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The Teahouse – Why is that working so well, and can we learn from it?

Hypothesis, based on some vague observation. You may disagree:

  • Most social or meta- attempts at WP fail.
  • The Teahouse seems to be working well. Better than any similar project I can recall.
  • What are we doing right over there, and can we extend the lessons?

Andy Dingley (talk) 10:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

  • The Teahouse has largely been the brainchild of Sarah, so that's clearly something being done right. I have taken a pretty active role over there, and I think one of the key things is the environment, which is "friendly" (e.g., the manner in which questions are answered: "Hi x and welcome to the Teahouse" and not overlinking to policies). It kind of reminds me of the saying when you do things right, word gets around. I agree, the Teahouse is doing excellently and it's something I enjoy being a part of. As for what we can learn, I think it might simply mean that we need to strive to be friendly and welcoming to new users. I know of several cases where a newcomer was fed up with runaround policy links they were given elsewhere and as a last resort on their way out the door asked their question at the Teahouse and are still here today. So, to summarize I think the lesson to be learned there is that newcomers often get bit, or at the very least given circular policy links which, let's face it, sometimes established users, much less newcomers can't understand or certainly not apply, so we should strive to make things simple for them, at least in the beginning. That's the editor retention aspect of it. Go Phightins! 11:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Not wanting to take away from the excellent work done at the teahouse, but it's an area of wikipedia that's very pleasant to work in. It's easy to be nice to new people who are curious about the site, as evidenced by the help desk which also gives new editors answers very quickly - as does the IRC help channel. I don't believe that the social aspects do that much for the teahouse... To see what I mean, just look at the page view statistics - Q&A page 11,480 views in the past month, hosts profiles 936, Guest profiles 599. I do approve of the teahouse, but I think it's scaleability is limited. WormTT(talk) 12:15, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
    We refer people to the Teahouse all the time, it is a great place and we don't want to duplicate their efforts. A lot of what we see here is when editors get into a bind, a fight, frustration, etc. Not an ANI issue, just discouragement. We would probably do our best work as a bridge. That and finding ways to reward and encourage in general. I've been talking to Fluffernutter about that above, setting up some kind of structure here to help frustrated editors. Fill part of the void left with the closing of WP:WQA, but not focused only on civility and doing it as a project, not an admin board. Kind of like how WP:OPP helps out other areas as a project and not a board. We don't want to be in the sanction business here, just the mediation, helping, education business. That is just part of retention, solving problems that aren't "violations". Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 17:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
The thing that I found good about Teahouse was the lack of bite there. I had a lot of problems understanding how to do things, and was getting bit on talk pages rather regularly, and then I got an invite to the Teahouse. We have been railing back and forth here over civility, and I agree with Dennis in that it is really something that cannot be enforced all that well. However, the lack of civility is a huge problem when it comes to keeping new editors here. Think about it. What would your reaction be if on your first foray into editing here, you were greeted with "WP:XYZ, WP:BLP, WP:GNG, if you don't know this you haven't got a WP:CLUE and why are you wasting my time?"
Something I think that would be workable would be a kind of "Alternative Sentencing" area that we could run for new users that did end up at a noticeboard. That would not be usurping any of the noticeboard's powers, it would just give them an alternative to blocks and interaction bans. We could then provide tutoring in a "kinder, gentler" way and administer an exit test prior to turning the new editor back out to edit at will. Just a thought.
One other thing. I really don't understand what Worm is trying to say with those stats. What does it prove to know how many people looked at the host or guest profiles? I would say that 11,000 plus views of the Q/A board shows just how successful it is. Gtwfan52 (talk) 19:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Alternative Sentencing

Kind of like Purgatory... derived from the Latin word purgatorium, suffering short of everlasting damnation. But rather than a place of suffering and torment, it (Alternative sentencing) is a place of education and nurturing...especially one that is temporary and without the eternal WP blemish of having been banned. 👍 Like ```Buster Seven Talk 23:12, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

  • This "AltSen" idea has great potential, I think. Its provides a middle ground for admins to send their delinquent editors. A choice between "Go and sin no more" and "You have been banned". Instead its-----"Spend some time with those editors over at WER. They are a reasonable bunch and will assist you." ```Buster Seven Talk 13:33, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Project Banner

Please use {{WikiProject Editor Retention}} or {{WPER}} from now on! —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 16:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Have you created a Project assessment page yet? Also, have we discussed what pages we see under our scope to place this on? Looking below I also notice that the category pages are still redlinked.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:46, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Project assessment page

I have created the Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor retention/Assessment page. This page contains all the categories associated with the project banner placement, additional pages for the project that include a reassessment page and the criteria associated with listing within ratings categories.. While the page has been made, the category pages have not yet been created and will require further work. If you are familiar with the creation of these pages and would like to help out, please free to do so. If you are unsure about how these are created, please request assistance or you can find information on Project pages here. There may also be other places to find more information located at the WikiProject Council page here. If you have questions I suggest User:John Carter as the best human resource for project information. Ask nicely and be patient as John is a very active editor but he seems to be willing to extend a helping hand. (also a WER member). If no one else gets to it, I will slowly start full set up.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:41, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Call me dense (or Ishmael, I don't care), but what types of pages would this project monitor? This seems like a strictly overhead type project. Gtwfan52 (talk) 03:50, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
OK...Ishmael, we don't actually monitor articles under the project scope so much as we attempt to keep up when needed or notified per the banner. Editors may wish to improve them etc and raise the rating level. Mainly (at least for now) this is a good way to keep track of all the project subpages, templates and userboxes. As the project advances it may well expand its scope to include some articles, essays and policy pages. As an example see: Wikipedia talk:Merging, where Wikiproject Merge has included the Merge policy page under its scope. Pages for our project here, may include such pages as BRD and other essays, articles like Collaborative editing and perhaps even some policy pages with a direct context to editors and retention such as Wikipedia:Be bold and Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. We will probably need an additional banner with no assement or rating as is done both WikiProject Merge (which has both) and WikiProject Dispute Resolution.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:34, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

CSD templates and rationales (or lack thereof)

I'm not sure where the most appropriate avenue is, but I'll put it here to start with as it should attract the right audience. As some of you may have noticed, I've been semi-regularly checking articles tagged with {{db-a7}}, and undoing any that I disagree with (which isn't actually that many), giving a reason why in each case. One of the problems I see is that, unlike PROD and AfD, you don't have to give a rationale to tag something for CSD (the idea being that the "db-" part of the template is the rationale. Forcing a tagger to give a one sentence explanation might go some way towards making the process a little more palatable for everyone. As it is, I've seen a few articles tagged as A7, thought "WTF?", because a standard Twinkle or Page Curator doesn't give me any idea what was going through the tagger's head at the time. What does everyone else think? --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

As you say, the CSD criteria are the rationales. They have been carefully selected to be kept to a minimum, and carefully worded to avoid ambiguity. Anyone who has a good understanding of deletion policies should have no difficulty in understanding them and applying them, especially if they have read WP:NPP and WP:DELETION. The problem is that many patrollers either haven't read those pages or don't have enough experience. What is needed is a better class of patroller rather than continuing to allow NPP to be the playground of every newbie who wants to feel the power of wielding a stick over Wikipedia articles. That said, however, I think NPP has improved since the introduction of the new page feed, because I don't seem to be warning as many patollers as I used to. Unfortunately, NPP is still severely backlogged and where we have 5,000 editors with reviewer right for pending changes, we only have on average about 5 users patrolling new pages at any one time. Perhaps it's just not interesting enough due to the very fact that it needs neither a user right nor a demonstration of experience. Poor tagging does not help user retention, and while admins should probably lead by example, even one admin/WMF staffer nearly lost us a good contributor not so long ago through drive-by tagging. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting Discussion

regarding newbies @ Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Usernames: STOP BITING THE NEWBIES... ```Buster Seven Talk 13:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

'Wikipedia losing editors', study says

Interesting article at http://phys.org/news/2013-01-wikipedia-editors.html - note comments. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:40, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

  • Yep! That is why I want to help here. We should also keep editor attrition in the back of our minds when !voting on deletion discussions. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs)

Guys won't be seeing much of me around, either...

Following my concerns about what's happening here. And the lack of genuine interest in fixing anything which really needs to be fixed. And I'm not talking about the thin veneer of pseudo-civility ... I'm talking about the kind of "quasi-government" which thinks that silencing the dissenting voices is OK; which thinks that closing access to people's talk pages is OK, in order to "disperse the crowds"; that thinks that a few grouchy snarls and a few "naughty words" equates to incivility; that thinks that a request for clarification or amendment can be skewed round to result in a motion for a site-ban which a lot of people who should know better signed despite the fact that nobody other than themselves asked for it; that thinks that our best editors and potential editors are driven off by what they perceive as "incivility"; that doesn't understand that drivers who do tens of thousands of miles in a year in areas frequented by trap-setters, boy-racers, drunk drivers, lousy roads and poor lighting are that many times more likely to have an accident than the one who does 1,000 miles a year on quiet country lanes ... . There's a stunning lack of genuine insight around here, and I, for one, am sick of it. I posted on Jimbo's talk that I was seriously concerned; and the response was ... well ... underwhelming. Nobody wants to address the real issues - it's easier to pick on someone whose accent doesn't quite fit. So I'm not doing much. Pesky (talk) 12:51, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I said on the mentioned page that the project is losing the best, and you, Pesky, are one of them. Y'all: speak up there, and enjoy the Christmas music on my user and talk, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:01, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
You are speaking 'real', Pesky. (Before you quit adding here on this Project page Talk, I'd like you to tell the "Editor Retention" project how you feel about the effectiveness of how they are organized, and what they talk about here, etc. [It seems to me, that the concrete problems you are mentioning, are pretty much not dealt with here in any direct discussion, and the overall philosophy here is "be nice to everybody" or some such thing, and even though that's nice, don't really see how that really intersects with the serious shit you are pointing finger at, which is palpably real.]) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:22, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Yeh. We, as a community, really need to be looking at what's driving away our good, established editors. The back-stabbing, scapegoat-seeking politics of the place, hiding under that thin, shiny, honey-scented illusion of sweet reasonableness. We're riddles with death-watch beetle, but because of the pretty waxed surface they hide under, most people don't even realise it's there. And woe betide those who point it out. And it would be sooooooo kewl if everyone who thought that Malleus having been blocked for calling a group of people "sycophants" was ok would join together as a team and issue an instant indef block to every admin or arb or ex-arb who has ever called a group of people "enablers", "fans", "supporters", or anything else at all which actually is just another of the many ways of calling people sycophants. Go for it! Be brave ... Pesky (talk) 13:30, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Wish I knew what to say Pesky. I'm not nearly as optimistic as I was many months ago myself. I still see admin say talk pages of blocked users can ONLY be used to request unblocks (policy does not support this claim), and a number of other happenings that I find frustrating. It sometimes feels like some people are trying to control Wikipedia, which is like herding cats: You accomplish nothing and it irritates the cats. On the issue of defining "civility", the community is completely torn in two and I honestly see it getting worse before it gets better. The last couple of months have been a rather depressing for me in many ways as well. I will be sparse for a while due to my occupation, so maybe a little break will do me good. I hope you don't stray too far away, we need sensible folks like you around. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:13, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
[ec]There's really nothing to say, Dennis. The "community" is dysfunctional, run quite often by those who can either shout the loudest or wield essays as weapons (which from what I've seen passes as consensus far too often). Reasonable voices are ignored or shouted into silence. And I honestly think that the breaks don't really help anyone (although I would never begrudge anyone time away from here, obviously). All they do is dull the outrage. It's pretty well documented that, given mental distance, people are more likely to forget the things that angered them about something and instead remember the "good times." Which in turn makes the shock of new bad times all that more severe. And as for defining civility...I don't think it will happen because there are too many who either use it as a weapon or hide behind it to launch their attacks. It's far too useful in a twisted sense for those who really don't understand it. Intothatdarkness 14:38, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
  • IHTS, we are just a project with no authority. The topics discussed are just what people bring up, no one really "decides" what we discuss. If you look at the early archives, my first objective was to get someone to act as a leader here as I don't want the job, but no one was interested, so we have no "leader" here. It is a bit scattered, but that isn't always a bad thing. As an individual, I'm completely clueless on how to deal with the civility misenforcement issue. I can speak out at Arb hearings (and have), vote in polls when they come up, etc. but I don't know of any action we could initiate or discuss that would fix this problem. As I said above, the community is very split on the issue, and it is very hard to find a solution when everyone disagrees on the problem. There are a large number of people who think that any rudeness or bluntness is reason to block. I would not be one of them. I think part of it is an effort to "child-proof" Wikipedia, make it all safe and warm and fuzzy. In my mind, that is not only impossible to achieve, but undesirable. It would drive me away, that is certain. I'm not interested in policing "dirty words" on the Wiki. I think it is a short-sighted philosophy and will lead to even more uneven and unfair enforcement. I've said it before: Laws or policies that are generally unenforceable end up being selectively enforced, thus are a form of tyranny. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:29, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I actually like having no "leader" here! I dream of FA without a leader ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:33, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Thx for your candid response, Dennis. If there is any de-facto leader here, it's you (project founder). After your last honest admission of depressed expectations and not knowing what the H can be done, I'd say there's not much purpose to the Project, other than chit-chat. (I.e., no authority, no chance for effectiveness to better any of the major problems, for sure, or even a willingness, IMO, to talk about them with any passion. T-shirts are not the answer, either!) Please read your conundrum soliloquy again (because, I think it's telling). You don't know what can be done. You are confused as to how problems could effectively be solved. You've thought and you've thought, and you've reached exhausted failure. Dennis, this is so obvious to me, your predicament: You have assumed that solutions can be found and achieved, *within* the current WP structure. That is wrong. That is impossible. Your frustration is a function of that false assumption. The only solution, is one of *structural change*. (And that isn't even close to the scope or objectives of the project here, to recommend structural changes, is it?) Plus, here is a second false assumption you are undertaking, that leads to more of your frustrations: You are assuming you are smart enough, to maybe, figure out what the solutions can be, to the problems. (You can't. You aren't smart enough. Neither am I. And neither is Malleus, *alone*.) I've just given the clue where that smartness can be found: in a collaboration of the top content contributors of Wikipedia. (That group would be a collective beehive of intellgence, that would have the capacity to produce solutions. And I think *only* that combined intelligence, can possibly do it. I don't know what they would come up with, but I can tell you this: it would involve structural change.) I can already hear detractors to the idea saying that such a group (the 10-15 top contributors according to the community) could never reach consensus what to do, what structural change to implement. Bull. (You see, they all love the Pedia so much, have given serious parts of their lives to it. They have a common interest to preserve their investment. And a committment to being smart, always. They would work it out, a consensus, if given the chance, and given some time.) That is where the answer is. And it is a resource untapped. It needs to be more than tapped (it needs to be organized, and given some authority). Anything else will be as ineffective as a Star Trek Tribble (which has no teeth). Ihardlythinkso (talk) 15:06, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
You have to remember that the sole purpose of WER isn't to deal with "civility", although that is one issue that fits the goals. We still do many different things via WER, typically not on this page. Often people drop off problems and a member will go and try to help, often with success. The Project is more a place to discuss problems, create awareness, and provide a venue for both sides of debates. If WER has done anything, it has allowed the discussion to take place in a public area, owned by no one. The real work that gets done never happens on this page. But you are right that I am not smart enough to figure out the solution on my own, and you may be right that it is structural and will require core changes, I honestly don't know. I do know that opinions are very split, and getting consensus seems hopeless at this time. And yes, usually I come across more hopeful, perhaps more so than I really feel, but it is just my way to try to project an optimistic view. For now, myself and others try ad hoc solutions in individual situations where we can, but that is a very hit or miss proposition. It is better than nothing, but still less than optimal. As for being a de facto leader, I understand why others see it that way, which is why I sometimes ride the fence, as to encourage discussion and not force the Project into my particular point of view. It is still not the role I wanted, and it is a bit uncomfortable at times, to be honest. There are a great many issues that affect editor retention, and if I had the answers, I would have no need for the project. The purpose is to get people to talk so we can learn and develop ideas. Some solutions are obvious and everyone agrees, but many (like civility) are not. The whole reason to start the project was that I knew the best ideas wouldn't come from me, but from others, and this would provide a forum for them. A look at the original edit I made to start the project [1] gives an idea of my original intent. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 15:39, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I {{like]] what DB has to say. Having read pesky and ihts's comments hours ago, I was concerned and wanted to reply but wasn't quite sure how. Ive tried to formulate a response but was not able to. I think Dennis said it best about WER being a sounding board, a place for open discussions without a moderator, a place to brainstorm and search for solutions. Civility is a big mountain to climb and I can understand editors wanting to take a break during the climb. But, as with most mountains, there are hundreds of ways to the top. Let's keep looking upward and search for one that works. Abandoning the journey won't get us there. ```Buster Seven Talk 18:48, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Perhaps we didn't all embark on the same journey, so our intended destinations may be different. For instance, I rather naively assumed that we were here to write a free encyclopedia, not to make the Internet a more civil place, whatever "more civil" might mean in backwoods America. And sometimes to do that in any kind of reasonable timeframe you have to break a few eggs, not stroke innumerable power-crazy and inadequate egos beyond the point of common sense. That, in my mind, is the fundamental schism that's tearing Wikipedia apart. Wikipedia in its current form is past its best-by date, and unless some serious changes are made it won't be around in even a couple of years I don't think, other than as some archive jealously guarded by the surving administrators. Malleus Fatuorum 19:21, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
What kinds of changes do you feel are necessary? Go Phightins! 19:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I will be quite happy to accept a well-paid consultancy contract with the WMF to point them in the right direction. Perhaps that may give you a clue, perhaps not. Malleus Fatuorum 19:37, 27 December 2012 (UTC).
This kind of thing is why I'm working on User:Biosthmors/WMF Noticeboard, FYI. Biosthmors (talk) 19:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
In support of Pesky and her brave move, sometimes "abandoning the journey" is the only sensible and heartfelt way to move forward. I've been reading Pesky long enough to trust that for her (and all of us) her decision was the right one. Gandydancer (talk) 19:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
As I suggested above, there are two fundamentally distinct issues here: what are we producing and how are we producing it. Is there any evidence at all that this emphasis on civility has led to a better product? Isn't that, at the end of the day, all that matters? Malleus Fatuorum 19:28, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I would say the emphasis is on incivility and that negativity has probably not helped. I have never seen you be uncivil (though I would grant annoying) and I would be reluctant to take anyone's word for it. But certainly with less than 20% of our pages being articles, there sees to be a chronic obsession with process rather than product. Rich Farmbrough, 20:10, 27 December 2012 (UTC).
Malleus is right, we must put building the encyclopedia first, and everything else second. Otherwise, we end up with a bunch of sweet talking passive-aggressives and a very poorly designed social networking site. You DO have to crack a few eggs, you must allow a good portion of bluntness and the occasional beer bottle thrown across the room. Only when it spills into the isles should we get involved in an administrative capacity. At least that is my opinion, but I appear to be in the minority. You don't have to like it, only tolerate it as long as the focus is still about the articles, using words instead of blocks to settle down the heat when you can. And of course, the flip side is where WER comes in, trying to make the place more fun to be at, cut some of the red tape in the policies, simplify guidelines, jump in and mediate disagreements, patch a wound every now and again, without creating a false sense of civility that is really just incivility glazed in polite words. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 21:12, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I think it's important to figure out a way to corral the bullies and trolls while not ourselves getting splattered with the same brush; seems like whenever you go after these people, they scream that they are the wronged ones and get everyone on their side. I couldn't figure it out in 5th grade and I still can't figure it out, but that's the dynamic. Malleus is the classic case, he calls the trolls on their crap, occasionally catching a few of the rest of us (that's the "annoying" part) in the process, but you can always spot the trolls by the haste with which they beat a path to ANI... sigh. Montanabw(talk) 22:18, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
You'd need to correct two (at least) basic flaws here first, IMO: the focus on the "last event" when it comes to just about any ANI action AND a startling inability to distinguish between assuming good faith (which appears to be a very selective thing in many cases) and being gamed by a superficially polite passive/aggressive bully. The "just grin and take it" mantra I see trotted out in far too many cases simply encourages the passive/aggressive bullies and (I suspect) makes their more obvious cousins more aggressive. Add to that a possibly unhealthy obsession with metrics and numbers and you're left with a real mess. Intothatdarkness 22:24, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't claim to have any definitive answers here, but I don't think "corraling" anyone is the answer. Throwing labels on people, regardless of the direction of the throwing, will likely make the situation worse. Some people are disruptive and need to be blocked, but the overwhelming majority of people who think that "civility must be strictly enforced" are not bullies. Most are good editors, but they just have a narrow view of the situation and think you can "corral" the people that say dirty words or get blunt. There are some issues, but lets not paint everyone who disagrees as being he same. There is a lot of variety in those that want overly strict enforcement, which is why we try to engage them and change their minds, not label them. The real "bully" types typically don't have a philosophy about civility per se, it is just a means to an end. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 22:39, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Dennis, it's a nice idea, but can you point even one example where you have succeeded in changing the mindset of one of these self righteous civility obsessives? This stuff seems too deep rooted in ideological background and genetics for polite conversation and rational discussion to have any effect. And how many of these people really contribute anything of value to Wikipedia? --Epipelagic (talk) 00:45, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that question must be asked. Wikipedia's quality should be foremost, not more than the editing environment. Binksternet (talk) 05:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree. Content is king. There are some brilliant editors here (Malleus, Intothatdarkness, Epipelagic, etc.) and I think the brief discussion shows a consensus that quality is first. It would be nice if everyone were on board (so all horses could pull in one direction). This is example what I mean (copied from here):

Something has got to give. I really do hope that we can create a decent civility "policy" - I'd rather have a happy healthy environment and miss a few articles then have good articles and an unhealthy community. We can't meet our mission if we don't have a healthy collaborative environment. SarahStierch (talk) 21:10, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure Sarah is a nice and professional person, and everyone seems to like her, and no doubt I would like her too when meeting her in person. But her sentiment seems to conceptually be counter the idea that article quality must come first. So in that respect, there's a divergence in thinking. (She is very pleasant and a good ambassador for WP, Teahouse and all, so, nothing personal, but I think it would be advantageous to bring her in the fold and convince her of the consensus which seems to exist here, to achieve an intellectual harmony regarding the objective and mission of WP. Again nothing personal, I just see a divergence of idea, and want the right one to win, and influential editors to get behind the same value, or be honestly convinced to. That is real teamwork.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 08:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I frankly don't understand why so many wanted to chase me away for so long, but I don't think that was healthy. It's true that I'm not an especially patient person, and I'm only prepared to put up with bollocks for so long before I tell you that you're talking bollocks, if I think you are. Am I always right? Probably not, but way more often than not I'd suggest. These interminable stupid arguments over trivia have to be chopped off at the neck, and that's not by blocking those who point out that they have to be chopped off at the neck, however "uncivily". Unless Wikipedia's ultimate aim is to become the nicest social networking site and the worst encyclopedia in the history of the world of course. So far it's failing badly on the first but doing a pretty good job on the second. Malleus Fatuorum 00:33, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The point is really this: professionalism. If editors feel that being professional in their comments and replies is not easy, then....don't comment. Civility is truly a two way street. Meet incivility with sarcasm at most.....and kindness at best. If this seems to elude some editors then.....perhaps it is best to just wave goodbye from a distance. This may seem counter to our mission here at editor retention, but some editors do not wish to be professional. The question is not about being civil as much as it is to not be so far to the extreme that you are, not just pushing others away, but actually discouraging their input and contributions. This isn't a very difficult issue to understand. We are not sharks smelling blood in the water and deciding to attack the weakest among us. We are trying to build an encyclopedia in a way that allows anyone to add input. If it isn't clear vandalsim....then...at least attempt to be professional and not prove yourself to be unworthy of the respect of the community. We can't save everyone...although clearly there are those that say they are going...yet can't quite seem to find the door. Good. Don't leave. Stay and collaborate. But don't pretend you are out and then keep coming back in. It makes those that are attempting to seek some resolution to stop and think that perhaps some game is being played upon them and they simply won't care anymore. There is a social aspect to Wikipedia. Don't like that....? Then you may have a problem with collaboration with others. If that is true....no amount of civility will resolve that issue. It may just be best to know you tried....and let go. What's the old adage...."If you love something... let it go, if it comes back to you it was truly meant to be".--Amadscientist (talk) 09:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Amadscientist, your statement "We are trying to build an encyclopedia in a way that ..." shows, by the placing the *how* condition, that you value civility over content. It's back to the basic disharmony re what should be WP's worthy mission. Your 2012 relative red-bar contributions seem (to me) at least consistent with your expressed value [2]. (I'm on on the other side of the fence than you; I want my time FWIW attributed to a quality encyclopedia, not a socially-purified comic book.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 10:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Your opinion of what I value is innacurate and unimportant. Please review Wikipedia:Five pillars. When you have figured it out.......get back to me (Hint: see # 3, the yellow pillar). What I see you saying here is what YOU think "should be WP's worthy mission". I am wholly disinterested in what you feel "should be" our mission and more interested in what we have already established as our goals for this project. I am also really not interested in your opinion of my percentage totals for article contributions. 30.69% compared to your 68.04% may show how prolific you are as a content contributer compared to me, but also could be seen as simply finding contribution to be more important than collaboration. If you want your own wiki...start one. Your statistics of 31 comments to our project here....without actually being a member, shows you to be little more than a critic. I also note the number of comments to usertalk pages shows you may have some bias on what I stated above. Please...dance some more with me here. It's fun, but....don't try to lead.....your are not good at it.--Amadscientist (talk) 11:23, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Was trying to be objective, fair, and honest, Amadscientist. (And you interpret as personal attack!, apparently feeling the need to "attack back".) If my view was inaccurate, just correct it. (If 'both' are not possible, do you value content or civility?) Shame on me for suggesting a common idea of WP mission is lacking between editors. Shame on me for taking a side. Shame on me for criticizing anything. (BTW, is there a pillar on article quality? Where?) You seem to be ready and willing to demonstrate where the door is, to content contributors. Ironic that you are here in "Editor Retention". Perhaps you should unplug your emotional cord a bit. Perhaps I didn't "join" here out of name-sake-value-only, because I don't like being a member of preemptively ineffective groups. (Just because it "feels good" is not enough for me. I'm results oriented. Oh so sorry for that!) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 12:36, 28 December 2012 (UTC) p.s. Amadscientist, in the above I referred to your 2012 edits, which show your red-bar edits at only 12.40% for the year, not 30.69% that you stated.

You guys are proving why civility can't be "enforced", it is relative, cultural and no one agrees on the nuances. You are both talking over each other a bit, both worthwhile contributors, but put you in a box, whisper "civility", and it turns into a dog fight. This is what is happening Wikiwide. People that are good contributors getting sidetracked and wasting time discussing something they aren't going to agree on, instead of working on articles. The whole debate on "Civility" has been become disruptive. Too bad I can't indef block debates, because the divisions, the rift, the larger debate in the whole community has been more time sucking and detrimental to article creation than all the sockpuppets put together. I haven't worked on articles in two weeks. :/ And of course, and now we lose Pesky, Malleus is poking in a bit but has made it clear he is on his way out, and we also lose editors on the other side of the debate. That I disagree with them on how civility doesn't change the fact that I don't want to lose them as fellow editors. I don't like to see us bleeding out editors, regardless of their opinion of that one pillar. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 13:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry Dennis, I don't accept your false blame for dog-fighting. (Was trying to express ideas here, objective, fair as I could. Amadscientist decided to pick up the hatchet. I only responded to his throwing it at me.) It is important to see who initiates incivilities, that is the same problem Malleus has suffered for years, when he has responded to incivilities initated by others, then he picks up the blame. Have a talk with Amadscientist, tell him to cool down, there was no offense intended. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Dennis, I think others have made clear where they stand, if a choice between content and civility. Where do you stand, because, it isn't clear. ("Malleus is right, we must put building the encyclopedia first, and everything else second. Otherwise, we end up with a bunch of sweet talking passive-aggressives and a very poorly designed social networking site." versus "That I disagree with them on how civility doesn't change the fact that I don't want to lose them as fellow editors.", seems conflicting to me.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:58, 28 December 2012 (UTC) p.s. This was a good discussion, until Amadscientist decided to try and tear it down over feeling personally offended. The ideas here were larger than that. He says nobody gives a damn what I think; I say nobody gives a damn about his feelings. His feelings were not the topic here.
I didn't mean it as blame. The problem is systemic and compounded by different opinions. You two can at least talk to each other, you misunderstand me or perhaps I wasn't clear. I'm saying the problem is larger than a discussion can fix. Every civility discussion I see, people talk over each other, because they argue about the solution, but each see the problem differently. I'm not sure how to properly articulate it. It is no wonder common ground can't be found. If my answers seem conflicted, it is because I don't think the answer lies at either extreme. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:03, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Can't we just show each other some basic common courtesy in discussions? I'm not saying this needs to turn into the choir boys, but why can't, in the course of discussions, we just treat others with a little respect? I completely dispute the comment that we can't have both civility and quality content...Go Phightins! 14:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I have not treated anyone with disrespect, if you are referring to me, who did not attack me first. Saying we can have both civlity and quailty content is really side-stepping the Q. (Because anyone can say that. Who would object to saying that? No one.) But why then has Editor Retention become an issue, and why have we lost quality editors thru disgust of the place? And why are we picking up the comments from Malleus and Pesky and others, that are in evidence plain for anyone to see? No one said discussion to resolve these major problems would be pretty. I see no reason to stick one's head in the sand like an ostrich, and whistle walking thru the petrified forest. Let's get real, otherwise it is pure waste of time. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 14:25, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
It's a simple Q, Dennis: If you can't have both, which do you value more, content or civility? (Others seem to have no problem to take a stand. Me too. It's a theoretic Q for sure, but germane to the divide of concept of mission which clearly seems to exist [compare above sentiments from content contributors, and even from yourself, against Sarah's sentiment; clearly an important divergence exists, and as long as it does, there can be no harmony/unanimity of purpose, real teamwork, for the Pedia]). Ihardlythinkso (talk) 14:14, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
My opinion on that has always been clear, that content is most important. The reader of the encyclopedia comes first, and content is what brings them here. They are oblivious to our squabbles for the most part. I've never equivocated on that issue. But it is a Catch 22, since if there isn't a degree of civility, you lose content creators, just as if you overpolice civility, you lose content creators. We are bleeding equally on both sides of the civility issue as we speak, demonstrating how dysfunctional the current system is. Of course I want people to get along better, and get offended by some things here. Everyone does. The difference is that I don't think blocking and banning people is the solution in most cases. I have anecdotal evidence it only makes the problem worse. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 15:19, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
You answered. That's great. No one presented an extremist case to you (that choosing content means zero civility). It is a value preference, when a choice must be made, is all. Sarah (in my interpretation) seems to be on opposite side of the coin (preferring civil environment, over good articles, if a choice must be made). I don't see how there's any way forward, unless people can agree on mission (and, the values question can't be side-stepped, otherwise we have the status quo of today, which most feel isn't working and will lead to further deprecation). As you know I think there is no way out except thru structural change, and I've identified the body-elect that I think is necessary and capable of coming up with those changes for the maintenance and growth of the Pedia. I really think there is no other way. I have no further need to be here, and the last I want is to see ideas devolve to easy criticism and defensiveness, when that is not the point. There are big problems here, and if it feels good to pick on someone, that just feels good, but is not helpful to any discussion out of this mess. I'm curious to get Sarah on board with the other editors previously named, re the value choice already discussed, but this is nothing personal, it's about divergent concepts of worthy mission, and I think not a little related to quality and stoppage from losing valuable contributors. The current structure has no chance at all of improving its health. Good luck with that. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 15:43, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
And we've come full circle, with me saying I really don't know the solution, and you may be right that radical change is needed. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER
I believe content is most important, while building a strong encyclopedia through professionalism. Professionalism is different than civility; it carries a certain amount of civility, yes, but that is not the overriding factor. A definition I found which follows what I am trying to convey is: "Professionalism does not mean wearing a suit or carrying a briefcase; rather, it means conducting oneself with responsibility, integrity, accountability...communicating effectively and appropriately..." (according to the situation). You guys are right, there are problems and some change is needed. Answers start with questions asked. Kierzek (talk) 17:59, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
It may sound vain, but I'm certain I could fix Wikipedia overnight by slaying of few of the sacred cows such as AGF, which is only ever invoked by rogues. ArbCom would have to go as well of course, and the infamous five pillars would need to become one. It's all perfectly doable, but I know it won't ever get done, because fundamentally Wikipedia has morphed into an Internet civility experiment; it's not been about building an encyclopedia for some time now. Sarah's comment above sums it up perfectly: "I'd rather have a happy healthy environment and miss a few articles then have good articles and an unhealthy community. We can't meet our mission if we don't have a healthy collaborative environment." There is no community, there is no mission, and we're missing more than just a few decent articles. The truth is that 99.99% of Wikipedia's content is shite, and being nice and lovey-dovey isn't the way to sort that out. Someone needs to start kicking some ass. Or in my case keep kicking ass. Malleus Fatuorum 20:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The problem with that, Malleus, is that unless you plan on fixing every article yourself, we're going to need new editors and to retain good ones, and many of them won't want to come to an environment where it's assumed that they are acting in bad faith. I agree that we need change in this issue, but we're going to need a happy medium. Go Phightins! 20:42, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
The problem is that these assumptions of good or bad faith are ruthlessly abused here. That needs to be addressed. Malleus Fatuorum 20:47, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more, but the solution (in my opinion) is not to abandon the principles that we were founded upon. That rarely if ever works. Go Phightins! 20:53, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
That's maybe where we have to part company; what never works is living in the past. Malleus Fatuorum 20:58, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
That's true...I don't know, there's no great answer or easy solution here, in my opinion. Go Phightins! 21:02, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Malleus, Suppose we did in fact decide to change the policies. How would you then continue with what we are doing yet- Being a collaborative encyclopedia? If we are not friendly to users, esp new ones, we cannot have their help to keep WP running. Which would lead crashing down. Right? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:05, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a friendly environment, and neither does it need to be. What it needs to be is a respectful environment, which it is not. Malleus Fatuorum 21:17, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
How do you think we should make it more respectful? Go Phightins! 21:23, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Respect is shown only for those whose work deserves it. Most new editors would not fall into that category and would learn as they carry forward. Would a friendly environment not be better for them? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:30, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
If you want Wikipedia to be a social networking site then of course you'd want it to be more friendly. But I don't, I want it to be more professional. And I really don't think that's achieved by blocking editors for using words such as "sycophantic", unless your idea of a professional environment is a junior school. Malleus Fatuorum 21:36, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
But Wikipedia can't be professional without paid editors. Additionally, calling someone sycophantic (I am not familiar with the context or background, but on the surface) doesn't exactly sound representative of a "respectful environment", though. Go Phightins! 21:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia already has many paid editors, but they're not being paid to do the right things. Malleus Fatuorum 21:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Yep, that's true. Editors are mostly volunteers and do what they want to do rather than what they have to do. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:32, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
So our problem isnt assuming good faith or being friendly, right? Its more about those editors, experienced ones included, who deliberately harm other editors and reduce the quality of the project. Ultimately our goal is to create a better encyclopedia. While you prefer a hostile yet professional professional, even if hostile environment, some other editors like me would like to provide a friendly atmosphere where we can also help potential contributors grow and understand. Only have a respectful environment, and it will turn too hostile to allow newbies. Have just a friendly one, and it will become a social networking site. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:43, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
You deliberately misrepresent my position, so I will bid you and this forum farewell. Malleus Fatuorum 21:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Um WHAT??? Which part of it was misrepresented? Was it a misunderstanding or what? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 21:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I suspect the statement you have since struck was part of what he objected to. Intothatdarkness 22:01, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Me too. I didnt realise if the words could be taken otherwise. On reading again I realised maybe thats what he felt misrepresented about; so I clarified my position. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 22:05, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Off topic discussion between Amadscientist and Ihardlythinkso 03:15, 29 December 2012
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Ihardlythinkso said: "Was trying to be objective, fair, and honest, Amadscientist". Alright. I will asumme good faith, however I will also note that you indeed did "Start" the "dogfight" by discussing me by name, my values and my edit counts to conclude an opinion on me without reason. I made a post that was about professionalism and you found it necessary to begin discussing me. Please don't do that. Discuss the contributions, not the contributer. --Amadscientist (talk) 00:16, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It's all about you and your feelings, Amadscientist. If you successfully pin the blame for "dogfight" on the right person, then for sure, WP will solve its structural problems and prosper. Or at least you will feel that all is well in Wikiland. Good night. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 00:38, 29 December 2012 (UTC) p.s. Thanks for offering me to zoom away and build my own Wiki. That was so courteous. Thanks for criticizing my participation here, based on not being a "member" - you with your 12.40% mainspace edits for the year 2012 (not the 30.69% that you stated). While we try and retain Malleus, you hand him a gold watch and tell him to drop in for a few odd edits each year. (Is that so he won't disturb your idea of Wiki social club, where 12.40% edits per year are good enough to lecture and attack content contributors?) Thanks for your offer to "dance" with you, that was really my intent here, as anyone can see. Your consistent negativity and self-centeredness, Amadscientist, is more than obvious. Please don't send messages my way again, it's just annoying. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 00:47, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)You seem to think its all about me or anyone else not agreeing with your opinion I guess. Try doing as requested and not discuss the editors. Blame for your words about others rests squarely on you. Have a good night. (And if you don't want further messages to you...just stop replying)--Amadscientist (talk) 01:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

This thread went from an explanation of why a particular editor was leaving to a pissing match. I, as a totally uninvolved editor who has only marginal contact with either of you, am going to ask you both nicely to either drop this NOW, or take it to one or the other of your talk pages. This kind of bickering is certainly NOT in the interest of editor retention, and isn't that what we are supposed to be working at here? Gtwfan52 (talk) 01:08, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Gtwfan52, thank you but I will defend myself from personal attacks here when I make posts that are relevant to the discussion. I will not be chased off the project page by an editor that can't figure out how respond without making it personal. Look, its clear this is intended as disruption of the project. I ask Ihardlythinkso to either join the project or stop posting here.--Amadscientist (talk) 01:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
With all due respect to both of you, I have hatted this portion of discussion... It seems a little off topic, and is distracting and tangential to anyone trying to follow the main thread. Revert if you disagree, but I agree with Gtwfan52 that any continued discussion should not be on this page. ~Adjwilley (talk) 03:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
@ Editor Original Soni. I think you have touched on the basic problem with civility. I didnt realise if the words could be taken otherwise. """Everything we type can be taken otherwise.""" We just had a little Drama Dance above because words were taken otherwise and editors started to talk around each other. Comments were made in general and yet taken in specific. ("Are you talkin about me") They all talk about bullies but they are not talking about the same group. One set of bullies are admins and civility police and the other set are editors that bite and their friends. Two completely seperate groups with unknown agendas. ```Buster Seven Talk 14:06, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. - Napoleon" Perhaps a bit strong of a statement but it was the closest quote I could find. Often times people think that being very, very strict in enforcing civility is the right thing to do and are acting in good faith. They are just mistaken and missing the big picture, in my eyes. But again, don't fall into the trap of throwing labels on everyone who disagrees, there are all kinds of motives to want strict enforcement. Most of the time, the motive isn't the flaw, only their proposed solution is, ie: block at the first sign of incivility. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:25, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I think that what we need most is more basic tolerance of minor little grouches and growls; not making mountains out of molehills is important. And less tolerance of the violation of that part of the civility policy which begins "The civility policy is not intended to be used as a weapon". And far, far more equality of enforcement, with the emphasis not on nuking everyone to the highest standards, but accepting the same lower standards from everyone which seem to be accepted from some. This example knocked my faith in the 'pedia "community" with a heck of a knock (visible from my contribs history; spot the difference in the months before it and those after). You have to be patient (and interested!) enough to look at what everyone did, there, to see where all the ripples went, and who did the unacceptable, whether from bias, apathy, incompetence, shite-stirring desire, or whatever. Blocking is almost never the answer. If there's a strong possibility that someone's drunk, a 6-hour block is enough to stop escalation if nothing else would do. But beating people up (metaphorically speaking) is just vile. And bad blocks should be expunge-able from people's block log - you only have to look at the number of idiots who spout out "But look at his block log, see how many times ..." blah, blah, blah. The kind of idle gets who can;t actually be bothered (or who just aren't competent enough) to do a bit of background research and assess the quality of blocks, rather than the total number. If people aren't competent enough to do the basic research required for that, then what standard of research can we expect them to be capable of for producing articles? Anyway, 'nuff for now. Pesky (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
The more I see, the more I agree with you that "Blocking is almost never the answer." (See below.) ~Adjwilley (talk) 01:38, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of blocks

Looks like User:Scottywong and User:Drmies just got blocked for "personal attacks". Oh yeah, and Malleus got blocked again too, just to be fair. ~Adjwilley (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Both Scottywong and Drmies were also unblocked. Gtwfan52 (talk) 02:04, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I posted this here, because we were just talking about the problem of not having a clearly defined policy and how blocks might not be the best solution. Editor retention is an issue, since Scotty has apparently all but retired [3], taking his many tools with him. ~Adjwilley (talk) 02:07, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
This will go down as the Great Admin Civil War of 2012. Odd that I am in the middle of researching the destruction of the Curia Hostilia. It was destroyed when two factions in the Catiline conspiracy faught outside of Rome and caused the death of Publius Clodius Pulcher. They brought his body back to Rome, rioted in the Senate House and used all the senator benches to creat a funeral pyre that ignited the Senate house and burned it to the ground.
I am seeing a lot of parallels here.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:20, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
The parallels between what happens in the pedia community and elsewhere in the world, right throughout history, are amazing. In the Real World, vast number of was have been undertaken in the name of religion or some other quasi-religious or "moral" standpoint (most of the ones not undertaken in the war for oil, really). It's just the same here - the bitterest quarrels are in the name of civility. It appears to be the WikiReligion. The vandal-suppressing and stuff is like day-to-day policing; dealing with petty little crimes. But the Big War, that's just people fighting over civility. Very close parallel. Attack, marginalise, disempower and ostracise all those who don't agree with the "religion" of that thin, polished veneer. Those who find slightly dented oak, complete with cigarette stain and coffee-mug-rings, works OK if nobody gets all up in arms about it. Pesky (talk) 09:09, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
If others do the same shit as what these guys are getting away with....the hammer comes down, hard, fast and quick.....and no one will just unblock them and shut down AN and AN/I discussions about it. There are those that are special..... and everyone else.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:25, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
How about a "Guild of Wikipedians who believe all users are equal"?
Lets just hope nobody creates a "Guild of Wikipedians who are more equal than others" though TheOriginalSoni (talk) 09:57, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
We can believe it....but then there is reality. Even trying to suggest "professionalism" be used seems to attract personal attacks on the user making the suggestion. The only thing that works are blocks and the standard offer apparently. And even that doesn't stick if one is "special" (and that can be anything from a perception of "Great content contributer" to just a "net asset to the project").--Amadscientist (talk) 10:08, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
IMO Blocking itself should be blocked. Have everyone use it very cautiously, and revoke the status for anyone who shows the slightest sign of abuse [There are some people higher than admins I suppose, who can look into it]. We can deal with slightly longish backlogs of block suggestions, but not abuse of the block itself. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:23, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Blocking almost never makes things better, unless it's to deal with something caused by external influences which will have worn off when the block's expired. It should really be kept for the most egregious personal attacks, outing, threats, etc. If someone's feeling bad-tempered with someone else's stupidity (and I'm only talking about really pathetic-deliberate stupidity); or there's a long history of back-stabbing, baiting, prodding, winding-up, etc., and gets blocked for snapping, and the other guy gets off scot-free ... is that really going to improve the blocked guy's temper or frame of mind? And when you look at some of the really atrocious blocks which have been done in the name of civility, by an admin who wouldn't have blinked if their best friend had done exactly the same thing, then that's bad. Blocking someone for telling someone to go troll somewhere else might seem good on the surface ... but what if the other guy ends up with a consensus-based topic ban in that area a few days later? What if he really was trolling, had been for far too long, and people had just got sick and tired of him? Is a civility block well-advised, there? Almost certainly not. On the whole, blocking is a far worse remedy than, for example, an interaction ban. Pesky (talk) 12:35, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
After hundreds of edits over several years of editing I was blocked for 48 hours for "edit warring". Neither the other editor nor I had reported each other--it seems that some admins just like to go looking for trouble. I was certain it was some sort of mistake on his part and of course tried to explain the circumstances. Lucky me, it was reduced to only 24 hours because a second admin decided that the "extra" 24 hours tacked on because I used a "roll back" actually had not abused policy after all. But my roll back was taken away anyway. It was all just total bull shit and left me forever changed in how I felt about this place. I'm a mature woman with a successful career history and it was just outrageous that three Wikipedia administrators should decide to block me from editing. When I compare my experience here to my other job experiences throughout my life, this place comes in at the bottom. The admin that blocked me was recently voted into the ArbCom group. Go figure... Gandydancer (talk) 18:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Holy crap...that's the thing right there Gandy! Admin use their block rights at the drop of a hat because they make the judgement call themselves and we then have no recourse to remove those blocks from our logs. Remember the night Dreadsatr blocked me for "edit Warring" for a single revert that was legitimate. I was actually working with the editor to see the best way to return the information and *wham*.....blocked. He said that (and this isn't blame or to rehash this) that I clearly have a history of edit warring. That wasn't a quality decision because it had nothing to do with the actual revert. Everyone working on the article at the time agreed there was no edit war happening, even the editor I reverted was confused and the support and messages from everyone got me immediatly unblocked.....but that is still on my block log.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:41, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
No MadSci, I don't remember. That's just it: Other people forget and certainly the admins forget, but the editor that feels they were wronged never forgets. And we don't really like to talk about it because it seems we're making a big deal about some little incident in the past. I'm very thick-skinned and seldom get angry or feel insulted, but my feelings were very hurt and I was very angry over my blocking incident. I still am. Gandydancer (talk) 04:35, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
I had to go through my acrchives to find it. I started t drag it out at another discussion but deleted it because it is not worth the bad feelings that would occur if I did. But it's there and I still thank you and the rest of the involved editors for the comments. I understand why you would still be upset.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes this type of action is all too common. I have just posted on Jimbo's talk page why I think it happens. There is indeed a problem with block logs being a permanent record. I am interested that in my arb case the block logs (of SmackBot) are cited en masse as evidence of bad behaviour, and not challenged by any of the 9 arbs in the case or 6 in the amendment - a request to identify any specfic unblock was an example of the alleged behaviour was ignored. This is exactly analogous to Pesy's case, and indeed to the original AN/Is - accusations are made without real evidence, or discussion, and blindly believed. I think the pile-on mentality has been largely excised form AN/I (up to the last couple of days) but it certainly shows its hand at ArbCom. Well, new year, new committee - sorta. Lets see what happens. Rich Farmbrough, 01:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC).

How many Blocked-wikipedians are there?

Just to add to this PREVIOUS DISCUSSION – it appears that there are almost as many blocked wikipedians as there are active ones:

Category:Blocked Wikipedia users

Or am I reading this wrong? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

It is very difficult to read at all. Not all puppet-masters or suspected puppet-masters have categories. (I would have fixed this but apparently if I do it, it becomes a BLP violation. ) Many of these people/accounts may never have constructively edited, some may have made many vandalistic edits. Whether they count as "Wikipeidans" is moot. And we can be clear that we only want to unblock people who at least have a semblance of wanting to edit. The promotional user-names, for example, will mostly have abandoned their accounts by now, and either be editing under another name or not at all. So a nuanced approach is required. Rich Farmbrough, 00:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC).

Blocked editors with thousands of contributions

Here is an example I just happened to run into of an editor with 23,646 edits to wikipedia who has been blocked indefinitely since 2008. Unfortunately I can come up with several more examples. Ottawahitech (talk) 17:05, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit count as measure of content contributions?

In the exchange above between user:Amadscientist & user:Ihardlythinkso it was suggested that a higher percentage of article-space contributions indicates that an editor is more involved in content building at wikipedia. However, it is my experience that many editors who contribute little to content building still show a high percentage of article-space contributions. This is because tagging of an article (for deletion and other purposes) is counted as an article-space contribution (and takes only seconds for each "contribution").

I wish there was a way to distinguish true content contributions from tagging. Anyone else? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:11, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Some editors are not worth retaining

Lets not forget that some editors are not worth retaining. See User talk:Tunoapeggy for example. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:27, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps...but NO editor is not worth trying.--Amadscientist (talk) 05:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I disagree completely. Of the 48,281,285 editors (and counting) there is a large number [citation needed] that start out as a vandal and don't stop until they are blocked. We waste a huge amount of time with them. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I see no evidence of vandalism or sockpuppetry in the account you linked to. I pictured two 14 year old boys sitting next to each other at school and whose first language is not English. I didn't realise "We don't want your sort round here" was an acceptable excuse. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 07:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Not as if 13 and 14 year olds don't sockpuppet, but I get your point.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:01, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I guess that is plausible. Anyway, how many editors are we loosing because we spend all of our time keeping all the rubbish out instead of adding actual content? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:17, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
"Rubbish" is such an objective term - by that logic, I'd like to speedy delete Cheryl Cole. What seems rubbish to us is often not rubbish to somebody else - otherwise it wouldn't have been added in good faith. A better, albeit more difficult, approach is to convince the editor adding the supposed junk that it is junk. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest Tunoapeggy doesn't know how to edit their talk page, hasn't read any messages, or at least not understood them, and on discovering they're blocked might create another sockpuppet account for good measure. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 08:26, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
When I say rubbish I mean the stuff that we all want to get rid of - that stuff that is speedily deleted and the outright vandalism. Yeah sure, there is all the stuff that is in a grey area. AfDs for instance. As for Tunoapeggy I find it hard to believe that she/he cannot and has not read and understood the talk page notices. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The toy articles are not copyvios, nonsense or personal attacks. Probably the parent page should be Fijit Friends and the rest redirects, or they should redirect to Mattel, butthey appear to be a significant phenomenon. I share Ritchie's concern that we are banning both accounts with a pointer to an empty evidence page. Rich Farmbrough, 16:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

Block on unblocking

I'm just looking at an editor who I actually think behaved worse than he is accused of, and I also believe is worth unblocking. He says "No thanks I'd rather not. Is 6 months going to really change an editor? Probably not. If I were to come back I would probably be editing like I have, being extra careful to not run into situations like this. I just don't understand the need for 6 months." This editor is unable to utter the shibboleth required for unblocking, but this statement makes it clear his intentions are perfectly in line with what we need. Sure often an editor like this will get carried away and "re-offend" but then they just get booted for good - if they actually can control themselves they can contribute for years. Pragmatically, according to pay-off, we should unblock.
Rich Farmbrough, 15:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC).

  • It is really hard to generalize, as every situation is different. There is a difference in someone edit warring over diacritics and someone injecting bad BLP info into "accused" bios, for instance. But in general, I believe in second chances, as does the entire philosophy of Wikipedia. I'm less concerned about apologies for past behavior than I am with someone having a clear path forward. I would note that I may be in the minority. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:13, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Retaining editors at AfC

You may be interested to read the responses I got at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation‎#Retaining editors. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:47, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Do deletions at Wikipedia lead to editor attrition?

Just before this unsigned/undated entry disappears into the archives, I just wanted to say that for me the biggest issue at Wikipedia, from day one and until today, was and still is rampant Deletions. Ottawahitech (talk) 10:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

That's true for the 25% of newbies who start by creating a new page, and it is an especially big problem for the minority of them who are creating stuff we want but get tagged by sloppy speedy deleters. However I'm not convinced that page deletion is such a problem for the 75% of newbies who start by editing existing articles, I think that they are more likely deterred by unexplained reverts and that all editors, newbies and old hands, are damaged by the shift from SoFixIt to template bombing that happened about five years ago. ϢereSpielChequers 15:39, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
  • @WereSpielChequers, thanks - useful statistics - where are they from? I am also curious to find out how many articles are deleted daily under the different deletion processes? Looking at the deletion log it is easy to determine that there are definitely over a thousand pages deleted every day - that makes hundreds of thousands of pages deleted per year! Ottawahitech (talk) 02:16, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mr.Z-man/newusers . A few years old, but probably the most recent available. Polymath49 (talk) 15:06, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

How deletions damage efforts to retain editors

  • Here is a link to a deletion discussion that starts with these words "THIS ARTICLE IS PURELY TRIVIAL". What a welcome for a brand new editor who just joined Wikipedia on 26 October 2012!
  • On the flip side, I see someone attempting to remove an article started by Simon Pulsifer who has been around since 2001. Would you blame Pulsifer for not sticking with this thankless volunteer job? Ottawahitech (talk) 03:43, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

New editors vilified in the deletion process

Here is an example where an established editor is trying to have an article deleted by whipping up sentiments against its new editor. Note that every time this new editor tries to participate in the discussion this text is appended to his signature:

has only contributed to the article(s) under discussion for deletion and AFD

Ottawahitech (talk) 15:06, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

"You have been warned"

Today's (Nov 17, 2012) caption:

And the conundrum is: How should an admin close when there is apparently a clear consensus to keep (possibly by a multitude of SPA votes and votes by editors who are not aware of policies, when the 'keep' closure would clearly conflict with inclusion policies or guidelines? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Admins should have some leeway when the apparent consensu is mostly by newcomers - between the possibility that these votes don't take our policies into account, and the possibilit of sockpuppetry, I think that in such cases, admins may ignore the newcomers. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

what happens when admins exercise discretion in closing deletion discussions?

The following link leads to discussion on an admins talk page after he excercised discretion in closing a deletion discussion with 15 keep votes, and 14 delete votes. example of what happens when admin uses discretion in closing Ottawahitech (talk) 16:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Admins closing as Delete even when the deletion discussion has a clear Keep consensus?

Can this really be happening? Ottawahitech (talk) 19:05, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

It's called supervoting, and it bypasses discussion, and it sucks, and it's bad practice, and it breaks faith with the community, and it's kinda rapey, and if editors admitted they'd be doing this during their RfA interviews, they'd be nowhere goddamn fast. --Lexein (talk) 22:31, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
  • @Lexein, Thanks for participating here and helping me understand the complex rules regarding deletions at Wikipedia. I knew that admins are supposed to act according to the community's consensus in deletion discussions, but did not know that the example I provided here was not the only exception. Is this common? Ottawahitech (talk) 03:21, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Once a year is too often, but I have no idea how often it really happens. I observe that just happened 272 times, though, if that's any indication. So no more for about 272 years would be about right, by my lights. --Lexein (talk) 05:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
(Sorry for not linking, the "272" number is a quote of User talk:Koavf, with whom I had stern words about his representations of policy in his recent image deletion nominations.) --Lexein (talk) 20:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive242#Admin smoke signals needed. GiantSnowman 15:35, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

  • It wasn't clear until I looked at the DRV and realised we're talking about using non-free images, which it's good practice to err on the side of not including them. Do you have any examples of articles being supervoted on? --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:40, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
  • If this is the admin who is deleting image files against clear community consensus to retain them in the cases being made reference to here it should be understood that this admin has a long history of engaging in this practice often resulting in these deletions being reversed after a review is requested. This admin also has a history of arbitrarily removing long standing "non-free" images from articles even though they have been correctly justified and provided with complete conforming rationales for their use. After unilaterally removing the image files the admin then also immediately deletes the images themselves without going through the normal community review process on the specious grounds that they are "orphaned" non-free files. These practices are contrary to both the spirit and letter of WP policy. Centpacrr (talk) 17:20, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
So is WP:FORUMSHOPPING (✉→BWilkins←✎) 01:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Editors pushed to work in areas they have no interest in

Example: I do not wish to participate in discussions, especially endless, fruitless, inconsistent deletion discussions. However, this is all I have been doing recently, because I feel obligated to try and save dozens of others’ contributions that are now on the chop-block after the stealthy deletion of a wikiproject that housed those articles which are now under a concerted attack. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Easier to remove content than to add to the knowledge base

Deleting takes much less effort than finding and adding new information which is very demoralizing for editors who are trying to add and edit existing articles. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Less than a minute to nominate articles for deletion

One of the articles which I started has been nominated for deletion It took the nominator less than ONE minute to do the following

Create a deletion discussion page
Nominate the articled for deletion
Notify me of the deletion discussion
Add it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion

It took me HOURS to create this article (which may survive the deletion process this time, but there is nothing to stop this nominator from nominating this article for deletion again and again). Why would anyone want to contribute new articles to Wikipeida under those circumstances? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:40, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know which article you're referring to, but it's true that the precise steps you've listed take less than a minute, much less with automation such as Twinkle. I'd hope editors would spend far longer than a minute considering most articles before sending them to deletion, even a minimal job of looking for sources takes far longer than that.
That's a problem with deletion, but not the only one. Most articles that appear at AfD end up being pretty solidly delete or keep by consensus, only a fraction are really hard calls. Most of the "solid" AfDs close delete. So, there are certainly a fair number of articles that presumably would never have been created if the article creator had understood Wikipedia's requirements. Why didn't we tell them before they put in all that work? --j⚛e deckertalk 21:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
We didn't tell them, because there's nothing out there that tells them. Instead of the stats-obsessed Foundation pursuing their policy of quantity instead of quality, leaving it up to the community and the admins to sort the wheat from the chaff that such an expansion policy generates, they should be working on the long promised new landing page for new users/new creators. All the Wikis would benefit from such a feature so it's not just an appeal from en.Wiki. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

WP:NOUSERS and its implications

Have any of you read WP:NOUSERS? I'm the author and I truly beleive it will be best if we get rids of users altogether, no usernames, no visible IPs (only admins could see them), etc. I mean, sites like wiki.answers.com work that way and are immensively successful (you can register an account but nobody knows who edited what). —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 07:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

My first thought was.....this guy/gal just lost all support I might have had for them. My next thought was.....is he/she trying to tear apart Wikipedia or build it back up? Not knowing which...you still lost my support.
Look, you have contributed to this project. It is not an article. Does that make the "content" you created less valuable? If we go by what you are saying, then yes. Think anout it, then get back to me. You are creating a heck of a lot of work without DISCUSSING it with us here. Does that mean I cannot just help out where you left off. Frankly.....I am beginning to think twice about it now. You seem to be willing to do away with "Users"....but not admin. Now that...I find odd.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:10, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
My rationale for having accounts is for accountability. If you made all editing completely anonymous and unaccountable, WP would start to resemble 4Chan and vandalism and copyvios would shoot through the roof. Or are you talking about not using real names and keeping on and off wiki lives separate, which we do anyway. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 08:18, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Some have a separate wikiname and real name. For others they are one and the same. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Not sure I have tried hard to understand what are you exactrly trying to say and I just can't. Could you please rephrase what you just posted as if I were a 5 year old? Regarding discussing stuff here: this is a WikiProject, it is not an authority on what can or can not be created on Wikipedia. If you don't like what I have I created then you can either submit it for speedy deletion or AfD it. Now, regarding admins, they are needed no matter what for legal reasons (removing copyvios) but my proposal is that admins are unknown as well. Essentially Wikipedia would become entirely transparent for the general public, with administrators being the only who would know who's who (nobody would know who's an administrator either except other administrators). —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 18:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
I was considering what would happen if someone used a new account for every edit, which amounts to the same thing. And I think it fairly clear that we could still handle copyvios. Vandalism too would be containable, with slight modifications to allow the system to block IP's associated with vandalism patterns (e.g. frequently reverted by different IPs with vandalism summaries). What you might not be able to contain, though is edit wars.
On a different point, editors would still create identities, either by naively signing their edit summaries, or PGP signing them on a different platform. So anonymity could not be preserved. Trusted users would emerge, cliques and projects would form....
Rich Farmbrough, 15:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC).
We would have to change the license here, as the GFDL and CC/attrib wouldn't allow this. That said, I don't like the idea as it would give too much power to too few: the admin. We already have more power than we need with the tools we are given. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Users already submit without being registered. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 18:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
How would you be able to identify who's who when anyone can impersonate anyone else? It's like me signing as 'Ahnoneemoos' and then somebody else signs as that as well. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 18:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Because the history shows that if "Bob" signs as you, it is obviously not really you. And I would warn, then block "Bob" for signing as you. We don't worry about the talk pages as much as the actual history. And yes, some of us do really check the histories, and catch bad sigs regularly. The license doesn't care about sigs though, only the article and talk page history itself. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 18:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
You missed the point. With this proposal your username wouldn't show up on the history page and your talk page would be visible only to you and administrators. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 04:20, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: May I remind everyone that Wikipedia operates under a CC-by-SA licence? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

And still unregistered users contribute to it. What's your point? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 04:20, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Uhm.......attribution.--Amadscientist (talk) 08:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
That was my point as well. Wikipedia couldn't do this even if we thought it was a good idea, but I still feel it isn't a good idea even if we could. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 09:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
IANAL but AFAIK cc-by-sa only requires you to link to our license but does not require you to attribute every single user that contributed to the article. Could you please expand on this concern and detail it as if I were a 5 year old? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 14:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually it kinda does. It depends on how you use the content. If you don't want to go through the entire history to find the exact user that created a particular line, the ones who contributed to it and modified it, you just link to the article history. That is all that need be done, but is a requirement of attribution. This is what is done all the time when you see mirror pages of Wikipedia content. Also, if you use an image you most certainly DO need to attrbute the specific author in the manner that they have indicated. Some of my images require attribution to my username and some to my actual name. And trust me...I have been down this road with companies attributing my work to another (a major newspaper, whos' name I will not mention) and a major restaurant chain (again no names) that used a bunch of my images with no attribution at all...by blowing them up and making wall paper out of them. After contacting the corporate offices they added a small silver engraved plate with "photos by...". So you are actually incorrect about the attribution thing.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
CC-by-sa requires us to attribute authorship, but there a couple of concessions to practicality: tracing authorship requires trailing edit histories, which are long, and there's no automatic system for showing the overall authorship, authorship of the preserved content alone, or attributing line by line (these all exist for MediaWiki, but aren't used on Wikipedia). Secondly attribution only has to be made to the intersection of what WP supports (as above) and the author themselves offer. I edit under my real name, but others edit under noms de plume or merely an IP. This is still within the terms of CC-by. No editor is constrained to edit here, to give fuller information for -by- attribution purposes if they don't wish to, or to edit here if they consider WP's attribution level to be inadequate for their own needs. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Let me give you an example for comic effect : I could write a post saying "I think Pink Floyd are the worst band in the world and make my ears hurt. I much prefer Cheryl Cole. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)", but thanks to the attribution and history, it doesn't take much effort to work out that it was actually me that made the comment, and nobody will get fooled. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Flashback to 2008, when an editor left Wikipedia in frustration: Me

I was digging up old barnstars when I ran across this comment by ME, right before I got frustrated with an ugly AfD and left Wikipedia for two full years. [4] It sounds like so many other comments we see. This kind of frustration is why I came back seeking the adminship and started WP:WER soon after. Ironically, some of the people that caused me the most grief are now banned and I catch socks for at SPI. Sadly, several friends from that time are also gone. Just thought I would share that. I do understand the frustration people feel, and why they leave, because I've been there and done that. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 20:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

It's interesting to see your signature from back then. I guess I find it interesting to see old sigs for editors (that I now know of) from before my time here. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 02:49, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Out of curiousity, what brought you back to editing again? The Interior (Talk) 20:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Good question, I haven't really analysed it much. I still read Wikipedia while on break, as I love to read and learn. If I found an error (spelling, etc.) I would just fix it as an IP, by the end of the two years, I was making more than a few edits a day and missing the "community" aspect of working with others towards a common goal. I never quit believing in the idea of a "free encyclopedia" (I'm also a bit Linux and GPL fan), I just lost faith in some of the people in charge at that time. I decided if I came back, it would have to be different, I would become an admin and help create change in a positive way. To try to fix the problems from the inside using positive methods, instead of just bitching about them from the outside, with a negative attitude. Armed with a new goal, I worked every day toward that goal and got the bit. Since then, my time is split between helping fellow frustrated editors (via here, SPI and ANI) and creating content. Even now, my goal is to persuade people to cooperate, not to point fingers and lay blame. You can see the actual break in my editing here [5]. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 21:38, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
I ask because there is often flurries of activity here and other places when an editor stops editing, but occasionally, as in your case, they do return at some point. Your example illustrates that there is such thing as a "good" break - some time off to re-evaluate your involvement and approach. Although I have noticed some editors having an even rougher time after their breaks - the new approaches didn't work any better than the old ones. Do you think there is any value in analyzing "wikibreaks" to see what can be learned about healthy approaches to editing vs. eventually self-destructive ones? The Interior (Talk) 19:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure you could really analyse them. I hadn't even analysed my own. I've known many people, including admin, who takes breaks and come back, most from burn out. Mine was likely part burn out but frustration was the key. I'm a bit more careful to vary my activities now to prevent it. ie: I usually work ANI, but other than a single post today, I've been avoiding it for two weeks, and expect to for a couple of months. There are so many reasons why people leave or take a break. Looking back to Nov 2008, I can't really remember if I expected it to be a break or a permanent leave. I don't think I really knew even then. I wasn't focused on "when I get back", I just knew I needed to leave. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 02:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Input from newly registered user: User:Anne Delong

I have asked User:Anne Delong to give us her opinion on her experience joining Wikipedia. Anne joined us on December 7, 2012 (about a month ago) and has significantly contributed to the Toronto Light Opera Association article and many others. As a newly registered user I ask you to please maintain a higher level of decor of what we usually keep in Wikipedia.

To Anne:

  1.  Question: What posed a challenge to you when contributing to Wikipedia?
  2.  Question: What did you find difficult or frustating?
  3.  Question: How was your interaction with other contributors?
  4.  Question: How easy (or difficult) was it for you to contribute to Wikipedia?
  5.  Question: What can we do to retain editors like you?

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 14:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. You ask -- twice -- that we "maintain a higher level of decor of what we usually keep". Shouldn't our level of decorum be the same for all editors?. Regardless, you might unveil some helpful insight from Anne Delong. Moriori (talk) 21:16, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

 Question: What posed a challenge to you when contributing to Wikipedia?
I had a hard time figuring out how to find the instruction pages. It took me a while to figure out how the talk pages work; I can see it's a work-around, trying to make a WIKI act like a message board.

 Question: What did you find difficult or frustating?
I wasn't used to giving up control of my document. I knew this would happen, but it's hard to let go. I expected to have others contribute content to my page, but instead there was a lot of disagreement about format. I was also directed to a page called Bold, revert, discuss, or something like that, which lead me to believe that this was the correct way to collaborate, but I got some flack when I tried it out - it seems most editors don't like it.

I checked the information about date formats and chose a format that was on the list (YYYY-MM-DD). Several people have told me that it's not acceptable. Maybe the date format page should be changed.

I also found it frustrating when my submission was still not near the top after a week in the queue [ Comment: she is referring to the WP:AFC queue] but actually I learned a lot from reading the comments that the reviewers made about other people's submissions.

One more thing - I have so much more information that I can't include because it is not from a published source. Although this is personally frustrating, I agree that it's a necessary rule.

 Question: How was your interaction with other contributors?
The contributors have been helpful and several have shown an interest in my topic. I was asked to join projects about opera and about Toronto, but, to be honest, I am neither an opera fan or a resident of Toronto (although born there), and I chose to create a page about the Toronto Light Opera because six members of my family were cast members.

 Question: How easy (or difficult) was it for you to contribute to Wikipedia?
I have operated a WIKI before, so the editing wasn't hard for me. I will learn more about the templates as I need them. I figured out how to do some things by looking at other people's pages.

 Question: What can we do to retain editors like you?
I think you are all doing a remarkable job for a random collection of people with varying interests.

—Anne Delong (talk) 03:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: A few things now that Anne has given her input:

It was very frustrating for her to keep waiting and waiting in the WP:AFC queue after submitting an article that had all merits to be moved onto the project's article space. We need to fix this. Either we start working on the oldest articles in the WP:AFC queue or we at WER join their ranks to help them in the sheer amount of submissions they get. I only had to add a few cleanup templates by the time that I discovered her article. Just to add even more onto this, she had another article in the queue which was also waiting in queue for a week and was also well redacted. We need to fix this. If their first impression is that we don't appreciate their contributions they will be frustrated from day 1.

She also did not know what to do when someone posted on her talk page. I blame WP:WMF and WP:TEAHOUSE for this. Teahouse didn't post on her talk page fast enough to let her know that she can ask questions there. I had to ask them myself in their project talk page to do so. Let's go and give them a few slaps. They need to be on top of new editors ASAP.

She also had some difficulty in regards to her signature. For some reason User:SineBot was not picking it up because her username was not wikified, although she always signed with her timestamp. I had to help her in this technical aspect.

She also couldn't differentiate between what ours rules, policies, guidelines, and essay were. She believed that Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle was a rule but I had to tell her that it was merely an essay, a suggestion, and an opinion, and that it didn't have to be followed. This got her into a minor problem with another editor because she thought it was OK to be bold, revert, and discuss the article, but she ended up doing a full revert and the other editor got annoyed because some portions of the revert were not justified. It sucks to be new and get into trouble (conversation is at Talk:Toronto Light Opera Association).

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 04:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

AFC submissions can take anywhere up to three weeks to be reviewed, because AFC is usually extremely backlogged. Is this too long? If so, then yes, more help there would be appreciated. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 04:26, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I sincerely hope that the people at the AFC are aware of this thread and that something very similar has been posted there.
I don't work at AfC or at The Teahouse, but as a regular contributor with nearly 1,000 edits over the years to another help desk, I am acutely aware of the problems - ironically, we even get Teahouse hosts asking us for advice there!
Because all editors should be treated with dignity, newbies should never need to be accorded any preferential treatment. This template is fine: {{your opinion is requested}}, while this one: {{Do not bite this user}} still conveys the message that we are not like this to other users (which we are supposed to be but too often aren't), and it's not the impression we should be giving. Being over-soft on newbies however, may in fact encourage them to be lax and expect us to do their work for them. Not only newbs, but also the mass creators of stubs, especially the recent spree by a couple of not-quite-so-new editors of school stubs, which are relatively easy to make start-class articles of from the very beginning.
Having reviewed Anne Delong's user pages, with all due respects to Anne with many thanks for responding here, I also feel that smothering newbies with so many templates and invites to join this and that is also a bit OTT. I remember my first experiences very well; I received a fairly standard welcome template some months after making regular contribs to a topic and it was enough to make me feel very special. Little did I know at the time that it was, well, just a routine template, but it worked, and it encouraged me, and that's why I am where I am at Wikipedia now. It wasn't long however until I started coming across nasty people, and that's what made me start wondering how some of them were ever made admins - one of them nearly wrecked my Wiki career twice (once on a topic years ago which be bullied me away from, and once more a couple of years later on my RfA with all the spite, venom, vengeance, PA, and untruths he could muster. Needless to say he is no longer an admin, although for other reasons. Desysoping is another thing thing that needs stepping up, but that's another topic, although as far as editor retention is concerned, we appear to be hemorrhaging good admins at a rather alarming rate recently, and if I were not as tough as old boots, I would have joined the exodus too by now.
As I've said so many times before, AfC, help desks, welcoming committees, and teahouses are only a palliative. Whether they do a good job or not (and there is still some quality to be improved, especially by the newbs themselves who think it's cool to work there and in other meta areas), the situation will never improve until Wikipedia has a proper landing page for new users/new new-page creators. As a result of a major community initiative nearly 2 years ago, the Foundation promised to develop such a page, but in spite of being asked many times where they are at with it, no development seems to be forthcoming.
If it's accepted by the presentations committee, I will be giving a talk about new-user reception and editor retention in Honk Kong in August. This won't be the first time editor retention has been discussed at Wikimania and it staggers me that the WMF still has this issue on a back burner. If we hadn't been practically muzzled with incivility by a couple of members of the staff at Bugzilla, and rudely ignored again at Wikimania in DC, we as a community could probably have developed such a page ourselves in that time. If the Foundation can't foster civility from within their own fold, who can? A proper landing page would put a lot of us out of work who try to relieve the misery, allowing us all to get back to the main business of building an encyclopedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
It does strike me that a lot of things we have around here, such as WP:CSD#A7, the Teahouse and Microformats are all due to the fact that down in the software, all you get is a bunch of unformatted text. In an ideal world, it would be impossible for a new user to add any article that qualified for WP:BLPPROD and much harder to add anything that qualified for WP:CSD#A7, as the software would warn you and stop you from doing it. (Mind you, I was having this same argument with XML fanboys before Wikipedia even existed. Plus ca change).
Regarding AfC, I can give you two observations. Firstly, the queue is hideously backlogged due to lack of volunteers, but also for people bad-mouthing the project when contributors do something contentious or controversial (eg: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/BBC sexual abuse cases, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bad B*tch Club), which puts a strong emphasis on "doing it right", which is fair enough, but obviously takes time. There is quite a bit of junk in AfC, but there's also a lot of lengthy articles, and it's time consuming to pick apart something that's actually good, or a very well disguised bit of unreliably sourced PR. Secondly, despite comments in the Article Wizard that explicitly say "PUT YOUR SOURCES HERE", very often I find the instructions are ignored and sources are put elsewhere, or nowhere at all. That shows that well intentioned comments in free text just aren't good enough compared to a proper user interface. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:22, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
The Article Wizard was once a good, but very incomplete idea. Instead of making it easier to create an article, it just presents the user with walls of text and instructions at each step. To be any good it needs to be mandatory for all new users, and built on the lines of a web form that prevents the user advancing when some required fields have not been populated. For example, a Coren search could be built into it to check for copyvios in real time. There is so much web technology that could be used, so why is the Foundation reluctant do do it? After all, their mantra is 'keep it easy for everyone to create articles' (which is why they rejected a major community consensus), but what we need are articles that comply with the rules and a system that helps new users understand them without all the instruction creep, and without being discouraged. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Well. I guess my comments started quite a storm! I would like to report that every time I messed up, there was someone there to politely redirect me. As an experienced computer user familiar with HTML , the complexities of the software didn't bother me, although they might deter others less technical. The proliferation of talk pages is a bit confusing; it's hard to know sometimes where to post a particular comment. Anyway, don't be so hard on yourselves... WikiPedia is amazing, getting better all the time, and I'm glad to contribute to something so useful. —Anne Delong (talk) 21:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Top 3 problems Wikipedia has and their root causes

Everybody knows what Wikipedia's problems are, right?

If Wikipedians take off their Wiki-hat, drive outside of Wiki-land to the top of a mountain and look down on the project to see it as non-Wikipedians see it, what would they say are the top 3 fundamental problems?

  1. ________ which is caused by ________
  2. ________ which is caused by ________
  3. ________ which is caused by ________

I'd really like to know what people think are the top 3 problems in a very general sense, an overview if you will. 64.40.54.95 (talk) 16:25, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

  1. A complicated editing process which is caused by too much necessary beurocracy if your edit isn't in line with policy (quoting a policy to a noob isn't a substitute for an explanation of why you removed their edit).
  2. Abuse which is caused by People too big for their boots, who expect a noob to know everything they do.
  3. Ownership of articles which is caused by People who revert anything at will because they don't like it for personal reasons
My 2 pence. Thanks ツ Jenova20 (email) 17:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment:. Easy:

1. That it suddenly became a community, rather than an encyclopedia, and that it started to focus on bureaucracy rather than on creating and improving articles. I get into issues all the times because someone says that consesus was reached here or there to not modify the articles in the way I did. You don't need to read Talk pages to improve Wikipedia, you just need to be bold and fix the damn thing.

2. reverts, reverts, reverts. People doing whole reverts when they only disagreed with 10% of the modifications done.

3. And most importantly: WP:WMF. I'm completely baffed at WMF's lax approach to Wikipedia. What exactly are they focused on? Wikipedia is what funds WMF, not the other projects, yet they focus on what? Mate, the big fish is Wikipedia, focus on it, treat it like your golden goose. They also don't use like 70% of their revenue. Why? I would hire so many process engineers, UX designers, graphic designers, web developers, database engineers, and sysadmins. I'm also suprised by WMF's complete lack of UX Designers on their teams. Seriously, no UX designers? C'mon, it's part of human-computer interaction. This UI and their processes are so difficult and archaic.

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 19:47, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

On your #3 I couldn't have put it more succinctly. I've had lots of direct dealings with the WMF and I can't help but concur. Like Western NGOs in developing countries, they are very good at writing reports, providing stats, and raising money (and not so good at spending it except on their own travel), but when (or if) they do something concrete, too often the volunteer community has to come in and mop up after them. On editor retention, it's now time for them to tell us whether or not they really are going to help and provide the long promised landing page, or otherwise let the community get on with finding its own solutions, and do as they're told when the software needs tweaking by those who are paid to have access to it. What would happen if all the salaried staff had to go through an RfA-like scrutiny by the community before they are hired? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd agree with Jenova20's points here, but disagree with Amadscientist's. I fix a lot of vandalism. I'm one of those editors that "newbie IP editors" have to make it past as a gatekeeper. Most of them, I can't get them blocked fast enough – because most new arrivals here just aren't here for any positive purpose. When you've seen too many idiot edits in a day from people who can't even spell "poop" right, then your impression of average editor quality does take rather a hit. That said though, we are ridiculously generous to outright vandal editors, especially IPs. IPs get "four strikes" before we do a thing, and even then we forgive them a week later. A long block, let alone an indef(!), needs a whole identifiable school to work on it before we act. If you're on a big dynamic ISP, you're bulletproof.
I've seen editors make "common mistakes", but we just don't hold these against people. Just about the only thing we do hold against new editors is competence or knowledge, especially if there's a sniff of a chance that they might be commercial. user:Burlenwiki (Burlen Fuel Systems) is one example I recall – a name I recognised immediately and was delighted to see appear (if you're interested in old British cars, this company is important). Driven off the wiki in a couple of weeks 8-( They're not unusual.
"New registered users and IP editors are blocked quicker" just isn't true. The only thing that gives rapid blocks in such a case is personal attacks, and that's not really a big loss.
I would agree the comment on WMF though. I guess we ought to be grateful because they do at least keep the lights on, but each and every "outreach" project I've seen has been a clueless idea leading frequently to a disaster. They're just so wrong-headed I wonder how the instigators can have had so little experience of WP (or WM.*) and what's involved. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry I didn't know that would be the outcome of an honest discussion when asked to give our three top problems we see. I apologise for the shitty answer. I wont make that mistake again. The floor is yours to do the same with everyone else but I am deleting my responses.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

No-one, certainly not me, is describing your comments in such a way. As it happens I disagree with you, but it's still your right to hold such an opinion – you might even be right. This is why a study has to look at a lot of data for a representative sample, not merely anecdotes from any one editor.
If you're going to flounce off in a huff, then that's your right too, but all it tends to achieve is to move you even further from the discussion. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I have a serious problem with the manner in which you have taken this suggested thread and made it into, yet another thread to criticise the efforts of others in what was supposed to be a simple exercise of stating our own perceptions. No one here needs to have their opinion reviewed. We were invited to state our perceptions. There is no right or wrong here. There is no need to agree or disagree. Your comments were actually just shutting down the discussion. There is a point to this talkpage and I don't think you get it. And....moving away from the discussion was my exact intention. A far more productive contribution would have been to simply add your own 3 issues and discuss those. You were actually inaccurate in you statements above in a number of ways. Most important is that you failed to see the points that were being made and simply used your reply to dismiss my contribution. Oddly enough, while you stated you disagreed with me...you actually stated agreement with my comment: "IP editing is seen as vandalism more often (no matter what the edit is) then a registered user". In fact...you stated "I'm one of those editors that "newbie IP editors" have to make it past as a gatekeeper. Most of them, I can't get them blocked fast enough". So...thanks for at least proving my point even if it was in such a backhanded manner.--Amadscientist (talk) 13:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Ritchie333's soapbox

I'll give you my top 3. All of which are reasons I have decided to become more involved in Wikipedia over the years :

  1. Newbie biting, which is caused by a general lack of diplomacy skills among experienced editors combined with an unhelpful user interface. Accidental biting done via good faith actions is particularly problematic.
  2. Overzealous deletions (particularly A7 CSDs) which is caused by editors wantonly adding tags without carrying out WP:BEFORE and not explaining policy correctly.
  3. Inability to make significant changes which is caused by small fanclubs springing up to defend just about anything, making fighting consensus against a determined group almost impossible, even when the group is in fact wrong. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
CSD#A7 is certainly a problem, but I think that creators still have to meet it, rather than lowering A7 to fit the articles. The root of the trouble is that new editors want their first article, and they want it now. Now it takes me ages to write a new article, because AfD annoys me too and I'd rather not publish them, even U1 them, than have to slog through AfD. I just don't throw stuff into the wild until I know it's robust. New editors don't know this, and they won't wait through the slog either.
How do we get established editors to handle new articles more carefully? There is little useful reason to delete new articles when they're still being worked on. Only a handful are truly damaging, and the rest won't break the encyclopedia if they remain for a week to see what develops first. Yet editors still persist in the speedy/prod/AfD cycle within minutes of a new editor's first article appearing. Challenge them over this and then hide behind policy, often taking great pains to explain that "Wiki article have to be notable", and other earth-shattering news I was obviously unaware of. We still have a culture where the main goal of the project is to provide a playpen for teenagers to play at being middle-management, and if we're lucky it might also be a host for an encyclopedia on the back of it.
So how do we also get new editors to respect A7? I don't see WP:BEFORE as an issue here. If WP:Notability or especially sourcing is questioned, then BEFORE comes into play, but most of these new articles are failing early at the A7 step, where they're not even making a credible claim that the topic is notable. You can't follow BEFORE this early on, often you can't even tell what the subject of the article is, or which part of the research haystack is worth looking in. Article creators have to understand and follow A7, and anything that doesn't is fair game. When it gets to Notability or sourcing, then we can start to help out (and certainly shouldn't be BITEy), but if it doesn't even get to that level then it's too early for an editor community to know where to start. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:34, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps there should be a revisit queue, where you can add a hidden/non-obtrusive tag to an article saying "revisit on date X", and then a queue would show all the articles scheduled to be reviewed again. This would provide a way to keep track of articles that had been given some time to develop. isaacl (talk) 15:46, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
(ec) The problem stems when you combine that with number 1 on my list, which means you get a "nice" welcome message like this as your introduction to Wikipedia. Now, this is an article I've looked at, and I agree this is a valid application of WP:CSD#A7, but note that the article's creator is still upset, and displaying an all-too common lack of understanding of policy. I've attempt to reason using a typical excuse of mine, stating my own band would also fall foul of CSD A7 itself, but I've noticed to actually deliver deletion notices in way that makes the end user understand what's going on is actually really hard - small wonder we all make a hash job and bite newbies without meaning to (I do it, probably by referring to WP:GARAGE, which isn't the most welcoming of essays by stating "no-one cares about your article", and I'd like to see someone that doesn't). FWIW the PageCurator deletion messages are nicer IMHO, but personalised ones for each case are better still.
As you say, management is a skill that is best acquired over time with experience, and is sorely lacking from teenagers except in the rarest of cases. And in an ideal world, the software should be able to deal with this - it's not technically impossible for a wizard to scrape an article and stop an A7 candidate before it even gets committed to disk, or at least advise against it on the rare occasion you happen to be writing an article on an inherently notable subject that you can get away without any references. Or a disambiguation page.
Regarding A7s, I've started patrolling these regularly, and while there's not many bad calls, there enough to make me sit up and take note, such as this example. If I can find one reliable source on an article's subject, I'll take the A7 tag off and at worst replace it with a PROD, which at least gives people time to improve it.
I don't personally find creating new articles a ballache - the last one I did, John Earle (musician) took about ten minutes and made it through NPP without incident. --Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Your point #3 is interesting. From my perspective, the lack of a strong, singular leader at Wikipedia is a catch 22 and is partly responsible. Most of us have an instinctive preference to not have a dictator, even a benevolent one, but there are some advantages. Back when Jimmy Wales filled that role, he could break a tie or force through a common sense decision but we no longer have that as he backs out of that role. Participation is low enough that any major change can be bogged into "no consensus" territory with only a small group defending their turf. I'm not sure what the answer is here. It's like the old joke about the platypus being the only animal designed by a committee, and sometimes we do look like a platypus around here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 12:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
  • I have, in my time on Wikipedia, had to learn how to deal with actual "Fan clubs" and the fan base of a number of films, performers, singers etc. It can be pretty harsh and many editors do not even try. But over time I have discovered that the best way to treat them is no differently than any other group. I originally came to Wikipedia as a "fan" of sci-fi and horror films (hence the username). I discovered that I had interests in other areas and didn't even really do that much editing on film articles and began making more edits to history and politics. But I still like to edit certain some film a stage articles. One particular article has helped me understand a better route to dealing with obssesed fans....I stick to policy/guidelines, but I also try to help out where I can and engage them with as much kindess as possible. Many times the fans are just clueless. I once even had one of the major fan organizers try to use their experiance creating a wiki of their own and a few interviews they did try to tell me that it qualified them to use their own original research. I had to go into as much detail, in as respectful a way possible to make them understand that they don't count as a reliable source and that their wiki is not reliably published, or their newsletters and fanzines. I thought they were going to explode, but they took it in stride and accepted it. You just have to point to each policy or guideline and explain each one, not just link them.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:51, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Report from the chemistry world

Here is one perspective.

In WikiProject Chemistry, we have a core of active editors - maybe 20 of us. The articles are in good shape - almost all articles have secondary references, are written in decent English, and are well linked. All the main topics are covered. Article creation continues.

Now the bad news: I would go so far as to say that the near majority of edits from new registered or unregistered editors are unhelpful, which is partly a tribute to the high quality of the existing articles. Contributions from newer editors tend to be too specialized (WP:SECONDARY), trendy (WP:NOTNEWS), advicey (WP:NOTMANUAL), or trivia. New knowledgeable editors do appear regularly but often fleetingly to engage in WP:COI, citing publications by themselves or their pals. This problem arises because the stature of professional chemists is correlated with citations to their published work.

It is clear to me (but I could be wrong) that many people want to contribute to WikiProject Chemistry, but they underestimate the standards. To some extent, these do-gooders pose a threat to the quality of the chemistry article. They are almost forced to contribute highly specialized factoids because the broadly useful content already exists. Left alone, they could overwhelm articles with specialized cruft (after all, >10,000 journal articles appear annually in Chem). Tricky to explain to these newbies that we are not seeking specialized information, and they can get upset/disaffected when their precious contribution (which are factually accurate) is removed as being specialized (WP:UNDUE) or replaced by a more encyclopedic source.

A partial solution (that is unworkable, I know): in the Chemistry project, many of the most helpful comments from new editors are left on talk pages. These new editors highlight things they do not understand or they point out mistakes. IMHO, new editors should be encouraged to interact via the talk pages. It is a friendlier, more conversational venue. And these editors can then witness how their input gets implemented.

So with respect to the topic of Editor Retention, the problem in chemistry is that the standards are now so high that few are able to contribute meaningfully.

I have not contributed to this discussion previously, so am unsure if my comments are relevant. If they are not, remove them, no problem.--Smokefoot (talk) 19:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

They are very relevant, and equally appreciated. Thanks for yout input. Gtwfan52 (talk) 20:57, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Very relevant indeed, and this really gets to the heart of the matter. (The problem is not just restricted to chemistry articles, that's just an extreme case of a problem that affects large parts of Wikipedia, especially related to science but also other areas.)
The extreme solution, which goes against all existing policy on this, would be to semi-protect all chemistry articles. Why? Because it's a lot easier to politely explain on a talk page why a certain change can't/shouldn't be made, while also encouraging the new editor to continue their involvement, than it is to do the same when having to revert an addition that's not appropriate. (There are probably saints and angels who deliver carefully thought out hand crafted explanation and encouragement on new editors' talkpages every single time they revert an edit, but I'm not one of them.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
  • It is tricky. The best way is to bring the new editors into the fold and help them get up to speed with the expectations of the project. This is time consuming, but it is the only way to spend less time "correcting" someone and allowing them to start actually helping. Of course, if they have a COI and just looking to be cited, there isn't much you can do. Then again, that means they aren't here to build an encyclopedia. Our efforts to retain editors is centered around people who actually want to improve the project as a whole, not just pad their resume. Those people simply are tolerated until they move on to another website to spam their reputation on. And yes, there is a lot of that going on. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 13:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for a new user-right group

A Request for Comment on a proposal to create a new user group with an abbreviated set of administrator user-rights, as an option for administrators to request instead of requesting removal of the entire sysop user-right package. I welcome everyone's thoughts on this. - jc37 15:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Posted this here, because one of my hopes is that it will encourage some former admins to not be former : )
There's also an RfC on WP:RRA, if you'd like to check that out as well. - jc37 15:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Central point to lure, tutor, and retain editors -- WP:OUTREACH is born

Check out WP:OUTREACH. Just created it to serve as a central point to lure editors, train them, and retain them. Coordinates efforts between several initiatives and WikiProjects who have the same goal but operate independently from each other. Easy peasy concept. Now to develop it. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 03:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Wording AGF

On the project page, the abbr AGF is first used unexplained, then explained a little later. I suggest to change that, addressing New Users, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that as well and I broadened the scope of that section as those are all excellent suggestions for editors new and old.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:04, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Goals section

I don't believe the "Goals section" should attribute a piece of advice to a specific editor, as it should reflect a consensus view of the WikiProject. I have started a discussion on the "Goals" talk page; please feel free to contribute. isaacl (talk) 13:14, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Buster7 has kindly rendered the discussion moot. Thanks! isaacl (talk) 15:29, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
It is best practice though so I am glad it was kept and have changed the image and explained the phrasing in the image caption.--Amadscientist (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Accessibility and equality as core policies

I propose that we add a commitment to accessibility and equality to the Five pillars. Please join discussion at Wikipedia talk:Five pillars#Accessibility and equality. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:34, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Teams

As to the project page, am I correct that the team concept never took off? In which case should we remove mentiuon of it from the project page? ```Buster Seven Talk 13:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The "Retain new editors" team lead, EpochFail, is working on the Snuggle tool as part of that initiative. isaacl (talk) 16:20, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:Afd-teahouse

Can some of you take a look at this template? I used it on a handful of AfDs recently, and while I'm not sure about it's effectiveness, some solution to helping new editors get tagged as {{spa}} all over the place and generally getting flustered is probably worthwhile. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:02, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the template is sufficiently useful to be retained, but if it is, I don't think it should be an AfD-specific template, as the contents of the template are pretty generic and the message could probably be applied to many pages. isaacl (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Editor of the Week

Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week is looking for nominations—please add your suggestions to the nominations page for editors who do excellent work in improving Wikipedia while typically going unnoticed, such as the following:

  • Writes or significantly expands articles on a regular basis.
  • Cleans up articles by, for example, adding sources, expanding citations with the necessary information, aligning prose with the manual of style, or improving the quality of the prose through copy-editing (such as making the text more concise and removing redundant wording).
  • Serves as notable voice of reason in discussions with other editors.
  • Performs behind-the-scenes work, not normally seen by the general community.

While there are many well-known editors who meet these criteria, the intent is to recognize someone less celebrated yet deserving of greater renown. So look around you, find the editor who has been toiling away for months at some thankless task, producing excellent work, and nominate them today! isaacl (talk) 16:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

In addition, the program can still use help: editors to review the nominations and decide whether or not to accept them, and also to present the award on Sundays. Please sign up on the project page if you are interested, watch the project page and the nominations page, and join in on the conversations! isaacl (talk) 17:08, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Excellent New Editor Barnstar

By request, we have a new barnstar to give out to new editors that you feel deserve recognition for being new...but on the right path!

The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar

A new editor on the right path
Put your message here. Amadscientist (talk) 13:51, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Use: {{subst:The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar|1=Put your message here. ~~~~}} .

For those not on the right path.......have some patience.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:18, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant!!! We could very well use this barnstar! I surely will keep this in mind! TheOriginalSoni (talk) 13:42, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Kerching. He's been here a few years, but (like so many editors) only started to edit in bulk from December. Thanks for this, it's one that I think will be very appropriate from some of just the editors we want. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:33, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Great...Love the Pelican, Egret, Bird..! ```Buster Seven Talk 17:23, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
👍 Like Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 17:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Templates for newcomers: {{this is a new user}} and {{edited by a new user}}

Check out {{this is a new user}} and {{edited by a new user}}. :) Works in all namespaces. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 08:57, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible to replace the stop image. It looks like a warning message.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, you can make the change yourself but I prefer to leave it 'cuz it gets people attention to STOP and read the notice. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 09:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Traditionally, the stop is meant to tell the editor being left the message to "Stop" doing "whatever it is they are doing". This could come across in the wrong way.--Amadscientist (talk) 10:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. With that icon, it's a scary template. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. Stop sends the wrong message. ```Buster Seven Talk 14:14, 3 January 2013 (UTC) Ive reconsidered. The message is actually for taggers or stalkers or drive-by editors...editors that may not read a more innocent tag. They will notice and read a STOP sign. ```Buster Seven Talk 14:28, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Could you add "helpful" to the list of thing to be aware of on these templates? Gtwfan52 (talk) 19:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 Done—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 20:25, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

 Comment: I think these templates are patronising, the use of the Stop icon is way OTT, and although the idea has its merits, they will encourage new users to do even less work and leave it up to experienced users to clean up after them. More encouragement to read the rules and guidelines is needed instead. What is really needed now where most new first articles appear to be biographies, bands, and corporate promotion, is pressure to be applied on the WMF who promised a proper landing page nearly 2 years ago, and appeared to have done nothing more about it since. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

some people may find them appropriate--we do get some inexperienced users. But certainly not with anything that implies anything the least negative, in words or images. I'm not sure what image is best, but not the stop sign!! DGG ( talk ) 05:49, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
 Fixed using File:Lifebelt and man icon.svg now. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 06:31, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
We are beta testing this template with User:Anne Delong and so far she has been consistently contributing to Toronto Light Opera Association, adding more sources, content, and what not. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 06:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Still not sure about the template or its use, but loving the user Anne Delong!--Amadscientist (talk) 06:52, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Perhaps the image on the new editor's barnstar that Amadscientist recently created at my request (I am graphically challenged) would be more appropriate, but it would have to be shrunk. I just realized no one shared this really useful tool to this page and it kind of goes with this thread, so here:
The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar

A new editor on the right path
Put your message here. Gtwfan52 (talk) 06:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)


I have way too much going on. I forgot all about this. I need to change the color of the blanket and make it less "Cheesy".--Amadscientist (talk) 06:36, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
On the bright side.....I have declared I am male. (OK...so that may only be funny to a few of us)--Amadscientist (talk) 06:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there something that can be used by ALL editors to keep the vultures off of a new article without implying they are doing something wrong because they are stupid? Better yet, is there is something that will keep new articles off of the hit lists for a few hours? My experience with creating new articles is that, no matter how many translation templates or incomplete templates you put on it, for the first two or three days, you end up trying to communicate with and undo the damage of the templaters before you can go on and finish the article. I have had to take "missing persons" tags off of BLPs and dead person tags off of missing person articles, and research titles in order to defend my title choice when someone came along and moved the article to something inappropriate. I once spent a week trying to keep the name of an organization in a foreign language on a new article because someone didn't have the right character set installed in their own computer and they kept trying to remove it. The situation was complicated by the fact that they were not very fluent in English. Last night I went through same thing once again, this time losing several paragraphs of translation in an edit conflict a half hour after I finished translating the lede. Edit conflict!!1! How do they even find out the article exists, less than half an hour after it has been created? There is no point in trying to communicate with the individuals who are doing it, as I have found by experience, it is someone new every time. It seems like for every one person trying to create content, there are ten people trying to change it, and that for every one day you spend editing, you have to spend four days dealing with those people before you can finish what you started. Maybe something can be done at the Page Curation level? —Neotarf (talk) 22:32, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Project page organisation

I did a very bold organisation. I apologise if it took longer than it should have. All of the original content is basically there, but I have taken out a good deal of redundant wording and some stuff I remember putting in that wasn't needed. I hope this looks OK and works for everyone. If there is anything to blame, it goes to me as I did basically overhaul the whole thing. including arrangment. I wanted to stress the editing goals section that I thought was an outstanding idea. I tried very hard to stay as close to the original theme from my first graphic format changes and tried to gather as many of the tools as I could.

I added a few things along with the organisation. There is a project collaboration section, and a to-do list along with a new page two. Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Page 2 is empty right now except for an incubation section for the few ideas that never got going and have archived them there until there they can be looked at. The page has potential to add a good deal of content.--Amadscientist (talk) 12:52, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:GettingStarted

Interesting. I've seen a couple of very good new editors here who could use barnstars. Dougweller (talk) 14:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Our first editor of the week is...

Several weeks ago, Dennis suggested that we start an editor of the week award to recognize some less-celebrated members of the community who do outstanding work but often go unrecognized. Today, I wanted to announce to the project that we have awarded the inaugural Editor of the Week to User:Kelvinsong. We could still use some additional help over at that page, and of course you're welcome to nominate someone. On behalf of the current clerks over there, Go Phightins! 21:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

👍 Like MBisanz talk 21:50, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
👍 Like--Amadscientist (talk) 23:22, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
👍 Like--Are we going to recognize him on the project front page? Gtwfan52 (talk) 23:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I think that's a good idea. Go Phightins! 02:19, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Give me a bit an I'll put something together. But then we'll need to move the collaboration for due weight, if that's OK.--Amadscientist (talk) 02:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Its up. I have placed it under the newly titled "What this project is" section replacing "what it is not".--Amadscientist (talk) 06:21, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

New to WikiProject

Hey, friends. I am new to this project -- can I please get some tips on how to get started? Thanks! CURTAINTOAD! TALK! 08:05, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! :) CURTAINTOAD! TALK! 08:52, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
There is more to the project than discussion, although that is a major part. You can look through the main page to find activities that might interest you. You can join the sub project "Editor of the Week" and help nominate the next recipiant. You can help with the current collaboration, which is to sign up more editors to Wikipedia:Snuggle and help beta test the working prototype! You can join the DR process by becoming a volunteer at DR/N and help mediate small content disputes. We also have a to do list where you can choose something that you would like to start or finish. We have a few work groups if you would like to resurrect one...or all. There are more things you can do of course, but those a good start. Also, if you would like take a look through the "tools" and see if there is anything off interest. Perhaps you would like to greet new registered users, or give a barnstar to some who have reached out to another editor etc. Take your pick! Lots to do!--Amadscientist (talk) 03:27, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! I like to do this please! :) CURTAINTOAD! TALK! 03:53, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate you're trying to help, Amadscientist, but having looked through Curtaintoad's talk page archives, he really need to keep his eye focused on improving articles. I have this horrible sinking feeling he's going to get blocked at some point and won't be able to get himself out of the hole. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Discipline Global Mobile

Outside eyes are requested. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Noting prior discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Prohibited (sic) links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:07, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Standard Operating Procedure for promotional usernames (for admins)

Very often we find new users being permanently blocked for having promotional usernames. Most such new users do not realise that a company name or something similar might actually be against policy, and so make such usernames. I am pretty sure (from personal experiences with such users) that the block tag does not help to understand Wikipedia policies on usernames, and several indeed fail to understand so; and most such users often see a direct indef-block rather than the warning or the explanation (which ought to be the standard procedure before blocking, but turns out to be just a "guideline"). As for how many of them return to Wikipedia under another name, I do not know.

As it turns out, the standard procedure for new admins states that its common for a user to be directly indef-blocked with the casual block tag rather than a proper explanation of the rules and policies. I propose a mechanism where a promotional username recieves a warning, as well as a "common layman's" explanation of the whats and the whys, and is autoblocked within 7 days of the block if the name is not changed. [Something like "If you do not change your username/create a new account within 7 days, this account shall be automatically blocked by an admin" can be added in the warning]. That way, we can address the user and help them understand the policies way better than what is normally done (I am pretty sure no user will like to be blocked, and such a ban would look positively horrifying to anybody)

What do others have to say to this? If this proposal seems to generate enough supports and interest, maybe we can put forward this proposal to the Pump (or the appropriate venue for placing it). TheOriginalSoni (talk) 19:53, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The appropriate venue to discuss this is at Wikipedia talk:Username policy. But also read Wikipedia talk:Usernames for administrator attention and the archives. Dougweller (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. But I wanted a feedback on whether we must rethink this issue. So it was best to ask at WER before going forward there. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 20:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Dennis or Doug can confirm this, but I believe the standard twinkle warning for promotional username lists the user on some list. I know every time I post one of those warnings, the user gets blocked fairly quickly, without me making a report to UAA. Gtwfan52 (talk) 07:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
Twinkle applies a category; Category:Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues. I recently used Twinkle to notify a good-faith and productive new editor that their corporate user name was not acceptable, but appended (emphasis in original): "Please note that this is a procedural matter, and not a reflection on your edits, which are most welcome". I have proposed including that wording as an option, at Username warning, suggested improvement. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:03, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree the approp venue is elsewhere. BTW, I just checked and there is a link to the WP username policy on the account creation page but it should have something stated explicitly on the account creation page. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:56, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

AfC vs AfD stats

Does anyone here know of any stats showing how effective AfC is vs AfD in terms of new articles by new editors? I am thinking of statistics showing how many article survives a AfC process vs how many articles survive the AfD process, and also whether the article in question gets channelled properly to the project most concerned with the content. I am asking this because I stumbled upon an interesting case this week that makes me think that the Articles for Creation project is so backlogged that it can possibly be better shut down, or somehow attached to the AfD queue so that new articles just go into the main flow of recent edits again. See my comments for the case history here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Editnotice and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Visual arts#Zanobi Strozzi. Jane (talk) 16:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

That is a bit off topic for this forum but here are my comment. I don't think Wikipedia needs more than four million article so we should shut down AFC. Oh, I see that we have already got over four million. But seriously, how do we keep our low barriers to entry to prevent a sort of censorship or a perceived censorship and at the same time not overwork the volunteers at AfC as well as everywhere else on WP? Nupedia did not work. Completely open editing did not work. We are now mucking about with all sorts of patches to keep WP operational. I think the solution is flagged revisions/Pending changes. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
You might like to get up to speed and see what we tried to do about it. A very large discussion with a healthy consensus, and the WMF simply told us very rudely to stuff it - ostensibly because they are more concerned with growth stats (that include any crap) than quality. They came back with the promise of a new landing page for new users as a consolation, but nearly 2 years down the line they have quietly hoped that we won't pester them for it - or so it seems. Maybe they are keeping it top secret and they are planing a big surprise! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:04, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Without a commercial sponsor hiring developers to complete a really nice, comprehensive and useful user interface for newcomers, I am somewhat sceptical that the landing page will take off (if you'll excuse the pun). Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
As mentioned above, there is a landing page now for new users: Special:GettingStarted (there is a bit of description at Wikipedia:GettingStarted; here's the initial announcement on the village pump (technical), and a small followup). It seems a bit underwhelming at the moment; it's a work in progress, according to Wikipedia:GettingStarted. isaacl (talk) 14:49, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
No, that's not it. A landing page is a page that all users would see on completion of their registration and would include a couple of simple hoops to read through before being allowed to click through to any editing windows. Very, very basically, not entirely dissimilar to the Article Wizard, but much more sophisticated and employing some modern scripts; it would also make quite clear in simple language what vandalism, COI, and other undesirable edits are.
It was proposed by Jorm (Brandon Harris), one of the most senior WMF employees, in direct answer to their very rude rejection of WP:ACTRIAL but in spite of constant reminders nothing seems to have been further developed - and, I have been assured, it is not for lack of available funds. What we need is an active campaign to get this project restarted which at the moment, according to the most recent WMF comment about 6 months ago is 'being revisited'. Here are some links to what was done:
As most of the discussion is on Mediawiki pages, it's relatively unknown throughout the en.Wiki community and tht's what needs to be remedied. It's part of the ideas for the Editor Retention presentation that I'm thinking of proposing for Wikimedia in August, but if I don't get some help with it ver soon from someone who will also be going to Hong Kong, in time to propose it before submissions close, I'll have to abandon the idea. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:22, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
It is a page shown to new users after registration, but it is quite barebones at the moment. The initial announcement points to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Onboarding_new_Wikipedians, which in turn points to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_Creation_Workflow/Design. isaacl (talk) 02:54, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
It's extremely bare bones, in fact the last time I looked, Article Creation Flow existed only as a front-end mock up, but the actual concept is really quite good. What we need to do is to put pressure on the Foundation to develop it. This is the way to keep new contributors. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:05, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
The thing is, the issue here is keeping new editors, but how to stop actively scaring them away. The word "keep" seems much less urgent, while the "scaring away" is probably the reason for the "holy shit" graph. Jane (talk) 10:51, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Oops! Sorry for forgetting I posted here as well, and thank you all for your thoughtful comments, as it is deeply reassuring to know that others share my concerns. As an experienced editor, I make stubs all the time and it never occurred to me that what I consider fit to print would be rejected at AfC. I have since been randomly clicking on recent submissions and frankly, it's depressing. As a GLAM volunteer, I am very concerned about art pages by new editors and feel that new editors should be showed a "tapas" platter of choices of Wikiprojects whenever they create a page. There should not be one "front door" to Wikipedia, but multiple (perhaps infinite?) front doors, and as I see it, these are the Wikiprojects. The Teylers writing challenge entailed a steep learning curve for me, and taught me that an editor who edits paleontology pages is just as likely to edit artist biographies or take WLM photos. The point is that each edit should be judged by a different group, and not some catch-all front door clan that look more like bouncers than a welcoming committee. Jane (talk) 10:46, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

What exactly happened in January 2007 and the months that followed?

Influx of new editors from January 2001 to September 2010. Notice the sudden drops in May 2006, and the dramatic drop from January 2007 to May 2007. What exactly caused this? What events or changes in Wikipedia surrounded this?

I have been reading the Editor Trends Study commissioned by Wikimedia in 2010 and I'm baffled at the fact that the study failed to uncover what happened exactly in January 2007 and the months that followed that caused a sudden drop in the influx of new editors. Does anybody have any idea? Was that the time when we implemented that only registered users could create articles? Was that the time that we formalized WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NOTABILITY, WP:BLP, or something else? Was that the time that Jimmy Wales stepped down? Did we get bad press during that time?

What exactly happened in January 2007 and the months that followed that caused a sudden and dramatic drop in new editors?

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 04:00, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Other than that being the month I started here....I have no idea.....and I wont take blame. LOL!--Amadscientist (talk) 04:04, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

But...looking back there was something that seems to have been something of a big deal. How much of a big deal, I am unclear of. It seems there was a professor that had assigned his students the task of vandalising Wikipedia and an ANI that looks like it got carried away by one particular user. Could this be one of the reasons with the decline. Did we scare off users or were a good portion of new users signing up to vandalise the project and got a good, and well deserved scare?--Amadscientist (talk) 04:24, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a better question is, what happened between 2005 and 2006 when we had an odd jump in new editors that seems to have kept growing at an unusual rate then began it decline in 2007. Could these be related?--Amadscientist (talk) 07:36, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I think 2007 was when the "don't add anything without sources" and "if it's not notable, delete it" policies really started to take off. If I was cynical I would say it was because the "easy" articles were done and if editors wanted to contribute, it was suddenly easier to find "junk" and delete it. Back in 2006, I could create an unreferenced article with original research and nobody batted an eyelid. Nowadays, I reckon there's a good chance it would get tagged, merged or possibly deleted very quickly. That might have had something to do with it, as people suddenly discovering the bar for contributing was raised and not being willing or able to keep up. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:39, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
    1. Late 2005 was the Seigenthaler incident, which prompted the introduction of the swathe of restrictions on IP editing which exist to this day, causing a lot of people who'd previously edited as IPs to create accounts, hence the big spike in "new" accounts in 2006;
    2. May 2006 had the WMF very publicly shifting Wikipedia's focus away from article-creation towards an avowed aim of "100,000 featured-quality articles" (how's that one going, Jimmy?), which discouraged some of the people who wanted to come to Wikipedia to create cod-Myspace pages on their band;
    3. December 2006-January 2007 marked the death of Esperanza, and Wikipedia decisively turning away from the social network model towards a "quality of the editor not the quantity" approach, which made it a much less welcoming environment to those who wanted to come here to chat rather than to work. Early 2007 was also the golden age of Wikipedia nutcases, which also drove off a number of people—those who think the environment is unpleasant now don't remember how bad it was back then;
    4. March 2007 saw the unmasking of Essjay, which dealt Wikipedia's credibility a blow from which it's never really recovered. Wikipedia ceased to be seen as a cool place for nerds to hang out, and instead came to be seen as a pack of obsessives, POV-pushers and pathological liars; a public perception which still persists; the casual editors started to defect to Reddit, leaving Wikipedia as a hardcore of die-hards which in turn made the environment even less welcoming to newcomers. (Don't be fooled by the WMF's 48,281,285 figure—the number of active users currently hovers just above 3,000, has been in steady decline since its 2007 peak, and is at its lowest point since February 2006.) – iridescent 14:54, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the concise history lesson, iridescent. I'm not sure its quite that dire but you provide information that is worth personal investigation by any interested editor.```Buster Seven Talk 19:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, thank you very much indeed. This did answer the questions I had and does seem to show why there was a mad spike. I belivieve the decline was and is slow enough that there are certainly multple reasons.--Amadscientist (talk) 22:17, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Answer the focus shifted from improving to removing
Echoing what iridescent (talk · contribs) said above. The media was pounding on Wikipedia's credibility at the time, so there was supposed to be a focus on quality. But what ended up happening was that people started focusing on removing the BADTM stuff instead of improving it. Automated tools became popular as did templating. So the focus shifted away from manual editing—which improved content—and shifted towards point-and-click editing, which removed content. This created a hostile environment which actually drove away the people that wanted to actually write and make articles better. It left us with point-and-click editors who were trying to help, but inadvertantly driving away that people we actually wanted here—the writers. There's some good related reading at Who Writes Wikipedia? that Aaron Swartz wrote around that time and the recent Signpost article too. See also strategy:Thread:Talk:March_2011_Update/What happened in May 2007? for more. 64.40.54.13 (talk) 16:32, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I was a new editor in January 2007. I survived my first month, but just barely. I was accused of COI, Spamming, Canvassing, etc. and although no one was uncivil to the extreme, it certainly felt like I had run afoul of the Wikipedia vigilantes. Because I was working in the corporate world and was trying to learn Wikipedia by writing about the business (sector not specific company) I was in, I immediately became an evil spammer, and the vigilantes weren’t interested in helping or mentoring me. They were on a mission to delete spam and discourage anyone associated with a corporation or company. Some of those vigilantes are still around today. I eventually learned how the vigilantes worked, how to avoid them, and how to productively contribute to WP. But I know a great number of people through my work that have been thoroughly put off by such vigilantism when exploring editing Wikipedia for the first time. There is no telling how many highly qualified and well educated new editors have been scared away before they ever had the real opportunity to learn how to survive in this community. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:13, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
"Some of those vigilantes are still around today" ... and at least one of them is an active admin, if my first guess is right. And very few other editors bother to do much to ameliorate the damage they cause. I'm not sure why. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:38, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Stanford prison experiment, sadly. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:51, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I came onto the scene in Sept 2007, so I guess that makes me the first wave of editors after "the incident", whatever that was. I was primarily interested in the issues surrounding Trivia sections (now resolved) and In Popular Culture article, and the notion was that, as a category, they were cruft and to be deleted. The conflict is largely resolved now, but at the time there was a huge battle going on between inclusionists and deletionists. At the end of it all, I think everyone agreed that some stuff is worth keeping and other stuff should be removed, but at the time it was a fairly negative atmosphere filled with people staking a claim and fighting to the end.
In general, I think what happened was we set the bar higher. It was a major time for the creation and enforcement of policy. It's still an encylopedia that everyone can edit, but we have raised the criteria of what can be added. I think in all that, the low hanging fruit of contributors just didn't want to put in the effort and moved on. If you look at the last 5 years, it has largely been about hammering out the finer details in policy; I would say there have been no major culture-changing watershed moments. I would describe this as Phase 3 of the wiki movement. We has Genesis, then Selectiveness, and now Improvement. --NickPenguin(contribs) 18:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Pet peeves

Editors who clearly know how to edit Wikipedia but keep getting blocked for the same thing over and over because they won't take advice. Irritating and easier to block, but so very avoidable. This is an example from a bunch, not a campaign against him/her. Opinions? Thanks ツ Jenova20 (email) 09:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

My opinion is Absolute Patience. There is no other alternative. It requires quite a lot of it, and time too; but can potentially become great contributors to the Wiki. My suggestion - Have specialists handle with them (The ones who can put the point across without frustuating themselves- The more patient users)... I would be open to anyone approaching me to do the same (I consider myself to be quite patient compared to others) TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, im not frustrated at all. If you check the user's talk page history you'll see he takes advice as a personal attack. Ultimately since he's unwilling to listen to others then i doubt he will last long before another block. Thanks ツ Jenova20 (email) 12:18, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Never implied that. Its just that frustration is much more likely to happen to editors. Might inviting him to the Teahouse help? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 12:27, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
That's a good idea if you don't mind inviting the user? Thanks ツ Jenova20 (email) 13:01, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
Done. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 13:24, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
There seems to be something in the Wikipedia model that attracts those who cannot accept social structure. It can be frustrating for us folks who try to help new editors get a handle on things, but it soon becomes obvious just who these guys are. They are the ones that absolutely refuse to listen to sound advice, no matter how many people tell them and no matter what kind of verbiage is used to tell them. There is only so much that can be done with those editors, and I have found that after a while it becomes pointless to even try to deal with them. Gtwfan52 (talk) 16:46, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
I think this is where we need to be more aware of the policies and procedures by verifying them ourselves before we state them. The comment made: "deletion of non policy violating content should be tagged citation needed before deletion". Is not accurate. If it doesn't have a source and is not unquestionable fact, it may be deleted as a challenge to the material. At this point the editor who adds the content back must meet the burden of evidence. Tagging and removing content is a challenge to the material. Editors should try to find sources before they delete material, but this is a best practice, not a requirement.--Amadscientist (talk) 22:31, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
The editor under question has declined a Teahouse invite. Any more ideas? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 16:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The term "notability"

Hi. In my day to day endeavors here at Wikipedia, I work with a lot of new editors. I have noticed (especially if I encounter the new editor at either AfC or AfD) that the way we use the term "notability" is problematic. Why do we artificially assign a word with a common usage to a specific definition on Wikipedia? When we say "notability", we mean "Wikipedia's standard for inclusion". When you are dealing with newer editors, that causes problems. It gets them up on their defenses as they think we are saying something qualitative about the subject of the article. When I talk to a new editor about either an article for creation or an article for deletion, I am always careful to explain to them that when we say "notability", we are not saying anything about a person's (or company or...) fame or skills or worth. We are simply talking about there merits viz. our standard for inclusion. So my point is, since "Notability" is our standard for inclusion, why not just call it "the standards for inclusion" rather than "notability", which can cause confusion and bad will among those who don't understand about it? Gtwfan52 (talk) 08:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Best practice to try and make the distinction is something like this: "the article may not meet Wikipedia's definition of notability and may be deleted." By mentioning that we have a context-specific definition of the word and linking to that definition you can at least try to avoid such misunderstandings. This applies to any WP policy that has a "real world" name, just yesterday I saw someone argue that their edits did not meet the dictionary definition of vandalism. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:05, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:AE

You may wish to view current discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Outreach

"Wikipedia:WikiProject Outreach" is listed at Wikipedia:Database reports/New WikiProjects (version of 10:52, 19 January 2013).
—Wavelength (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Collaboration

I think a great deal of progress has been made in recent months to promote collaboration on the Wiki, and I would like to update this page to reflect that. It has seen no major updates since 2007, and it would be nice to get some input on how it could promote collaboration. The page currently gets upwards of 1400 views a month and is linked from the Community Portal via the {Cotm} template. --NickPenguin(contribs) 20:38, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Our second Editor of the Week is...

... EricEnfermero. Please feel free to drop by at the Editor of the Week main page and take a look if you haven't already. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 19:28, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Retirement question

Hi. I have a question for the project. Even though some other editors retire due to being driven away by abusive editors, do they often come back? Also, considering the fact that one of our editors left the project in frustration years ago due to the site's inability to deal with an persistent vandal, I don't know if it would happen to me. I have been resilient since I had a few arguments with other users, but I don't want to retire due to abusive or disruptive behaviors. What are your thoughts? Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:39, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Lots of retirements are very brief indeed, though I'm not sure whether that is true of those who retire because others are abusive. There have also been some high profile retirements where the editors came back under a new name. I suppose when it comes to persistent vandals there are two groups of victims, those who are directly targeted for abuse on their talkpage etc and those whose work is targeted. Where the abuse is targeted at the editor we can usually help with protection of userpages and so forth. Where the problem is in mainspace it can get more tricky, ultimately the solution to much of this is too move to flagged revisions as DE wiki has done. But sadly we don't yet have consensus to do that here. ϢereSpielChequers 15:39, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
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