Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-29/News and notes

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There are two types of young Wikipedia editors: The clueful and successful type, and the immature, annoying, less-than-clueful type that shouldn't be on here. I know of more than a few young users (12–14) in the latter category and I simply cannot believe that they don't understand how to maneuver the corporate nature and internal politics of Wikipedia. I'm not sure I've ever masked my disapproval of most young editors (90% waste time without much [quality] end result), but anyone who disagrees with me is invited to email me or discuss this issue on IRC. I don't wish to start a firestorm here. /ƒETCH COMMS / 01:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, of course, 12-14 year olds are generally do not have much "real world" experience, so they are less able to understand why some parts of Wikipedia work in the way they do. Many of them also probably do not see the point in reading seemingly boring pages full of "policies", aka "rules". A young Wikipedian probably enters Wikipedia with the mindset that Wikipedia is an unstructured free-for-all. Not that I'm saying all young Wikipedians start out like this. Bramble claw x 02:47, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I started editing there were only four rules. And that's as it should be. Moreover the structure (and rules) should support ad-hoc editors. It's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" not the "encyclopedia anyone who can be bothered to read all the guidelines, polices, essays and precedent can edit". Rich Farmbrough, 19:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]

From my experience, the clueful types have been roughly distributed amongst the age groups. I have found some contributors in the 12-14 group who are very mature & intelligent, as well as some 30+ who are clueless & very immature. Maybe there are fewer jerks amongst the 50+ groups because they would rather say "it's too hard to edit Wikipedia" & forgo doing so, than prove the problem is on their side of the keyboard. -- llywrch (talk) 20:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By no means are the young the only people who can be clueless. Generalizations aren't fair, even if you do have a point. bahamut0013^words _deeds 19:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Inforapid mindmaps

The Inforapid mindmaps can't index articles with apostrophes in them. They don't appear in other articles' mindmaps and can't be searched for as the root of a map. Try, for instance, Macy's or Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Powers ^T 15:17, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup suggestion

I have suggested it before - but would it be possible to have a 'Random article with an action required tag' (or similar) linke on the side menu?

Also - it might be useful to group some of the 'pages requiring care, consideration and attention' by subject rather than by type of action necessary. Jackiespeel (talk) 16:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are such lists, created by bot, on a project by project basis. The "Expert" tag also supports subject classification up to a point. It would be reasonably simple to extend the clean-up category system to cope with a set of generic subject clean-up categories, and it might forestall the incessant creation of subject-specific clean-up tags. If this would be considered useful, gain consensus and let me know and it can be implemented. Rich Farmbrough, 19:31, 30 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Something quite close exists: lists of articles needing cleanup by WikiProject. Considering that most WikiProjects are based around some subject, this should give you what you want. Svick (talk) 20:41, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SuggestBot is also worth a subscription, if you're not already on their list. 84.51.181.140 (talk) 21:55, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can use the linkintersection tool as well. I use it to find Novels that are orphaned with this query. I like it because it doesn't just give me articles tagged by Novels WikiProject but also newly created ones in the category tree, Sadads (talk) 15:08, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]