Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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I wrote an essay on the dangers of the supervolunteer

I wrote an essay on the dangers of the supervolunteer, User:Geo Swan/The supervolunteer. I've written a bunch of userspace essays, some of which other people have linked to. But I was wondering whether this one merited being placed in the wikipedia namespace - once other people had had their say about it.

If other people looked at this, and there was some general agreement with it, could it just be moved to the wikipedia namespace? Is there a formal procedure for moving a essay to wikipedia space/

What is a supervolunteer? Short version: because they do more than their share they feel an extra sense of entitlement, entitled to blow off some rules...

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 22:08, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I think that while the dangers are accurate, the advice for supervolunteers to do less is misplaced. I'm one of those supervolunteers, during my 10+ years here I came up with stuff like WP:RECOG, WP:AALERTS, WP:JCW, WP:CITEWATCH, and many many other things. I don't plan on doing any less anytime soon. I'm good at what I do, and while it would be great to have 432 others that could replace me, the reality is that we have very few supervolunteers, and if they left, chances are all the work they do would not get done, or get done much less efficiently. Would others have come up with these ideas? Maybe. Maybe not. But you won't find anyone arguing that Wikipedia is better without WP:AALERTS.

There is no shortage of work on Wikipedia. If the 3 people that are good at dealing with copyvio stuff become 2 people that are good at copyvio stuff, that won't suddenly create a boost of interest in copyvio stuff. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:13, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

The dangers, including burnout are real, but we might also remember that the graveyards are full of indispensable men. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:04, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

• Jim.henderson, clarification please, are you saying the essay is unnecessary because (1) burnout is the only problem you recognize with supervolunteers; so (2) supervolunteers, aren't a problem, because if they burnout, they'll leave, and new people will replace them.
• I see supervolunteers as a problem because burnout is not the problem that really concerns me. Supervolunteers, whose extraordinary efforts trigger them to feel extraordinary privilege, so they don't have to comply with all our policies, are very damaging to the project, in general. Geo Swan (talk) 01:35, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • What's the difference between your essay and Wikipedia:No vested contributors in that case? Or Wikipedia:You are not irreplaceable? Anomie⚔ 12:02, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

• Greetings Headbomb! Congratulations on your accomplishments! If you are not a supervolunteer who acts like your extraordinary efforts justify you taking extraordinary liberties - like not bothering to be civil - then keep on with your extraordinary efforts.
• Supervolunteers who have the opportunity may sometimes rationalize embezzling resources. Ordinary administrators wouldn't have this kind of opportunity. Essjay may have been a supervolunteer.
• Some of our supervolunteers feel so confident in their judgment they think they no longer have an obligation to comply with WP:BEFORE. I don't like it when they do this. Geo Swan (talk) 01:28, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
• It's been estimated that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles were written by 1 percent of editors. [1] Editors like Headbomb have been crucial to its success. But like Jim.henderson says, our graveyard is full of indispensable editors. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:36, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Headbomb, Jim.henderson and Hawkeye7 weighed in. Thanks.

    It must be my fault that the three of you understood my key point. It seems you all think I am concerned for the well-being of volunteers who do so much they exhaust themselves. That is not my point. My point is that some volunteers, who see themselves doing more than their share, end up really damaging the project, because they rationalize doing more than their share entitles them to stop complying with some of our rules.

    Can't you think of prolific contributors, who end up being bullying other contributors?

    FWIW, I too would be part of the 1 percent of contributors who adds new content.

    So, should I changed the title from "supervolunteers" to "extreme volunteers" or "toxic volunteers", or something like that? Geo Swan (talk) 06:18, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

    • Then I would massively disagree with that. People aren't toxic simply because they do a lot. There isn't a quota of participation after which your contributions become undesired. If someone wants to go balls to the wall and create one feature article per day, that is GREAT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:58, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
      • Clarification please Headbomb - have you really never noticed any regular contributors or administrators acting as if our normal policies and conventions on civility and collegiallity don't apply to them, because they have spent a long time carrying far more than their share of the load?

        Please take a minute to think about this? Never?

        Never?

        You are lucky then.

        No one is claiming here that every person who does more than their share starts acting like their extra efforts justify them acting as if the rules don't apply to them. But, trust me, if you really can't think of anyone whose sense of entitlement makes them an overall negative factor for the wikipedia, these individuals do exist. And, in my opinion, it would really be a good idea if we had an essay that helped people recognize the supervolunteers who push, bend, or massively breach our policies, out of a misplaced sense of entitlement.

      • Contributors can have essays that disagree with the opinions of other good faith contributors. The hatnote the {{essay}} template places explicitly warns readers that the essay may be the view of just a few contributors. If I were to create WP:Dangers of Supervolunteers you could create WP:Supervolunteers Welcome. However, another option would be to help me draft something we could both agree to. A start would be for you to see if we can figure out why you think I said merely doing a lot made people a toxic influence on the wikipedia. There is no way I would ever say that. I've started almost 3200 articles, so far, so I too am a contributor who does a lot. I said those who do a lot, and then somehow justify breaking our rules because doing a lot left them with a feeling of entitlement, can be a very toxic influence on the wikipedia. Geo Swan (talk) 17:52, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
    • @Geo Swan: As I asked above, if that's your intention then what is the difference between your essay and Wikipedia:No vested contributors or Wikipedia:You are not irreplaceable? Anomie⚔ 11:07, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
      • Sorry Anomie, I didn't see your question when I drafted the comment where I pinged those other guys. I started a long reply to you last night, but it got too late to save, without a more wide-awake review. The short version is: thanks for drawing those essays to my attention. I'd never read them. They don't really address my main concern. In particular: WP:You are not irreplaceable's intended readers seem to be those feeling stress from overwork, not those who have been the targets of supervolunteers who feel a counterpolicy sense of entitlement. Geo Swan (talk) 17:52, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
        • @Geo Swan: Your essay seems to suffer from both a lack of focus on your thesis (witness the number of people who seem to think you're talking about something else) and a lack of applicability to your audience. It seems to me that Wikipedia:Equality already exists for "targets of supervolunteers" as an audience. Anyway, while you're welcome to have your essay in your userspace, I see no place for it in projectspace when we already have those other essays that more directly address the problem you're trying to point at. Anomie⚔ 11:04, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
          • Anomie, thanks for pointing me at EQUALITY. I read it and, while it does assure targets of supervolunteers that they should be able to count on being treated fairly, honestly, civilly, I don't see how it is of any practical use to those targets.

            Neither Wikipedia:No vested contributors or Wikipedia:You are not irreplaceable has any advice for those targetted by a super-entitled supervolunteer either.

            You are an administrator, so you are protected from bullying from supervolunteers who feel empowered by a toxic sense of super-entitlment. Please bear in mind the difficulties of those who are not administrators. Geo Swan (talk) 20:13, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

            • @Geo Swan: Err, your essay doesn't give any advice for users targeted by "supervolunteers" either. It doesn't address them at all, despite your claim that they are your target audience. Anomie⚔ 13:05, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
              • Essays are often neither proscriptive or prescriptive, rather descriptive as in this case. -- GreenC 13:25, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
• @Geo Swan: I for one like the essay and the concept it introduces, it is memorable and imparts learned wisdom not merely resummarizing rules. Another related essay is WP:UNBLOCKABLES which arises because of Supervolunteerism. You may also be interested in some links on my user page, in particular the Iron Law of Oligarchy. -- GreenC 12:06, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
  • User:Hawkeye7, it happens that I was looking at the same source about "77 percent" ...and I have my doubts about it. I would like to get further clarification, but it appears to me that under their system, the very best content creator is User:ClueBot NG, because ClueBot reverts more page-blanking vandalism than anyone else. (That is, for that particular calculation, I think they're using those little + and - numbers to decide how much was contributed, rather than actually parsing who wrote which words on a page. They discuss a different formula in Appendix A.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

A reminder not to WP:BITE the newbies

@Justlettersandnumbers and RHaworth: I'm sure neither of you meant any harm, and please pardon me for using you as an example. It's not my intent to beat you up in public, but I'm going to take this opportunity to remind people to be nice to our newest editors. We recently had User:FNH200Team8 create an account and write a draft as part of a school project. The draft wasn't in line with our guidelines, and neither was their username. But, both of these were totally innocent mistakes. Instead of getting help and support, what they got was their draft speedied and their account blocked.

I've been seeing a lot of school projects happening here on wikipedia lately. This is A Good Thing. Far from being Eternal September, the quality of work is often exceptional. Even when it's not, it's almost always a huge step above the everyday deluge of spam we see. We really should be putting more effort into encouraging these school projects, which means going out of our way to show them how things work and navigate our byzantine collection of rules and policies. That doesn't mean we accept everything they do. Indeed, that would be a poor outcome for both the encyclopedia and for their education. But, more teaching and less biting would be nice. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:23, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

RoySmith, it would seem to me that the educator and students should have had more support before beginning their project, to understand how to edit in order to prevent that from happening. I don't think blaming people for doing what they were supposed to do is helpful. Rather, why don't we make sure that students on these projects know how to avoid mistakes like that before they make their first edit? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:00, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay, and now that I look at it, I have no idea who worked with them (or if anyone did), but someone needs to. All those userspace drafts need to be deleted under G5; they're using Wikipedia to host school projects rather than making improvements to articles. That is not acceptable. If students want to do projects here, that's fine, but those projects need to be reasonably oriented toward improving the encyclopedia, not writing stuff in userspace that we already have articles on. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:10, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

When you say "school" do you mean school, or college? If you have examples of articles where the quality of work is "exceptional", please share. People may be interested in a discussion on this at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#A_lot_of_student_editing_coming_our_way. Johnbod (talk) 16:33, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I wish I had a better way to find these, but Architecture of Saudi Arabia, Architecture of Cuba, and Lung cancer in Australia are all examples that I've accepted. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:50, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

The last two aren't bad, I'll grant, especially Architecture of Cuba, which we seem to have had nothing on before. The Saudi one isn't great. Johnbod (talk) 20:12, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Johnbod, the question isn't whether their very first edits are "great". Almost nobody's first edits are great. The ultimate question is whether they're good enough to be better than nothing, and the immediate question is whether they're better than is typical for that experience level. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I was asking for examples for "the quality of work is often exceptional" per RoySmith above, and commenting in that context. Johnbod (talk) 12:24, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Fair enough, RoySmith. I was aware that was a school team, so took a small amount of extra time to explain exactly what what the problem was with the username. How would you have handled it with less 'bite'?

Judging from this page, the course supervisor is Wmengle. I agree with Seraphimblade – in this case as in all others, the students should have been made properly aware of the basic rules of editing here before they started. That would be an educative experience, but unfortunately it very often doesn't happen. Perhaps we should have some sort of threshold of experience for course supervisors, who often themselves do not have a good understanding of our basic policies and practices – 1000 mainspace edits, say? Are education projects still supposed to receive prior approval, as I believe they once were? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:12, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

The thing that originally got me off on this was I wanted to leave a note at User talk:FNH200Team8/sandbox explaining to them how to do things better. But, then I noticed the user was blocked, so they'd probably never see my message. Maybe instead of immediately blocking, put a note on their talk page explaining what the issue is? I also noticed that the sandbox was WP:CSD'd with, "Subject already exist in Mainspace". That's not a valid CSD. I agree that this student didn't get good guidance and/or supervision. But, that's something to bring up with the person running the class. Blocks are designed to prevent ongoing damage. I don't see what damage there would have been if instead of an immediate block, they got a talk page warning and a window of time in which to pick a new username without getting stomped on. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:27, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Seraphimblade: I'm not sure which pages you're referring to by All those userspace drafts need to be deleted under G5. Can you be more specific? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:12, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

  RoySmith, I'm talking about the ones at the school project you cited. Those all duplicate content in the encyclopedia, and don't appear to be any kind of attempt to improve it, but rather to do one's homework in userspace. Many of them have stuff added that would be inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:16, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

  (Also, I apologize, I meant U5, not G5. To my knowledge, none of them are banned editors.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:18, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

  You mean like User:Jcookie98/sandbox? That looks like a perfectly reasonable way to start collecting thoughts for future improvements to an existing article. Kind of like what I do myself. How is that U5 material? You say that, Many of them have stuff added that would be inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. Well, that's true of the vast amount of crap that people write, especially in draft space.

  I'm guessing you're more concerned about things like User:Rose08080/sandbox which do indeed duplicate existing articles. But, people work on new ideas for existing articles in their user sandboxes all the time. Most of them probably go nowhere. Some evolve into new improved versions that can replace the one in mainspace to the benefit of the encyclopedia. I'm actually impressed with the process here. I'm always telling people to start by researching sources and then write the article from the sources. And that looks like exactly what this author did. If they got that part right but messed up on every other one of our processes, I'd say they're off to a good start.

  I just don't see the problem, and can't see how this comes anywhere near to a Blatant misuse of Wikipedia as a web host. If you want to push the boundaries of blocking policy and WP:CSD, There's tons of WP:UPE, WP:PROMO, WP:POV and otherwise WP:NOTHERE in draft space that would benefit from some over-eager blocking and deleting. A bunch of students stumbling around trying to learn how to write encyclopedia articles is the wrong place to be swinging the banhammer wildly. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:53, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Lapablo: with respect to the above thread, I'm curious about this edit of yours. You tagged the draft for speedy deletion with the explanation, "Subject already exist in Mainspace". That's not a WP:CSD. In cases like that, just reject the draft. -- RoySmith (talk) 11:31, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

RoySmith I completely understand however the draft was due for a G13 (Abandoned draft) and also existed in Mainspace. I actually made an edit adding in edit summary "G13 Eligible" but it wasn't saved. It won't happen again. Lapablo (talk) 11:38, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

How could it have been due for G13? It was first created last week and actively worked on every day since then. -- RoySmith (talk) 11:44, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Pardon me, two of the articles i went through yesterday had the same issue and mistakened one for another. However i will be more careful in placing tags on pages especially while reviewing pages created by newbies. Best regards, Lapablo (talk) 13:59, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Like I said at the top, I'm sure nobody involved here meant any harm, but the confluence of events added up to a sub-optimum experience for our student editors. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Introducing advanced mode for editors on mobile!

Screenshots showing the new, advanced features on the Wikipedia mobile site

Over the past year, the Readers web team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been working on an advanced mode for editors on mobile.

This mode adds more editing and contribution functionality to the mobile website. Prior to these changes, this functionality was only available on the desktop site.

This new mode is now available on your wiki. To try it, go to your Mobile Options page and select “Advanced mode” (picture).

Advanced mode contains the following features:

• Article and discussion page links at the top of the page.
• History button at the top of the page.
• Full-details in History and Recent Changes pages.
• Access to all Special pages from mobile.
• A new Main Menu with useful links to Recent changes, Community portal, and more.
• A new Page Menu when viewing an article, which contains links to the subject in Wikidata, PDF download, Page information, and more.
• A new User Menu with links to the user’s User page, User talk page, Contributions, and Sandbox.

We encourage you to try out Advanced mode and give feedback on the project page.

Yours, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Yay! This is a HUGE improvement! Thank you so much! There are some things that could be tweaked still, but it's a TON better. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 18:23, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks ONUnicorn. If you do come across anything you'd like to leave feedback on, please do. The team is watching the talk page and listening. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

I'll try to pay attention over the next little while to when and why I'm switching from mobile view to desktop view on my mobile device and leave notes on the talk page about what is making me switch to desktop view. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:55, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

That's great! @CKoerner (WMF): (or others) is there a way to add custom options to the ⋮ menu? Perhaps via CSS/skins? Will definitively give feedback. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:11, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikimania Live Stream

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to leave a heads up that there will be banners running for a few hours tomorrow relating to a livestream of the Wikimania Keynote. Apologies for the short notice. This banner will be low impact in design, showing every other impression and limited to 1 page view globally. This will be at a high rate in Nordic countries but limited to 5 impressions. This will be for an hour or so in the morning and the same in the afternoon. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 02:16, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

For those who missed it, the opening session and keynote can be watched on YouTube or on Commons (skip to about 3:10). Links to other sessions can be found at wikimania:2019:Video. Thanks to all the people involved in doing such a great job streaming and recording! the wub "?!" 22:00, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Saved Articles (Reading/Editing List) For Desktop

Think I know the answer to this question, but am going to ask anyway. Is there a way to save articles for later editing and/or reading on the site's desktop version like there is for the mobile app? ANDROMITUS (talk) 18:58, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I believe this is phab:T194441. Lots of work to go there it looks like. --Izno (talk) 03:35, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Have you tried using your browser's bookmark feature? Some browsers can even sync these across devices. Anomie⚔ 12:36, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Izno (talk) Oh my god, that looks beautiful. I really hope they make it work. Anomie ⚔ That was my intended compromise if there wasn't a function within the site. Was clinging to a hope that I had just missed it. ANDROMITUS (talk) 17:15, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Search optimization

The Wikipedia search function doesn't seem to be quite optimal. When I search on this pattern:

Catalogue of two dimentional spectral types for the HD stars 2

I get no results. However, if I search on this:

Catalogue of two dimensional spectral types for the HD stars 2

I get 539 matches. The only difference is one letter: the 't' in dimentional. Praemonitus (talk) 20:47, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

That is because the occurrences are mostly 'two-dimensional', which is two characters difference from why you typed in the first query. I believe it is setup to only handle one character of difference by default. If you add a tilde ~ at the end of dimentional, increasing the fuzzy factor by 1 more character (see help), then it can find the results. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Fundraising in India

Hey all,

As I announced on the wikimediaindia-l back in June, we are planning to return to fundraising in India in 2020. Next week, in addition to our weekly Wednesday tests, we will be running some small and brief pre-tests in India to test out our payment infrastructure and to gauge response to our localized messaging.

• If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket.
• If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donate@wikimedia.org.
• If you have specific ideas to share, please feel invited to add them to our fundraising ideas page.

For our India campaign, we have gathered feedback from CIS, focus groups, and community members but you can also send feedback regarding the fundraising campaign directly on my talk page. Your feedback might not make it into the banners for the 2 hour tests, but we will definitely factor it into our campaign for next year. Many Thanks Seddon (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Alumni/alumna

I found a sentence I paraphrase as "She is a distinguished alumni from university XYZ." But alumni is plural. Is this an attempt to avoid using alumna? Should it be changed to singular? Thank you. RJFJR (talk) 14:59, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Possibly just someone who didn't know the proper singular. If someone wants to avoid the female-specific "alumna", they could use "alumnus". Anomie⚔ 18:59, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Adding "Yearbook" to school infobox template

Hi! I'm requesting that the field "Yearbook" be permanently added to the school specific infobox template! Many have legacy names and I'd like to be able to update without creating a new and unlinked field each time. DogLuna (talk) 20:15, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

6,000,000 articles celebration

I remember 2,000,000 articles celebration at a covention. Is a 6,000,000 articles celebration planned?--Dthomsen8 (talk) 21:26, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Transparency

Hello.
I made a page in the namespace 8 of en.Wikipedia in a regular fashion for a pretty routine task. A powerful functionary deleted it citing WP:CSD#G3. What can I do to undelete the page—importantly, including both history and Special:Log/delete record—to have a publicly viewable piece? Preferably the page should be immediately userfied. May a (very bold) volunteer having the sysop flag do the job expecting some reward from the transparency knights? I was largely out-of-touch with the site for years and may miss important caveats for cases where bosses have some stake. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:15, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

A Wikipedia app banner experiment is coming up

Hello all! On 29 and 30 August, the Wikimedia Foundation will be conducting two experimental and short one-hour banners. These will be shown only to non-logged-in readers on the mobile web version of Wikipedia, and will help us determine which readers on mobile devices would prefer the Wikipedia app as an extension of their experience on the site. I'll be monitoring this page for any questions and/or feedback. Thank you! Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 26 August 2019 (UTC)