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November 2

Can editing Wikipedia be considered as coding experience?

Suppose you're from HR and you saw that an applicant cited that they were a Wikipedia editor for several years, would you consider those edits as HTML, CSS etc. experience? Lenticel ^(talk) 03:16, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd think it would be unwise for the applicant to suggest that it was. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:27, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No. Wikicode is not HTML nor CSS by any stretch. It's a meta-language that provides some hints for layout, style, etc. It is highly specialized. Depending on what types of edits the applicant has made, they might cite some "soft skills" such as research, layout, copyediting, etc. It would be preferable to most employers if the applicant had instead used the Visual Editor and gotten high-level stuff done rather than getting down into the weeds and painstakingly hand-formatting everything.

I don't know that my Wikipedia experience has ever got me points before hiring, but it's certainly helped in terms of such "soft skills" at my current and previous jobs, I'm sure of it. Elizium23 (talk) 03:30, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds more impressive if the applicant writes that they were an editor of a major online encyclopedia. :) Skills acquired by being an Wikipedia editor may be very valuable to a future employer, but if the person from HR is somewhat familiar with Wikipedia, they will know that the skills of its editors are all over the place. --Lambiam 07:58, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the insights. So I guess it does give bonus points for volunteer/ soft skill stuff rather than actual coding skills. --Lenticel ^(talk) 10:13, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It also suggests that the applicant has spent spare time actively engaged in an intellectual and arguably educational pursuit, rather than, say, watching daytime TV. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.213.189.208 (talk) 11:05, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

IF you know the user's username, then you can also get an insight into how much, and of what quality, his contributions were. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:42, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Or her contributions. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:00, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Standard rather than PC English as I'm sure you are well aware. Did nit-picking add anything to the debate? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:19, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Standard from a different time period. We also don't use words like thou and thy and letters like þ anymore. --Jayron 32 13:23, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Speak for tha'sen! :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:28, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If I were from HR, I probably would not have much familiarity with what HTML and CSS are, let alone how wikicode does or does not resemble them. I would also not have the time, nor the inclination, to educate myself on those topics, for the sake of understanding one CV out of 10-100 I received for a given position, or even ~1000 I receive monthly for all positions I try to fill.

I would possibly use the braindead approach of scanning the CV for keywords (either by hand or automatically) and rejecting the CVs that do not contain the keyword. If I am somewhat self-aware, I would regret it and think it is a crude approach, but might still do it anyway because of the sheer size of the task of doing otherwise. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:05, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say it would really depend. If it was just normal article creation, anti-vandalism, typo fixes, etc. then no. But if they helped work on some of the internals of Wikipedia (like templates or modules which tend to use a lot of HTML, CSS, and sometimes even JS) then I would consider it as some experience, but definitely not enough to land them a job (why would a Human Resources department even need to worry about whether or not an applicant has experience with HTML and CSS?) since Wikipedia also uses Wikitext in place of HTML which only works on Wikipedia. And we also can't guarantee that they haven't been blocked on Wikipedia for screwing things up without knowing their username. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:10, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it is common, but the computers here show the Wikipedia editor just like any editor. There are buttons at the top for formatting. I can highlight words and make them bold or underslined. I can click the paragraph button to move things around. I see what it looks like as I work. After I save my changes, they rarely change from what I saw in the editor. So, from my point of view, editing Wikipedia is no different from using Word. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 15:05, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]