notability is definitely something that is highly debated within the
community, and I actually think there has been a lot of improvement in this
area. But if your citations -- or your entry -- isn't well done, I believe
that's when there are problems. Again, I would like to see these citations,
Slovenian or otherwise.
And I agree with John that there should be checks and balances. Many people
or subjects do not merit an article, but many others do.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog*
Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle>*
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 3:06 PM, Mitar <mmitar(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi!
Thank you for your responses.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle <wp.brilllyle(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Please include your user name and the name of the
article you were
working
on. Without any context it's impossible to
help you. Thankfully I was
able
to dig and find the page, etc. But include
identifying info if you want
help / resolution.
I didn't want to include this information because I didn't want to
make it about my issue in particular. I wanted to give feedback and
discuss principles behind my experience.
I otherwise had good experience editing Wikipedia. Other editors were
constructive and often with patience helped me learn how to improve
the content and related rules of Wikipedia, which also seemed
reasonable. But this rule I do not get and cannot relate to, thus I am
bringing it here.
I read that Wikipedia is trying hard to get new editors and this is
why I am sharing this story here. Because from all my experience this
one is the most problematic. It really pushes you off.
And it is pretty reasonable that it is problematic. Now that most
clearly "notable" articles have been already written the one which are
left will be increasingly more and more in the "gray zone". And
increasingly local, specialized, where such mistakes might be common.
Maybe this policy for notability and significance had its historic
place. It focused the community on the core set of articles, improving
the quality of existing articles and created a name for Wikipedia. But
I think maybe it is time that it is relaxed and a new level of
articles is invited in. As I said, a warning could be used to tell
readers that they are reading such a new article.
(Oh, and please improve talk pages, that way of communicating is also
a mess, but that one I can understand, it is a technical legacy. It is
cumbersome, but I can understand it. But it does influence other
issues then, like this one when you have to discuss something about
Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia does not simply use some issue-management
system where people could be opening issues for articles and other
people and have conversation through that? It would also allow much
better statistics of how many issues were satisfactory resolved, for
example, for all sides.)
Discussion (with reason):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Poliā¦
Yes, it is clear that the editor who deleted it does not understand
local importance of the article. They could read the news articles I
cited and might get a better picture.
The issue is here that while new editors can edit pages, see tags to
improve sources and so on, that is all helpful. But once a page is
deleted, they are pushed off and cannot do anything anymore. I just
started with the article. I could improve it through time, get more
information in why it is important and so on. But once it is deleted
nothing of this is not possible. I have to go around and find ways how
to object to this, and I have no idea how to do that. (This is also
why I am writing to such general list like this.)
I don't have rights to view the deleted
article, but if someone who does
moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there,
and I
would be happy to take a quick look at it / try
to help.
But the problem is systemic. It does not matter if we resolve it for
this particular page. Also, if a page is in my sandbox then it is only
on me to fix it and improve it. If it is its dedicated namespace then
others can help edit it because they can find it. This is the whole
power of Wikipedia, that it is not that one person has to write the
whole article, but that multiple people can collaborate.
Maybe a solution would be that an article can exist under its
namespace and link then to this sandbox version saying that article is
still in development. In general Wikipedia could be just an directory
of pages, some could be edited in Wikipedia and some could be linked
elsewhere, until they are seen as worthy of Wikipedia.
The structures you propose exist, but if you
don't educate yourself on
procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware
of
them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I
appreciate your passion
and
thoughts and want you to know there are solutions
in place....
I followed instructions which were presented to me in the speedy
deletion tag: I opened a talk page for an article and objected to
deletion. The result was that next day the article was deleted without
any discussion.
What structures exist here?
I am talking about structures which would prevent deletion, and
structures which would help editors explain local significance of
articles. Structures which might exist to revert deletion are too
late. Editors might not return anymore.
The best solution I've found if as a newish
user you are wanting to
create
new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in
your Sandbox and make sure
you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations.
I had citations. It seems it was not enough.
Have a friendly editor take a look at the article
before attempting to
move it to the main
space.
Friendly editor? How am I supposed to find one? I do not want to be
harsh, but I am here to write content, not to mingle with other
editors and socialize. I have enough other things in my life. I can
understand that for some editors this is their online social
space/forum and they know each other. But for me is something where I
get to occasionally, I want to fix a thing I care about, and I move
on. If I find trash on the floor I pick it up and carry it to the
nearest thrash can. I do not want to interact with city utilities
system or talk to supervisors.
(BTW, talking to a friendly editor comes back to the issue of really
strange talk pages. Probably all you got used to them, but they are
really a mess.)
It is critical you use the citations to establish
notability. Not
everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't
knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I did that. Of course, citations were to Slovenian news articles in
Slovenian, only one was in English. And this is why I started the
Wikipedia article. To bring more international exposure to a local
thing.
but their goal is to "protect" Wiki
content, so....
Hm, protect from what? Existence? If content is true, why it needs
protection? If content is not yet complete, guide it to being
complete.
The IRC help channel (
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a great
resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
BTW, you do realize that many of new people online and potential new
editors are not familiar with IRC? Mailing list are already
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:11 AM, carl hansen <carlhansen1234(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
You have been hit by crossfire in the long
running Inclusionist vs.
Deletionist war.
Instead of waging war, could we open some discussion about middle
group solutions? For example, what is wrong with having such pages
tagged with "not an encyclopedia-grade article, possible lacking
notability and/or significance" and move on? And then we can discuss
the merits of that tag being applied to a particular article. Which is
much less new-editor-scary than a warning "page is nominated for
speedy deletion" and bam, deleted.
Has this ever been put up for a vote by the community?
Mitar
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