Very true. This little story is very representative of how Commons can bite newbies (I know, I'm a biter). I believe that it is totally possible to solve this kind of communication problem on Commons.
But I think the solution is to hire full-time administrators. An active admin on Commons can easily, in a single day and depending on his profile, close dozens of regular deletion requests and tag or speedy-delete one or two hundred pictures. Even if he limits himself to non-controversial, obvious actions. The workload and the backlog are really huge, the problematic contents land on Commons at a very high rate and the active administrators are really few. Contacting a user each time an action is taken is often simply not an option (in 75% of the cases, the user won't watch his messages on Commons anyway). I believe the current role of an admin on Commons is very different from the role on a Wikipedia, much more technical, much more task-oriented. The best I could personally do to improve the situation when I was sysop was to customize my message templates by automatically adding small textual explanations to them, with an invitation to contact me. I'm not sure it helped a lot, although I saw other admins using the same system after me (I think). I don't think the Commons admin community could do much better, unless it can be ensured that a number of them spend 8 hours a day doing the job (and staying friendly all the time). But I'm naturally pessimistic, so... Guillaume Le 22/02/2011 18:32, David Gerard a écrit : > Food for thought. > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Michel Vuijlsteke <[email protected]> > Date: 22 February 2011 16:29 > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay) > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <[email protected]> > > > On 22 February 2011 14:14, Yaroslav M. Blanter <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >>> We have to make a profound choice in the culture here: >>> 1) we continue with the whacking and scaring the newbies away (content >>> priority #1, people #2), or >>> 2) we embrace the newbies and we let some spam through (people priority >> #1, >>> content #2). >>> >>> So far we are steadily moving along the first route. I believe, it is >> time >>> we switch the priorities. People are important. It's the people who will >> be >>> creating content in the future, and not the other way around. Wikipedia >>> will >>> inevitably fail without participation. And content... we are already the >>> largest and the best... >>> >>> Renata >> >> To me it sounds too much black and white. Indeed, there are points you >> better not stumble across as an editor: engaging into battles over disputed >> content (like Middle East conflict), writing articles on smth with disputed >> notability, pushing POV or not getting immediately the image upload rules. >> But I assume this is a relatively minor fraction of editors (though of >> course it still represents a problem). I can not recall that I ever got any >> templates in my articles (I have written over 500 of them since 2007), >> except for a couple of times from a bot that there are no links to the >> article, and that I ever got any angry comments from admins/other editors >> concerning the articles I have written. >> > > I don't think it has to be as obviously annoying as slathering templates all > over pages or wikilawyering the newbies away -- it's often much more subtle > how content/data seems to be considered more important than people. > > One interaction I encountered recently is typical. Michiel Hendryckx, one of > Belgium's best-known photographers, started uploading fairly > high-resolution, good quality images to Wikipedia (well, Commons) on 3 July > 2010. Stuff like this 1983 Chet Baker portrait: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chet675.jpg > > The first message on his talk page was a request to confirm his identity > (which he did). > > The second message was a complaint by Nikbot (no valid license for one > particular image). A couple of hours later, at 10:51 on 4 July, the next > message is from CategorizationBot, asking Hendryckx to add categories to his > images. > > The third message, not six hours later, was this: > > *Please categorize our images !!!* > You already have been asked by a bot to categorize your images. Therefore I > don't understand why you keep on uploading images without categories. > Uploading images without categorizing them doesn't make sense. Only > categorized images can be found! > > > I'm pretty sure the user in question meant really well, but *this* is what > that focusing on content over people means to me. It's in the small things, > the interactions that experienced Wikipedians take in their stride, but that > can end up scaring people away. > > It's like the last message on Hendryckx' talk page, dated 1 February 2011: a > notification that one if this images is listed at commons:deletion requests, > and to "please do not take the deletion request personally... thank you!". > Follow the link to the discussion ( > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Van_istendael675.jpg): > turns out the requester couldn't see the image. His/her first action was to > nominate the image for deletion. Took about three hours for someone to > confirm that no, the image works perfectly fine for them, and about five > hours for the original person to close the deletion request ("thanks"). > > Again: content over people. No personal interaction with the photographer, > no message on the photographer's talk page after the deletion request was > closed, nothing. The last interaction Hendryckx had on Commons -- on 19 > February, almost three weeks after the deletion request was closed -- was a > baffled question ( > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Deletion_requests/File:Van_istendael675.jpg), > asking what on Earth is wrong with the image, and that he'd like to at least > know why it needed to be deleted. > > Again, I'm sure the user in question meant really well again, but here too: > content over people. Drive-by templating, shoot first, don't ask questions, > don't even provide feedback, trust people will read every last word in the > templates, etc. > > Michel Vuijlsteke > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > _______________________________________________ > Commons-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
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