Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention

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Where should the focus be now?

The WER project page contains this, "Editor retention is the concern and proactive effort of retaining contributors, many who leave for various reasons". My interpretation of this is that we should focus on editors who have a history of ongoing contribution. The 'retention' of new editors seems to be a contradiction in terms. At least it would be useful to discuss new editors on a separate thread. I think WP does a fairly good job with new editors. We manage to detect vandals quite quickly. We welcome, mentor and encourage new editors by a variety of methods. The Teahouse is outstanding in this regard. I would like to see all the welcome templates altered to include a link to the Teahouse. Retaining experienced editors seems, in contrast, to be something we need to give more attention to. --Greenmaven (talk) 23:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

One of the difficulties with the retention of experienced editors is that many are discouraged after participating in disagreements or confrontations with other editors. It's tricky finding ways to make people feel better without seeming to take part in the dissention. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The original focus of Editor Retention was to help editors, old and new with difficult situations and make their experience more positive, thereby retaining them when they might have been discouraged otherwise. Sometimes you actually have to become involved and take part in the "dissention" in order to help.--Mark Miller (talk) 00:35, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd agree with that only to the extent that it helps when outside editors get involved in bridging disputes and adding calm voices. If A is in a battle to the wikideath with B, taking up A's cause to "retain" her is likely to equally discourage B. It disappoints me how often the comments on this page appear to boil down to "the problem is the Bs! If we drove off all the Bs, we'd more easily retain As!" ("admin abuse"/"anti-admin brigade" threads seem particularly bad for this.) I don't mean to trivialize these concerns, which can be serious, but I'm skeptical that we will ever increase editor retention by attacks on Bs, especially when it's hotly debated who exactly the Bs even are.

I think a better approach (speaking purely in editor retention terms here) is usually to remind both A and B that they're valued editors, that there's plenty of work left to be done outside the narrow confines of the dispute, that their dispute is unlikely to be the end of Wikipedia as we know it, and generally to just take a deep breath. Most editors I know who retired did so due to a festering dispute, or weariness from disputes generally, and few of these disputes were actually worth the loss of editor hours and quality contributions we suffered from them (for example, the Infobox wars).

We can't prevent disputes, obviously. But we can try to add calm voices to others' conflicts before they escalate to a heated, potential-quitting level; ask for outside opinions in or learn to step away from our own conflicts before things escalate; and always work to recognize the efforts of other Wikipedians, whether they're under wikistress or not but especially if they are. Just my two cents. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:50, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

• I'm pretty sure that when Dennis created this WER project it was not to provide individual editors with a grievance with yet another venue to grind their axe. For that we already have (possibly too many) other noticeboards, help pages, mediation, and dispute resolution venues. Maybe this very attempt over the years to highly compartmentalise all the different kinds of user issues has led to a dilemma of choice of venue for many. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
  • No, you're right Kudpung, when Dennis created the project the original page had this: "Editor retention is a project-wide problem, so the focus of this wikiproject is not on individuals". However he, himself changed that:"I also updated that mission statement to make it clear. We do talk about individuals who leave, get updates here when someone leaves, we have lists of missing editors them around here for that matter, but the real focus is still on the larger issues of why and what can we do to fix it." But that is not an excuse for "individual editors with a grievance with yet another venue to grind their axe", or for the continuation of conflicts that simply move the fight from one venue to the next. At any rate, Jack Greenmaven, Dennis did feel that new editors should be assisted: " But yes, we do help some individuals, in particular, new editors that are lost.".--Mark Miller (talk) 07:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

    New editors are being helped, but mostly at the Teahouse, not at WER. --Greenmaven (talk) 08:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, but the Teahouse is a very specific project consisting of a friendly help page, helping new editors one by one. It is great, but it doesn't have the scope of a Wikiproject like this one, and is just one "tool on the workbench" of Editor Retention. We shouldn't expect its hosts to consider larger issues such as changes to policies or procedures. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:36, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. Some ways that we decided to assist new editors was with welcome templates. Some editors don't like to use templates because they are not personal and look sever to many even when they are simple hello's. But a great deal of effort was put into the templates for welcoming new editors and it really would take a full community consensus to change a core part of the project. We purposely decided not to try and be another Teahouse, but to try to be a little more proactive with efforts to encourage new editors that are on the right track with several different methods. We have a Barn Star that was incorporated into the list of general barn stars, {{subst:The Excellent New Editor's Barnstar|message ~~~~}}, which was originally created for John from Idegon (formerly Gtwfan52) when they were asking for something to encourage new editors that they thought were doing a great job. It was created as part of the Editor Retention effort towards new editors. We also created the Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week as an effort to spotlight lesser known and more unappreciated editors, but has since expanded to include all editors, new and the well experienced. It serves the purpose better that way to help network editors to those with experience in many subjects and aspects of Wikipedia editing.--Mark Miller (talk) 21:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

The welcome templates are excellent in their present form. Is there any support for adding a link to the Teahouse on one or more of them? --Greenmaven (talk) 22:29, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't oppose this, except the templates are huge, so judicious use of minimal verbiage helps, IMHO. I wonder if WER's job is to steer the majority of the saveable-by-discussion to the teahouse, and to intervene directly, with other methods (email, phone calls, beers) in the almost-too-far-gone situations. --Lexein (talk) 23:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

There is a plethora of welcome templates. many of them are standard in the twinkle dropdown, and Twinkle also adds the option of creating your own which will be added to your Twinkle dropdown. See Wikipedia:Welcoming committee for more extensive information, and where perhaps preferably this discussion should be taking place. Welcome templates do however frequently get misused, I regulary come across users who do little else but search new account creations and slap welcomes on them even when there have been zero edits or when the only edits were vandalism or some other inappropriate contributions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

We should discuss our welcoming templates here. They were created and meant for use by our members, however if the original author and proposer of these templates, User:Buster7 does not object I will not either.--Mark Miller (talk) 03:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't object to changing them. We can create some new ones w/ mention of the Teahouse. Welcomes are like a "travelers guide" that the newbie gets at the border. Lots of links because we don't know where they are headed...what doors they will open...what action will catch their fancy. Like Anne, I too referred to the Welcome to figure out where help was available. Without it, I think I would have given up after the first Road Hazard. ```Buster Seven Talk 08:51, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Some of the welcome templates do more than just welcome. The one I received when I was knew had a number of helpful links which I visited frequently until I found my way around. Wikipedia's backstage is a maze, and I am far from having visited all of its corners. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:33, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, ours is meant to show links to what we felt were the most important places for newcomers to see in order to make the first contributions as close to guidelines as possible to avoid the normal trauma of editing blind on your first day. I am still concerned that we may have packed too much into it and made it look too formal. What do you think of ours in comparison to your original welcome Anne Delong?

{{Subst:Template:WikiProject Editor Retention/Welcome}} Template:WikiProject Editor Retention/Welcome 04:28, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I see the primary mission of WP:RETENTION as working to change $insert_infrastructure_here, so that use of noticeboards, and WP:BATTLEGROUNDs to the wikideath, and the factional A-vs-B troubles, gradually begin to decline. Of course, that is no easy row to hoe. The focus of the teahouse is on being an immediate source of instant gratification. If you are a new editor, and you have a quick question, the teahouse is the place to ask it. What is the infrastructure-question here? Well, see above: how to best drive newcomers to the teahouse, and more generally, how to best welcome them. My approach:

Talkpage table of contents, plus useful links. For fast answers to quick questions, try the friendly folks at WP:TEAHOUSE, they are open all hours

Note

• I probably won't be able to follow up so please pardon me if I don't see any reply. I'm busy in real life but saw this and wanted to make one thing clear: The Teahouse is the right place to refer new users. When someone falls through the cracks, or isn't able to get the help they need there (for any reason), then WER members have generally come in to help as individuals, not so much as a group function. It is still The Teahouse's job to work with new editors and 99% of the time, they do the best job. We tend to help the other 1%, not because of our mission but because of our nature. The core goal was to work on systemic issues rather than individual issues, but being human, when we can help, we generally have. And sometimes this means discussing/debating individual issues to get a better understanding and find consensus. Of course, the group can always change the scope, this is just what the scope was originally. Dennis Brown | 2¢ | WER 23:45, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, WikiProject Editor Retention, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

• Getting Started
• Introduction to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question. Again, welcome!

|}

new talkpage section: howdy
Hello, you can call me 74 -- noticed your good work on $article, wanted to let you know I added $some_new_change that I think makes the article even better. Feel free to message me on my talkpage if you need anything (click 'talk' next to my name, then click 'new section' and type your message and click save). Thanks for improving wikipedia. ~~~~

What would be an even bigger improvement on the WP:TEAHOUSE infrastructure? Well, my long-term plan is to replace the bewildering forest of hyperlinks in the lefthand panel with a live chat-window which hooks straight into the teahouse. What better way to let beginners know there is a place they can get fast answers to quick questions, than to put the thing right where they can see it? Similarly, if they get a note on their talkpage, they can get a little chat-notification right in the "teahouse sub-panel" over on the lefthand side. Even better would be two chat-panels... one for article-related discussions, which follows their editing and reading interests, and the other for meta-article-related discussions, which is where the teahouse and user-talkpage and similar things would go. p.s. Before anybody asks, I don't think we need permission from WMF to create this useful feature, and I don't think the lefthand side of the page is exempt from WP:BOLD.  :-)   Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:00, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

"Everyone reverts my changes"

Around the net and in real life, I hear the following complaint (or something similar) very often : "I found an error on Wikipedia, and corrected it. It was immediately changed back again. I hate Wikipedia." I suspect a lot of the time this is because an article is changed by an IP address with no edit summary that is unsourced, or invalidates a previous source. A regular spots the change on the watchlist, and promptly reverts it with a summary akin to "rv unsourced".

The casual visitor has no idea what our policies on verifiability are, or how to view an article's history, and probably doesn't care. All they know is they changed something, and it was undone "for no reason". They then leave Wikipedia, never to return.

What on earth can we do about this? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:53, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

One obvious change would be to technically prod IP editors to not leave edits without edit summaries. The editor interface could do this very easily. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

This thread also assumes that they were right (good chance they weren't) and it sounds like they didn't try communication. Specific cases should be evaluated rather than trying to guess at the speculation of a generalized situation. Can you qualify your hypothesis with some form of evidence? If not, speculating could be a waste of your time.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm speaking from personal experience chatting to friends of mine. Bear in mind because they've been discouraged from editing Wikipedia, that they're not going to remember exactly what they did in intricate detail, but just frame it terms of experiences from the outside world. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:17, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Discuss, discuss, discuss! Edits don't tend to stick in one go. For better or worse, we have gotten into a culture where a lot of edits are reverted. Long term editors will recognize a revert as a first disagreement from where consensus should be found. A revert generally means "not like this" rather than "no". A newcomer doesn't work in this mode. They change something, and if it gets reverted, they shrug and walk away, with a potentially good edit wasted. What I would love to see is less revert more compromise. Each time you think of reverting, think about how can I make the article better using this edit. That might be a bit utopian. But what I think we should at the very least be able to do, is on a revert of an edit, if the editor is new, explain to them on their talkpage 0: thank you for taking the effort to improve wikipedia, 1: what was wrong about the edit so that it got reverted, 2: what the user can do to find a compromise, 3: an invitation to discuss if they disagree and ask if they don't understand, and 4: thank you again for your effort. It is unrealistic that a new user will be able to understand our modes of communication on first guess. If we need better tooling for casual reverts - which do not include canned replies, which are the kind of stuff that make humans fail turing tests - then we should work on that. Other than that, we need a shared conciousness that a revert of anything but vandalism is generally not a good, and a revert of anything but vandalism from a new user doubly so: if you have to resort to them, you should explain your actions. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:28, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

@ Ritchie333, I found something I agreed with on your User Page: "A good newbie can teach themselves to become more competent. A bad newbie never will." You added a link in the second sentence to Wikipedia:Competence is required, in which this passage can be found, "This is where we sometimes see a harmful side effect of our (generally quite useful) notion of assuming good faith. Many editors have focused so much on this that they have come to believe that good faith is all that is required to be a useful contributor. Sadly, this is not the case at all. Competence is required as well." As a user of STiki I see a lot of first attempts at editing. I disagree with Martijn Hoekstra that "a revert of anything but vandalism is generally not a good". For every vandalistic edit there is an edit with one or more spelling errors and often poor grammar and punctuation as well. These don't edits belong on WP and I am not going to spend any time encouraging such editors, following the philosophy "A bad newbie never will" [be able to write competently in an acceptably short time-frame]. We are not here to be tutors of the illiterate. --Greenmaven (talk) 05:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

There are many people with bad spelling who are otherwise competent. I would rather fix up the spelling of an editor who finds good information and sources and adds them appropriately than deal with beautifully written spam or unsourced material. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:42, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

My first edits to Wikipedia nearly 10 years ago were on-the-fly corrections to grammar and typos while simply looking stu:ff up. I knew absolutely nothing about rules, regulations, policies, and guidelines. I just saw the 'edit' button and pressed it, and I got it right. Nothing of mine has ever been reverted by an intelligent editor. By the time I had realised there were some articles that I could expand or even write, when I registered an account I still dd not know much about the rules, but most of it was intuitive - it seemed pretty obvious to me what is wanted in an encyclopedia and what would be copyvio, PoV, and what needed sourcing. But that's just me, we can't expect everyone to have been a professional writer and linguist for 30 years. More needs to be done to explain things to IPs and new users as soon as they touch the 'edit' and 'save' buttons. Less credence needs to be lent to the mantra that all drive-by editors will be come dedicated, prolific editors, although with a bit of luck, some might. I did, but I and others like me are probably a rarity out of the 13 million registered accounts. I saw somewhere that there are around 50,000 regular editors, but I doubt even that; it depends on the criteria used for extrapolating the stats. There is a table somewhere of the highest performing editors (by edit count) - I was rather high on it myself once, but IMO, minor edits don't count for much. We should focus here on retaining editors who have made significant contributions to content, and who suddenly stop editing, or who were driven away by the drivel and lack of good faith by others. The focus of WER as I understand its founding principles, is on retaining good editors rather than encouraging 1-edit newbies - for that we have the TeaHouse. Things would buck up if the Foundation would pull its fingers out and create a proper landing page after all these years. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I would like to point out that having an academic background doesn't always lead to an intuitive understanding of Wikipedia's policies. I've had several long discussions with professors and authors who undoubtably wouldn't think of submitting an article to a journal without a bibliography, but couldn't undertand why an encyclopedia article about themselves should have independent sources. —Anne Delong (talk) 07:09, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

If you allow me, I have the opposite experience. I gave up and unwatched the article on heat after on its talk page there was a consensus of editors stating the reference I brought in is incorrect (in fact, mistaken). The reference is an undergraduate text which I use for teaching the course in physics (which includes thermodynamics), and I am a full professor of physics in one of the leading universities of the world. The subsequent discussion showed me that the most active editor on the talk page in not familiar with the basic notions of the subject. This is not my first experience when a bunch of schoolchildren or undergrads gets together to reject academic sources in favor of their favorite book or smth. This is why I almost never edit articles which have any relation to my professional activity, and many of them are in a pitiful state.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

And btw articles about academics do not always have to have independent sources. If the subject passes WP:ACADEMIC, in many cases the university webpage (obviously a dependent source) would suffice.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:10, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

While I agree that the university profile is enough to show notability of a professor (I'm presuming that this is because universities value their reputations and wouldn't allow someone to misstate their academic credentials on an official web site - although I'm sure that it's happened), I believe that references are still needed for the inevitable "is well known for", "has made significant contributions to", "discovered the fundamental principals of", or "lectures world-wide on the topic of", etc —Anne Delong (talk) 13:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is correct.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Anne, 'Not everyone has an academic background' - I think I made that clear in my post - I was referring only to myself. In fact some stats once raised by the WMF demonstrated that the fewest editors have an academic background. Also, having lived in academia for nearly 40 years, I can confirm that even academics are not always the most intuitive of people. It depends what their area of research is. Scientific researchers tend to be more pragmatic, while those studying humanities tend to be less objective (again, only in my experience). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I would also "fix up the spelling of an editor who finds good information and sources and adds them appropriately" (Anne). But I am talking about people who add a sentence or two of drivel, stating the obvious, repeating the already said, in a poor paraphrase. These sort of editors are not capable of finding "good information and sources" because they don't live in the literate community. User:Kudpung has made a key observation: "Less credence needs to be lent to the mantra that all drive-by editors will be come dedicated, prolific editors". --Greenmaven (talk) 08:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Hey folks! Just reverted this, <"ulaalaa,, membahana badai cinn..." "Nyata terpangpang....." "Bulu matakuuu..">. It may be intended to represent part of a song. --Greenmaven (talk) 08:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

So, your point is some edits are plain old vandalism? If I didn't make that clear on the first go; yes, that exists, and the ROI on taking time with those editors is probably a lot less than with good faith edits. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:13, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Martijn is pretty well on the nail with the ROI. I think it's fair to assume that most vandalism is done by children who are best waiting for a few more years before they edit the encyclopedia again. Any vandalism done by adults is probably done by individuals who should never be considering editing Wikipedia again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I try to tell myself, when its a borderline case, to let it go. Its hard because most of the pages on my watchlist are articles I care about. Let's say an editor comes along and changes "most" to "the majority of", stuff like that. It's not an error, but its not an improvement either. Its roiling the text to no benefit and actually introducing needless words, and on the purely technical merits I'd be inclined to revert it on that basis. But: it's not an actual error. The person thought it was an edit worth making. It's the encyclopedia anyone can edit.

If its the introduction of (what I consider to be) unnecessary material, same deal. If it's not sourced but there's no reason to believe it's not true, consider letting it go. Tag it you like. Most of the statements in the Wikipedia are not sourced but are true. Of course if its an actual error, or there's reasonable cause to believe its not true, or if its egregiously illiterate or trivial, that's different. But it's the encyclopedia anyone can edit, not the encyclopedia anyone can edit who writes like I do or has the same idea about what an encyclopedia article should or should not include that I do.

It's hard, though. There's a certain amount of eye-rolling and even teeth-gritting involved. And there's a valid counterargument that technical quality even at the margins is more important than social inclusiveness. You have to strike a balance I guess. Herostratus (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

It's hard, particularly when you've got an article up to a certain standard, and the edit in question would be picked up and criticised at a formal review. For example, List of Hammond organ players is on my watchlist after I cleaned it up substantially, and it's spelled out in a comment in the article's text and in an edit notice that unreferenced and / or non-notable entries will be removed. So when I saw this edit, it would have been quick and easy to undo it with a summary of "unreferenced, non-notable" but I spent a good hour creating a Peter Weltner article even though quite frankly his notability is tenuous. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:07, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

That's pretty great. Now the questions is, how do we get more people acting that way? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Ironically enough, one good way of handling it is to spend less time on Wikipedia and do other things. You'll get a better perspective of what really matters and what doesn't. It sounds counterintuitive, but I think it basically comes back to the fundamentals of WP:OWN that you'll fall into traps less often if you don't have as big a stake or interest in an article. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Possibly though, but can we distill a concrete proposal out of that. We can discuss this untill the cows come home, but unless we change actual behaviour, nothing will change. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The word 'altruism' is occurring to me. Taking time to create a new article rather than throw out someone's contribution is commendable. Probably there was some curiosity as well... who is this Peter Weltner? Behind that there is a desire to keep the article List of Hammond organ players in good shape. Now, how can we formulate a proposal to encourage 'altruism'? Most of the efforts of editors are altruistic, as far as I can see, especially to begin with. We reward them with tokens of our esteem. That's what our first welcome page is. Our community will prosper if we acknowledge good work. In the end, people want to be well thought of, and that begins to supersede 'altruism'. --Greenmaven (talk) 19:12, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps implement forced viewing of Wikipedia:Tutorial for new IP's and accounts. Meaning they will be directed to the tutorial and hopefully read over a few basic principles before they can edit. -- Moxy (talk) 18:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree. They have to be given some kind of Rules of the Road or else they head right for the "fast lanes" and cause all kinds of un-necessary traffic. ```Buster Seven Talk 19:45, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

As an aside, your edit summary is awkward for one large area where new editors head straight for the overtaking lanes. In India, if slower traffic were to keep to the right then one would have colossal problems, for they drive on the left, as do far more people than you might be aware of Fiddle Faddle 19:51, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I meet quite a few "burned" editors in real life. My first response now is to tell them to cite their sources, I'm not sure I like the situation where newbies have to be told to cite any factoid that they add to the pedia, but I find that deals with most cases. OK in several cases I've then had to explain that they first need to create an online source by getting something published in a reliable source. In a couple of cases I've further steered them to wards writing a book, and I'm not sure the sort of book that we would accept as a source. In only one rare occasion have I found that someone had had a cited edit reverted, and I can see there that it was a logical editorial decision, the info belonged in the sub article not in the main article perhaps we could get some sort of edit notice or transclusion system to prevent people from ignoring the {{main}} template and just expanding the main article to duplicate the section that was spun out. ϢereSpielChequers 08:53, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

If a good faith new editor inserts material that's not sourced but is reasonably appropriate and probably true, tag it rather than deleting it. And if someone else deletes it, restore it and tag it. Do this on the grounds that the greater good -- being a more welcoming community -- supersedes the technical requirement to ref all statements (honored more in the breach anyway).

I don't know what the rule is -- so many rules! -- but I'm generally against deleting material that's appropriate, not derogatory to anyone, for which no claim of untruthfulness is made, and which common sense tells me is very likely to be true, unless it's been tagged for a reasonable time, like a year.

You know, if someone inserts let's say a discography, and someone reverts that on the basis of not being sourced, come on -- it's the second editor who's being disruptive (as well as unwelcoming). It's not common for people to just make stuff like that up, it'd be easy enough for the second editor to look it up, or he doesn't want to take the time to do that then tag it, if he doesn't want to take the time to tag it he should let it go, and if he's not willing to do that then screw him -- why should his lazy one-click editing get to dictate the narrative?

If and when an article goes to peer review unsourced material can be removed then I guess. I don't know much about the GA and FA process but what I do know doesn't incline me to treat them as a shibboleth. I want lots of reasonably "good articles" not a few "Good Articles"^TM and to make lots of good articles we need lots of writers.

New topic, but one place where people can practice "letting it go" is re WP:ENGVAR. I see a fair amount of that, anon IPs changing "kilometer" to "kilometre" and so forth (when it's not a UK-specific article). There's a very good reason for WP:ENGVAR, which is to avoid pointless sterile warring over that. But that doesn't mean you're required to bounce the guy's edits. They guy thinks he's "fixing the spelling", and probably some small but non-zero number of editors who start that way go on to become useful editors.

I think it would be basically impossible to write that into WP:ENGVAR. For one thing, if you did it would presently be gamed. It's just an attitude. Lead by example, pass it on, write an essay (there probably already is one) and point people to it, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 16:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

What an excellent and forward-moving strategy!

I can think of at least one admin who threatens blocks for doing this. 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 16:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't fully agree with this, but there is a balance. Leaving it there is probably better than outright reverting, and possibly leaving a boilerplate warning. Then again, a handwritten note, which genuinely thanks the editor for trying to do their part, and genuinely welcomes the editor to wikipedia, along with explaining that the article is written in American English, and that we prefer to keep it in one style, but that they are welcome to keep contributing, and to keep making mistakes every now and then is probably still better. If you don't genuinely feel that they did a good thing trying to improve the encyclopedia because you strongly feel about Engvar/Are in a bad mood today/Are dulled by a rote anti-vandalism run, it's probably better to opt for the first option of leaving it there. Someone in a better state of mind might still do it, and wikipedia isn't going to burn down for leaving that there for a few hours/days/weeks/months. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

  Herostratus is fundamentally correct. The only way that we are going to overcome the delete-if-not-perfection wikiCulture, is by directly counteracting it, in the field. Of course, snark-tagging everything is not much better than deleting it. *Especially* if somebody added some info, then that info was deleted, the beginner was officiously template-spammed... and then *later* it got undeleted, but marked as "we think you are full of it" to add insult to injury, and a condescending patronizing holier-than-thou personal note left beneath the template-spam. (Fully support Martijn's plea for authenticity and genuineness! That is the real intent of pillar four!) Methinks there is only one way forward, we have to bite the bullet and Actually Fix The Problems, not just complain-n-delete; whether done very rudely or very politely, complain-n-delete sends one message only, clear as a bell: Go Away. This goal of fixing-the-problems dovetails with other WP:RETENTION goals: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Adding_references_to_articles_as_a_method_of_retaining_editors. I suggest we have to *implement* these cite-squads, not just talk about them. When some beginner adds poorly-written unsourced material, the cite-squad needs to swoop in ... FASTER than the deletionists ... and improve the stuff that was added. Then, thank the beginner, and invite them to join the squad.

  This is true for new articles, and new image-uploads, as much as for new text-insertions. What is the primary reason people want to edit wikipedia? To spam the world, about their awesome band/company/self/boss/friend/whatnot. They create a ten-paragraph article about their band. The upload ten photos of their band. What happens next? In mainspace, all the images are deleted, and all the paragraphs. But it's a slow and torturous procedure: they get template-spammed for every image. Their article is tagged, then templated, then marked for death, then !voted to death, then actually killed. Meanwhile, fighting to save their work, they get even more template-spams, more insults. Don't remove tags! don't re-add unsourced material! don't copy images off the web! don't run with scissors! don't forget to sinebot your posts hahahahahaaaa! Even in the AfC submission queue, things are not much better. They work in quieter conditions, but when somebody finally comes to review their work, weeks later, it is often a quick "sorry WP:NOTNOW WP:COI WP:V WP:RS WP:N WP:NOTEWORTHY WP:UNDUE WP:SELFPUB WP:OMG you're on your own now I'll be back in six weeks with any luck".

  We need to have cite-squads. They need to be helpful to the beginners. They need to be good at improving articles. Most crucially, they need to be friendly, so that the beginners stick around, and get taught all that stuff, by watching the cite-squad at work. But... but... but none of that matters, if the cite-squad is too slow getting there. An article is put into mainspace. WP:NINJA delete! An image is uploaded. WP:NINJA copyvio! An edit is made, inserting some not-quite-perfect grammar, or some not-quite-formatted ref. WP:NINJA snark-tag and/or WP:NINJA revert. How do they do it? Well, simple, the wiki-tools are optimized for deletionists. There are no wiki-tools optimized for cite-squads, for being friendly by helping beginners insta-improve their flawed contributions. VizEd is horrid. Thanks-button does not even *work* for sending to anons. We need to build wiki-tools that make the lives of anons easier, and make the cite-squads able to take control of flawed contributions, before the deletionists arrive, and fill the beginner's talkpage with the templates of war. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

There is one problem with the "let it go" philosophy -- although it is the one I've been practicing for a number of years. That problem is that eventually the time comes when one can't just let it go. I've seen this happen many times with many different editors, & when that moment comes it often isn't pretty. Sometimes it's because the other party is pushing outright bullshit & it seems no one else understands. (This is the problem with esoteric topics that require a fair bit of education, such as advanced mathematics.) Sometimes it's over something very trivial -- if not amazingly stupid -- but it's become the line in the sand a veteran editor has decided to draw. (I suspect a lot of the entries at WP:LAME which end with one or more editors leaving are caused by this.) And sometimes it's because the inevitable personality conflicts between one editor & everyone else have built up until that editor goes into mad suicide bomber mode. (Does anyone like everyone she/he works with? Are you being honest? Would you really invite all of them to a party at your house?)

In short, the average human being can only let so much go & when that point is reached it's not a pretty picture. And I don't have the answer for that. -- llywrch (talk) 22:58, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Nobody is perfect, and nobody said it was easy. For stuff that might end up in LAME it's an excellent idea to point at WP:FUCK a little more often, try to live by it, and remind other editors when they are seemingly too deep in. That whole thing at Yoghurt should never have happened, and we should have asked our editors there how important the spelling of yoghurt is to Wikipedia, and if it's worth the hassle. But I agree there are other issues where letting go would be detriment to Wikipedia. A recentish example of that, which I was tangentially engaged in is the mess at Ezhava, which was the target of persistent POV pushing, and having one central editor trying to maintain sanity there, with some help of others (check the last talk archive for more background). If that editor wouldn't guard the line, or be pestered away (and we've been close to that a couple of times) Wikipedia would be worse of for it. I can't blame him for not always being welcoming to newcomers, since the fast majority of newcomers there have the intention of making Wikipedia worse in their own self interest, and it is virtually impossible to reliably distinguish between a good newcomer and a bad one. If someone has suggestions for these kinds of situations, I'd be very happy to hear them and apply them myself. and remind me to invite you all next time I'm hosting a partyMartijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

  Heartily agree with Llywrch. The idea that, when a beginner shows up, and makes a significantly flawed edit, it should be left to stand, to avoid hurting their feelings by deleting their stuff, is wrongheaded. Yes, deleting their stuff is a slap in the face. But there is a third option, besides leaving shoddy work in mainspace, or deleting everything and driving away the beginner. The third option is to help. Beginners *like* it when they contribute, and somebody notices, and appreciates their intent, and helps them achieve it. Think of the person that changed "most" into the more verbose "the majority of" phrasing. What was their intent? To make the statement less vague. WP:WEASEL applies. How can we help? By getting precision from a sourced quotation. WP:GOOG and WP:CALC and a bit of hunting for relevant sources, and maybe we can improve that sentence to say something like this: "According to the meta-review of surveys[6] of professionals in the field by Faim O'Spundit in 1987, at least 83% of respondents agreed..." Then leave a note on the beginner's talkpage, asking them in they like the new wording you came up with, and thanking them for improving wikipedia when they made the original statement less vague. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Retirement

Yworo (talk · contribs), a user who has been active for over 6-7 years, has already announced his retirement a couple of days ago, as well as Khazar2 (talk · contribs).

Also, I know this might be irrelevant, but back in August, I semi-retired from Wikipedia in frustration over being subjected to personal abuse by some disruptive users (such as Fladrif (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), Bambifan101 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Fragments of Jade (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)), Wikipedia's inability to deal with some of these editors, as well as real life issues like getting ready for college. That lasted for two months (it ended in October), but now I'm back and decided not to let past issues get to me anymore. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

You shouldn't really cast such aspersions against other editors without at least wikilinking them to let them know. I've done so for you. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Some of these issues have been actually easing up for me, because they are things that I don't think about every day. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:46, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Bambifan has been blocked since at least 2012 (and I believe most of the time before that), so you could hardly interfere in 2013.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:22, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

And Fragments of Jade were blocked in 2008.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:24, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Back in early April, an IP belonging to FOJ (76.120.178.220 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) continued her disruptive editing on video game articles as her previous socks, and I had one of the admins block her for it by filing an SPI. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 22:59, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for clarification.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:53, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

This is a volunteer project, people are free to come and go and a proportion will go each year, losing some individuals is normal. Are we losing more volunteers than other voluntary organisations? Are we losing more (or indeed less) than we used to? I will be updating my stats of admin retention in the next fortnight, it would be really useful if someone could do some stats for the broader editing community. It would also be useful to do some research on those who leave to ask why they've gone. But we need to be careful not to do so until people have actually gone months without editing. ϢereSpielChequers 13:45, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Actives, 5+edits/mo.[1] Readers, 1+views/mo.[2] Click 'secondary' to see veryActives, 99+edits/mo. Nutshell follows.

during	99+/mo	5+/mo	readers/active
2011	3382	35099	11725
2012	3313	33057	14333
2013	3176	31648	15824
decline	-4%/yr	-4%/yr	+10%/yr

The loss of 4% of our editors per year, both actives *and* very-actives, is incredibly disconcerting. Coupled with the ever-growing number of readers per editor (nothing attracts visigoths like a large audience with few guardians), wikipedia's lack of retention is an existential crisis.  :-)   "May you live in interesting times." HTH. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Is thisa new trend? Just from my watchlist, we have lost AutomaticStrikeout, user:Kafziel. Just from my watchlist, we could potentially lose Fluffernutter, and Stormmeteo. Generally it's for the same reason: WP:BATTLE. What should we do? -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 15:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

We should change the wikiCulture, from one that drives people away ("everyone just reverts me") into one that welcomes beginners, especially famous celebrity beginners who by their mere presence here will draw in others. This means accepting that COI edits on talkpages are perfectly fine. More crucially though, it means accepting — and then fixing — the problem of slap-in-the-face reverts. Also, some less-clunky wiki-tools, and some less-officious template-spam-messages, can probably help... quite a bit, even, methinks. But the wikiCulture is the key here. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

@IP I was interested in retention of our existing editors, and if that was just 4% we'd not have a problem. Retention is about how many of our existing editors are staying with us. The superficial community decline is about total community size, and the raw edit count has indeed been falling. The more efficient the edit filters have got at preventing vandalism the more editors we appear to have lost, but as it takes most vandals 5 or more edits to get a block we shouldn't worry too much about the loss of 4% of editors who do 5 edits per month. As far as I'm aware nobody who has looked at the effects of the edit filters has been able to work out a formula to calculate whether the community is contracting, stable or growing; But I'm not aware of anyone who thinks that but for the edit filters our community would be growing as fast as our readership.

Community size is about how many editors we have left after we look at how many stayed with us how many joined and how many left. Retention ignores the recruitment side of things and just looks at the proportion of the existing community who have stayed and the proportion who have left. We have lost some people recently, and I'm interested in finding out whether we have a retention problem. ϢereSpielChequers 23:27, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Hello, you can call me 74, if you like. "Retention is about how many of our existing editors are staying with us." Disagree 100% — this project ought to be about growing the number of Good Eggs in absolute terms as well as relative-to-readership terms — but you are in good company with your stance, many others here see this wikiProject the same way you do. If you ask me, retention is about retaining a community-size sufficient for wikipedia to thrive, and that means having enough active editors *per* reader. Readership growing. Editor-count shrinking. Fatal, if not corrected.

  So yes, we have a retention problem, by my definition. I'm curious about your definition, and why it is not the same as mine. When the absolute editor-count is falling, even by your terminology ("our existing editors") there is a decline. Whether that decline is inherently a problem, some would argue no. We have "enough" articles, right? But to me, that *is* one major problem: not enough people believe we have enough articles! We get a new article every 127 seconds, based on my spot-measurements. There are not enough Good Eggs to revert the spam, cruft, et cetera contained in that massive influx. Look at the AfC backlog, which just forced Kazfiel into retirement. So let me put it like this. How many "real" editors do you think we have, in those years, if not 35k/33k/31k? How many do we need? You don't think the loss of 4% of active editors is a problem... do you also not see the loss of 4% of very-active-editors, each responsible for 100+edits/mo, as a problem? That trend *is* new, just this year.

  p.s. Your point about the edit-filters is a telling one... as you know, they only apply to anons and other low-caste folk, so I've been incorrectly blocked by at least eight different edit-filters, just in the last two months. But I'll bet a million wiki-bucks that if the edit-filters were shut off for a randomly-selected million IPs, and left on for the rest of the internet (randomly choosing a million of them to act as a control-group), we'd see a distinct differential in retention profiles, *any* way it was measured. I'm trying to research how many false-poz events there are for filter#225 enWiki, at present. The ones on metaWiki are even more bitey. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi 74, the way I see it we have a problem the recruitment of new members of the community and possibly with the retention of existing ones. But recruitment of new editors and retention of existing ones are very different issues. I suspect we are losing far more than 4% of our existing community every year, but we are recruiting enough new ones that the net loss is 4%. Our retention rate is the percentage of our existing volunteers who we retain, though perversely we usually talk of it in terms of the percentage of them who we lose. As for whether falls of 4% in the number of active and very active editors is a problem, one of those is just a function of the edit filters, if the edit filters had been coded as anti vandal bots we would not have lost most perhaps all of that 4%. The active editors dropping is as you say a new phenomena and I agree it is troubling, but we don't currently know whether it is a retention problem, a recruitment problem or a combination of the two. We know that the community has been getting more and more closed to newcomers, so it is entirely possible that we are still losing say 10% of the very active editors every year, but this year the number of new very active editors has fallen sharply. Of the various theories for loss of experienced editors the hardest ones I find to rebut is that the site has become a much more hostile place for gay editors, and we've seen a lot of them disengage. Whilst the use of EN wiki as a guinea pig for software testing, and a succession of initiatives such as AFT and implementing a version of VE that had failed user testing has taken its toll of people's motivation. Remember we recruited this community by empowering people and involving them in the running of the community. The transition to a more managed community should in theory lose some of those people. The problem with just looking at the growth or decline of the very active editors is that we don't know whether we have a recruitment problem or a retention one or both. As I said I'm not bothered that the edit filters have lost us a bunch of vandals, and no I don't have an accurate figure of the number of goodfaith editors we have left. My guestimate is that somewhere between 2% and 6 % of the annual decline is down to the edit filters stopping vandals. Since the raw decline is running at 4% that could mean anything from 2% annual decline to 2% annual growth in the number of editors doing 5 edits each month.

As for false positives, I thought our main problem with IPs is that we have blocked millions too many and we need to implement some sort of smart blocking, and unblock many IP ranges; But if there is an edit filter that is getting excessive false positives then yes it needs dealing with - and your 8 blocks is a troubling stat. ϢereSpielChequers 02:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Your suggestion seems misguided, WereSpielChequers, that we must *first* figure out the metrics, and which factor is the most crucial, *before* we act to solve the declining-editor-count-relative-to-readership-count problem. We could be working on improving retention-of-experienced-folks, right? And we could be working on improving improving recruitment-and-then-short-term-retention-of-beginners. Which I also see as a "retention" phenomenon... because the vast majority of beginners need no 'recruiting' in terms of active effort, we get literally 1000 of them every month for free... but the problem is, they make ten edits, and get ninja-reverted nine times, and then leave forever.

  WP:NICE will improve retention of beginners, as well as the experienced, some people say. So why not work on both, starting now? The more people we save/retain/recruit, the more people we will have *available* to help us save others; it's not like sending wikiLove or having a nice chat-slash-pep-talk requires Vast Wiki-Skillz. Figuring out which factor is the bigger demographic-group quantitative problem, before we start attacking the low-hanging fruit of *both* groups, is putting the quant before the fruit-picker, or the cart before the horse, or somesuch old-school metaphor, methinks. Agree that we need to have better stats/metrics/whatnot, see sections above on that question; I just disagree that we should do that first. We've known since 2010 that something was amiss. Best to just confidently wade into the floodwaters, and start rescuing the drowning folks, immediately. That way, some of the rescued folks can help us lighten the workload, and give us more hands & brains to figure out the question of measuring our progress, quantitatively. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi 74, I'm not objecting to people starting on the problem before measuring it. I've personally been working on editor recruitment/retention issues for several years. But metrics are worth getting especially if we don't know if a problem is stable or getting worse. We know that our editor recruitment is poor and has been for years - for the 25% of editors who start by creating a new article we demonstrated some of the problems years ago with wp:NEWT. Retention of our existing core editors is a very different matter, we don't know whether it is particularly bad or indeed getting worse, or how we compare with other organisations. So metrics are really useful there, and metrics are useful for the people who don't accept there is a problem. I have been producing metrics at RFA for several years and we no longer get people disputing that there is a drought in the number of new admins, we've also got past the stage of having the problem dismissed as a seasonal or cyclical blip. Now we just have to deal with the arguments of those who don't see the decline as a problem. I believe that if we can prove that something is getting worse reasonable people will be more willing to try and fix things. We have proof that the core community is no longer growing, and that we are treating newbies badly. We don't know whether the existing core editors are leaving in an greater numbers than the past. ϢereSpielChequers 20:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

p.s. I lied, only *seven* bohts have blockerized me... so far... though several of them prevented me from working on more than one occasion, for different false-poz bugs in the regex.[3][4] The warning is always the same: your edit is potentially unconstructive. No details whatsoever; no way to figure out *what* was unconstructive, even if your post is 17 kilobytes. Which, uh, sad to say, I've actually posted that much once... was blocked by the WP:WALLOFTEXT abuse-filter, if memory serves.  ;-)

1. block == Long-term pattern abuse,
2. block == Spam article trap (autopromote),
3. block == Comment bot edits from IPs,
4. block == Antivandalism,
5. block == Personal attacks,
6. block == Common vandal phrases,
7. block == Vandalism in all caps ((this one was rich... I was quoting a policy-shortcut in allcaps)),
8. warn_ == Possible spambot,
9. tag__ == BLP vandalism or libel,
10. tag__ == antivandalism,
11. tag__ == New users adding external links on their user talk page,
12. tag__ == Moniter[sic] addition of archive.org,
13. tag__ == Promotional text added by user to own user(-talk) page ((buggy... tags me on *any* talkpage whatsoever))

Multiple my experience by many-fold, for editors less experienced than myself... nobody is keeping track of false-poz counts, that I can tell, and anecdotally, the edit-filters are *constantly* being tweaked, without then testing whether they hurt or harm retention, that being too hard to measure... all that is tested is whether they knock down the actual visigoths one more tenth of a percentage-point per hour. Talk about the crying need for a metric! Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• A word about the Afc backlog - For a number of years, the declined articles that were not being improved by their original submitters (or in some cases were not improvable) were left in storage, until there were tens of thousands of them sitting there. At the time they were doing no harm, since search engines were ignoring them (NOINDEX), but then some other Wikis sprang up which suck in Wikipedia pages indiscriminately and allow them to be indexed. It became necessary to get rid of the old submissions. All of the editors whose "Articles for creation" hadn't been worked on for six months were notified of impending deletion. Among them, though, were plenty of submissions that were close to being accepted, but whose editors had either forgotten about them or were inactive. Some of us have been going through these and "rescuing" them from the path of deletion. This has been having a bad effect on the Afc backlog for three reasons: (1) setting up the deletion process and checking over the 50,000 or so old submissions is taking up the time of editors who normally would be working on the backlog, and (2) some of the editors who were reminded of their old submissions have started working on them again and resubmitting them, and (3) editors who are checking the old abandoned ones are finding some good material, fixing it up and resubmitting it. This is all temporary. We are about half way through the process, and while it will never be done, the numbers of stale submissions should drop drastically once the giant stack of old submissions is gone. The result should be several thousand new articles, and a cleaner Afc in the long run. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  There is some crap there which should go, and which even an arch inclusionist such as myself would have deleted if it was in mainspace where articles erm belong. There is other stuff which would have been categorised and improved if it had been put in mainspace where collaborative editing takes place. The solution to the AFC problem is to make unpatrolled articles no index and exempt all new articles from most of the goodfaith "A" deletions for their first 24 hours. Shoving them elsewhere just deprives them of the collaborative editing that newbies need. ϢereSpielChequers 18:07, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  I fully support this opinion.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  I think many AFC articles would benefit from the fresh air in mainspace. Let the collaborative editing process take hold of them. --Greenmaven (talk) 20:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  So move them into mainspace - simples! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

  I have not moved any because I am not very familiar with the protcol around WP:AFC --Greenmaven (talk) 02:07, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I know i'm late to this, but didn't User:AutomaticStrikeout leave because of the campaign against LGBT editors, which intensified on Jimbo's user page about 1-2 months back? An issue which has once again been swept under the rug after the Chelsea Manning incident was already largely ignored. RFC and ANI are cumbersome and useless. I've seen as much the last time when an editor was painted as the victim for harassing Talk:Homophobia for over a year and trying to redefine the term, without producing a single reliable source. AFC not only allowed this editor to paint the other side, mostly LGBT editors as attackers, but saw fit to call the entire LGBT Wikiproject a group of activists, again, without anyone batting an eye. The result was no consensus. No admin present saw an issue with such an editor who also thought being personally involved with the creation of an article on Straight Pride (a fringe extremist movement) and attempting to merge Gay pride into it, when there wasn't even a reliable source in it at the time was an issue. A racist editor would have been topic banned quickly for just an ounce of this behaviour, no problem, but there is a clear double standard, which is as yet unresolved. I was disgusted by the comparison of bestiality and gay editors (discussed on Jimbo's page) and made clear i would be leaving too the next time i see anything like this again, which is ignored. I'll stick to that oath, as Wikipedia doesn't deserve to retain LGBT editors, when it chooses to attack them at every opportunity. I have less than a year at this rate, as these situations are cropping up more often, since by not stamping them out, they're being encouraged. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken. I'm not pro-gay, so while I left for a variety of reasons, the one you suggested is not among them. At any rate, I will be scrambling my password and removing my email from my preferences, since I seem to keep coming back for one reason or another. Adios, AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 21:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I got the wrong impression from that thread the way it escalated. In any case good luck in future Automatic Strikeout. My opinions on the matter of it being swept under the rug and ignored are unchanged. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:19, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Jenova, you are welcome to pay myself and Timtrent a visit, we're working on this on our user-talkpages. I know sometimes it feels like things are ignored, but these are not easy problems. As you can see from the subthread above, where Richie333 sarcastically suggests that we just dump the 80k G13 backlog into mainspace, and Jack replies (in all seriousness) that AfC wiki-tool is too complex to attract more help... while meanwhile up above WSC and I are plotting to Solve The Recruiting... which of course would mean vastly more submissions-per-day to the AfC queue. We can always perma-ban the members of the anti-admin-brigade, perma-ban the editors who are suspected of being in the anti-gay-brigade, and perma-ban anybody who disagrees with such drastic perma-banning. But whence retention, if we do?

  Methinks perhaps the singlemost difficult thing is overcoming institutional slash communal inertia, and shaking up the wikiCulture, so that people are not afraid to just jump right in and try hard to fix the problems without first asking permission, checking the WP:PG thoroughly, creating a wikiProject to manage the new problem-solving effort, writing up some helpdocs to explain the mission ... $insert_agonized_yawp_of_frustration_here. A Little Less Conversation, a little more action. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't accept that at all. If we already ban racist editors and refuse to ban homophobic or transphobic editors when accusing others of bestiality and such, then there's a clear double standard, which should be addressed. Otherwise you will have no LGBT editor retention and should just recruit directly from Conservapedia, since the policy is the same. AGF doesn't make an exception for LGBT editors from what i've seen, but the admin enforcing it do. That's reinterpreting policy and it wouldn't be tolerated for race. Why is it tolerated when LGBT editors are in the firing line? I'm not bothered about permabanning "the editors who are suspected of being in the anti-gay-brigade", i'm bothered about trying to edit and being accused of raping animals. Banning suspected anti-gay editors and banning the ones who come here just to make the lives of others miserable and slur them is a completely different thing. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 11:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Editor retention of tag-bombers

In my wiki-travels I have come across many missing-editors who joined wikipedia fairly recently but show thousands of edits . I was intrigued by this phenomenon and investigated a bit further. What I found out might surprise some of you.

Here is what is common to this Group of editors:

• Most do not contribute to wiki-mainspace in the classic sense
• What shows up as edits to mainspace is actually tag-bombing (wikilinked by Ottawahitech (talk) 14:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC) ) using automated tools.
• For example nominators of wp:XfDs can easily generate edits by using automated tools that plaster deletion-nomination-notifications tags on articles/categories/wikipedia pages and user talkpages
• I have recently come across an active editor who generated 24 such messages in ONE minute. (user:WOSlinker on December 13, 2013 at 11:54)

I just wonder what motivates these editors: Do they feel these thousands of automated edits improve Wikipedia in some way? Do they realize the daunting effect their actions have on good faith contributors? Why do many of these editors leave Wikipedia within a couple of years?

Apologies for this long (crap?) posting. XOttawahitech (talk) 20:17, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

It saddens but doesn't greatly surprise me, I suspect that many are young and not really ready to improve wikipedia. Though of course we shouldn't assume that they are gone forever - some may come back when they are ready to start adding cited content. One reason why they go is that the feedback that they get is rarely going to be positive, and it is positive feedback that many people editing. I have tried in several cases to get such editors to at least extend what they do to categorisation. My belief is that they do believe that their contributions are a net positive and some have got very upset when the discover at RFA etc that the community considers them otherwise. I honestly doubt that they realise what effect template bombing has on newbies, indeed my fear is that some of them started by creating articles and after those were deleted they "switched sides" and became templaters. I think we need other things for such editors to do, and we need to replace some of the templates with less obtrusive things like maintenance categories. We also need to recognise that new page patrolling can be come quite addictive, and that some patrollers start thinking in terms of "which CSD tag or templates best fit this article". If we can get them to fix typos or add categories, links or section headings then we can indulge their natural urge to do something to each article they touch without having them do so much template bombing. ϢereSpielChequers 20:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The provision of WP:Service awards to show length of service and gross edit count is a very imperfect measure, but is a way some editors try to establish credibility and reputation, (not surprising in this competitive environment).This is an incentive for some to find ways to build an edit count faster. --Greenmaven (talk) 20:37, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

And that concept of quantity-over-quality has crept into virtually every aspect of our measurement of editors. For example, at my RfA, my edit count was deemed 'too low' to qualify me for adminship (amongst other, valid criticisms). --NickPenguin_(contribs) 20:57, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

In at least some cases, tag-bombing is another convenient way for SPAs to push PoV advocacy (along with serial blanking, misuse of sources, endless talk page campaigns, forum shopping, and the rest of the PoV-pushing toolkit). I doubt those types of new editors are worth retaining, as such edits-bordering-on-vandalism tend to drive away constructive editors (new and old). It is a frustrating enough task just to get such advocates warned, especially for less highly visible subjects, let alone to get them to abandon tendentious editing methods that drive away genuine contributors. • Astynax ^talk 21:00, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• In general, a lot of tag and category additions are a waste of time and do little other than degrade articles and irritate editors. However, it was a very bad idea to identify one editor in the OP as WOSlinker is an extremely helpful editor who has brought enormous benefits to the encyclopedia—the technical side of Wikipedia is less important than article content, but it is important. Johnuniq (talk) 22:57, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• The messages that were posted on Ottawahitech's talk page were nothing to do with article editing. They were all redirects for discussion and the messages were as a result of using Twinkle to create the nominations. All the peges that were nominated were of a similar types so that's why all they were all done at the same time. -- WOSlinker (talk) 07:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

@WOSlinker: Instead of trying to figure out how to make twinkle produce better messages, or better still, leaving a human message on my talkpage, I now have a new message on my talkpage that mentions only one of the pages nominated for deletion, sigh… XOttawahitech (talk) 15:02, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• I don't agree that adding tags to articles degrades the encyclopedia. In some cases, editors who have an interest in the articles will come along and improve the pages so that the tags can be removed. Tags also are sometimes the start of conversations on otherwise bare talk pages which result in article improvement. Many editors who start out as "tag-bombers" are drawn into the conversations and end up helping to improve articles. And, if nothing at all happens to improve the article, the tags warn the readers that the article isn't in good shape and in what way. The only time that I can see that tagging is a bad idea is if the person adding the tag could just as easily have fixed the deficiency in the article instead of tagging it. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:02, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

That is true only in those cases where the tagging is warranted. My experience is that tagging is as often, if not more often, employed either to bump up an edit count (sometimes by SPAs to make it look like they have involvement beyond their targeted subject) and/or as a tactic to deface or cast aspersions on well-sourced and well-written articles by warrior types who have more interest in wearing down constructive editors than contributing improvements. Tag gets inserted, non-destructive editor reverts, tag gets reinserted, non-destructive editor reverts with a note on talk, tag gets reinserted with no comment or nonsense rationale (almost always unsourced OR and PoV) given on talk, the non-destructive editor must allow the defacing tag to remain to avoid 3RR (and forget about reporting the defacing behavior for less highly visible articles) and the inappropriate tagging stays visible, making the article look unreliable and/or unstable. Welcome to another edit war, during which it is not unheard of for one or more experienced and constructive editors to throw up their hands in frustration and leave Wikipedia. No one is advocating getting rid of tag templates, which have value if used carefully and not to whine, deface, criticize, pad edits or as an alternative to discussion. However, in too many cases they're an easy-to-use tool for those whose aim is to disrupt or to pad their edit histories, both of which can be frustrating to other editors. Tags can be beneficial if employed constructively, but as you suggest and except for obvious flaws, it is far more constructive for editors to concentrate on fixing problems, even if they have to wait a day or two to do the work, instead of slapping tags. 09:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, saying that tags shouldn't be added when they are inappropriate is pretty obviously true, but this is not something that is in any way a special to tags, since any editing feature can be misused, and disruptive editors end up being banned or blocked if they continue with behaviour after multiple requests to stop. (To pad my edit count, it might be fun to use the search engine to find instances of the word "big" and then change them all to "large", which I will claim is more encyclopedic and formal sounding. Or, I could decline a batch of Afc submissions as "not suitable for Wikipedia" without leaving a note saying in what way.) However, there are a lot of times when an editor shouldn't fix a problem themselves. For example, I was working on a biography article that had been translated from Spanish by copy-pasting the surface text instead of the source text. All of the references were thus at the end. I could fix grammar and spelling myself, but it would be much more efficient and accurate for a Spanish-speaking person to recreate the inline citations. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:59, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that there are a lot of times when an editor shouldn't fix a problem themselves. Even if they cannot personally fix it, they can still seek an editor who can. Speaking of which, does anybody know German, and want to translate an article from deWiki over to enWiki?  :-)   Serious question. As for Anne's larger point, that tags can be beneficial if employed constructively, and therefore nothing need be done, is wrong wrong wrong. Sorry Anne!  ;-)   Tags are problematic nowadays precisely *because* the way they function nowadays attracts abuse (whether for editcountitis or for the thrill of power they give or whatnot), and tends to be seen as a slap-in-the-face. Five thousand articles on software startups, and *my* article on *my* invention is the one that is snark-tagged as vanityspamadvertisingcruft? Seventy-five engines in the article with 99% of the spec-data unsourced, and *my* factoid about *my* engine-model is the one that gets snark-tagged as citation needed? Such things lead directly to physical brawls in real life. On-wiki, they lead to edit-wars, noticeboards, and grudge-o-pedia vendettas. Sure there are good uses for snark-tags, just like there are good uses for thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (nothing less would have stopped Stalin methinks), but do we want such things to be as common as saying hello when you answer the phone? I argue we do not. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I know an editor whose basically only contribution to the project is to tag large pieces of text as unsourced without trying to find any sources or to ask fellow editors for help, and to return in a month to remove the pieces claiming they were staying unsourced too long. They were unfortunate to start tagging pages on my watchlist, and I finally from the fourth attempt managed to get them blocked for a month, but generally I believe such activity is purely destructive - even though it can be arguably described as good-faith tagging. It is of course less dangerous with other tags, but generally I would say if someone is only tagging without any attempt to fix problems - they are probably here not to build encyclopedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:08, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

It depends... if they are working as the scout, for a cleanup-team that they know will come along in a week... and then come back as the janitorial-crew a month later. But yes, I've seen exactly the kind of editor you mean, all the time. They are imposing their personal policy ("everything must be cited") in direct contradiction to the actual policy ("everything challenged or likely to be challenged must be cited")... via the most adversarial fashion imaginable, by throwing down the gauntlet and challenging everything, clear violation of WP:NICE if ever there was one. It reminds me of POV-pushers, who stay just within the rules to force their POV into mainspace, carefully treading that line.

  Pop quiz, how many seconds does it take for a poker-dealer in Vegas to perform the five shuffles? Used to be in the article Shuffle, put there by one of the authors of mediawiki software, who also spent fifteen years as a dealer in a casino. Snark-tagged in 2007, deleted in 2010, if memory serves. Is practical info like that, data about competence at a particular area of craftsmanship, inherently unencyclopedic? Same problem with engine-specs, no performance figures unless cited. Same problem with computer software, no performance figures unless cited. And hey... maybe some of it belongs in wikiVersity, or in wikiBooks, or even in wikiaDotPokemonDotCom. But never have I *ever* seen a tag added like that.^{[move to wikiversity]} Just citation needed, wait a bit, delete as unencyclopedic. It is a problem with our wikiCulture; we like deleting, we reward deletion with editcountitis scores. Fixing and moving are too much work, for too little emotional payback. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:17, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• Would tag bombing be less of an irritation of the tags were simply smaller? – especially if stacked tags formed a row, rather than a page-height block. Most useful actions triggered by tags come from the implicit categorisation from the tags, or by editors looking at the article anyway. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, this is a separate issue from that of overtaggers, but IMO little tags would be fine, especially for issues not relating to reliability of the content. —Anne Delong (talk) 13:24, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Andy's idea is good, but not drastic enough for my taste. Snark-tags should be **invisible** to readers, and to most editors. They should be kept in wikiData, and in rare cases, appear on the article-talkpage. That way, editors who are interested in fixing copy-edit-and-translation-from-Spanish-to-English-problems, can easily find such pages, using a wikiData search... but there is almost no snark involved. Also, to avoid edit-count-itis, snark-tagging should be a null in terms of edit-count. If you want to boost your edit-count, leave a message on the talkpage of somebody who speaks German, right? Right. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

That last is not always practical or effective, but sometimes I post at a Wikiproject for a country where that language is commonly spoken. That way many editors see it, increasing the chance that one of them may take on the task. However, (although I am mostly too busy with other stuff to do much tagging), I still feel that there are many editors who have an interest in having an article "look good", and know all about the subject, but who wouldn't bother to fix up substantive issues such as unreliable sources or POV unless someone gave them a prod by placing a tag.—Anne Delong (talk) 16:25, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, as always, WP:REQUIRED applies. You need not seek the German-language-person. (I've been too lazy myself so far... I even *know* a fluent-in-German-editor who already *offered* to help when I come up with a translation project. :-)   So I fully grok wikipedia is voluntary. But look at the words you use. That lazy other editor cannot be bothered ... I know I'll just poke them with my cattle prod. Now, I'm clearly putting some extra words into your mouth, to make my point crystal clear. But not many. Snark-tags are a way of saying *I* won't do the work, but somebody else *ought* to have done it. That is how WP:BURDEN drives away beginners from mainspace: holier-than-thou tude-itis. WP:HTT. Spelling error? Revert. Grammar error? Revert. No source? Revert. Cite malformed? Revert. Not up to my personal standards? Revert. Editor was somebody I personally dislike? Edit-war! Editor was anon who dared touch my article? RVV.

  By way of contrast, over in the AfC queue, the tags up top -- while still a bit too snarky for my tastes in wording perhaps -- are very clearly also *necessary* because AfC is a learning environment. But mainspace is a production environment intended mostly for the 500M readership, not the 0.03M editors, and snark-tags should thus be invisible, or at least, dramatically less intrusive and adversarial. I personally have a coloration-scheme based on auto-aging of individual edits, which might help fulfill many of the functions of tags. Hope this helps clarify. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:17, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

To my mind, tags would better be displayed on a "To do list" on the talk pages. I also like the idea that inserting templates that contain no editor content should not be included in edit counts. It could be done, though I don't know if WMF's software folks would want to bother. Egregious errors should be fixed or deleted with a note giving the rationale on the talk page. • Astynax ^talk 17:48, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

We need not ask the WMF for help with this. We can build a prototype which analyzes edit-history, and displays the "true edit-count" as opposed to the current raw edit-count, after subtracting away tags. Similarly, we can use external wiki-tools that semi-manually migrate tags from mainspace into a marked-for-non-archival-todo-list on the article-talkpage. Make sense? We have the programmers and the admins we need, to do what needs doing. We just have to implement such practices... and then use them. Next time somebody is up for RfA, post their "true edit-count" compared to their tag-count, rvv count, and so on. Next time a person who concentrates solely on WP:MMORPG-style tagging/stiki/huggle/npp/whatever shows up, advise them of their ratio of "true" edits to their ratio of "button-mash" edits. Sooner or later, the "true edit-count" will either become popular and gain unstoppable consensus-momentum that the WMF devs cannot ignore, or, it will turn out to be a bad idea, and nipped in the bud. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:21, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

• To the original title of this thread the only things I can say (and I feel as if I have said them a thousand times already) is either better education for the page patrollers, or a user right to ensure that only experienced editors are doing the patrolling. Maintenance tasks such as these are a magnet to new/younger/inexperienced uses who don't have knowledge, clue, incentive to add content or write articles. They are however, very good at button mashing, sending each other WikiLove and barnstars and turning WP into a MMORPG - after all, Wikipedia is just about the only site on the web where anyone can police the content and each other without being promoted to 'moderator'. It is most important to notify poorly performing taggers that their patrolling is sub par and to keep track of them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:51, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree. There is some risk, however, that putting simplistic criteria in place (e.g. 500 edits for AfC helper-script access) will just move the goalposts to a new sort of MMORPG. Look, I've moved up from wiki-corporal to wiki-captain, and this weekend I'll get the bronze-star of my thousandth G13 deletion!  :-/     Instead of solely trying to deter folks methinks we need to come up with a set of ways to channel their natural proclivities into an area where button-mashing is useful. (This also gives us a place to *send* them when we take away their npp/afc/whatever toys.) For instance, if there was a speediest-non-admin-hatting-of-nebulous-complaints-with-no-actionable-diffs-provided award, then all the noticeboards would get a lot quieter, right?  :-)   Or what if there was a MMORPG-style award-system for the additions of inline cites, from a special whitelist of extra-super-reliable-only websites (not facebook sorryeeeee)... plus special awards for finding *cheaters* who were citing things not supported by the sources (catches link-spammers as a side-effect too), or infringing on copyright, or similar transgressions? All *that* MMORPG game takes is ability to use a search engine, which every 4th-grader is pretty decent at nowadays. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:21, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

• Both of you, please continue your argument somewhere else. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Something to commend

This reply from Anna is truly one of a kind. Few, not even me, would have this amount of patience with an editor who may not even even be helping the encyclopedia. I think this is one good example of exactly how we should be treating our good-faith and helpful newcomers. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 01:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

What? A reply that enforces a made-up policy that each list entry must separately meet WP:NOTABLE? Not a good move at all, IMHO. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

No. The reply said that each list entry must be notable, and additionally, those of the entries that meet WP:NOTABLE could have standalong articles.

In particular, I was pointing to the way the reply was, with respect to making sure we treat our newcomers well and help them understand our policies. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think Andy's point is that entries in lists of brands or companies don't actually have to be notable, although a citation for verification of their membership in the list is required. Whilst I'd personally prefer it if Anna's claim that all list entries must meet WP:GNG was correct, it actually isn't. Yunshui 雲‍水 13:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Anna's response was truly commendable. It would be nice if we all had such patience - and time - (including me) to provide answers like that. BTW: I think you'll all find that the cheese entry is covered by WP:LISTCOMPANY, and noting there the use of the modal, I therefore concur with Yunshui. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:43, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Please come and join this discussion on Draft:

Please have a look at the emerging discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Deletion_and_Draft:. I feel that WER could be the key formative group to show us what Draft: can and should do. Fiddle Faddle 08:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Frederick s. Fuller

Hi, OK here we go again....

I am having an extremely hard time trying to do..what I am told to do...and actually get a proper response that concerns the questions I am asking...

Extended content

#1. and the most important thing....I am NOT trying to change "ANY" of the information that is currently on your site..!! WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO....is figure out how to link the EXACT INFORMATION already on your site to all of my given names.........Now I have tried to explain this already many many people...many many times and they just don't get it.... Most people have ONE NAME Tina, Carl or Sandy and that is it....if you are looking for an article on Tina you just type in her name and you find her... WELL I have been blessed/or cursed...with a name that people can type in as..FRED, FREDDY, FREDDIE, FREDERIC or FREDERICK and depending on what name you type in on Wikipedia determines whether you find me or not "on Wikipedia"...""UNFORTUNTATELY"" I cannot tell people how to search or type in how to find me...they just do it the way they want to. SO if you type in my exact full name Frederick S Fuller...you will find me....BUT if you type in any of the other names..you won't.. AGAIN....I am not trying to """"CHANGE"""" the information that is on your site and has been on Wikipedia for ages....I am just trying to get someone to finally help me by linking the ""EXACT data"" that is and has been there for ages to all my given names....so no matter what anyone types in they can find me... PLEASE PLEASE see if anyone there can help me with this.....every person to date...just sends me more and more information which is totally confusing to me on how to do this...yet no help I need help..!! not instructions......because every time I get time and try to fix this problem I get major flack but no help from anyone there.... Thanks God Bless Freddy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.69.172.100 (talk) 20:14, 20 December 2013 (UTC) 20, 2013 1:15 PM Subject: Help... I cannot understand why your people have such a big problem understanding and allowing me to do this... but maybe using an example using your Founder of the company who does it with his two names...will suffice. AND this is ALL I WANT FOR MYSELF no more... If you go onto Wikipedia, and type in Jimmy Wales...or James Wales the content itself is "identical"...BUT he is using two names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wales Fortunately for Mr. Wales....he only has two ways for people to confuse his name and you can find him quit easily by using of the spelling of his name.. UNFORTUNATELY.....I cannot seem to be able to get this point through to any of your volunteers..... I have been written about by the sports industry for over 50 years and all articles I have absolutely no control over...and they have posted them using my name. UNFORTUNATELY "I CANNOT" seem to be able to get anyone on your staff to understand that just like their boss....I have more than one way of spelling my name... My name said by other people is either Fred, Freddy, Freddie, Frederick or Frederic... "I DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE ANY OF THE EXISTING CONTENT in any way" that has already been on your site for years... I just want it linked to each of my given names as ..Jimmy or James has done above.... The content is exactly the same but under two different first names. WHAT PART OF THIS DO I NEED TO EXPLAIN AGAIN..... Thanks God Bless Freddy

Additional information

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Frederick_S_Fuller#December_2013 User talk:Frederick S Fuller From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Welcome! Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. The following links will help you begin editing on Wikipedia: The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Editing tutorial Picture tutorial How to write a great article Naming conventions Manual of Style Please bear these points in mind while editing Wikipedia Respect copyrights – do not copy and paste text or images directly from other websites. Maintain a neutral point of view – this is one of Wikipedia's core policies. Take particular care while adding biographical material about a living person to any Wikipedia page and follow Wikipedia's Biography of Living Persons policy. Particularly, controversial and negative statements should be referenced with multiple reliable sources. No edit warring or sock puppetry. If you are testing, please use the Sandbox to do so. Do not add troublesome content to any article, such as: copyrighted text, libel, advertising or promotional messages, and text that is not related to an article's subject. Deliberately adding such content or otherwise editing articles maliciously is considered vandalism; doing so will result in your account or IP being blocked from editing. Do not use talk pages as discussion or forum pages as Wikipedia is not a forum. The Wikipedia tutorial is a good place to start learning about Wikipedia. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and discussion pages using four tildes, like this: Frederick S Fuller (talk) 21:47, 20 December 2013 (UTC) (the software will replace them with your signature and the date). Again, welcome! Contents [hide] 1 Frederick (Fuller) 2 Freddie Fuller 3 Your contributed article, Freddie Fuller 4 September 2013 5 December 2013 Frederick (Fuller)[edit] This is an automated message from MadmanBot. I have performed a search with the contents of Frederick (Fuller), and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: Freddy Stephen Fuller. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history. It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. MadmanBot (talk) 00:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC) Freddie Fuller[edit] Hello, Frederick S Fuller, and thank you for your contributions! I wanted to let you know it seems an article you worked on, Freddie Fuller, is copied from another Wikipedia page, Freddy Stephen Fuller. It's fine to do this as long as you provide the following information in the edit summary: a link to the article you copied from the date you copied it You can do this now by editing the page, making any minor edit to the article, and adding the above information into the edit summary. If you're still not sure how to fix the problem, please leave a message at the help desk. It's possible that I made a mistake, so feel free to remove the tag I placed on the article. Thanks again for helping build the free encyclopedia! MadmanBot (talk) 00:10, 9 September 2013 (UTC) Your contributed article, Freddie Fuller[edit] If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article. You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles. Hello, I noticed that you recently created a new page, Freddie Fuller. First, thank you for your contribution; Wikipedia relies solely on the efforts of volunteers such as you. Unfortunately, the page you created covers a topic on which we already have a page – Freddy Stephen Fuller. Because of the duplication, your article has been tagged for speedy deletion. Please note that this is not a comment on you personally and we hope you will continue helping to improve Wikipedia. If the topic of the article you created is one that interests you, then perhaps you would like to help out at Freddy Stephen Fuller – you might like to discuss new information at the article's talk page. If you think the article you created should remain separate, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. Additionally if you would like to have someone review articles you create before they go live so they are not nominated for deletion shortly after you post them, allow me to suggest the article creation process and using our search feature to find related information we already have in the encyclopedia. Try not to be discouraged. Wikipedia looks forward to your future contributions. - →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 00:13, 9 September 2013 (UTC) September 2013[edit] Hello, Frederick S Fuller. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject. All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible. If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems: Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with. Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors. Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam). Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies. Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. - →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 00:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC) December 2013[edit] Hello, I'm Writ Keeper. I wanted to let you know that I deleted your article AdsMadeEZ because it appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:33, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Freddy. When a subject is known under varying or different names, we don't create duplicate pages for them. We create what is called a 'Redirect page' - that's a simple page that automatically redirects the search entry to the one existing page. That's what happens on Jimmy Wales' page - there aren't several duplicate pages about him. I'll create appropriate redirects now to the article about you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks kudpung, looks good. I left a note on Freddy's two talkpages. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

People's views of our community

I'm curious if anybody here knows how the rest of the world views the community of Wikipedians here at EN:WP. Has anybody read this recent thread at Slashdot and also this recent thread at Reddit? To those that have read these threads, what did you think of them? Did they give you any ideas on what problems our project has with editor retention. Thanks. 64.40.54.99 (talk) 06:52, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

It's a bit of a paradox. Anyone who has ever contributed to the Wikipedia is part of the community, so all those individuals who attack the encyclopedia and its editors are ironically attacking themselves as a collective. I've worked on a couple of very large collaborative open source software projects in the past, one which I believe powers the vast majority of web forums, and one which is the largest free online store solution. We never had those problems there. When I first started editing Wikipedia nearly 10 years ago (for the first couple of years as an IP) I never really thought about it. First off, I didn't do anything to get told off about, secondly I suppose I imagined that there were a couple of dozen volunteers who all sat together in cubicles in a large open plan office and were the 'insiders'; silly really, because I knew that's not how we worked on other collaborative projects. Some people are just born whingers and whiners and go through life moaning about anything and everything whenever they get an opportunity. Then they wonder why they are always drinking their beer alone in a quite corner of the pub or sat alone at the workplace canteen table at lunchtime. I think they are the majority of the kind of people who populate the anti-Wiki websites. Unfortunately, a few of them hang around on Wikipedia too and all they do is bring the place down and scare even more people off. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:10, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Later note... Kudpung speaks truth, because the reddit username 'SomewhatScience' is absolutely positively a former wikipedian who now spends all their time complaining about how bad wikipedia is... I personally stumbled across them marking an FA as copyvio, flatly insulting four other wikipedians along the way, because it cited the full names of the scientific papers ... then doing a rewrite of the page which merely rearranged words. Sheeeeeesh. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:26, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Kudpung and I disagree, shockingly.  :-)   First of all, I really doubt wikipediocracy has any significant impact on anybody who is not already a wikipedian, and I know from empirical testing that just our everyday revert-first-ask-questions-via-template-spam-later approach is a thousand-fold more damaging than Larry Sanger et al. But first things first: the metaphor Kudpung used was incorrect, and prolly why he though of Larry, perhaps, since back-in-the-day™ the line between mediawiki-PHP/SQL-devs and wikipedian-editors was fuzzier. MediaWiki is the open-source software project here, nowadays. Truth be told, mediaWiki is *not* even a 'major' open source project: it powers wikipedia, and hardly anything else. It is more of a mid-tier single-purpose project, like Chromium (which powers a couple important browsers). Drupal and other CMS stuff surpassed mediawiki long ago.

  Wikipedia, and in particular enWiki, are now the main thing which people complain about. All the people who Richie333 knows, that complained about everybody-reverts-my-changes, were *not* talking about uploading PHP code to gerrit for tweaking the mediaWiki core. They were talking about creating an article, adding a sentence, changing something in mainspace, and being a wikipedian. Being an editor on wikipedia is categorically different from being a contributor to a major open source software project. The barrier to entry is almost non-existent; you don't have to register an account, or learn wiki-markup. All you have to do is click the edit button at the top, type some stuff, and click save. Then you are an editor. Officially a wikipedian, ready to whine about how it sucks? No. Not yet. Just wait, though.

  Four milliseconds later (actual measured median time-to-live of first edits during 2013), you become a frustrated bitter *former* wikipedian, complaining quite authentically on slashdot/reddit/etc, because somebody with flashing colors in their five-year-old-pseudonym just reverted you, with a helpful message like rvv/A7/WP:OMG in their edit-summary, plus some template-spam on your talkpage. Look at the guy above, the canadian welterweight boxing champ of 1977, trying to get a redirect made. He got template-spammed a dozen times! He only finally came here (the wrong place) and got Kudpung to actually help him, because wikiCulture sucks. Here, look, I pasted the main "front-page" headlines, if you do not believe me and Fred/Freddy/Freddie/Frederic/Frederick.[5][6]

the top-rated quotes people visiting those links see first... which *are* mostly correct methinks... WikiCulture is the key

REDDIT.[7] ((aaronSherman sayeth)) I used to contribute liberally to Wikipedia. One day, pages I had worked on started to be merged together into footnotes because they were interesting only to a small fraction (but still sizable in absolute terms) audience. Then my photographs, posted with fair use rationales for their subject matter (such as the "Are you prepared for the Rapture" signs of the early 1990s in New England) began to be attacked for their lack of adherence to new policies. Then my edits began to be reverted for lack of adherence to modern template usage guidelines. As Wikipedia became more insular, I became more alienated until I just stopped. How is Wikipedia going to address this isolationism? ((slide_potentiometer sayeth)) Answer: they won't. The editing has been taken over by people with the most time and persistence. Like many groups the classic hostility to newcomers has taken hold (see: any time something is called "eternal september"). SLASHDOT.[8] ((AnonymousCoward sayeth)) Unfriendly elitists. In my direct experience the majority of hardcore contributors and long-time editors are complete ideologues and giant assholes who are extraordinarily hostile to any outsiders or differing thought. ((rudy_wayne sayeth)) That is the same experience I have had and I'll bet it's the same experience that many people have had. The battles on Wikipedia are well documented. Articles deleted, added back, deleted again. Back and forth in a never ending battle of arrogant assholes with giant egos. But the biggest problem is that the few people who have any power to actually do anything about it are completely clueless, as demonstrated out in TFA: "the Wikimedia Foundation, the 187-person nonprofit that pays for the legal and technical infrastructure supporting Wikipedia, is staging a kind of rescue mission. The foundation can’t order the volunteer community to change the way it operates. But by tweaking Wikipedia’s website and software, it hopes to steer the encyclopedia onto a more sustainable path." Because re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic will make a big difference. TECHREVIEW.[9] ((Tom_Simonite sayeth)) When Wikipedians achieved their most impressive feat of leaderless collective organization, they unwittingly set in motion the decline in participation that troubles their project today.

  Wikipedia *editors* are more like slashdot commenters, and especially reddit contributors, than they are like Linux kernel hackers. (LKML does *not* call it "the kernel anyone can hack" for a very good reason. :-)   Anyways, I think the fine folks at MIT have a clear picture of what's wrong with wikipedia as an environment conducive to building up wikipedians,[10] and although I haven't finished reading through the slashdot and reddit links, there is not much difference in their crowd-sourced conclusions from the MIT author's conclusions, that I can tell. The question is not what the problem is. The question is not even how to fix those problems. The question is, whether we *active* and high-caste wikipedians have the gumption to overcome bureaucratic inertia, and the will to do what it takes to triple the number of active editors, starting now, and finished within the next couple years. We have 1000 first-time editors per month, and we lose 1050 editors per month. We need to stop losing, so we can start winning again. The WMF cannot help us; they have tried since 2010, as WereSpielChequers will tell you... and VizEd was their answer, and as WSC can *also* tell you, it was not designed to be the answer wikipedia herself needs. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Productivity, the Holy Grail

"For years now we have been hearing about the imminent demise of Wikipedia and/or the "damage" it is doing. Yet it continues to grow and prosper. Talk of it's decline/demise is not premature, it's ridiculous. The author openly states that "Even though Wikipedia has far fewer active editors than it did in its heyday, the number and length of its articles continue to grow." With a traditional company with employees and a hierarchy that would be called *greater efficiency* - and lauded. Doing more with fewer people is of course a gold standard of progress and the fact that this is presented as a "problem" for Wikipedia just shows how far afield it's critics will go to find supposed 'problems'."
MaxGain Decline of WP, comment by MaxGain

--Greenmaven (talk) 01:15, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Kudos

The Signpost's newest report includes the WER logo among the best WikiProject logos. A special thanks goes to our first Eddy winner User:Kelvinsong for creating our logo. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:31, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Another one bites the dust

I won't categorise on the issues surrounding this retirement of another admin/crat/Arb, but of course, the anti-admin brigade will be jumping up and down and clapping their hands in glee at their New Year's party. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:06, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

That's another unhelpful remark Kudpung. Please make an effort to be less divisive and inflammatory, and stop making things up. 28bytes is one of our best admins and would have made much needed contributions as an arb. The main people who attacked him were other admins. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:54, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

As (almost) always - and I'm making a conscious effort to refrain fro reacting to them here and elsewhere - I fail to see the point of your comment. Echoing the words of one admin, I fully concur that 28 was the best member of Arbcom the committee never had. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm against both a lot of poor admin behaviour and certainly against Wikipediocracy, but this certainly saddens me. It just shows what a toxic environment Wikipediocracy is, if they even turn on their own quite so viciously. 28bytes struck me as pretty decent here and even with their front page editorial posts to Wikipediocracy. I believe he's right when he says "The goals of some key members of Wikipediocracy are to destroy and discredit Wikipedia. I do not share those goals. ", but the atmosphere at Wikipediocracy is so toxic that it taints everything it touches. It would be unwise for any well-meaning WP editor to get involved with that place, even if they see it as "the place from which to fix WP", just because of this sort of action from others there. Clearly there are people at Wikipediocracy who see disruption so much as its own reward that they'll pull stunts like this, just because they can. A WP editor who sups with them had better have an awfully long spoon, as they make themselves a hostage to fortune and Wikipediocracy's own agenda.

I applaud 28bytes for having taken this prompt action to thwart Wikipediocracy's actions, but I'm very sorry that he had to do so. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I abhor WO and all the other sites like it that exist mainly to criticise Wikipedia or replicate deleted articles. I only ever looked at it once and that was enough to formulate my opinion that many parts of it are a dingy back alley haunted by a lot of hypocrites, and whether what 28 had to say there was in WP's defence or not, I was surprised to learn that he had edited there. There is probably a great deal I could say on WO too, but I wouldn't demean myself into adding anything to those stinking, muddy waters, or even waste my valuable Wikipedia time in contributing to it. It's a place for people such as the anti-admin brigade to hang out whether they disclose their WP user names or not. The efforts of those who persistently tar all admins, 'crats, and Arbs with the same brush,whether they are a cohesive group or not, can only achieve further destruction of the reputation of Wikipedia - between them, they even managed to bring down the very project that was designed solely and specifically to address their concern: bad admins. Vom Miesmacher zum Mistmacher ist nur ein kleiner Schritt. Ernst Heiter (1930)

I supported 28's RfA (2nd), and RfB with these words:

Support: I was looking at 28Bytes just a couple of days ago with the intention of asking him if he would like to run again. I found that not only one, but three nominators had beaten me to it! There's not much more that I can add to those, except that I fully endorse them.

Support: It's taken me a while to catch up on, and get my head round the Rlevse debacle. I have always admired 28's level-headed approach to all things meta, and I have no concerns whatsoever with him being a bureaucrat.

I also voted for him at Arbcom (screenshot of my vote available).

As a consolation to 28, if there were ever any serious doubts as to my ethics and intelligence, whether or not I felt I were in the right I would have bowed, as he has, to the concerns expressed by the community. It's one hell of a difficult choice to make, but whatever else happens, he will come out on top by having proven to the community, especially those who exercise their 'bad hand' on WO, that the damage the press it gets injures user retention and discourages others from wanting to edit.

Although it has some truly highly respected members, Arbcom has never been a satisfactory system. The elections focus around a tiny handful of editors who are prepared to nominate themselves - alone something that takes a lot of courage - and we have to vote from those who present themselves, and the seats will be filled. The committee does not have a good reputation, especially since some Arbs have been forcefully retired and/or desysoped, so there is probably sense in the path 28 has taken, but the committee - and Wikipedia - won't be a better place without him. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

It is a loss to the community that 28bytes was forced to resign as a member of ArbCom, however I would assert that, by him resigning, he did more for the committee than he ever could have done on it, even being the exceptional member that I think most thought he would be. ArbCom has suffered from community distrust and bashing lately, and by having one of its members step down, even with abundant support from the community remaining, shows integrity that we too often do not see on Wikipedia. Thus, because that integrity came from an ArbCom member, he brought integrity to ArbCom that, even if he had been another Newyorkbrad, which I think many thought he would (note - another Newyorkbrad in the sense that he would have been a top-flight arbitrator), he could not have done. As such, despite the loss to the community, he may have done more for ArbCom never having been on a case than if he had heard and keenly arbitrated many. I tip my hat to him for his service to the community, and to ArbCom, and sincerely hope that he does not leave the site; We have lost too many exceptional administrators (and other editors) lately, and can ill-afford to lose any more. Thank you, 28bytes for doing more for the community than most would ever imagine, and please do not leave us ... there is always content creation work to do. Go Phightins! 04:57, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

All fine words, but he left the site. My workshop is closed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:33, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

"Anti-admin brigade"

@Kudpung: I know you believe many Admins are getting the short end of the stick at Wikipedia, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to tell you why I treat Admins as a group with suspicion:

I draw my conclusions from interactions I have had with Admins on my talkpage. In my experience many Admins do not (cannot?) take the time to investigate issues before acting on them. As a result many admins rely on others' opinions rather than on facts. This leads to more bad decisions by Amins than is necessary, and leads to the distrust many editors have of Admins as a group. Just my $.02.

You and I have had our differences over the years but I hope you will not treat my comment above as "trolling" like some editors do. XOttawahitech (talk) 23:37, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

You'll see from the archives on my talk page that although I do pretty thorough research before acting, even I sometimes miss things, but rather than take the hump I'm always grateful when they are pointed out to me. I can't remember where you and I have had any disagreements - if we have, it was all in a day's work, and although I sometimes don't mince my words, where some admins must surely have a guilty conscience about being nasty and unjust, I like to think I'm pretty fair. It's impossible to be an active admin without upsetting some people though, especially those who go through life like some real trolls I could mention, just looking for things to complain about, especially when they're not even directly involved. Those are the people who, through their incessant mantras, give the corps of admins a bad name. I wish you all the best for 2014 (we had our party here in Asia a few hours ago and here I am back at my computer at 6:30 am). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:57, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

The sad reality is that if an admin action stinks, that smell is most likely because there is a problem behind the scenes; which the admin has not disclosed publicly. (Sometimes it's just an attitude problem of the individual admin, but there's no easy way round that other than to be very cynical at RfA. Which is hardly an ideal solution.)

We only find out about these admin problems, sometimes, years later (Essjay), or sometimes months later (28bytes).

A great fuss is then made. But the damage has already been done. The people who actually contribute to the encyclopedia by writing content, have already had to put up with the behaviour of the problem admin. That is what hurts editor retention the most. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:44, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

And if you were not aware of it although I have mentioned it many times, I first became interested in admin reform a long time before I was given the bit. And why? Because I was badly bitten several times by some really nasty admins, who fortunately have mostly all been since desysoped for something or other. Recognising that an anti-admin brigade exists goes hand-in-hand with efforts to produce better admins. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:02, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I would like to say that I have found the admins that I have dealt with to be helpful, even when I made a mess and took up their time fixing it. Some were frank (but not nasty) rather than encouraging, but frankness in discussions is better in the long run and can prevent misunderstandings, so I don't mind when more experienced users point out where I've gone wrong. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:20, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Most admins are of course perfectly reasonable, but it only takes one rogue to rock the boat. There's an interesting dichotomy developing here, which is that the only editors worth retaining are admins and new editors. I guess the unspoken assumption behind that harks back to the early days, when anyone who'd been around for a few weeks or months could become an admin simply by asking. Eric Corbett 03:16, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Admins can feel safe with new editors, but the ones who have been around and might have a bit of nous about what really goes down here are a different matter. --Epipelagic (talk) 04:10, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey! I'm not that new ([11]) —Anne Delong (talk) 04:40, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Then why not chance your arm at RfA, and see how you feel after that? Eric Corbett 04:44, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard it's a bit of a gauntlet. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Does Kudpung have a list of editors in the "anti-admin brigade" they would be willing to share? NE Ent 03:55, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is time Kudpung named the people he believes belong to this wicked "brigade" he is so damning about. --Epipelagic (talk) 04:02, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm... maybe we can get them to start up a Wikiproject. They'd be easy to spot and making all of those banners, templates and coloured tables would keep them busy.... —Anne Delong (talk) 04:40, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

He won't because he can't, because there's no such brigade except in his imagination. Eric Corbett 04:46, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this intrepid brigade exists only in Kudpung's imagination. But it is overdue for him, if he is determined to persist with silliness, to tell us who he imagines populates his fantasy brigade. --Epipelagic (talk) 05:37, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, there certainly are editors who spend a fair amount of their time complaining about admin decisions and Wikipedia policies in general. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:08, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Unless you believe administrators to be perfect, and policies to be perfectly crafted, isn't some criticism to be expected? Even welcomed? But let's see what Kudpung comes up with in support of his anti-admin brigade hypothesis. Eric Corbett 07:07, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think Kudpung believes all administrators are perfect. But as far as I can make out, Kudpung does believe the existing admin structure is perfect, or at least should be left alone. He has a history of trying to suppress discussion which examines the admin structure. He seems also to believe that everything will come right if the admin structure is left as it is but more competent admins are appointed. In my view that is an absurd position, deeply disrespectful to both the content builders and the able admin. Kudpung seems to expect the able admin to carry the load of the dysfunctional admin structure and also the load of the dysfunctional legacy admins. That is what I would call an "anti-admin" position. In contrast, I personally support a functional admin structure that gives both content builders and admins a fair go. That is not an anti-admin position as I suspect Kudpung will try to claim it is, but a decidedly pro-admin position. --Epipelagic (talk) 07:49, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

My observation is that "anti-admin brigade" is a simple, quick, and predictable ad hominem used to deflect a criticism, objection, or argument not liked. Its very nature is exaggeration and labelling, designed to dismiss, discredit and defame. I'm also thinking it's seldom used against well-known/respected content creators and usually reserved for "nobody" editors (like me). (Which is kinda how bullies operate, right? -- Picking on the littler guy.)

E.g. here's what I got from Kudpung when I objected to his pushing around a relatively new user expressing himself honestly:

Jumping on the bandwaggon where you are not involved everywhere you see a possible issue with an admin really confirms my basis for thinking you may have a antipathy for all things admin. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:52, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's what I got from Dennis Brown when I challenged the consistency of an example admin action as part of an argument I made in an ANI thread:

What is not helpful is your editorializing about admin at every opportunity. We get it, you think all admin are scum. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 20:32, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Ihardlythinkso (talk) 11:39, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

@Eric Corbett. I would agree that we need to concern ourselves at editor retention generally and not confine our efforts to newbies and admins. I'd also add that it is better to look for patterns and systematic problems rather than mull over individual resignations. I have been keeping stats on adminship for some years now, and while I do think we have some big problems both with RFA and also with editor retention I don't see admin retention as a major problem. If anything it has been the tendency of admins who started editing in 2001-2006 to stick with us that has enabled us to continue to have enough admins to block vandals and delete attack pages despite the problems at RFA. We do have a known and serious problem with recruiting new admins, and we've been very lucky that so many existing admins have continued to volunteer their time, in some cases now for a decade or more. It would be interesting to see what the retention has been for other groups of longstanding editors, the impression I have is that we have more of a retention problem amongst longstanding non-admins, but I'll concede I have no stats to back up my view on that. ϢereSpielChequers 13:39, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

And in the aftermath

- yet another admin resigns. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Note that they explicitly said that their resignation was for personal reasons. Ross HillTalk to me! 04:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

And did I say anything different...? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Your heading is In the aftermath. The aftermath of what? Eric Corbett 03:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

This section was following the discussion of the User:28bytes leaving Arbcom. A lot of other talk intervened and separated the two sections. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:41, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

So who is the admin Kudpung was referring to? 28bytes? Eric Corbett 07:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I think Admin. Secret. It's what that Admin does from time to time. Leaky Caldron 11:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Possible paths, after some thoughts

Original thread "Some thoughts"

Go Phightins!, WereSpielChequers, Buster7, Jtmorgan, Keilana, Ocaasi and others, I've been thinking about the editor retention issue for some time and I've compiled a list of ideas of my own and others'. I'd like to know your thoughts about these.

• Have more in-person events.
• Encourage educational. cultural, and scientific organizations to feel responsible for stewarding Wikipedia and its content.
• Remove bad actors quicker. It can take weeks for someone to get blocked through ANI or SPI.
• Use technical methods to prevent inexperienced users from template-bombing other users' talk pages with warnings. Some new users like to be aggressive and in the process they drive other people away.
• Appeal to the motivations given at Wikipedia_community#Motivation.
• Strengthen the civility policy. Treatment by other users can cause burnout and stress.

What do you think? What should be added to this list? --Pine^✉

What do I think? I think that you need to define "civility" and "bad actors". HiLo48 (talk) 07:06, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I think we have a definition of civility; Pine is calling for better teeth, aka enforcement, because although incivility does not *directly* hurt wikipedia mainspace content, it indirectly hurts it over time, by driving up wikiStress and driving away contributors. Pine may have a different take on it, but I thought their working definition of "bad" actors was excellent: those folks that end up getting blocked as socks at SPI, *are* the bad actors, by our current definition (whatever that might be). Problem is, it takes at least 48 hours that I've seen, from the first tingle of wiki-whiskers, for doing the investigation, collecting the requisite diffs, filing the SPI report, waiting for somebody with CU power to come along, assessing evidence, assessing commentary, and performing the block.

  Cannot we speed this process up, without hurting accuracy of SPI work, i.e. without changing our false-poz record and offending people who turn out to be innocent? Same logic applies to AN/I... how can we get from everybody-agrees-this-is-bad-enough-for-a-block, to the actual preventative-not-punitive-block, quicker so as to avoid drahmahz and timesink and collateral damage whilst the presumed-by-definition-bad-actor is not yet blocked? p.s. I think that "inexperienced" and "new" should be struck. Nothing drives beginners away faster than holier-than-thou template-spam.  :-)   See proposal above to make mainspace tags invisible; I feel much the same way about user-talkpage templates. p.p.s. Add wiki-cake-bake-sales to the list please. m:Talk:Trademark_policy#Is_the_cake_a_lie.3F Methinks such things would boost retention/morale/etc. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:00, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

That definition of civility doesn't work. HiLo48 (talk) 17:29, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

• There is a culture on Wikipedia that contends that prolific content contributors are exempt from exercising civility. Arbcom bends to this. Essentially admin boards, consensus at ANI and AN is often coloured by fan clubs of uncivil editors and/or comments by editors who have little knowledge of policies. There is nothing that can be done about these issues because there are editors, often, it appears, those who are frequently accused of incivility, who complain about 'admin power'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:16, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Again, you ignore the other half of the story Kudpung. There is also a culture on Wikipedia that contends that admins are exempt from exercising civility. And that applies to all admins, not merely the handful of prolific ones (you say yourself that there are only about 30 in that group). Never, in the history of Wikipedia, has an admin been desopped for being uncivil to a content builder. And while you imply that the editors who comment on the misuse of admin powers can be ignored because they are uncivil, you also ignore the editors in that group who are civil. You also fail to mention the uncivil editors, usually admins or admin wannabes, who believe that admins are entitled to misuse their power, or worse, claim that misuse of admin powers doesn't happen. --Epipelagic (talk) 04:42, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't ignore anything; on the contrary, I believe I have an exceptionally clear overview. Granted there is clearly a very small number of admins who perhaps should not be sysops (generally, but not always, ones who were appointed before we started being more particular), but there is absolutely no evidence for your persistent claims. On the other hand, if I wanted to, I could come up with a clear list of diffs that lists the editors who regularly complain about admins, many of whom don't even have a personal axe to grind, and whose constant bleating just brings Wikipedia into disrepute and frightens new editors away. Let's not forget that WER is a project to retain editors (and even admins) - not to piss them off. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:07, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Why is that "a very small number of admins who perhaps should not be sysops" still there? If we can't even get rid of the bad apples you actually acknowledge, why should we believe that any Admin will ever be sanctioned? HiLo48 (talk) 05:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Some admins for whom I saw the writing on the wall a long time ago have since been desysoped. It took a long time and it was a question of doing nothing (because I wasn't sufficiently involved to raise a case) and sitting back until they got so over-confident they did something egregious enough that even Arbcom could not ignore. That said, some of them chose to hand their tools in voluntarily when the stuff hit the fan. The main problem as I see it - and where I could eventually accord even Epipelagic some credence - is that sloppy, or power-hungry admins misuse their privileges in such a diluted manner, and thus goes largely unnoticed, that there is rarely sufficient accumulated evidence to bring them to book. This is exacerbated by the fact that Arbcom will only address individual complaints and fails/refuses to take into account the longer term patterns of admin abuse. That said, there exists a greater and more significant problem with admin wannabes who think it's cool to stick their oar into every admin area, where they more often than not get things wrong, and are basically just a pesky nuisance. They probably believe that their interventions are going to put them in good stead for a future run at RfA. They couldn't be doing themselves (and Wikipedia) a greater disservice. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:27, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Anyway we all know admins have a stranglehold, maybe a deathgrip on Wikipedia now, and nothing is going to improve. The battle for a decent deal for content builders has been lost. I occasionally whimper on the sidelines, and am ignored of course by the dysfunctional elite, such is their confidence in their powers. An occasional whimper is the only input to the system left for content builders now, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a move shortly to suppress that also. --Epipelagic (talk) 07:17, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

• There's another view that messes up civility policing. That's the view among more conservative editors that incivility comprises the use of naughty words, and nothing else. To these editors, tendentiously, persistently, and repeatedly pushing a POV is fine, but one "curse" word from someone frustrated with their behaviour labels the editor frustrated with such behaviour, and who actually cares about NPOV in articles, as the uncivil one. Our definition of incivility doesn't work. HiLo48 (talk) 01:37, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Concur. I wish I could have called you in for help at a few recent horrible run-ins, but that would have been "canvassing". Gah. --Lexein (talk) 03:08, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Just to remark that in the recent incident where HiLo48 was incivil without being provoked by me (they started with recommendation for me to stop talking bullshit or smth, and ended asking why such a fool as me is still not blocked) and the community explicitly refused to do anything about it, with many admins saying that such behaviour is pretty much normal. After thinking several days whether I should resign as admin I decided to take a wikibreak instead and unwatched ANI. I am sure ANI is doing fine without me, but this is certainly one of the two most unpleasant incidents which happened to me during all my tenure in Wikipedia.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:51, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

LOL. If that was one of your worst experiences, I feel kinda proud. Certainly not sorry. You were either incredibly rude during that encounter, or you really did completely misunderstand the point I was making. Either way, you still owe me an apology, but I left that discussion perceiving a very low level of comprehension of what I had said on your part, so I don't expect you to understand now. HiLo48 (talk) 09:56, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Great. I see that you have been consistently incivil, as your talk page demonstrates, so if someone (for example In ictu oculi, or someone else) would open an RfC on you, I would be interested in certifying it. I hope in the end of the day you will be indeffed, since you do not learn at all and continue making harm to this project. The sooner you are gone, the better.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:07, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh dear. Yet another threat. What a way to debate. HiLo48 (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I am not interested in entering into a catfight with you. I hope my message is clear.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:12, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, very clear. But it may not be what you think it is. HiLo48 (talk) 10:17, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Pine for taking the trouble to make a list of things that could be done. I agree with them all except for 'more in-person events'. I would not find that helpful; perhaps I should say that the one that I attended was not useful to me. --Greenmaven (talk) 07:28, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

User:Ymblanter, thanks for the ping. I'm very sorry to see exactly the same incivil behaviour exhibited by HiLo48 at the Talk:Genesis creation narrative RM actually defended here as if it's something to be proud of on, of all place WP Editor Retention. Incredible. I have never opened a RfC/U, but likewise I would certify one. Has HiLo48 attacked anyone further since the warning a few hours ago? In ictu oculi (talk) 10:14, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

WTF? You guys seem to think any challenge to a conservative status quo is a personal attack. Maybe it means my challenges are valid, and they frighten you, but they're definitely NOT personal attacks. HiLo48 (talk) 20:09, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Personal attack in this context is discussing the user (their IQ, language ability, political views etc, especially in the context the user would find offensive) instead of discussing the issue. Usually it is done in order to derail to discussion and avoid discussion of the issue. If you do not get this after being explained multiple times, may be you should RTFM?--Ymblanter (talk) 20:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh dear. Look, it's obvious that English isn't your first language. You speak and write it very well, much better than I can do for any language other than English. But for me to suggest that mutual linguistic issues are getting in the way of an effective conversation between us is NOT a personal attack. And in that Winter Olympic discussion, you raised the name of Putin, very obviously suggesting a combination of corruption and incompetence. You did this before anyone else, including me, said anything else about politics. That is blatant pushing of a political POV. Now, I'm sure that Putin is no candidate for a sainthood, but the talk page of an article on the Winter Olympics is no place for you to be pushing that POV. I don't recall any comment on your IQ. It's not something I'm ever likely to comment on because I think such measures are mostly bullshit. I know you didn't like me trying to close down POV pushing at that article, but I really can't stand the way every Olympic article is used that way. It's a bad look for Wikipedia. HiLo48 (talk) 22:46, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Just not to make an impression I agree with your interpretaion of the POV issue let me remark that you are talking garbage now. Sorry.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:54, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's a very poor and bad faith post. I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. (Apart from you don't like me.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:10, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

• Getting back to the subject at hand, what are some concrete steps we should do to address these? --Pine^✉ 22:52, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Acknowledging Pine - I have boldly started a new section to refocus on the following points; after "#Some thoughts" got a bit diverted:

• Have more in-person events.
• Encourage educational. cultural, and scientific organizations to feel responsible for stewarding Wikipedia and its content.
• Remove bad actors quicker. It can take weeks for someone to get blocked through ANI or SPI.
• Use technical methods to prevent inexperienced users from template-bombing other users' talk pages with warnings. Some new users like to be aggressive and in the process they drive other people away.
• Appeal to the motivations given at Wikipedia_community#Motivation.
• Strengthen the civility policy. Treatment by other users can cause burnout and stress.

I am particularly interested in exploring:

• Encourage educational. cultural, and scientific organizations to feel responsible for stewarding Wikipedia and its content.
• Strengthen the civility policy. Treatment by other users can cause burnout and stress.

--Greenmaven (talk) 23:27, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I've seen this text before. I know it's posted in good faith, but have you come up with unarguable definitions of "bad actors" and "civility" yet? HiLo48 (talk) 00:03, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I am more interested in being civil than arguing about its definition. It's here WP:CIVIL, in case you have not read it. (One of the five pillars - with good reason). Editor Pine took the trouble to come up with six possible starting points for new discussion, and not one of them was addressed by the people watching this page. I call that uncivil. Therefore I have re-posted it (not directing this at you HiLo48) in GF. --Greenmaven (talk) 03:16, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

By your statement that you consider it uncivil not to have addressed the points raised by that user I think you have very ably, although undoubtedly unintentionally, demonstrated the fundamental flaw at the heart of any civility policy. Eric Corbett 03:29, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

"Bad actors" is more worth a closer definition. In mainspace, clear vandalism is obvious. The more problematical "bad actions" in article space are caused by varying degrees of incompetence. On the talk pages, even here, we see "bad actions" take the form of incivility and lengthy rants. --Greenmaven (talk) 03:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

So are we going to discuss the points above, or be diverted again? --Greenmaven (talk) 03:51, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

No point discussing the points above until we can all agree on what they mean. On the civility front, many editors seem incapable of finding a better definition of incivility than being a little rude to arrogant POV pushers, and using words from their personally defined list of naughty ones. I've looked in vain for the article WP:Agreed list of naughty words, but it seems the list is 100% clear in some editors' minds. No, we do not have a practical, uniformly agreed definition of civility. HiLo48 (talk) 05:08, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

You can deal with POV pushers without being rude; in fact it is probably more effective to be civil. Our definition of WP:CIVIL is practical. It does not need to be "uniformly agreed" to be useful. I doubt whether there is a "uniformly agreed" consensus on WP:NOTABLE either. --Greenmaven (talk) 05:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

So it doesn't need to be uniformly agreed to be useful? That sort of approach tends to lead to management by majority decision, and bullying. Those from cultural minorities haven't got a chance. Our systemic bias would dominate even more than it does now. HiLo48 (talk) 05:28, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

• Okay, I'll start. The point about institutions taking ownership - these groups have their own agendas and ideas of what they want to do, which may conflict with Wikipedia's policies and cause contention. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:56, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

  I would have thought that "educational. cultural, and scientific organizations" had a vested interest in having WP contain accurate reliable information. I can see there might be an issue of resources. --Greenmaven (talk) 05:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, here's an example of a problem in that area. "Educational and cultural" organisations include many with religious connections. To a religious person, "accurate reliable information" includes the "fact" that God exists. We cannot go there. It's clear to me that many find it very difficult to avoid pushing a religious POV in their efforts to contribute here. Is that civil? HiLo48 (talk) 05:25, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

@HiLo48

• If you want to discuss the definition of civility have a look at WP:CIVIL. I'm not planning to discuss that further here.
• Many organizations will have their own information or opinions that they might want to promote. So will individuals, nations, and corporations. Just because everyone may have conflicts of interest doesn't mean that we ban everyone from contributing content. I think we should instead discuss how we can get educational, cultural, and scientific organizations to contribute and curate content in a way that is compatible with our neutral point of view policies. --Pine^✉ 02:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL excludes many behaviours that I regard as uncivil, includes some that are hardly ever policed, and does not actually define incivility. The sentence "It is sometimes difficult to make a hard-and-fast judgement of what is uncivil and what is not" illustrates the problem perfectly. How can we enforce something we can neither define, nor agree on the definition of? HiLo48 (talk) 02:59, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

@HiLo48, neatly put, an effective civility policy would be difficult to achieve and yet there may well be a need for one. We have been criticised by a number of visitors to this site as being rude and unwelcoming, and we have a number of skews in our editorship which may be partly a consequence of that. Most importantly for this project, incivility is probably a contributor to our losing editors. Yet at the same time we have a mutually agreed objective to give our readers a high quality product, and some of the biteyness is inherent in a wiki where your contributions may be ruthlessly edited. Perhaps we as a project could come up with a few things that would make Wikipedia a more civil place? ϢereSpielChequers 12:08, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

new editors who write new articles

• A point that I feel is missing from the above list is supporting new editors by helping them get their first article accepted. There will always be people leaving for one reason or another (not necessarily dissatisfaction; some just get a new job or have a baby or take up the clarinet). Those of us who have learned (some of) the ropes can magnify our skills by passing them on to someone new. I enjoy seeing someone that I helped create a nice new article with inline citations, proper sections and an infobox. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:51, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

• This is a good point although I think many editors have the patience to wait through the article review process if they've taken the time to write an article and want it published. While this is important, along with editor adoption and mentoring in general which I think should be improved, I think this affects a relatively small number of people. WMF is already working at improving the new user experience and I think the VisualEditor and Snuggle will help with this eventually as well. --Pine^✉ 02:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

• There are plenty of ways to help new editors without going anywhere near the article review process. For starters I recommend a personal policy of being one of the people who removes more templates than they add. Showing newbies the ropes does not have to mean some formal mentoring or adoption system. It can just mean fixing newbie mistakes with a clear edit summary that gives them something they can learn from at their own pace. ϢereSpielChequers 03:34, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, and thanking an editor who is fixing up small errors in articles or who is showing willingness to bring his or her article in line with policies, either personally or with "Wikilove" is something that only takes a minute or so. About helping people make their first article: it may seem that this affects only a small number of people, but Afc has accepted over 36,000 articles, and most of these are first or second articles for new users. That's a lot of new users! Of course, there are a lot of advertisement, copyvios, attack pages, and just plain silly pages submitted, but the 36,000 is not counting those. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:52, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

• I'm sure there are plenty of articles languishing there which need accepting into mainspace. I just find it a much more deletionist venue than mainspace and would like to see it wound up. Aside from the confusion and complication of having multiple routes to create a new article, at AFC articles are declined by a single editor on wider grounds than CSD - so they can be declined even if they don't meet the speedy deletion criteria. This is an inherent flaw in the system, based on the idea that declining a submission is somehow less bitey than deleting a submission. Last I heard 25% of new editors start by trying to create a new article, and I don't think we treat them as well as we should, with AFC as one part of the problem and over hastyness and a proportion of sloppy tagging at NPP as other parts. ϢereSpielChequers 05:46, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
• [12] makes a case how AFC backlog delays can discourage new users. The size/age/particulars of the backlog are discussed some in that thread. Kafziel felt was inexcusable; despite his rough edges and unilateral out-of-AFC-SOP methods, and even though exact size/age isn't clear, wasn't his point fundamentally correct about the unreasonableness and deleterious effect of such a backlog? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 07:31, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

• An editor's first article feels like an important part of the pipeline. Do you think the new Drafts namespace will have an impact on AfC? Siko (talk) 07:53, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what advantages the drafts namespace will bring, except that it improves on AFC by making the talk page available for its intended purposes.
• As for AFC's impact on editor retention, which discourages a new editor more; having to wait several weeks and then finding their article submission declined with advice provided on how to get it accepted, and avenues for further help; or working on their article for (maybe) several weeks and then having it speedy deleted with no opportunity to improve it or discuss the reasons, and little explanation as to why? It's not at all clear to me that one outcome is obviously more problematic than the other. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 10:07, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not happy with either route at present, and I don't expect that the draft namespace will improve things. The plus side of creating articles in mainspace is that if you are lucky you will experience collaborative editing and providing the article doesn't meet the speedy deletion criteria it has a better chance of survival. The downsides are that if you start with one sentence or so it will be gone before you add the second, and a proportion of tagging and deletion is very sloppy. My recommendation to a new editor today would be to start in a sandbox and move it to namespace when you feel it is ready. My preferred system would be to merge AFC and "drafts" back into mainspace, but have unpatrolled new articles as No-index and with a discrete draft header until they are patrolled. I think that if we did that we could in effect get rid of some speedy deletion. To encompass the natural desires of the patrollers to make their mark on all new articles we could also enable some delayed action speedy tags, which were visible to other patrollers but not the author. So patrollers could tag brand new articles as A1, A3 and A7, but the tag would only be added if after 24 hours the article had not been further edited - until then the author could return, save their second sentence, the one about their local pub landlord being a retired professional footballer who once played for his country and never know that their article was ever at risk of deletion. ϢereSpielChequers 17:24, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really don't think we should be encouraging new editors to be making articles at all. I realize everyone likes to start building their own thing, but there is a significant amount of good information on here that makes just absolute crap articles. Rather than create a tightly focused stub, maybe we should encourage editors to contribute their information to a broader article that encompasses the subject. It would likely involve more interactions, being there are more eyes on mature articles, and therefore more feedback and encouragement. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 19:23, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Well most, last I heard three quarters, of new editors do start editing existing articles. But that still leaves a large minority who want to add new articles, and some of them are interested in some of the many specialist subjects where we are still very weak. As for the spammers and so forth, in some ways I would rather that they tried to create articles on their company or product rather than being forced to add sections in articles about the city they are based in or the raw material they use. I think we are quite efficient at dealing with spammers at present and might regret it if we diverted them onto existing articles. There is also the problem of raising the threshold, similar to suggestions that we require a name that looks real or ban IP editing; the spammers and vandals will just change to the new minimum, but a proportion of goodfaith editors will be lost. ϢereSpielChequers 20:15, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I see your point. Generally companies, bands or authors themselves don't really belong in another article, but their products, albums and books likely belong in the parent article. Not being terribly experienced in NPP, maybe this just doesn't happen as much as it used to, but I notice it a lot with older articles, from before when our article creation guidelines weren't as clearly defined. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 21:55, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nick, I'd agree that merge would be a better response and less bitey - "your paragraph is now here" rather than your paragraph has now been deleted. I don't often see that happening at NPP, but then it might not be so visible to me as merge and redirect does not go to cat:SPEEDY. As for most NPP content not belonging in other articles, I agree, but if we were to stop new editors from creating new articles I would expect to see more stuff going into existing articles where it doesn't really belong. ϢereSpielChequers 07:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

• I would like to respond to User:WereSpielChequers's statement that Afc articles can be declined for stricter reasons than CSD. This is not a fair comparison, because declined articles are not deleted, and can be fixed up and resubmitted. Also, in some cases Afc is more lenient; an article that would be deleted as an advertisement in mainspace is usually given another chance to be rewritten in a neutral tone. A more fair comparison is Afd, where articles are discussed over a period of time during which the article can be improved. Afc is more lenient than Afd because the inexperienced editors are given more time to figure out how to improve the articles, and are given advice which will help them to create better articles in the future. About 90% of the Afc articles are declined on the first pass because they likely wouldn't survive Afd or CSD. That's an average of 200 unsuitable articles per day. Maybe 80 or so of these could be CSD'd. (I am estimating from my experience of reviewing several thousand submissions.) A few may be picked up and improved right awy by interested editors. That means that to deal with these articles properly in mainspace there should be an extra 100 or so Afd discussions per day. Who is going to work on these? —Anne Delong (talk) 23:13, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

declining an article and deleting an article are both rejections. Perhaps some people take one form of rejection as gentler than the other, but I'm pretty sure that others don't. To be fair to AFC there are some elements of it that I would like to see incorporated into a better way of handling new articles, and I don't dispute that it may be gentler to spammers (though I'm not convinced that is a positive); One aspect that I don't like is "the inexperienced editors are given more time to figure out how to improve the articles" - to me the great beauty of wiki work is collaborative editing, and that really benefits from keeping articles in mainspace where they belong. As for the efficiency argument that AFC saves us from over a 100 AFDs per day, in practice many articles go from the back of the queue via uncontentious prods, from the front of the queue by BLPprods, and lots are simply redirected. If those 200 submissions a day went into mainspace only a minority would ever reach AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 08:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Expecting a "great beauty of wiki work is collaborative editing" is, in my view, still rose-tinted, and always will be as long as I see evidence that a new user's introduction to that is an edit-summary free revert or an A7 tag. Benjamin Clementine (CSD, DYK) shows that the problems uncovered by WP:NEWT are alive and well, and that a "gentler" route via AfC is still worth persuing. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

There are some interesting comments about sending Afc submissions into mainspace at THIS page. As part of the discussion I suggested that the decline template be modified to give the submitter three choices (1) Resubmit - the article has been improved. (2) Move to mainspace - the article may be deleted if it doesn't follow Wikipedia's policies, and (3) Delete - I agree that my article is unsuitable for Wikipedia. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:27, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree that a gentler route is worth pursuing, but I don't see either AFC or NPP as currently satisfactory. Maybe one of these days I'll write a design for how I would like it to be, I have made various suggestions including after NEWT and during the strategy process. One problem is that a solution would require significant development, another is that as we saw during NEWT, the current system has many advocates. ϢereSpielChequers 08:50, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

New page reviewal process

Confusion has arisen due to the page review notifications system concerning new user's userpages. See Wikipedia talk:Editor review#Non-Requested Review ?. The original poster has also opened a request for comment at WT:NPP. benzband (talk) 23:52, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Did you know#RFC on QPQ for non self noms

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#RFC on QPQ for non self noms.   Tentinator   15:41, 5 January 2014 (UTC)Template:Z48

My experience and why I am not going to edit Wikipedia

tl:dr - editors reverted my good faith edits; put macro-warnings on my user page; didn't bother reading the references I provided after they asked for them; and didn't fix any of the other problems with the article because they were concentrating on preventing me from editing the page.

Fuller version: international and law enforcement agencies are using the term "images of child sexual abuse" instead of the phrase "child porn". Several wikipedia articles discuss this and use the new term, and have reliable sources for that information. I found a page that didn't include the new term anywhere. I thought this would be a good place to start a serious edit and clean up of an article. The article is bad, has some error-macros at the top of it, is not much linked to in WP (and thus isn't an important high traffic article but a nice quiet corner). I started by changing a few -but not all!- instances of the phrase "child porn" to "images of child sexual abuse". I then started a talk page section explaining what I had done, and why. I included an edit summary.

That edit was reverted. The person reverting asked for a reliable source. I reverted back, and replied that the other wikipedia pages on the topic already included reliable sources. I was reverted again, with a macro-warning put on my page about unproductive edits.

What I would have preferred: an editor sees the change. They don't revert, but they discuss the changes on the talk page. If they think sources are needed they should look for those cites. It is very easy to hit revert and think that you are helping the project. But looking for sources is important (and was mentioned in the error macro on the page) so it's better to look for sources. The editor should have noticed that I am a new editor and offered to help with the bizarre and complicated formatting for references. Or the editor could have made any other good faith exits to the page to help clean it up.

Now the situation is that you have several edits to a page taking time and effort, but the page is still in the same poor state it was in before. And you have editors who think they've helped the project when really they've achieved nothing positive. And you have me - I now dislike Wikipedia intensely. This is not a controversial change. It was not an attempt to remove all instances of the term "child porn" from a page, just to insert a few occurances of the term "images of child sexual abuse" which is helpful because it's the term used by interpol and unicef etc and helps public search for and find more information.

I present my experience for some meta discussion. I am not asking for pitchforks for any involved editors who were acting in good faith, although totally unconstructive. And there is no way I am going to continue to edit WP.

My talk page and edits history contains all the information. There's not too much to look through.

--Barepunts (talk) 14:58, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I am sorry for your experience, but you acted explicitly contrary to the policies. You were pointed this fact out by several editors in good standing, but instead you have chosen not to reply and discuss with them, not to read the policies, not to try changing the policies but to leave Wikipedia giving us your opinion on how the policies should look like. No, they are not like this, and there are some good reasons for that. Again, sorry that your experience did not match your expectations.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:32, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

hi, i logged out and forget my pass!! I'm not sure i understand tou. Bold revert discuss, right? So i boldly edit a page. Someone reverts that change and asls for sources. They then leave. I provide sources (although not in a great form. I honestly didn't know how to do that on the mobile version of the site). I then revert the changes back in because the only complaint -no cites- has been addressed and reverting is easier than re typing all the changes. That change is reverted and someone gives me a macro-warning about unconstructive edits. Well, that's just annoying and wrong because these were not test edits they were real edits, so I revert and leave a message on that user's page. I am correctig an incorrect revert. But this has pushed me over some limit, so someone else reverts and asks for sources. They don't notice that sources are aleady in place. I don't understand what you mean when you say I havn't spoken to people - i have. I have left messages on their talk pages or on the edit page of the article and in the summary text box. The chain of events is less clear than it could be because someone changed the order of some but not all of the posts on my talk page. So, the oy thing that people asked for to make my edits stick were sources, which i tried to provide. At that point there should be no reason to stop the edit, right? And if there is someone could put it on the talk page. No one did. So why aren't the edits there? I don't know what you mean when you say that I am asking for wp to change policy. Where do i say that? I do ask that people look for sources before slapping macro-warnings on the page or reverting. Especially if the page already has a macro saying that sources are needed - given the choice of a) reverting the edits of someone and doing nothing else to get spurces or b)helping that new editor to put the sources they've provided into thw article it is clear that B is preferable. Notice that anyone responding to the helpme macro on my talk pages by asking me to provide sources is doing so after I had provided sources! And none of them is helping me to put those into the article. --82.132.236.23 (talk) 20:59, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Reviewing your edits, I do not see where you ever provided a source. Here you say that they exist, but that is hardly the same thing. Our established editing practice is to be bold and make an edit, and if another editor disagrees then they let you know that it needs discussion by reverting the edit. At that point, the content should not be re-added to the article until there is consensus to do so. Calling other editors lazy for following this process is unhelpful. As for the use of communication via automated tools; I see on your talk page that when you engaged in the nonconstructive behavior (ie edit warring) that we see a lot, you received semi-automated messages. When you asked a specific question with a helpme template, you received personal, non-template replies. VQuakr (talk) 17:36, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

"put macro-warnings on my user page"

@Barepunts: I checked your talk page and noticed that I also had a similar experience with the same editor (see:User_talk:Ottawahitech#Speedy deletion nomination of Meredith Stark). XOttawahitech (talk) 15:45, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not happy with User:Arunsingh16's behavior - I complained to him earlier this month about reverting an editor without an explanation. This doesn't mean that Barepunts behavior was correct of course. Dougweller (talk) 17:01, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

User:Arunsingh16 received several warnings in rapid succession regarding his overuse of automated tools and seems to have backed off now. I agree that if he picks up with rapid-fire reverts using STiki as a rollback substitute again he may need to be banned from using any tools at all. In this specific case, really the only wrong thing he did was to incorrectly identify edit warring as vandalism [13]. VQuakr (talk) 17:36, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to User Study

Would you be interested in participating in a user study? We are a team at University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within a Wikipedia community. We are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visualization tool. All you need to do is to prepare for your laptop/desktop, web camera, and speaker for video communication with Google Hangout. We will provide you with a Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 22:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC).