Only people who are fluent in Spanish have a prayer of solving problems on the Spanish Wikipedia. Somebody's got to grasp the nettle, maybe not you, but somebody, actually a determined group of somebodies. Faith...
Fred > Greetings all. I have been monitoring exchanges regularly, but never felt > the urge to respond to any topic, here is my first. > > As a beginner, I found Wikipedia, in addition to unfriendly, very > abstract > and complex. > > Wikipedia Spanish has a problem with editors, and I can see in the text > below some of the things I have experienced, where is why: > > I am a big archaeology fan and decided to undertake a personal project, > enhancing the quality of archaeology articles, mainly because I noticed > that > many articles did not exist in Spanish or in English. > > What was worst was that many articles exist in English and not in > Spanish, > naively I set out to fix some of it, by investigating, researching and > adding bilingual articles, in some cases simply translating from English > and > a few from German, Italian, etc. So I guess I found the reason why there > are > far too few Spanish articles. > > At a point in time, I encountered empowered and authoritarian Spanish > text > editors that vandalized my contributions, deleted articles, made > Wikipedia > rules on the go, etc., and offered no explanations. The last resort > measure > I had was to stop creating Spanish articles. In English, however it has > been > a pleasure, I have found people very proactive, friendly, helpful, etc. > For > details about my contributions and comments, see my user page, under > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gumr51. I have a lot of time to > research > on my personal project, however very little time or interest in arguing > or > engaging in sterile debates with Text Editors, that I have no clue who > they > are, what is their knowledge, or actual interest are, since the > environment > is very impersonal, few even provide their real name. > > Since this is voluntary work, I would have liked or expected for the text > editors to advise or comment on problems they encountered, I spent a few > weeks last year asking for help and advice, I did get support in English, > but not in Spanish. > > I believe that in addition to "quality" text editors and their "power > levels", somebody may require to qualify the editors expertise in the > content of articles, beyond the Wikipedia rules. > > I will continue adding English archaeological articles. > > Regards from a frustrated Mexican bilingual "Wikipedian", > > Raul Gutierrez > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Neil > Harris > Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 12:13 PM > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > Subject: [Foundation-l] Friendliness: a radical proposal > > Thesis: > > The main reason why Wikipedia seems unfriendly to beginners is the > reduction > in the assumption of good faith. A lot of this could be resolved simply > by > creating large numbers of new admins. This should be done automatically. > So > why not just do it? > > Argument and proposal: > > Many admins and edit patrollers find themselves forced into an aggressive > stance in order to keep up with the firehose of issues that need to be > dealt > with, a surprising amount of which is fueled by deliberate malice and > stupidity and actually does require an aggressive and proactive response. > > This is not the admins' fault. The major reason for this is the broken > RfA > process, which has slowed the creation of new admins to a trickle, and > has > led to an admin shortage, which in turn has led to the current > whack-a-mole > attitude to new editors, and a reduction in the ability to assume good > faith. > > I'd like to move back to an older era, where adminship was "no big deal", > and was allocated to any reasonably polite and competent editor, instead > of > requiring them to in effect run for political office. > > If, say, over the next three years, we could double the number of admins, > we > could halve the individual admin's workload, and give them more a lot > more > time for assuming good faith. And, with the lesser workload and more good > faith, there will be a lot less aggression required, and that will > trickle > outwards throughout the entire community. > > I can't see any reason why this shouldn't be done by an semi-automated > process, completely removing the existing broken RfA process. > > Now it might be argued that this is a bad idea, because adminship confers > too much power in one go. If so, the admin bit could be broken out into > a > base "new admin" role, and a set of specific extra "old admin" powers > which > can be granted automatically to all admins in good standing, after a > period > of perhaps a year. For an example of the kind of power restrictions I > have > in mind, perhaps base new admins might be able to deliver blocks of up to > a > month only, with the capability of longer blocks arriving when they have > had > the admin bit for long enough. > > All existing admins would be grandfathered in as "old admins" in this > scheme, with no change in their powers. Every new admin should be granted > the full "old admin" powers automatically after one year, unless they've > done something so bad as to be worthy of stripping their admin bit > completely. > > None of this should be presented as a rank or status system -- there > should > only be "new admins", and "old admins" with the only distinction being > the > length they have been wielding their powers -- admin "ageism" > should be a specifically taboo activity. > > Now, we could quite easily use a computer program to make a pre-qualified > list of editors who have edited a wide variety of pages, interacted with > other users, avoided recent blocks, etc. etc., and then from time to time > send a randomly chosen subset of them a message that they can now ask any > "old admin" to turn on their admin bit, with this request expected not to > be > unreasonably withheld, provided their edits are recognizably human in > nature. (The reason why "new admins" should not be able to create other > admins is to prevent the creation of armies of sockpuppet sleeper admin > accounts riding on top of this process -- a year of competent adminning > should suffice as a Turing test.) > > So: unless there is a good reason not to, why not do this? > > -- Neil > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
