Wikipedia:Wikipedia should be fun
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This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Wikipedia should be fun. Its editors should derive pleasure from the time they spend here.
What "fun" means
[edit]- Productive collaboration
- Editors should enjoy working with one another to create value in the form of great encyclopedia articles.
- Friendly advice
- Editors should get help from one another where they get stuck.
- Congenial discussion
- Editors should enjoy talking to one another about their work.
- Empowerment
- Editors should feel free to be bold in improving the encyclopedia, no matter what area of it they prefer working on.
What isn't fun
[edit]- War
- Edit wars are not fun. They sap the will to edit from editors. They get ugly. They redirect energy which could be used to work productively on the encyclopedia into undoing the work of others.
- Drama
- Wikipedia is not Dallas. The purpose of our interaction with other editors is not to entertain bored housewives. When things get personal, productivity drops. We're here to build articles, not egos.
- Enfeeblement
- Editors should be able to jump in and improve the project wherever they like. Every hoop that they have to jump through unnecessarily reduces their enthusiasm and holds up improvement of the project.
- Desk jobs
- Editors shouldn't feel that they are chained to their desks, forced to slog away at the same thing every day. Where fighting vandals or taking personal responsibility for everything that happens to an article starts to feel like a vocation and not a hobby, editors should feel free to walk away and do something else on the project.