Would it make sense to have a "be nice" session at Wikimania to share all kinds of experiences and best practices around this topic?
Phoebe, you sound like the ultimate person to organize such a session (in case you did not yet propose such) :) Lodewijk 2011/2/22 phoebe ayers <[email protected]> > On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 8:47 PM, Renata St <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> This is to some degree a question of balance in approach. > >> > >> Every day, thousands of absolutely idiotic, non notable articles get > >> started that really have no point or hope. Every day, new page > >> patrollers find (most) of those, and they go "kerpoof". It would > >> largely be a waste of time to prod them, mark them "citation needed" > >> talk to the new user. The user never had any intention of > >> contributing legitimately to an online information resource / > >> encyclopedia, they're just trying to insult/promote/blab about their > >> friend/school/work/favorite whatever. > >> > >> We could emphasize a more positive engagement intended to get the > >> message to these people about what an encyclopedia is, what Wikipedia > >> is, and what contributions would be appropriate. But by and large > >> these driveby contributions aren't intended to really stick. They're > >> an advanced form of vandalism, and the perpetrators know it. > >> > > > > That's what I though: "There is too much garbage coming in, too few > admins > > to police. There is no way that we can deal with this other than nuke on > > sight and who cares about collateral damage -- we have a war to fight!" > > > > Then one day I stumbled upon Distributed Proofreaders ( > > http://www.pgdp.net/c/) and proofread a few pages. I couple days later I > > received *three* *personalized* welcoming messages & evaluations "this is > > what you got right, this is what you should improve". I was shocked. > These > > people are overworked, they have huge backlogs, they are stricter about > > quality than the pickiest FAC reviewer, yet three of them found time, > > energy, and good will to write lengthy personalized messages for a newbie > > who reviewed 30 book pages... If it was Wikipedia and I was a newbie with > 30 > > edits, best case scenario I would have been slapped with {{welcome}} and > my > > articles with endless variations of {{cleanup}}. This opened my eyes > that > > there *is* an alternative -- an unthinkable idea for someone born and > raised > > up in the Wikipedia battlefield zone. > > This is a really interested (and lovely) experience. > > I am curious, apropos of this discussion: how many people remember > their welcome message? Did it make you want to stick around? > > I do mine, and it did; it was short and to the point and led me into a > little discussion about grammar with my welcomer. I was kind of a jerk > about it, but they (an editor who sadly left the project not long > after) were kind enough to walk me through best practice. Then later > someone else recommended a topic for me to work on, and pointed me to > Wiktionary. It was nice, and gave me the impression there were real, > quirky people behind the project. This was all pre-templates, to date > myself. > > I know we've had this discussion many times before -- welcome messages > help, they don't help, they don't make any statistical difference when > it's measured. But I'm actually curious about people's anecdotal > experiences. Presumably if you made it to Foundation-l you did stick > around, after all :) > > -- phoebe > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
