Wikipedia:Sticky notes

This is the description of the proposal on Strategy Wiki by the same name.

“ If we can redefine apathy, not as some kind of internal syndrome, but as a complex web of cultural barriers that reinforces disengagement... and then if we can work together collectively to dismantle those obstacles, then anything is possible.
-Dave Meslin in his Ted lecture "The antidote to apathy" ”

Research video: "Editing Wikipedia makes me feel stupid"Have we fixed this? Have we agreed to never fix this?

By far, there is one thing that Wikipedians hate to hear the most. It burns ears to hear: "I do not edit Wikipedia". Out of all the common and related complaints ("It's too hard", "Vandalism goes unchecked") it is the issue of reader engagement that is, deep down, the greatest focus of this page, and of Sticky Notes. The dream of engagement is that some day it will be strange if you lived your life without editing several pages on humanity's encyclopedia: Wikipedia. Read the Closing section below for the bullet points about how Sticky Notes will help.

The path to increasing reader conversion may seem obvious. Make editing easier, right? That is important, but those of us getting involved with Sticky Notes think there is another pillar to build. Unlike the ease of editing articles, there is a problem that has been somewhat neglected because it is more subtle.

To attract more volunteers, the Wikipedia Project needs to let people be more than readers, even if they do not want to be full-fledged editors yet. Wikipedia needs a stepping stone like Sticky Notes. It is time to adopt an internet staple: commentators. If you are interested, check back now and then to read about the idea more, leave a message, or show your support.

Overview

Right now, the learning curve is too steep. Readers struggle to reach a place where they feel like they can affect pages themselves. There is too large a gap between being a casual reader (i.e. hands off wikipedia) and an editor (ie. learn the markup and the policies to make lasting edits). Wikipedia needs commentators; a place to land during the jump from reader to editor.

Sticky Notes are a user-friendly way to make minor contributions directly to a page. In every article section header, there would be a button that says "sticky note" - right next to "edit" (see Figure 1 below). Readers just click that button, highlight some text, and leave a comment in a popup window. Done.

Every sticky note displays highlighted text on the main page, but also generates a new section over at the discussion page. Only the sticky note indicators are visible by default; the comment and highlighting remain hidden (see Figure 2 below) to maintain a professional look.

The benefits? Any page covered in sticky notes will remind readers that Wikipedia is "the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit", and that it is forever a transparent work in progress. Secondly, sticky notes are so easy to use that we we will capture more productive comments that would have otherwise gone deterred. Finally, sticky notes are such an easy way to get involved that, ultimately, we will end up with more long-time editors. There are many challenges that come with a design change like this, and they too are discussed below.

Digging into the idea and motivations

Figure 1 A user leaves a comment without needing to understand wikipedia's coding.

When you leave a sticky note, a little yellow diamond appears on the line of the left margin. Other readers can now click that diamond and it will expand to reveal a comment, while at the same time the relevant text is highlighted for them. We can take inspiration from such comment features (and their ease of use) in programs like Adobe Reader or Microsoft Word.

Hitting walls

Imagine you are a very casual reader of Wikipedia. Now imagine a valid complaint: You notice vandalism. Really, you want to change it yourself - right there and then. So you click "edit", and suddenly you face a wall of coding (code that will not even be colourized until you have an account's "Enhanced Editor"). As a casual reader, you care about the topic you came to read - but you are not in love with Wikipedia project. To the casual reader, correcting the vandalism is not worth the trouble.

Right now, too many stories end with that wall of code. Many readers will hit edit, see some harmless code for an image or something, and say "I am not THAT interested in fixing wikipedia". We have all heard something like that from friends and family (e.g."Yeahhh.. it was false, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out how to change it"). This is not simply apathy - it is the result of Wikipedia's design.

Or maybe you are unintimidated by coding. It may be people, and the community you worry about. Some readers wonder "What exactly are Wikipedia's policies anyway? Would I be making things better or worse?" Often a reader does not want to start an argument. In other words, amateurs can be scared away from editing Wikipedia for many reasons, and yet, these fans of Wikipedia may still wish they could warn people about particular content.

Perhaps the optimistic reader can leave a request in the back on the discussion pages. In the meantime, readers are driven away from Wikipedia while it goes on displaying vandalism. And not just vandalism, but dead links, typos or grammatical mistakes, poor writing, unprofessional and inaccurate summaries...these are just some of the things from which truly amateur Wikipedians might be forced to walk away.

Growing to love Wikipedia

Each time a reader walks away from a little issue instead of being able to flag it quickly and easily with a sticky note...that unimpressed user loses respect, and Wikipedia misses out.

Sticky Notes make commenting easy; when someone spots something, they are now more likely to call it out. Sticky Notes also make an effort to get people involved, and the stylish appearance reminds everyone just what the Wikipedia project is all about. The result: better chances of converting readers into editors.

The main benefit of Sticky Notes might be this: It will win us more long-term, interested editors. That may be what the Wikipedia project needs more than anything: more quality work from more passionate volunteers. And how do you take a Wikipedian who "reads sometimes" and turn them into a "frequent editor"? Ask a salesman: the answer is one little step at a time. We have to get our foot in the door. Put another way, people can only take big steps after they have experience and a vested interest; the beginner must always start with little, easy steps. In this case it means that, before a person starts wielding code on pages, they have to really care about Wikipedia, take ownership, and feel like contributors.

Sticky notes also make Wikipedia more transparent. The pages you read are not "finished" - they are often still debatable, and subject to commentary! Sticky notes on a page (although they are aesthetically integrated) reflect Wikipedia's ever evolving nature.

Challenges

Worthy ideas are not without their challenges.

Comments in place of edits?

There has been a worry that many sticky notes would be ideas that should be put directly into the body, or links that belong in the body, or suggestions for rephrasing that would really just be better performed on the main text.

That is the hope, no? People who do not know how to edit would use sticky notes, instead of these comments never showing up at all. Many sticky notes would be from the public, not editors (who already know how to fix things themselves). The greatest risk remains that readers will give up and lose interest completely ("I don't edit it" becomes "stuff doesn't get edited" becomes "Wikipedia is not as democratic as we thought - maybe I can't trust it!"). We KNOW this is happening, and it happens after seeing walls of markup text.

Another good thing about letting people comment on the page is that it is a way for less aggressive editors to say "hey, this idea has an issue, but I also do not want to delete the hard work of whoever wrote this yet".

Too distracting?

Figure 2 How pages look before you click on any sticky notes. Even when there are many of them, they are unobtrusive.

Wouldn't comments all over the page, and highlighted text, be distracting? Yes. That is why sticky notes do not work that way.

The indicators are visible by default (moreover, there could also be the option of clicking "hide all sticky notes" at the top of the page). The "sticky indicators" themselves are small diamonds that match the Wikipedia aesthetic. Even a page loaded with them looks great. To be clear, it is only once an interested reader clicks on the indicator that a sticky note displays its contained comment, and highlights the relevant text.

Rarely, two people leave sticky notes in basically the same place, highlighting the same text. In these cases, their comment could be moved directly to first sticky note's discussion page. We might also consider implementing code that moves, deletes, or changes the size of "sticky indicators" with time. All this because there is only so much room on the margin.

Vandalism?

This idea has the potential to cause participation to increase significantly. This means we have to plan on dealing with vandalism, and applying more of the same rules and precautions as we do on pages in general (with the help of bots). It seems unexpected, however, to then draw the conclusion that we must, therefore, abandon sticky notes.

Ignorance about editing wikipedia rarely stops a vandal the way it stops an interested reader. This is because the vandal is simply indifferent to the project's goals. We might consider two examples. Firstly, like graffiti, the useless words will be put in any section. Graffiti is easier for the vandal, who need only figure out how to make their change visible; they spend no additional time worrying about how their edit enhances the surrounding text or meets Wikipedia's policies.

Secondly, it is only the serious editor who will be concerned with image captions, broken or untrustworthy links, important ideas that need to be articulated, and other more complex issues that would require a command of the Wikipedia system. As editing becomes more difficult, the more nuanced and productive input is lost; comments about stuff that matters are lost. Difficult editing may well prevent people from making the more complex, interested changes - but it does little to curb the vandal looking to add useless words anywhere they can.

Vandals exploit every great tool we give users. The same will, at times, be true of Sticky Notes. Misuse is a challenge, but the way to deal with this is to find better ways to stop vandals, not to avoid adding very good features - especially not features that can sometimes make contributing easier (this is the Wikipedia project, after all).

Wikipedia has had to come to terms with the fact that a feature where "anyone can edit, always" is too absolute; some pages truly need their access restricted to auto-confirmed users. It is likely that, equally occasionally, admins may need to restrict sticky note commenting abilities too. If, however, we refused to attempt something as promising as sticky notes because we fear any vandalism at all, we would have to be honest about our reasoning. We would have to be clear that we are officially keeping Wikipedia hard to edit as an anti-vandalism measure. The working hypothesis here is: difficult editing is a sort of filter. Perhaps it is the case that keeping editing difficult really does prevent many more and worse comments to a degree that is worth the costs: the loss of many more and better comments, as well as the decrease in public engagement. But put this way, we have a hypothesis that, if it is not against the philosophy of Wikipedia on its face, is certainly a hypothesis that could (and should) be put to the test.

Do not forget that sticky notes also act as a reminder to everyone that they can get more involved. The important thing is that readers will be left with an easy way to contribute. Not to mention that this becomes another chance to display the message "thanks for the comment! Here are some reasons you might want an account..."

Coding

How do we code all this? Well, once we are asking THAT question, we know we want to make this happen. At the discussion page, some ideas about implementation have started bouncing around.

Ideally, the wikipedia project would incorporate sticky notes into the wiki markup. This might be similar to the way image captions or templates work, for instance. That is, a "{{StickyNote}}" with parameters like "the user comment", "note colour", "date", "link to anchor in corresponding discussion section". There could also be a "Sticky ID" parameter; that way, even the highlighted text would be handled by the wiki markup. Consider some sort of <StickyHighlight StickyID=4> and </StickyHighlight> tags flanking the text in question (where the sticky id parameter is a way of associating particular highlighted text with an expanded sticky comment).

The main hope is that established users would have direct access to the sticky notes (to edit the code). Moreover, we would want a secure system, where main page histories would display any new sticky notes (not just the discussion page histories, where the sticky notes generated the new discussion section). If you have coding knowledge or ideas, consider lending them to the discussion page.

Advertisement

Many of the above features and benefits would work well as promotional material. It could start with something as simple as a banner saying "Now it's even easier to volunteer suggestions for Wikipedia pages - try our new Sticky Notes feature".

Closing

• Sticky Notes will remind readers that Wikipedia is "the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit". It is forever a transparent work in progress.
• Sticky Notes are easy to use. We we will capture more productive comments that would have otherwise gone deterred.
• Sticky Notes make it easy to get more involved; ultimately we will end up with more long-time editors.
• Sticky Notes represent a stepping stone for timid people, not just into coding itself, but into the community and its policies.

Other info

Thanks for reading!

Do you have a moment to add your ideas to the talk page? Maybe later.

-Tesseract²(talk) 01:31, 18 July 2011 (UTC)