User talk:Clovermoss

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Software development challenges

 Adding courtesy link to previous discussion User talk:Levivich/Archive 3 § Growth team Clovermoss (talk) 20:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
I'm following up on your comment here, because it's not directly related to your main point (I haven't looked into the details of spending, but I'm certain software development can be done more effectively, because that's almost universally true). I can't comment much on the WMF's software project management, since I haven't followed it (though from what little I've seen regarding its interactions with the community, I do feel it can be improved). There are a lot of challenges to it, though. The MediaWiki developers strive to support a broad set of devices with different levels of technology and Internet connectivity, and users with different levels of knowledge and limitations. Every user has their own set of priorities on what they would like developed, and it's hard to figure out what features would satisfy the most people. Free software lacks the "will users pay for this?" filter to drive feature development. This isn't all bad, but it means there's less urgency to figure out future plans and to complete features.

Taking talk pages as an example: they use the same wikitext markup as in articles (as I understand it, discussion used to just be held at the bottom of articles). Some editors are adamant about preserving this, so there's no difference in editing an article or a discussion. Many editors were understandably displeased by the WMF's attempt to develop an infinite-scrolling, threaded discussion forum interface, and are now very wary of changes. The talk pages project is trying to navigate a middle ground where incremental changes are layered on top of the wikitext conventions.

When seeking input on MediaWiki on Wikipedia, you get feedback from a self-selected set of interested users, and there's no guarantee you'll get be able to get prolonged engagement from them to provide ongoing feedback. You can use telemetry (monitoring of user actions) to gain insight, and from things that WhatamIdoing have posted, it seems the development team looks at feature usage and editing patterns. You can use focus groups, but with a community as expansive and anonymous as Wikipedia's, it's hard to get a representative sample. There's also a significant portion of the community who think the WMF should provide the bare essential functions, and let the community develop everything else. Recall Levivich expressed his desire for a third-party Wikipedia editor to be developed (though as a competitor to the in-house provided editing interfaces). Numerous other editors think all visual editor development is a waste of time.

In summary, I agree the WMF should try to do more to overcome the challenges it faces, but I acknowledge that the challenges are daunting and limit what can be done. isaacl (talk) 04:00, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I see you've put a lot of thought into this. I wouldn't say I disagree with the heart of what you're saying. There's a lot of nuance. I think one of the reasons everything is complicated is because everyone involved is super passionate and this can lead to kind of seeing the trees instead of the forest, y'know? Or not recognizing that certain plans are flawed until there's a larger outreach. I do think better communication and awareness between the WMF/the community at large is a good idea, as I previously stated in the growth team discussion at Levivich's talk page. There's also optimism bias. I'm a fairly optimistic person myself, but it's good to be realistic about certain things. Change doesn't come from nowhere, but thinking you're the only person capable of changing something and that you'll suceed where everyone else has failed often doesn't lead to a good outcome, either. Because there's been some bad precedents (or at least what has been percieved that way), there's a lack of trust, too. Ideally, the overlap between the WMF/broader community shouldn't be comparable to a venn diagram. Of course you're more likely to hear from the people who are upset with certain changes, but again, I don't think ignoring something that's reiterated by mutiple people is the best solution to that. Again, you obviously can't please everyone, but people in general shouldn't feel like their concerns are being ignored.

There's also that the very nature of requesting feedback from people you're more likely to get people who are super involved/passionate and that by itself is a form of survivorship bias. But at the same time, these super involved people care. Sometimes these concerns can be dismissed (and this happens a lot in real life too) as "haters being haters". But I think it's important that there are people who aren't afraid to express how they feel. I'm someone who has a hard time standing up for myself in general, but I feel like that's more understandable because of certain adverse life experiences. But just because someone's rude doesn't mean that there isn't any point to what they're saying. And just because someone's nice doesn't mean that they don't have misgivings. That's not to say I don't think being civil is important, because it truly is, but sometimes being straight to the point and trying to call things out is nessecary and there's not really an ideal way to do that without emphasizing that the way things have turned out have left you frustrated. Again, not saying that this makes it okay to attack people, but again, I'm saying that there's nuance to everything involved. I heard a radio ad once that was along the lines of "there's homeless teens... here's some statistics about how much their life sucks" and then it cuts to someone swearing. The point the ad made was that people were more likely to be upset about the swearing than they were about the homeless teens. Civility shouldn't be just a pretense, but it also shouldn't be something that is somehow more important than vital issues. Not that whatever goes on at Wikipedia is on quite the same level as life-changing in most circumstances, but there are a lot of potential real-world ramifications of what goes on around here. The easiest example of this is with BLPs, but there's more than that to be concerned about when it comes to the impact Wikipedia can have to the world at-large.

In general, I don't think people that criticize the WMF are saying these things because they want the WMF to fail, but such input may be ignored regardless. I think it's reasonable that people get frustrated with that and that that leaves a lasting impact. That people keep talking about whatever happened for ages. In general, trust is something that's hard to regain. Especially if someone feels like it's been broken over and over again.

You also don't hear from all the people who quit in the process. Or get to listen to their perspectives. At least not typically. I read something once a few years ago that stuck with me. It was a comment along the lines of "we need more people who don't make a career of editing the encyclopedia." It's one of the reasons I thought that my idea of an expanded #1Lib1Ref but #1Person1Ref would be useful. The potential impact of "true" crowdsourcing has a massive scale. Trying to basically compete for the attention of active editors for growing backlogs can only do so much. We need more editor retention, but we also need more editors in general. But getting more people involved with a change like learning how to cite a reference, which is a small but achievable goal to teach people, could get people more interested in Wikipedia editing in general. Obviously there's going to be a ton of people who never do anything of the sort again and move on with their lives, but I think to a certain extent Wikipedia editors are self-selecting. A little taste of what editing looks like could prompt something more, even if it's just a fraction of a fraction of an initative like that. But isn't that how things already are? A fraction of a fraction of people who create an account make an edit and then continue to edit, let alone be what most people would consider an active member of the community.

By the way, I think this is the longest talk page comment I've ever written. I knew my desire to write walls of text would blossom one day! Joking aside, I'm quite talkative in real life, so this isn't really all that surprising to me. I've got to say that reading this back to myself it seems like I've made some really good points but it's 3 am so maybe not all of my ideas are formed out the way I would want to be. I'm going to go sleep and maybe I'll have something else to say later on once I've had some time to reflect and not be exhausted. Clovermoss (talk) 07:21, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

So after going back to sleep, I wanted to add a few things. First is that I agree with basically everything you were saying but I understand aspects of other people's viewpoints. I think it's important to have conversations where people disagree with each other, because reasonable people can disagree. Ideally, everyone is civil and no one attacks each other. But there are ways to have good intentions and nice, but also cruel. This is more of a general life thing. A lot of what I was saying has implications beyond just the way the WMF/the local community interact with each other. I think more effective communication and more participation from the broader community is an important thing.

I think the main reason nuance is so important to me is because I grew up in what I would call a restrictive religion. There's a million things you can't do if you're in "The Truth". Reading the article about Jehovah's Witnesses would likely be useful background for what I mean. Anyways, when I was about 5 or so, one of my parents was disfellowshipped. Literally no one in my family who was a part of the religion has talked to them since. Not their twin, not their mother, etc. People would act as they were dead, to be honest. Whenever people would talk about them, it was in the past tense. They "used to be such a good person", "it's such a shame they're no longer with us", etc. But it was all from a place of good intentions. By shunning them, they were showing that they truly loved God and wanted my parent to return to the Truth. I grew up with people warning me to not turn out like them and that they were being influenced by Satan. All because they had a different idea of what it meant to be Christian. But that was apostasy and apostates were "mentally diseased"... there was a few times I had literal panic attacks that hospitalized me as a child at assemblies when they'd talk about apostates because I knew my parent was one of them.

It's hard to explain where I'm coming from if I don't explain some of the things that made me the person I am today. So sometimes I focus on things that people take for granted, I guess? Like seeing the nuance in everything is a very important thing to me. Clovermoss (talk) 11:36, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@Levivich: Pinging you in case what I wrote above changes your position about what was said at COIN/Lamb v Benoit. It's more complicated than just being a former member of a religion. Clovermoss (talk) 14:31, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

<not-your-dad mode> You know these message are timestamped, and four hours of sleep is not enough sleep. I hope you turn in at a reasonable hour tonight! :-D </not-your-dad mode>

It's still not a COI, unless those apostates are paying you for your apostasy. :-) A bias, sure, but we can edit articles we're biased against and still edit them neutrally. Look, I edited Hitler Has Only Got One Ball because I hate Hitler and want this notable example of mockery of Hitler to be known to the whole world. My bias against Hitler is what motivated my volunteerism in this case; still, the article is neutral. Same for George Floyd and most everything I work on. Or for example Elgin Baylor -- I think he was an underappreciated basketball player, that's why I worked on his article. I'm biased in his favor; doesn't mean I can't edit neutrally.

You're perfectly aware of your own bias on this topic, which is 90% of what's needed to edit neutrally. The other 10% is a good night's sleep :-) Levivich^[block] 16:40, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

@Levivich: I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote the original comment, so I technically got more than 4 hours of sleep. In general I do get a decent amount of sleep but sometimes I work day shifts or night shifts and that can kind of throw everything out of whack. Also you're nothing like my Dad, which imo is a very good thing.

And no, no one's paying me for my apostasy, lol. I think it's kind of hard when the definition of apostasy within the religion is literally openly disagreeing with anything. Think celebrating a birthday is fine? Boom, you're an apostate. You're literally being influenced by Satan!

While we're on the subject on Hitler, I also hate him. I think part of the reason I had a hard time renoucing my faith was because of this. I heard a ton of stories about that growing up and also about relatives that weren't looked upon kindly here in Canada, either. The "choice" offered to JWs there definitely seems like a deal with the devil, but it's possible to disagree with the JWs and the Nazis. Again, nothing has to be an either/or thing. Nuance is important! Clovermoss (talk) 17:11, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, very possible to disagree. I have a friend who I've known for 20+ years and who recently, in his 40s, left the church, when he learned of the details of this. It was interesting because although I respect his freedom of religion, I always thought his was kind of cult-ish, and after 20 years when he finally left and said "they're a cult!" I had this big moment of, "I've been telling you that for 20 years!" Unfortunately in his case, leaving the church also meant leaving his wife, and dealing with excommunication makes noncustodial parenting challenging.

I am so with Karl Marx about organized religion.

I'm still editing Bible though. :-D Levivich^[block] 17:22, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Eh. Not quite sure I agree with that. Even though I'm an athiest, I think religon can be a force for good, even if it can also have a negative impact. This is a huge part in where I think "reasonable people can disagree" applies. In regards to whole discussion going on at Bible, yeah I agree that people can have such vastly different interpretations and use it to justify practically anything. I agree that there should be more content about how the church basically ruled society for like 1,000 years. Anyways, the bible has inspired people like the Westboro Baptist Church and the Quakers, with such radically different viewpoints. Religon has a potential to harm, but it also has the potential for good. It's complicated. I'd prefer people to just act ethically, regardless of what a book says. My position on this is similar to Hemant Mehta's, but not exactly the same. I will say as someone who had a parent who was disfellowshipped, it definitely was difficult to experience family members shunning them because of what they percieved as love. But it's very possible to disagree, even if I respect someone's choice to believe those things. I'm hesistant to label Jehovah's Witnesses a cult... but I know that some people consider them to be. I can understand that perspective, honestly. I would say that in my opinion, it's a red flag when "how long have you been in The Truth?" is a normal question to ask someone. But where do you draw the line between what's a cult and what isn't? I do care about religious freedom because I think it's an important human right, even though I'm not religious. I'm just super cautious in regards to everything because I don't want to go too much the other way, y'know?

That said, I don't want to drift too much into what Wikipedia is not here. You can always email me if you want to hear more about my philosophical views. Clovermoss (talk) 03:17, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

There are at least a couple of categories that are tricky to address. There's the large silent majority of current users who just edit and don't participate in project space, and there's the population of readers who may become future editors. The WMF has spent effort on the second category in an attempt to expand the editing population, which has caused some experienced editors to decry the lack of attention to base MediaWiki capabilities or in-house support for tools. Organizations can of course work on multiple projects, but to do it sustainably, you have to build up your teams (including project management and long-term support), meaning you have to plan for long-term funding. For a non-profit making money from donations and grants, this means figuring out how to allocate spending between operations now and investing in a long-term trust to generate an ongoing revenue stream. This is all doable (though with overhead expenses), and I'm sure there's plenty to criticize about how the WMF is falling short in its planning. I'm bringing it up just because often users focus on what they think the coding effort will take, and don't consider the total cost of managing a product. isaacl (talk) 13:47, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, obviously anything that's at the scale of the WMF has its own unique set of problems. There's also the thing where people focus on what went wrong and not the good. I believe it's called negativity bias? I do think people are trying their best and that their intentions are in the right place. I appreciate you bringing all of this up. Clovermoss (talk) 19:04, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

I do think it's important to address things like WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU though. Clovermoss (talk) 00:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Congratulations on joining the Wall of Reading Text Squad (WORTS)!

Editor recruitment and retention is the whole game. Pardon me for shilling a self-help book but I'm reminded of the thesis of The One Thing: when you have a list of tasks you don't know how to prioritize, ask yourself, "What's the one thing that I can do that will make everything else on this list easier or unnecessary?" For Wikipedia, The One Thing is recruitment. More editors is the one thing we can do that will make all other editing problems easier to deal with or unnecessary: from uncited articles to vandalism patrolling to self-governance to editing user interface... more editors will help all of it, more than almost anything else we can do.

IMO there are two things that are the primary obstacle of editor recruitment: editing atmosphere (incivility), and poor user interface (software). To its credit, the WMF, via UCOC and product development efforts like the Growth Team, is working on both those obstacles, and I think they're doing the best they know how.

One of the problems with the software development -- and it's an example of one of a big general problem with Wikipedia -- is that they don't go about it the way everyone else goes about it; they don't learn the lessons of industry experience. For example, as mentioned above, there is this problem with feedback. The editors who give feedback to the WMF are, indeed, a self-selecting group of interested volunteers, and therefore not representative of the broader community. Also, they don't necessarily "stick" to give full feedback across iterations; instead, you get much more "drive-by hot-takes". It's really hard to get a representative sample of volunteers to give you details feedback across iterations.

Why is it so hard? Because we're not paying them! Duh! In the real world, focus group participants are paid. If you want someone to take hours out of their day to try your product and tell you what they think about it, you need to pay them for their time. The people making the product and conducting the focus group are being paid for their time... why not the participants? Nobody is going to want to spend hours to participate in a focus group for free--and if they do, they're probably a super-user of the product whose opinions won't be representative of the broader user base anyway. The WMF has $400 million dollars, they can afford it; they need to grab a truly random (not self-selecting) sample of active editors and offer them a stipend to participate in a focus group or an extended beta test. That's the only way you'll get meaningful feedback from a truly representative sample. That's why everyone else pays focus group participants and beta testers. (And I don't mean open betas, which is something else.) I know if I have an hour to spend on Wikipedia, I'll spend it on an article or in a discussion with other volunteers before I'll spend it beta testing. Levivich^[block] 16:36, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I mentioned focus groups (which I implicitly considered to be paid). It would be tricky getting a representative sample from a community where a large proportion wants to remain anonymous, and many might balk at having to place a paid editor notice on their user page. But all the same it would be worth collecting this info while remaining aware of its limitations. I also think the WMF should partner with universities and take advantage of all that unpaid grad student labour. There is a lot of interesting research into the interactions of online communities or user interface design that could be done which would benefit all parties. isaacl (talk) 20:37, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Regarding editing environment, to me what is usually considered as civility is a symptom, and not the root issue. English Wikipedia's decision-making traditions don't scale up well, and there's often an advantage to being unco-operative. So that's what we get. Some editors recognize this, but many are content with trying to manage the symptoms in order to keep the advantages they see with the present ways of working. That might be an acceptable trade-off for some, but as you note, it's a limiting factor for growth. isaacl (talk) 21:11, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Huh. The paid editing thing has interesting implications and is not something that I had even considered. Rereading Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure, I wonder how that would work. I guess people would say their employer is the WMF? Or maybe it'd be more specific like WMF Focus Group? With a link to what exactly that is? My understanding that the main reason paid editing is so tabboo is because you inherently have a COI. But my understanding is that people view stuff like Wikimedian in Residence more positively, but that's something that might not even be directly comparable. Presumably because people are being paid for their expertise and community outreach in a way. Random selection of who gets to be a focus group would be more fair, but I can also see a lot of people being kind of upset about it. Why should they have access to an opportunity that I don't kind of thing? You'd also have the same issues with like sockpuppets and stuff. I'm sure people who think trolling Wikipedia is fun would get a kick out of being randomly selected for something like that and would have no issues trying to make the odds more in their favour, y'know? In regards to the paid contributor thing, since undisclosed paid editing is against the WMF's Terms of Use therotically they could just change that to provide some sort of exception for the focus group. I can kind of see why you would do that, as it could definitely change how an editor's experience is like if other people know they're being paid as a focus group participant. But at the same time, doing anything in a secretive way could seriously backfire and cause controversy. I do kind of get Levivich's earlier point about the people who volunteer their time to provide feedback as it currently is to result in a lot of "drive-by hottakes". Anything an organization does that invites criticism and wants to do the right thing would have to deal with that to some extent, but if you're getting is negative feedback from a small portion of editors who aren't really giving you the feedback you're looking for, I can see like how that can just result in ignoring crucial things (like the whole "talk pages don't matter because most new editors don't use them" example).

In regards to editing environment, I was wondering if we were even on the same track here? I tend to avoid conflict so maybe you're seeing something I don't, but in my experience people who are incivil tend to have anything else that might be relevant disregarded. Because it's not about whose "right". Being incivil becomes the focus of the conversation, which is why civil POV-pushers are something that people care about preventing. Also in general, everyone hates someone whose a jerk. It's just better in every concievable way to be a kind person. So the idea of that somehow there's an advantage to being uncooperative intrigues me. I just don't get how that could be the case, but maybe it's just because the thought has never occurred to me. It's like the antithesis of who I am as a person. Clovermoss (talk) 16:00, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

To clarify, the main reason I care about incivility is that's it's off-putting in a "it adds up" way. Also because it just isn't a nice way to treat your fellow human beings. It leads to people feeling like their contributions aren't valued and what's even the point of contributing to Wikipedia if you can never do anything right? At least that's sort of the impression I've got by observing what new editors who become frustrated and have had a few unpleasant experiences is like. It makes sense, why would they, y'know? It's why it's important to do more than just not "bite" the newbies. But at the same time, maybe that's the advantage to being uncooperative, I guess? I don't know. It just seems like a loss to everyone involved. But if someone really cares about something in particular, in a twisted way I can kind of see that being an advantage? As in, they won because there's no one left to disagree with them? But that's just... horrifying. I'd like to think most people who edit here don't think that way. Clovermoss (talk) 16:17, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

I've considered writing an essay "Please don't be obnoxious, even if there's no rule against it," but it would be unlikely to reach those who could benefit from the advice (at least not in an effective way). Instad, I wrote a few sentences for a possible essay called "On kindness" with the thesis statement, "If you're planning to be part of the Wikipedia community, exhibiting kindness towards others has better long-term benefits than un-collaborative behaviours." The problem is that the long term... might be very long. The key issue is that most editors aren't interested in conflict—like you say, you avoid it. If someone is being unpleasant, this is just a web site, so the natural tendency is to go somewhere else. Decisions are made by a self-selected sampling of the community that happen to show up in the right place at the right time. So there's incentive for escalating aggression in order to drive others away, or to induce them to do something overly aggressive, and thus have an editing restriction imposed. The "consensus can change" principle means editors can keep doing this as long as they have patience for it. The good will of collaborative editors gets taken advantage of, time and time again. isaacl (talk) 20:48, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think that the problem is that inherently, the people who are 100% convinced in their position on anything are going to be the people who are the most willing to do whatever it takes for that to happen. I know I used to be very good at that when I was a JW because I literally felt like nothing could stop me, not even Satan. And Satan controlled this system of things, so... My point is that having doubts about anything makes it harder to be that adament about something. Because you're trying to think and consider other perspectives, which is a good thing. It's why stuff like gish galloping is effective. It takes time to counteract things and it's exhausting to do that point by point. What's the point of doing so if you're not even a politician or convinced that you're somehow saving people from imminent destruction? I don't want to make comparisons to my religious upbringing too much, but sometimes it feels relevant, and as I said, it is part of what made me the person I am today. That said, this isn't really directly comparable. I hate generalizing and care about nuance. It's a comparison, but it isn't really quite the same. It's just hard to describe how to feels to be 100% certain about something and I'm not sure anyone here really advocates for things that way. I guess my point is that it can be like that, though not quite like that, sometimes? Maybe? I don't know.

Anyways, strong insistence can come from a place with good intentions but it's really off-putting to whoever has a different position but isn't willing to argue about it indefinitely because they just don't care about it that much y'know? People have lives and typically care about things beyond Wikipedia. So you're inherently going to end up with a bunch of decisions where people who care enough to keep the argument going eventually win. I can see this resulting in whoever participates casually but has an opinion basically being ignored in most circumstances. I agree that kindness is the best long-term. And also, just in general. But I also think the premise of some editor retention stuff is also kind of unrealistic? Very few people are going to care about Wikipedia enough to make 100+ edits a month for several years of their lives. It's a lot to ask of someone, even if there's the rare person who thinks it's fun and does it for whatever reason. We really do need more people who do contribute casually. I don't remember the exact calculations of what I did at the village pump discussion about my out-of-the-box idea, but I vaguely remember something along the lines of if 0.1% of readers added a citation to an unsourced statement, we'd basically be rid of the huge overwhelming backlog in two days. But if I wanted to do that entirely by myself, I'd have to fix 10 every day for 109 years. Clovermoss (talk) 00:08, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure by "editor retention stuff" if you are referring to how it's generally discussed on, say, the editor retention WikiProject talk page, or metrics from the WMF. I think, though, that no one thinks editors should be roped into contributing for longer than they want to. The amount of content can be increased through increasing the top line and the bottom line: recruit more editors, and make the collaborative process sufficiently attractive so editors remain interested in contributing. There are, though, limits: not everyone is well-suited for writing or evaluating encyclopedia articles for a general audience with a neutral point of view. And writing in a group is just hard—in the real world, generally the work gets broken down into separate parts that are delegated to individuals and then reviewed together after. Trying to work through issues through talk page discussions is extremely challenging where not everyone may be available at the same time, individual editors can, even in good faith, swamp discussion, and often editors lack patience to let everyone have their say and work towards agreement. isaacl (talk) 22:08, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I was talking about it more in a general way, I know that the editor retention WikiProject talk page tends to more realistic. But I've kind of got the impression that people care more about what ~4,500 people making 100+ edits a month are doing and not the 36,000 people who make more than 5. [1] The latter aren't really considered as "active editors" and 100+ edits seems to be the threshold where people kind of care about your opinion. But also tenure? My general point is that less than 5,000 people being involved in what makes Wikipedia function as a website that literally millions of people read isn't that sustainable and I kind of get why people are concerned about that. But at the same time, asking people to devote even more time (potentially even years of their lives) to Wikipedia isn't always the best option? People have other things to do in their lives and very few people are going to be interested in making this website their main hobby. According to this [2] I've literally spent more than 700 hours here and I still don't quite yet understand everything that goes on. Smart Serve, the local alcohol serving certification in my jurisidiction, can be completed in about 4.

My overall attitude hasn't changed much since I started editing and I've always looked before I leapt but I feel like people take me more seriously now simply because I've been around awhile. I was also referring to the general rhetoric of "the sky is falling, we're losing our active editors"... which, to some result, is true (but metrics like Wikipedia:Time Between Edits seem to suggest that the situation may not be as bad as it appears to be). Backlog drives tend to be almost a bandage on overall issues, I guess? Ideally they wouldn't get to the point where there are massive backlogs because there'd be enough people working on them to make that not an issue. This can also lead to people doing so much that they become burned out. Wikipedia by its very nature is going to lead to people focusing on whatever their specific interests are by its very nature as y'know, a place where people volunteer their time. Personally, I deal with enough conflict in my real life job. People don't always treat young people working minimum wage jobs that well. A lot of the time I don't feel the need to go much beyond my own personal interests, although occassionally I do. Part of that is the fear I'm going to miss some crucial detail or mess things up because I'm 19 and the older I get, the more I realize I just don't know about the world. Wikipedia has a lot of potential real-world implications, too.

I think that's part of the reason there's always been an issue with NPP/copyright violations/AfD or whatever being backlogged is because people are way less likely to find that a valuable use of their free time. We shouldn't expect people to have to. I really doubt I'm the first person to point this out. People talk about how we need to reduce x or y backlog, and yes, that is something that should be done, but at the same time I agree with you and Levivich is that the answer to that is more editors. More editors basically solves all of these issues to some extent, so that should be the priority. But Wikipedia editing in general has a high barrier to entry. I'm a fast reader and I know how to use the "find" feature of my browser, but most people are not interested in reading stuff like the Manual of Style for fun. Let alone the absurdly long Village Pump/RfC discussions that go on. I think Joe Roe made an interesting point in the growth team discussion about how stuff like VisualEditor can help people focus more on content instead of trying to mess around with formatting. In the grand scheme of things, very few readers care about things like portals, categories, short descriptions, etc. Not that those contributions aren't valuable, because they are, but it's not what the average person imagines when they think about what Wikipedia is all about. Ideally people shouldn't have to spend time being confused about how our weird markup language works before writing about whatever obscure topic they're passionate about. Clovermoss (talk) 23:19, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

My guess is that editors who make small numbers of edits annually are likely making typographical and grammatical fixes, and introducing small fact updates or corrections. (You see something wrong or perhaps missing, and you fix it.) This is indeed highly valuable in the aggregate, because it forms the long tail in the distribution of editors. Other important tasks, like new page patrolling and copyright investigations, are more likely to be performed by more vested editors, and so they'll naturally have higher edit counts. Attention should be paid to both groups, particularly since the first group is a potential source of editors for the second.

Although there is a lot of written guidance available, if a potential new editor understands what it means to write an encyclopedia article and how all info should be traceable to sources, they don't really need to read any of it ahead of time. When a writing style question crops up, they just need to know how to look up an answer. (Knowing about WikiProjects would in theory help them find other editors to collaborate with, though sadly many WikiProject talk pages no longer get a lot of responses.) It's why I think the success rate at keeping an editor around for some period of time can be improved if we try to recruit from communities that do know what it means to write an unbiased and sourced record of history. isaacl (talk) 00:55, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

You stated what I was trying to explain a lot better than I could. People are capable of teaching themselves what Wikipedia is about but a lot of this information isn't easy to navigate. If you figure out how to do that, you have a good foundation. But there's a million little things that can kind of get in your way at the same time? If you don't edit somewhere more controversial, it's like your edits go into a void unless you actively seek input from others (which is what I did). If you don't do anything problematic you could basically go unnoticed for years if you fix a typo here and there occasionally, even if you may be interested in contributing more if you knew how. I had a similar experience with TVtropes, actually, now that I'm thinking of it. I was able to fix typos because that's something that was easy enough to fix but I never really did much beyond that because I couldn't figure out how CamelCase and everything else in their editing interface worked. You might find the previous discussion about new editor experiences that Levivich, HLHJ and I had here interesting [3]. I had an experience that was within what is suggested at welcome the newcomers. My understanding is that Levivich's wasn't as welcoming based off the comments there, although maybe they reflect on their experiences differently now? I can't speak for other people. My first edit was literally fixing a typo, but I was also really insistent on asking other people for advice right from the start. I'd say the main benefit my previous wikiHow experience had (apart from some familarity with MediaWiki format, even if it wasn't really enough to not get confused about many things here) is that I was aware that Wikipedia also likely had a community "behind the scenes". This meant I could ask for help before I did anything I was unsure of and I didn't really ruffle any feathers. A lack of feedback isn't nessecarily a good thing or a bad thing, but it can be disheartening and it can also lead to problems down the road. Maybe it's just me, but I'm still working on my confidence in that I actually know what I'm doing here and trying to alleviate some of the gaps on what I know I'm not that good at. I think part of this has to do with having really high expectations for myself in general, but at the same time even though I've spent a lot of time lurking/reading what other people say and trying to figure out what works here, actually doing things based on that judgement can get a bit more complicated. Clovermoss (talk) 03:17, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

It's interesting to hear about other editors' experiences. I had no expectation of getting any feedback so it wasn't an issue for me. I can't remember how I learned about discussion on the talk page; that is one important thing for new editors to know. Upon further reflection, I can see a good bit of luck affecting an editor's first impressions. If you happen to edit an article being watched by someone who is protective of it, you might find yourself getting reverted with a brusque, dismissive comment. Even if somewhat warranted, it can be very off-putting (and if not warranted, it feels like a waste of time). I hardly edit main space now for a variety of reasons, but not least of which is that the potential for conflict over even the most benign edits is wearying. isaacl (talk) 04:40, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I think the other thing is that people usually are focusing on preventing harm and thus are at best apathetic to the vast majority of new editors. I have an unconvential approach of how I sometimes patrol recent changes (since you can filter it to show likely good faith edits by newcomers). The main reason I do this is because I always figured it's much better to try to approach someone while they're still in the middle of the first (or maybe only) attempt at editing and there's already a huge focus on people who are keeping an eye on vandalism so it seemed like something I could have more of an impact doing, y'know? I also try to welcome people I see making good faith edits on my watchlist. Clovermoss (talk) 05:13, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

In regards to talk pages in general though, I was actually referring to what Levivich said in the growth team discussion: It wasn't that long ago that we learned that the reason IP editors didn't see links to article talk pages is because the WMF thought that it wasn't important for IP editors to use talk pages. (!) They did a study and found that using or not using talk pages doesn't meaningfully change the frequency that an editor is reverted, and that's how they decided talk pages weren't important. These decision, and others like it, were made by people who do not edit Wikipedia. That's why wiki-apps written by editors are better than what the WMF puts out. [4]

Anyways, I should also probably ping the only person (at least that I'm aware of) from the WMF that's posted on my talk page: MMiller (WMF). They might have something interesting to say, since we haven't really asked anyone from the WMF what their thoughts are. They're also involved in the actual growth team stuff so they might have some interesting thoughts about that, too. Clovermoss (talk) 20:15, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to anything you said when I mentioned talk pages; just commenting on something I think new editors have to learn. I wasn't intending to start a multi-person conversation on general thoughts regarding editor recruitment and retention, so I'm not sure how much further I'll go down this digression. isaacl (talk) 23:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Oh, okay. That's fine. I thought you were mentioning them as a sort of reply to one of my previous comments but the discussion kind of went in a million different directions after that, so I thought I'd bring that up in case it was relevant? I'm not saying that I nessecarily agree with all of that, just that there should be better communication between the WMF/the general community and that's an example of where things didn't really go that well. Regardless of whether or not you continue this discussion (I think it's probably going to cease sometime soon because they're only so much discuss on this topic because it's something that people have had a lot of discussions about in general)... I did want to say that I really appreciated everything you said and your perspective on things. You've clearly put a lot of thought into everything. Clovermoss (talk) 00:17, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, @Clovermoss. I am definitely interested in conversations and thoughts about new editors! I'm about to be away from work for a week or so, and I'd like to be able to read this very long conversation before saying anything in particular, so I hope to get back to you a bit later. I hope that's okay! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 15:17, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): That's completely fine. It is a gigantic wall of text. There's also a link to a previous discussion at the top that you might be interested in. Enjoy your time off work! Clovermoss (talk) 15:56, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

There's also this discussion where I wrote a bit more about what exactly I meant by the 1Person1Ref idea. Specifically in the third subsection about out of the box ideas. Clovermoss (talk) 16:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): Are you still interested in having anything to say? Or are you still going through it all? If it helps, I don't expect you to say anything about the religious stuff that just kind of poured out of me. I guess I've been thinking more about my life experiences and how that's impacted who I am as a person more lately. In regards to everything else, I truly am willing to listen to your perspective even if it's quite different. I've always admired what you've done specifically, and maybe part of thw problem is that it's relatively easy to conflate the WMF as a whole with anyone whose willing to listen, and that's not really that fair to you. Clovermoss (talk) 10:16, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Hello @Clovermoss. I've read over these interesting conversations you started! Thank you for being enthusiastic and thinking hard about the health of the wikis. I think it's definitely reasonable to be asking about how the product teams at WMF might be more productive, and you might be surprised to hear that I am always asking myself that same question (it's part of my job!) I definitely feel a lot of urgency to get major things done quickly for our users -- the internet is changing fast, and we want free knowledge to be there for people in five or ten years time and beyond. As this conversation has touched on, though, shipping changes to our software turns out to be quite complicated. For instance, whenever we build something new or change something old, we need to consider how it will work in multiple skins (e.g. Vector, MonoBook, etc), how it will work in multiple languages (e.g. English, Arabic, Korean), and whether/how it will be usable on both desktop and mobile. I definitely carry what I would consider a "healthy impatience" to make an impact. I know we could have a much longer conversation about it all!

I'm glad you feel like the Growth features for newcomers are on the right track. We've done a lot of research on what makes newcomers stick around and what makes them leave, and you touched on a couple of the big ones. Civility (or its opposite, toxicity) definitely matters. You might be interested to read the New Editor Experiences research, which interviewed dozens of newcomers and confirmed that many newcomers are turned off from Wikipedia after doing something wrong and then getting made to feel like they're not welcome. And you also touched on how we need to bring many more people into editing. One of the main ways the Growth team has been trying to do that over the last couple years is by creating new ways to edit. To edit successfully, newcomers need to learn wikitext (or the Visual Editor) along with so many policies and rules. Many people who might be interested in contributing to Wikipedia don't have the time or technical skills or tenacity to do all that learning and trial-and-error. But we still want to give them the opportunity to try editing and perhaps get the spark of enthusiasm that prompts them to go deeper. That's why the team has developed two "structured tasks", which are "add a link" and "add an image". They are streamlined editing workflows that newcomers can do without too much skill or learning required. They're not yet on English Wikipedia, and I would definitely be interested to know what you think!

On that note, I wanted to mention how we do research and learning. You talked about things like focus groups and bias around the information that goes into the product process. Yes, we totally do many different kinds of research as we plan our work! This includes interviews, live user tests, surveys, office hours, and community conversations. That New Editor Experiences research that I linked above is an example of a time that WMF spent money on recruiting interviewees, translators, and researchers to try to create an unbiased picture of newcomer experiences. Another example is these prototype tests done by the Web team around the Desktop Improvements project. One of the reasons we gather information through multiple channels simultaneously is to help mitigate biases that could come from any one of them. For instance, when thinking about Growth features for newcomers, it obviously wouldn't make sense to only test the features amongst experienced editors (even though those are the most readily accessible users), because they're not the target audience. So we seek out newcomers for testing. But we do also test the features with experienced editors, because they'll be able to see things from their perspectives that newcomers can't -- perhaps problems the features could cause further down the line for patrollers.

Well, I wanted to touch on a few of the major points you brought up, Clovermoss. I hope this is interesting and helps! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:59, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

There's another example of this phenomenon playing out now; I recently added to WP:CENT a link to the village pump proposal about showing edit notices to mobile editors. This is another thing -- mobile editors don't see edit notices -- that's been flagged by the community forever (there's a phab ticket from I don't remember how many years ago), and the WMF just thought it was low priority. In the meantime, a volunteer editor wrote a hack that shows edit notices to mobile editors, and the community is about to implement said hack. Once again, the community just steps in to fill an obvious gap because the WMF just didn't think it was a priority. The WMF has $400 million dollars, but volunteers on the internet were able to fix this faster. It's evidence of the poor prioritizing of WMF dollars.

Another example: I don't participate in the m:Community Wishlist Survey because I think it's BS, given how the prioritization is decided by the WMF. We can see at m:Community Wishlist Survey/Updates/2022 results#The leaderboard that the community's votes constitute the "popularity rank", which is one of four criteria. The other three criteria are set by the WMF. Then the WMF calculates a final "prioritization score". Now, it's fine for the WMF to weigh the community's priorities against other criteria, such as feasibility, complexity, etc. But one of those three WMF-set criteria is "community impact score". What the heck is the difference between "community impact" and "popularity"? Simple: the WMF wants to decide the community impact, rather than just letting the community decide that by voting on things -- this, the WMF calls popularity. Each item's final score, the "Prioritization score", is calculated by some algorithm that does not appear to be disclosed by the WMF (at least I can't find it). The end result? Click on the leaderboard link and sort the table by "popularity rank" or by "prioritization score" and you'll see there is basically no correlation at all. In other words, our votes don't matter, they're actually wiped away via some calculation determined by the WMF. So I'm not going to spend over an hour reading and thinking about the Wishlist Survey when I know the WMF will just set the priorities based on what they think is the "community impact".

This is why people say the WMF doesn't listen to the community. Based on interactions with WMF devs, I, like others, have come to the conclusion that the devs do not think the community knows what's best; they think they do, and that's what drives software development priorities. That's why we have Wikimedia Enterprise (which BTW is losing money and behind schedule) before we have a decent WYSIWYG editor. Levivich^[block] 18:15, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I did want to mention that I don't think they're completely unaware of the tension that can exist between the WMF and the community. They also have a volunteer account that they use to edit, Cloud atlas.

I can't speak for everyone who edits here and I doubt they can speak for the entirety of the WMF. I do think broader awareness of these issues is important though, with more communication and awareness being vital for everyone involved. Clovermoss (talk) 19:17, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, true. Cloud atlas has started multiple new articles, and brought multiple articles to GA (thank you!). That's an imperfect metric, but I wonder whether that's typical or atypical for WMF staff. I know a lot of WMF staff have personal accounts and edit, but I wonder how many of them have GAs, or similar, like how many have done "heavy duty content work". Levivich^[block] 19:36, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

As I posted in that discussion, I think research is great and something that the WMF should do, but shouldn't hold up immediate needs. Prioritization challenges, though, are not the sole provenance of the MediaWiki development team. The interface admins, for example, resist implementing per-page gadget loading in Javascript, as they disagree with the principle of having the client take on the workload of making this decision. (Maybe they're right to defend this design choice against popular opinion from editors that the performance cost is minimal, maybe they're not.) So as much as I do think a better prioritization mechanism should be put into place by the WMF, with more funds allocated towards maintenance and unglamourous fix-up projects (I do know it's not as easy to do as it is to say), I acknowledge there is a role for code owners (in the software development sense) to act as guardians of key design decisions. Of course, there should be occasions when those design decisions are re-examined to see if they are still applicable and desirable. isaacl (talk) 20:39, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

As for Wikipedia Enterprise, I don't think that's an example of the development team thinking they know what's best. I think that's an example of how it's easier to decide how much investment you want to spend on a product that is forecast to have a revenue stream, than one that has no revenue stream. That decision is made at a strategic level, above the development team. isaacl (talk) 20:42, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Arbitrary break since this conversation is huge and still ongoing

@MMiller (WMF): Thanks for getting back to me. I'm trying to take it easy on myself due to stressful real life events, but I do have some thoughts about what you just said. So... I think a generalization I've seen is that new editors experiences are either good, really bad, or just kind of apathetic. If you're doing something wrong, you're definitely going to get feedback because people are focused on minimizing harm or just keeping with established consensus that you might not be aware of because there's been however many discussions over the past two decades. I wasn't aware of MOS:CELESTIALBODIES until today when I was like "it's kind of weird that Sun is capitalized sometimes" and my change was undone. I didn't know that and it was a good faith mistake, but you're way more likely to have something like that happen if you don't even know that the MOS is a thing or how to reference it.

There's also the whole "Wikipedia abbreviations" thing. We basically have a dedicated subculture where things can be a bit different than their standard English meanings or even inherently contradictory. A lot of the essay pages are like that too. They have a disclaimer that they can represent widespread or minitory viewpoints, but it's difficult to tell when you're reading them just where anything might fall on that. Then there's individual discretion on where to draw the lines. There's a million links to everything. I think something I have agreed with in regards to Sdkb is that streamlining welcome templates is a good idea because it gives people some sort of basis to be like "this is what you do" that doesn't contradict itself or give you massive walls of text that prompt you to TLDR. I think there's also just some general issues with banner blindness too. A lot of stuff about the Wikipedia community and editing and everything (especially on the main page) is hidden by things that you basically instinctually ignore if you grew up in the world where the Internet was a thing. You pay the same amount of attention to them as you do to pop-up ads... something that's just not worth your time and doesn't even register. Like I'm looking at the bottom of this very page and I'm like "oh there's this toolbar with characters like → I just straight up ignored for years". There's also a lot of issues with the mobile version of the website. I'm like Cullen328 in the "when I edit on my phone (like right now) I use desktop view for basic functionality" way.

Going back to my good efforts disappear into a void comment earlier on in the thread, the impact feature that's in the growth newsletter seems like an interesting step in the right direction of doing something to help mitigate that. As for wikilinks and images... it might help with some familiarity with wikitext, but there's still a lot of uphill climbs from there. There's also stuff like MOS:REPEATLINK that might have the outcome of newcomer tasks like that kind of backfire. Unless I'm misunderstanding how that task works. I think that while our attention on retaining new editors needs to be improved we also need to give more attention to intermediate editors too, since imo they're the most likely to stick around. Not everyone is interested in making editing Wikipedia their main hobby and that's okay. I do think trying to create some sort of stepping stone with newcomer tasks like that in general is a good idea, though. Clovermoss (talk) 01:05, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I am commenting because I was pinged. For over ten years, I have done over 99% of my editing on Android smartphones and I almost always use the fully functional (and improperly named) "desktop" site on my phone. This is a collaborative project. These mobile sites and apps have been in development for many years and they are still an active impediment to collaborative editing. So, countless millions of dollars have been squandered for well over a decade on failed ventures, all while the desktop site works perfectly fine on modern smartphones. It is Kafkaesque. Cullen328 (talk) 02:03, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Pinging MMiller (WMF). Just so you do not think that I am somehow kind of ignorant rando, I want you to know that I have written roughly 100 articles on my smartphone, none of which has been deleted. I have substantially expanded many hundreds of articles, and just today, dramatically expanded and referenced Clambake, all on my phone. I truly love improving encyclopedia articles on my phone. I have taken articles to Good article status, on my phone. I am among the most active editors at the Teahouse and the Help desk, on my phone. I agreed to put my name forward for administrator on my phone and was approved by the community by a vote of 316/2/3. As an administrator, I have blocked 6402 vandals, trolls, spammers and copyright violators, all on my phone. I protect countless articles from vandalism, all on my phone. Almost every single day, I devote serious volunteer time, all on my commonplace Android smartphone.

Over and over again, for year after year, I have offered to discuss my smartphone editing expertise with WMF staff. I lived 35 miles from WMF headquarters for many years. Crickets. I now live more like 135 miles from San Francisco. Crickets. I now live in the same small town as a WMF board member. Crickets.

Why does the WMF entirely ignore the input of highly experienced and highly productive volunteer editors who have made objectively substantive improvements to this encyclopedia, and have detailed insights into the specific problems? My hypothesis is that "friends might lose their jobs" but I am fully prepared to be convinced that my assessment is wrong in this case. Cullen328 (talk) 02:32, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Accessing the desktop site on mobile doesn't work all that well. It's hard to use. You have to scroll alot and zoom to be able to click on things. It's not optimized for mobile design. I would always edit using the mobile version, flawed as it is, unless I needed some feature that isn't there (the fact that some aren't is bad design). The messages thing needs to be fixed though. (t · c) buidhe 02:32, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Buidhe, I deeply disagree that it doesn't work all that well. Scolling and zooming are commonplace behaviors on smartphones, and using the desktop site on mobile rapidly becomes very easy for those who try. Plus, the desktop site is fully functional on Android smartphones. It works right. Some people say "well, you must have great vision". False. I am 70 years old. I have amblyopia that left one of my eyes almost blind. I have cataracts. I had cataract surgery on my good eye because operating on my bad eye would have been a waste of time and money. I have low tension glaucoma and have had a laser procedure to help with that. Despite all of that, I have no problem at all editing on my Android smartphone, as I am doing at this very moment. Cullen328 (talk) 02:48, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

My near vision is fine and I have trouble seeing all the text let alone clicking on it without a lot of zooming and scrolling side to side. I do edit this way a fair amount, mainly because the mobile site doesn't support citation template generation, but it is considerably more difficult for me. Admittedly my smartphone is on the smaller side. I'm glad it works for you, but I don't think that all or most mobile users would be able to access Wikipedia easily using this method. (t · c) buidhe 02:55, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I also prefer the desktop view but I have edited using the mobile website (and even the actual app which was not ideal for anything beyond basic typo fixes at least in 2019 [5]). I also don't mind the scrolling but I'm used to it. I actually dislike the automatic hidden sections in mobile view, but maybe that's just me. As for eyesight, I don't wear glasses and I'm young so maybe I'd have a different opinion if I wasn't like that. But I also get annoying popups from my browser (Chrome) that try to "simplify" the page when I use mobile view. Maybe there's something I could do in settings somewhere to fix that. But I will say that I haven't heard often from people who say that they actually like the mobile site and that's an interesting perspective. Ancedotally my experience has been that people agree with Cullen328 most of the time. It might be worthwhile to actually try and survey people in Category:Wikipedians who edit by smartphone for their opinions, though. Clovermoss (talk) 03:50, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe: so you inspired me to experiment with mobile view a bit more. Haven't tried to do anything outside of mainspace yet, but I was able to manually add a citeweb template. [6]

I don't think a new editor could easily do that because you basically have to have the parameters memorized for it to work... but still, not impossible. The overall experience seems to be a bit better than what I remember though. Maybe I was mixing up my impressions of the app with mobile view in general? Or the experience has been improved since I last tried? It's still not my favourite way to edit, but my brief experimentation has lead to me belive it's tolerable. Maybe I could get used to it. Clovermoss (talk) 06:35, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

for a new user it has most of the necessary functionality (they are more likely trying to correct a typo than add a citation) with added convenience of bigger buttons, larger text, lack of scrolling/zooming etc. I don't support de-defaulting the mobile site although users should have the option to switch back and forth. (t · c) buidhe 06:38, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe: Agreed on that. That's actually mostly how my edits with mobile view/the app have worked in the past. Something small enough to fix that seemed like it wouldn't to be too difficult to accomplish with that interface. I was more just seeing how a more "serious" editing experience might look like. I might even try downloading the app again... I'm curious about the differences, honestly. I still think the desktop view is ideal but I wouldn't say that everything else is completely broken (at least based off my initial impressions).

Agree with Levivich in one of the prior conversations that the WMF has a lot of resources at its potential and could have used them more effectively... but we got to work with what's happened already and go from there, I guess. I really do have some faith in MMiller (WMF) and I recognize that he can't speak for the entirety of the WMF and that his efforts mostly focus on new editor engagement specifically. I think part of the problem in general is a lack of suistained communication with the greater community and a lack of trust from previous well-known issues that is hard to regain. That leads to people feeling frustrated and that the status quo will never change. I haven't personally been greatly disappointed yet, so maybe I'll feel differently in the future. So far I like having hope, though. I'm also kind of out of touch with a lot of things myself so maybe I'd feel differently if I was more experienced in certain areas. I have a tendency to feel like I half-understand things even though I'm trying to work on that. I don't really contribute to policy-related discussions much. Clovermoss (talk) 06:53, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Leaving this here in case anyone is interested: User:Clovermoss/Mobile editing. It's still very much a work in progress. Clovermoss (talk) 00:50, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

NPP July 2022 backlog drive is on!

New Page Patrol | July 2022 Backlog Drive
On 1 July, a one-month backlog drive for New Page Patrol will begin. Barnstars will be awarded based on the number of articles patrolled. Barnstars will also be granted for re-reviewing articles previously reviewed by other patrollers during the drive. Redirect patrolling is not part of the drive. Interested in taking part? Sign up here.
You're receiving this message because you are a new page patroller. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here.

(t · c) buidhe 20:25, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

St. Catharines

Moved to Talk:St. Catharines

Clovermoss (talk) 14:17, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

TheWikiWizard - July 2022

Hey, Clovermoss! Here is the July 2022 issue for the TheWikiWizard!

Humour

• It's less than 6 months till Christmas (I think...)
• Start making the Christmas list! Never too early, or late for those who think Dec 26 is Dec 25 haha
• If I had a dollar for every word I typed, the world would run out of money ;)

Wiki(p/m)edia News

• The Japanese Wikipedia now uses the new vector skin! For those who speak Japanese or just want to take a look, check it out!
• There is a conversation event that you can check out. More details on the link.
• A meeting had taken place in regards to Interface of MediaWiki. More information of that meeting can be found here.

Editor's Notes

• Please note that due to me being busy/at times not much to report on Wiki(p/m)edia some issues of this newsletter may be skipped. Don't worry I haven't forgotten about it!
• Sometimes during the delivery of the issue, the mass message extension sends it twice for some reason. Please note I only send them once and not twice. I apologise for the inconvenience this causes.
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Question from Trini Herrera on Talk:Zacatecas City (14:19, 18 July 2022)

Ola. A todos --Trini Herrera (talk) 14:19, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

@Trini Herrera: Hello to you as well. If the language you're writing in is portuguese, maybe you're looking for this? [7] Clovermoss (talk) 16:06, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

We're both pretty similar, if a half-generation apart. We both do minor edits and even started editing around the same age (16-ish). So, here's a cookie for really very little reason. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 00:24, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

@I dream of horses: Thanks for the cookie! I'm a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, honestly. Nice to hear that I remind you of you. :) Clovermoss (talk) 00:31, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

HB Antwerp

Hey there Clovermoss, it's nice to meet you. I've been working on a draft for HB Antwerp, a diamond company based in Antwerp currently mentioned in the Sewelo article. I noticed that you are an AfC reviewer and an active member of WP:BELGIUM, so thought you might be interested in taking a look. Do you think it's ready to be included? Looking forward to your thoughts! Please note that I will be offline for a few days, so may be delayed in responding. Thanks again, Margxx (talk) 11:49, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Margxx: Thanks for thinking of me, but I'm not the best person to ask. I prefer being able to understand all cited sources, if possible. I'm also a relatively new AfC reviewer, so I'm a bit more cautious in regards to how I've been reviewing in general because I'm worried I'm going to make mistakes. Sources do not have to be English, but I only understand English and French, so personally I'd just not be comfortable with reviewing this. It seems like you're off to a good start, though. Have you taken a look at Wikipedia's criteria for including articles about individual companies or products and services? Being familiar with it will help with an AfC draft about a company being reviewed. Keep in mind that there is a backlog at AfC (more than 2,000 drafts are waiting to be reviewed) so it might take awhile. I hope you have a good day, Clovermoss (talk) 12:02, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much for taking a look, Clovermoss, I appreciate it. Margxx (talk) 09:15, 29 July 2022 (UTC)