Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab): Difference between revisions
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:I feel there's a lot of value to readers to knowing how long a tag has been in place. I agree that many do get resolved incrementally without the tag ever being removed (the same is true for stub tags, my pet annoyance) - but that's something for us to resolve by patrolling older tags, rather than remove the information completely. [[User:Andrew Gray|Andrew Gray]] ([[User talk:Andrew Gray|talk]]) 19:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC) |
:I feel there's a lot of value to readers to knowing how long a tag has been in place. I agree that many do get resolved incrementally without the tag ever being removed (the same is true for stub tags, my pet annoyance) - but that's something for us to resolve by patrolling older tags, rather than remove the information completely. [[User:Andrew Gray|Andrew Gray]] ([[User talk:Andrew Gray|talk]]) 19:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC) |
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*As well as having the dates there for potential reviewers/editors who might want to fix the articles, I think it's useful for readers to see the tag dates too. Rather than trying to avoid looking lazy, we should be as open as we can in saying "''Be careful, this could be a bad article and it's been that way for a long time''". The reliability of Wikipedia's good articles is very very good, but the reliability of bad ones is horrid, and that's a common cause of valid criticism of the project. Being open about the bad stuff is a sign of honesty and is a step in helping address that criticism. We should not try to cover it up. [[User:Squinge|Squinge]] ([[User talk:Squinge|talk]]) 11:28, 8 February 2015 (UTC) |
*As well as having the dates there for potential reviewers/editors who might want to fix the articles, I think it's useful for readers to see the tag dates too. Rather than trying to avoid looking lazy, we should be as open as we can in saying "''Be careful, this could be a bad article and it's been that way for a long time''". The reliability of Wikipedia's good articles is very very good, but the reliability of bad ones is horrid, and that's a common cause of valid criticism of the project. Being open about the bad stuff is a sign of honesty and is a step in helping address that criticism. We should not try to cover it up. [[User:Squinge|Squinge]] ([[User talk:Squinge|talk]]) 11:28, 8 February 2015 (UTC) |
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== Beta for everyone == |
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I think that the beta features should be made available to everyone, even if they are not logged in. I constantly miss the hovercard feature when I am not logged in. Perhaps instead of being allowed to comment, people should be given a vote - Did you like (feature)? Yes, No, what could be better. [[User:Awesomeshreyo|Awesomeshreyo]] ([[User talk:Awesomeshreyo|talk]]) 19:17, 9 February 2015 (UTC) |
Revision as of 19:17, 9 February 2015
Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
Before creating a new section, please note:
- Discussions of technical issues belong at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).
- Discussions of policy belong at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).
- If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.
Before commenting, note:
- This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
- Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals, and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals.
Quicktalk
1st: A QuickTalk option. If enabled in the preferences, when you click "talk" next to the name of a user, a popup window will appear to make it easier to send a message. This would be good because it would motivate more dialogs and more feedbacks.also more help Tetra quark (don't be shy) 22:44, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
- I support this idea, as an opt-in. --NaBUru38 (talk) 15:40, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
Linking the Talk Pages across languages by Wikidata.
Wikidata is used to link en:George Washington to fr:George Washington, should the same list of languages generated by Wikidata for en:George Washington also be there for en:Talk:George Washington to enable a single click to get to fr:Discussion:George Washington? I'm sure someone else has come up with this idea before, so this is half a suggestion, half a "I wonder why it isn't" :)Naraht (talk) 16:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
- Linking different language articles makes sense, since this is a benefit for our readers and we can be sure that both articles will have the same basic content, in different languages. However, since each language operates mostly independently, each language will be discussing completely different issues on the talk pages, so a direct language link is probably of relatively low value. Also, it is of no value at all for readers, who generally don't look at talk pages. There's always the slightly longer version of article -> article -> talk. Perhaps this could make sense as a user preference, though? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:01, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Are Departing Editors Ever Surveyed??
I understand that one of the goals of wikipedia is to encourage people to contribute as editors. So it seems that it would be a good practice to obsessionally survey a sample of ex-editors regarding reasons they have not continued editing.
I'd suggest that every 6 months or so, a survey (which may change as we begin to learn more) be sent out to people who created an account with an email address who have not made an edit in the last 60 days but made more than 5 edits after creating their account, or within the last year, including people in each subgroups such as (1) users who were active for less than on month, (2) users who were active over one month but less than three months, and (3) users who were active over three months but less than a year.
It would not be necessary to email everyone fitting these categories, just a large enough sample to get 100-200 respondents in each subgroup.
Types of questions of interest to be explored using a likert scale: did they leave because it was too confusing, or because they had accomplished their goals, they were exhausted, they were frustrated by having their edits reverted, they found editing policies were inconsistent or not followed. And there should be an open ended text field for them to give their own reasons, which may shape future questions.
The results could be made available (minus the email addresses) for analysis by anyone interested and might help inform future policy and technical goals. –GodBlessYou2 (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
- It's been done. Most of the "departed" editors said that they considered themselves to still be active editors, only they've been busy with real-world stuff or had forgotten to login recently.
- Those that said they had stopped editing generally said that they quit because people yelled at them for honest mistakes (we were all new once, and the learning cure here is steep) or because everything they added was reverted or deleted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:10, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
- Are the results available? And is there any discussion or plan for periodic efforts to repeat such surveys and to consider ways to address the concerns? How might I get involved? --GodBlessYou2 (talk) 15:34, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- It looks like the final report on that survey hasn't been published; a brief and early (read: probably wrong in some respects) summary can be read at strategy:Former Contributors Survey Results. I asked around, and here's what I learned: the survey was run in late 2009 or early 2010, for users who had edited the English Wikipedia at least once during 2009 but had not edited for a while, and who had never made more than 99 logged-in edits. About a third of the people surveyed directly said that they had never left, many said that they left for reasons unrelated to Wikipedia (e.g., people who stopped editing because a new job or family situation left them with no time for Wikipedia). Significantly more than half said that they were likely to edit again someday.
- It appears that it was possible on this survey to simultaneously give the reasons why you left, and also say that you hadn't left at all.
- Significantly more than half of the surveyed editors reported unpleasant experiences with other editors, like being reverted by other editors or receiving warnings from other editors. Significantly less than half of them would recommend editing Wikipedia to any of their friends. Of the people who left for some reason other than personal issues, and who had made more than 10 edits, most of them said that negative interactions with community members were a (or sometimes the only) reason for their departure. The (many more) people who had only made two or three edits were more likely to say that it was too confusing or complicated, although they, too, said that they had significant problems with actions by other community members.
- AFAICT, there are no current plans to repeat this survey. Whether and how to change would be up to the community here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- Are the results available? And is there any discussion or plan for periodic efforts to repeat such surveys and to consider ways to address the concerns? How might I get involved? --GodBlessYou2 (talk) 15:34, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Cite this page
Would it be feasible to have at the bottom of each page a box similar to a navbox that had the full citation for the page it was used on in different formats, ALA, MLA, etc.? And would the community support such a change?
There are many possibilities for implementation:
A template like {{reflist}} that we put at the the bottom of each page under external links with its own section
A mediawiki feature that is automatically put in every page
We might have to restrict the usage, however, because not all pages are of citable quality, and there might be a backlash by academics if more people cite badly written pages on their college reports.
Should it be only for FAs? FAs + GAs? The aforementioned plus A or B class?
Or should it not use the Wikiproject quality system and use some other bar for entry such as a peer review?
The reason I am proposing this is to try to raise awareness of the great articles we have here on-wiki, that anywhere else would be a reliable source if not for the stigma surrounding Wikipedia. Hopefully this initiative will help remove this stigma and make at least some of Wikipedia a reliable, citable source.
The first phase of this proposal is simply discussion-What articles you want it to be restricted to, how it will be implemented, whether you support the general idea of posting cite information or not, etc. When a general consensus arrives at what different models the community would most like it to use, I will put together 1 or several different proposals and create a formal RfC on VPR.
Thank you and I hope to see your input on the idea. KonveyorBelt 01:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
Discussion (citing)
Well, Jimbo himself has said that people shouldn't be citing Wikipedia. Yes, we have some great articles, but the role of Wikipedia is to provide the overview and point to where the best sources are. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:36, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
- Are you (Konveyor Belt) aware that there is already a "Cite this page" link, under "Tools" in the left-hand margin of each article, that leads to a page giving full citations in various formats? Deor (talk) 11:24, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
- The current "Cite this page" is made by mw:Extension:CiteThisPage and MediaWiki:Citethispage-content. I don't see a reason to duplicate that feature. We might consider a more prominent link to the feature for quality articles but I wouldn't support it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:22, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- And it also already has multiple style formats. And indeed, encylopedia's are poor sources and shouldn't be cited in formal, news reporting, or academic writings. — xaosflux Talk 20:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- The current "Cite this page" is made by mw:Extension:CiteThisPage and MediaWiki:Citethispage-content. I don't see a reason to duplicate that feature. We might consider a more prominent link to the feature for quality articles but I wouldn't support it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:22, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
Counter
In my opinion, the Wikipedia software should attach a counter to both registered and non-registered editors that denotes whether all of the editor's edits should be checked. The counter starts at 0. All the editor's edits will be checked until the counter reaches 100. It reaches 100 after a hundred constructive edits were made with no clearly problematic edits in-between. If the editor ever makes a clearly problematic edit, the counter is reset to 0. There are external links to "Common Language in Marketing Project" here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and several more inline that have not been reverted for almost 3 months. They were added on 7 November 2014 by User:Karenmharvey who on her User page writes "Karen M Scheller on behalf of the Common Language Project at MASB." Clearly WP:PROMO/WP:SELFPROMOTE/WP:COI (and possibly WP:PE). I did not revert her edits, and I will not report them - mention them here only as an example of something that could've been prevented with a simple counter. Most vandalism could also be prevented with such a counter. Who's going to check all those edits? Well, first of all, if almost all vandalism (~8% of all edits?) is being prevented, that saves us a lot of time. It takes effort to create an encyclopedia. Just like editors check WP:PC edits, editors can check the edits of editors whose counters have not yet reached 100. The difference would be that WP:PC edits do not immediately go live. (related) --82.136.210.153 (talk) 09:33, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
(possible Hindi spam removed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.192.214.195 (talk) 10:34, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
- So would this be based on reverts? How do you define non-problematic edits in a way that software can do it? Is this something like "This editor has had 23 edits without being reverted", kinda lack those "23 days without an accident" signs in workplaces? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:56, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
- I'd say not measured by reversions. We want people to be bold when necessary and we all make mistakes. If someone's counter is at 100 (it should never pass 100), and you believe the editor's counter should be reset to 0, nominate the editor. In practice, the nice thing about this is that anyone trying to get away with misusing or vandalizing Wikipedia will need to make (at least) 100 constructive edits in a row. It shouldn't be about shaming. If a good faith editor makes a clearly problematic edit, (s)he too could be nominated. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 16:49, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- Actually, it's probably better if reviewers can tag edits as being non-constructive/problematic, which will reset the editor's counter to 0, and that tagging can be contested. Way less discussions necessary than with nominations. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 17:09, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- I don't think we have enough editors to review all these contested tags, especially once vandals and spammers figure out they can tag the guys who revert them. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- How about without the option to object. Wouldn't be necessary anyway, since it only means edits are being checked by other editors, and editors are free to check each others' edits anyway. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 22:51, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- I don't think we have enough editors to review all these contested tags, especially once vandals and spammers figure out they can tag the guys who revert them. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- Here is another example. BG19bot put back a References section as a next edit. It's the fourteenth edit of that editor. If we would've kept an eye on such editors, it would not have required a coincidence for me to notice. It appears to be a good faith edit, but it's (also) worsening Wikipedia, and if there was a counter we'd set it to 0. We're carrying coals to Newcastle because it's too easy for editors to add unreliable, unreferenced, original research, and worse yet to remove (referenced) material. Certain articles are well-protected, but, by far, most are not. I frequently notice clearly problematic edits after months, even years; there's a lot we never even notice. The more articles I work on, the more I'll have to keep an eye on forever, because it's currently far too easy for editors to get away with destroying Wikipedia. What I also see a lot is vandalists who make many vandalist edits in a row, and when they eventually get stopped, nobody takes the time to check all their edits to see what nonsense of theirs is still present on Wikipedia. In the end we have an all right encyclopedia, but it's such a struggle because of what new editors get away with. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 11:03, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- Have you done any rough calculations on the number of new accounts registered every day and worked out the potential size of the task? A quick look at recent new accounts suggests around six per minute (and that's while most of the USA is asleep), or 8,640 new accounts per day. Or have you considered that many IP addresses are dynamic and may not last for 100 edits, and the effect of this proposal might be that almost all IP edits would need to be checked always? And how do you enforce "All the editor's edits will be checked until the counter reaches 100", given that voluntary work cannot be enforced? On the whole, this is a well-meaning idea, but I think the scale of the task would make it impractical. Squinge (talk) 11:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- I think that less than 1/4 of all edits would need to be checked. This really isn't that bad. It takes effort to create a good encyclopedia. I do not think that almost all edits by IP editors would need to be checked. If the checking needs to be enforced, Wikipedia software could ask editors whose scores are at 100 to approve a diff as part of making their own edits, every now and then. The status quo needs to change. This is an example of an article with 0 references that has been on Wikipedia for more than 10 years. We're pretending that we try to make material verifiable, but in reality everyone can do whatever they want with most articles, unless one or more people are protecting an article they personally put a lot of effort into, or when we feel the article is important for showing off what Wikipedia can accomplish. Like, for example, when I put a lot of effort into improving a Reception section, and someone decides to destroy all my work because some unrelated stuff is apparently plagiarized. The more articles I create or contribute to, the more articles I need to keep track of to prevent them from being destroyed. At some point you just walk away. I understand that a lot of people apparently feel that the way Wikipedia functions is currently 'good enough' and if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but in my opinion it is broken. Why do we allow editors to destroy what we work on. Just prevent vandalism, prevent non-constructive edits. Or at least force editors to make 100 constructive edits before they can give destroying our work a try. Add a big notice when an editor isn't at 100 edits that says it'll be checked. And, you know what, I think that most vandalism is not from IP editors as such but from IP editors (and registered users) who have made less than 100 edits. Most just happen to be unregistered, but it's the number of edits and not whether they're registered. You know, similar to how correlation does not imply causation. When you write "many IP addresses are dynamic and may not last for 100 edits", those "many" are exactly the ones that we should be checking because that's where the vandalism is coming from. The same goes for good faith edits, if someone is just starting with editing Wikipedia, that's when they need our help. Those are the people we need to keep an eye on. There's no need for semi-protection or pending changes. It's not about whether a user is an IP editor or not, it's the number of (constructive) edits that matters. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 14:24, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- How did you decide that only 1/4 of all edits would need to be checked, and have you worked out actually how many edits that would be per day? I do understand the problems you are describing, but without quantification of the required effort suggestions like this will get nowhere, and practically unfeasible solutions won't solve the problems. I suggest you start by working out how many edits per day would need to be checked under your proposals, and show us how you calculated it. Squinge (talk) 14:45, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not going to do that. For the same reason I described in my last post in this section. I don't want to start a discussion about exact numbers and details. You expect me to put an incredible amount of effort into giving you calculations that you can then easily shoot down if you'd wanted to because there's always something not 100% right. I should not even have mentioned the 1/4, because it's exactly the kind of thing you could easily jump on. As I wrote, I think it's doable and I think we should do it. If nobody else truly cares and agrees with me, it's pointless for me to start writing about exact numbers and details. Even the 100 score is obviously a random number I pulled out of my hat. What I'm doing is trying to paint a picture and offering a possible solution to what I believe to be a serious problem. In my opinion even checking every single edit would be doable. It's really not that difficult, just ask editors to check an unrelated diff each time they make an edit. A changed mentality. Most edits are fine, and the number of constructive edits would only increase if we have a proper system in place to really prevent vandalism from taking place. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 15:04, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- Oh no, I absolutely am not looking to shoot down your efforts, and I'm sorry if it came across that way. My point is simply that suggestions like this absolutely need to be quantified in terms of required effort before they can realistically be considered. I don't have any statistics myself, but I do have a feel for the enormous number of edits made by new editors every day, and I think it's very likely that your suggestion would require a very significant increase in new-edit reviewing - and where is that extra work going to come from? Squinge (talk) 15:35, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- PS: RE "just ask editors to check an unrelated diff each time they make an edit" - that's at least doubling the amount of work done by contributors, and simply assuming everyone has twice as much time to spare seems unrealistic. Squinge (talk) 15:39, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- I very much disagree with your assessment that it's "at least doubling the amount of work". Checking a diff is quite different from finding and properly referencing reliable sources, and thinking about how to formulate or rephrase material, and so on. Even if it would double the amount of work - not true, but hypothetically - it's still better to do what we do right instead of doing more half-cocked. If I click "Random article" a bunch of times, I run into so much unreferenced or poorly referenced articles, frequently with original research and just plain untrue nonsense that was dumped on Wikipedia by random fanboys. What's even worse is how solid and properly referenced material is being removed, because, let's face it, how could we possibly notice. Yes, sometimes stuff is tagged and bots intervene. Yes, some of us check the Recent changes or care enough about articles to keep an eye on their revision histories, but it's so easy to remove material without anyone noticing. What also happens a lot is trolls who change, for example, years. Would not work if they touch, for example, Gerald Ford, but just pick any article that's already tagged with {{Refimprove}} or {{BLP sources}} and you can more or less make up/change whatever you want as long as it looks like it may be true. If someone died in 1927 and that's true but unreferenced, anyone could change it to 1926 and nobody would notice. Then if you wait a while some random website will think Wikipedia is reliable, not mention Wikipedia as a source, and another Wikipedia editor comes along and adds the website's page as a ref. Recently I made this change, because everything it says in that section including the entire quote ("I think vegetarianism is really great, and I stand really strongly behind it...I think that an animal goes through a lot of pain in the whole cycle of death in the slaughterhouse; just living to be killed...I just don't think it's worth eating that animal...There's so much other food out there that doesn't have to involve you in that cycle of pain and death.") may be utter nonsense. The editor who added that should've been stopped. At least that particular quote is tagged with
{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}}
, but you and I both know that Wikipedia is full of nonsense that random people added based on things they heard their friends say. I think that almost all of those problematic changes are from editors with less than 100 constructive edits. This edit lasted over 1.5 years. From an IP editor who has made only seven edits, all vandalistic edits. The very first edit we should've been there to say to warn this person and say we check edits. More than 1.5 years "He also lost from the lange dunne By TKO" and "2011 won the Dutch Koekhappen open in Amsterdam". Yes, koekhappen. Oh, and I also disagree with WP:BLUE and in my opinion every single thing on Wikipedia should be properly referenced, and references should be attached to material, so someone can't change "They have 2 dogs: x and y.[1]" and change it to "They have 3 dogs: x and y and z[1]" even though ref 1 only mentions two of the dogs. But let's not go there, let's start with changing what new editors can get away with. No 100 constructive edits, then your edits get checked. Your edits are no longer being checked but you deliberately make a non-constructive edit (not good faith), you're back to 0 and we're checking your edits again. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 17:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- I very much disagree with your assessment that it's "at least doubling the amount of work". Checking a diff is quite different from finding and properly referencing reliable sources, and thinking about how to formulate or rephrase material, and so on. Even if it would double the amount of work - not true, but hypothetically - it's still better to do what we do right instead of doing more half-cocked. If I click "Random article" a bunch of times, I run into so much unreferenced or poorly referenced articles, frequently with original research and just plain untrue nonsense that was dumped on Wikipedia by random fanboys. What's even worse is how solid and properly referenced material is being removed, because, let's face it, how could we possibly notice. Yes, sometimes stuff is tagged and bots intervene. Yes, some of us check the Recent changes or care enough about articles to keep an eye on their revision histories, but it's so easy to remove material without anyone noticing. What also happens a lot is trolls who change, for example, years. Would not work if they touch, for example, Gerald Ford, but just pick any article that's already tagged with {{Refimprove}} or {{BLP sources}} and you can more or less make up/change whatever you want as long as it looks like it may be true. If someone died in 1927 and that's true but unreferenced, anyone could change it to 1926 and nobody would notice. Then if you wait a while some random website will think Wikipedia is reliable, not mention Wikipedia as a source, and another Wikipedia editor comes along and adds the website's page as a ref. Recently I made this change, because everything it says in that section including the entire quote ("I think vegetarianism is really great, and I stand really strongly behind it...I think that an animal goes through a lot of pain in the whole cycle of death in the slaughterhouse; just living to be killed...I just don't think it's worth eating that animal...There's so much other food out there that doesn't have to involve you in that cycle of pain and death.") may be utter nonsense. The editor who added that should've been stopped. At least that particular quote is tagged with
- I'm not going to do that. For the same reason I described in my last post in this section. I don't want to start a discussion about exact numbers and details. You expect me to put an incredible amount of effort into giving you calculations that you can then easily shoot down if you'd wanted to because there's always something not 100% right. I should not even have mentioned the 1/4, because it's exactly the kind of thing you could easily jump on. As I wrote, I think it's doable and I think we should do it. If nobody else truly cares and agrees with me, it's pointless for me to start writing about exact numbers and details. Even the 100 score is obviously a random number I pulled out of my hat. What I'm doing is trying to paint a picture and offering a possible solution to what I believe to be a serious problem. In my opinion even checking every single edit would be doable. It's really not that difficult, just ask editors to check an unrelated diff each time they make an edit. A changed mentality. Most edits are fine, and the number of constructive edits would only increase if we have a proper system in place to really prevent vandalism from taking place. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 15:04, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- How did you decide that only 1/4 of all edits would need to be checked, and have you worked out actually how many edits that would be per day? I do understand the problems you are describing, but without quantification of the required effort suggestions like this will get nowhere, and practically unfeasible solutions won't solve the problems. I suggest you start by working out how many edits per day would need to be checked under your proposals, and show us how you calculated it. Squinge (talk) 14:45, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- I think that less than 1/4 of all edits would need to be checked. This really isn't that bad. It takes effort to create a good encyclopedia. I do not think that almost all edits by IP editors would need to be checked. If the checking needs to be enforced, Wikipedia software could ask editors whose scores are at 100 to approve a diff as part of making their own edits, every now and then. The status quo needs to change. This is an example of an article with 0 references that has been on Wikipedia for more than 10 years. We're pretending that we try to make material verifiable, but in reality everyone can do whatever they want with most articles, unless one or more people are protecting an article they personally put a lot of effort into, or when we feel the article is important for showing off what Wikipedia can accomplish. Like, for example, when I put a lot of effort into improving a Reception section, and someone decides to destroy all my work because some unrelated stuff is apparently plagiarized. The more articles I create or contribute to, the more articles I need to keep track of to prevent them from being destroyed. At some point you just walk away. I understand that a lot of people apparently feel that the way Wikipedia functions is currently 'good enough' and if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but in my opinion it is broken. Why do we allow editors to destroy what we work on. Just prevent vandalism, prevent non-constructive edits. Or at least force editors to make 100 constructive edits before they can give destroying our work a try. Add a big notice when an editor isn't at 100 edits that says it'll be checked. And, you know what, I think that most vandalism is not from IP editors as such but from IP editors (and registered users) who have made less than 100 edits. Most just happen to be unregistered, but it's the number of edits and not whether they're registered. You know, similar to how correlation does not imply causation. When you write "many IP addresses are dynamic and may not last for 100 edits", those "many" are exactly the ones that we should be checking because that's where the vandalism is coming from. The same goes for good faith edits, if someone is just starting with editing Wikipedia, that's when they need our help. Those are the people we need to keep an eye on. There's no need for semi-protection or pending changes. It's not about whether a user is an IP editor or not, it's the number of (constructive) edits that matters. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 14:24, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- Reading the above, I think that most editors commenting have some sympathy for the idea; but are troubled whether it can be reasonably be implemented. Your koekhappen example is indeed problematic. However, as you said yourself, that should have been picked up, and fixed even within the current system. Why would a new list of edits to be checked result in these edits being actually checked and corrected?
- If we would go somewhere in this direction I think an automatic notification in the history of an article along the lines of "editor without track record" would be more likely to work. Editors working on an article can than decide whether this needs to be fixed immediately, later on, or ignore it and leave as is.
- In addition I think your 100 edits reset to 0 can play out overly harsh. A simple disagreement can already set you back to 0 if you encounter an overzealous admin/reviewer. If you would go to something like this I would rather set the penalty at 10 points (or so) and set any score above 90 as good enough. That allows editors in good standing one minor hiccup once in a while. Arnoutf (talk) 17:56, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
- Well, firstly, giving us lots of specific examples of things that were wrong doesn't really provide any support for your actual proposed solution - we *know* that things go wrong, and what we need to be doing here is assessing your proposed solution and not simply restating that things go wrong. Secondly, you say "I very much disagree with your assessment that it's "at least doubling the amount of work"", and sure my guesswork might be wrong. But we do need to quantify the work needed for any proposed solution, and anything that requires editors to do more work will be much harder to implement - simply because we cannot enforce what people do here. You say "Even if it would double the amount of work - not true, but hypothetically - it's still better to do what we do right instead of doing more half-cocked", and I agree - but you seem to be missing the fundamental point that we cannot simply order people to do that. Seriously, if you want to make a proposal for doing things better, it first needs to be quantified in terms of effort required, and only then can its feasibility be determined. Ideals are brilliant, but ideals don't turn wheels - to turn ideal into reality requires some serious practical work, and I don't see any interest from you in doing the legwork that would quantify your proposal and help get it closer to practicality. Sorry if you think I'm being a sourpuss, but that's the way critical analysis of ideas works. Squinge (talk) 18:06, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
Is showing the date of cleanup tags really necessary?
Why is it so necessary that the date of an added cleanup template be displayed on the articles? I think these should be removed and only work behind the scenes. Back when Wikipedia was new, it may have made a little sense, but today I see articles using Template:Multiple issues showing dates as far back at 2007, and it is very off-putting. It makes us look lazy and was obviously not helpful in drawing people in to clean up the problem. Sure, adding the date better-sorts the template into categories, but if an article requires cleanup, should it really be announced on the page that it still has not been done after so many years? Thoughts? — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 08:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- I agree with the thrust of your proposal. It is useful for an editor to know how long the tag has been in place. If I see a tag dating back to the dawn of Wikipedia then my starting position is to check whether it should just be removed because the issue has been addressed. One common scenario I see is that multiple editors have made small changes and collectively dealt with the original issue but none has presumably reviewed the whole article or felt confident enough to remove the tag. So the date is useful to me. Is it useful to the reader to have the date? Not at all and does indeed make us look lazy. QuiteUnusual (talk) 09:37, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- I like the dates, even for the cleanup tags. Letting people, especially editors, know when the article was tagged is helpful in a number of ways, not the least of which is knowing how to proceed from there -- check the edit history since then, check who added the tag, check and see if they posted anything on Talk around that time, check why they added it, check to see what the state of the article was when the tag was added and what its state is now, etc. In terms of "it makes us look lazy" (or bad) (1) if Wikipedia cared about looking bad it would not let IPs edit, and do many other things differently; I think the date on a tag is very low on the list of how and why Wikipedia looks bad (2) if a random outsider thinks it looks bad, they can always do some cleaning themselves. As it is, nowadays the cleanup tag cannot be added without filling in what exactly needs cleaning up (if I'm not mistaken), so that at least has solved some of the problem right there. Some articles have really old tags because they are so seldom visited. Softlavender (talk) 10:00, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- One man's "it makes us look lazy" is another man's "it gives readers a window into how much attention a particular article receives". Wikipedia tends to be pretty highly trusted among online resources—sometimes much more so than it should be. (Frankly, the earned reputation of our high-popularity, high-traffic, closely-watched, well-maintained articles is probably giving our less-maintained, rougher-edged long tail an undeserved boost.) I actually think it's a good thing to conspicuously remind readers, where appropriate, that some (many!) Wikipedia articles are very much works-in-progress.
- Above, QuiteUnusual suggests that it is "common" for issues underlying an older maintenance tag to be remedied without the tag being removed, and that this might unfairly taint a particular article's reputation. Is that actually generally true, or is it just because the articles that QuiteUnusual (or any other editor) are most likely to see are the ones being more-actively maintained? In other words, if we look at the issue from the other end – examining where the tags are distributed, rather than by considering articles with active editors – by using the dated maintenance categories, what do we find? I looked at the first few entries in Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2006, and all the ones I checked are still lacking sources. The articles listed in Category:Orphaned articles from May 2008 still seem to be orphans. Editors should, perhaps, be encouraged to be a bit bolder in removing no-longer-needed maintenance tags, but I have yet to see convincing evidence that more than a small fraction of these tags deal with resolved issues.
- That said, if someone with a bit (or a lot) more know-how than I were to create a bot or script to pick out articles with a lot of 'old' tags that had also received a substantial number of edits in the interim as 'priority' candidates for screening and re-evaluation, it's possible it could be a useful tool. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:01, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- I like the dates on the cleanup tags in part because often a very-old cleanup tag indicates issues that just don't exist any more - and if a reader notices the old date, he can re-assess whether it still applies. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 18:57, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- I feel there's a lot of value to readers to knowing how long a tag has been in place. I agree that many do get resolved incrementally without the tag ever being removed (the same is true for stub tags, my pet annoyance) - but that's something for us to resolve by patrolling older tags, rather than remove the information completely. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
- As well as having the dates there for potential reviewers/editors who might want to fix the articles, I think it's useful for readers to see the tag dates too. Rather than trying to avoid looking lazy, we should be as open as we can in saying "Be careful, this could be a bad article and it's been that way for a long time". The reliability of Wikipedia's good articles is very very good, but the reliability of bad ones is horrid, and that's a common cause of valid criticism of the project. Being open about the bad stuff is a sign of honesty and is a step in helping address that criticism. We should not try to cover it up. Squinge (talk) 11:28, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
Beta for everyone
I think that the beta features should be made available to everyone, even if they are not logged in. I constantly miss the hovercard feature when I am not logged in. Perhaps instead of being allowed to comment, people should be given a vote - Did you like (feature)? Yes, No, what could be better. Awesomeshreyo (talk) 19:17, 9 February 2015 (UTC)