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Brainstorming: How can we improve the Wikipedia complaints system?

Trying to make the best of the hatted debacle above, one thing Tango is right about is that Wikipedia's complaints system does not work well enough. Talk page complaints are regularly ignored. BLP subjects removing BLP violations may find their edits are reverted. OTRS is not well enough advertised. Members of the public have to navigate a labyrinth of pages and contradictory instructions to locate the OTRS e-mail address, and even if they manage to contact OTRS, sometimes it can take days or weeks for them to receive a reply. OTRS is understaffed, and underfunded, with some OTRS staff at least complaining of poor software.

What I am driving at is that as long as Wikipedia's complaint system is too difficult to understand, too unresponsive for people with legitimate grievances to get any satisfaction from, there will be a market for consultants promising people that they can help "navigate the maze" that is Wikipedia, and its policies and guidelines.

So, how can we make Wikipedia responsive enough that nobody would dream of paying someone to help them fix something that is wrong? Ideas welcome. JN466 13:05, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

1. Redesign the Help path

Assume you are a BLP subject or a PR professional, and there is a problem in an article about you. This is how you are directed:

  1. If you spot and click on the tiny word "Help" on the left, under "Interaction", you come to Help:Contents, a page that is fairly confusing, and mainly offers help for people wishing to edit.
  2. If on that page you spot and click on "Report a problem", you come to Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem, another confusing page.
  3. If on that page you click on "There's a problem in an article about you or someone you represent", in the "What's the problem" section, you come to Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject).
  4. This tells you, "Before you read anything else on this page, please visit the Article subjects FAQ." And the first section below that, which you can't help noticing, says, "Fix it yourself."
  5. The Article subjects FAQ is at Wikipedia:FAQ/Article subjects. It's a page with 2,000 words on it.

Frankly, it looks like Wikipedia does not want to help people very much. There is probably a good reason for that: lack of volunteers. But we cannot have it both ways. We cannot on the one hand make it difficult for BLP subjects and PR professionals to complain, or tell them in so many ways that we rather wish they'd leave us alone and fix the article themselves, and then turn around and come down like a ton of bricks on BLP subjects and PR professionals who make "COI edits", or who end up looking for consultants to help them "navigate the maze" and make the desired edits stick.

The Help function needs a complete overhaul, and if there is a lack of volunteers, then the Foundation should use some of the millions it is taking to employ staff, or fund a body that employs staff, to handle content complaints. Thoughts? JN466 13:05, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since we have so many Wikilawyers, maybe we could look into recruiting Wiki public defenders/advocates to help people for free in the way that people would be hired to do externally. Though I'm not sure that this would be a very satisfying cause for volunteers, especially when seen as an alternative to being paid. Wnt (talk) 14:35, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The wub has been redesigning Help:Contents as part of his Community Fellowship. He's done a great job streamlining the page, but it doesn't have a section for I need help editing an article I'm personally or professionally connected to. His redesign is here: Help:Contents/B. I think adding a field to that page which introduces WP:COI, WP:PSCOI, WP:COIN, WP:WIZ, and WP:PAIDHELP would be very useful and go a long way towards giving COI/paid editors a chance at figuring out what the f*ck they're supposed to do around here. Ocaasi t | c 16:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have spent a lot of time re-working the request edit templates, process and instructions for reasons along these lines - to create a consistent and reasonable process.
I think there is no compelling reason for a company to use New Page Patrol instead of AfC. By the same token, a well-supported request edit process can eliminate any argument for direct editing. Between COIN, Talk, Request Edit and AfC, I would think OTRS would be a last resort. Corporate 20:32, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AfC is really another topic altogether. But did you know that there is presently a backlog of around 1250 articles for creation waiting for review at Category:Pending_AfC_submissions? I would accept being 1250th in line at AfC as an arguably compelling reason for trying to put an article directly into mainspace. JN466 21:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The queue is always large, but the wait is usually only a couple weeks. I have never been in a situation as a paid advocate where someone was pressuring me to directly edit because AfC was taking too long. The same could not be said for request edit, however I should probably escalate un-answered requests to COIN more often. Corporate 22:53, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Following the Philip Roth controversy, I boldly added a simple link from Wikipedia:Contact us to the OTRS email address. There's some discussion about it on the talk page. It'd be nice if we could get some consensus on simplifying the process for people contacting us. It's simply bad practice to obfuscate the "let me get to a human" bit: it's horrible when we have that phone tree nonsense, it's equally horrible when you have to decide which of seventeen options to choose when you are, well, angry, pissed off and want to talk to someone about it.
Imagine calling The Samaritans and being presented with a series of options: "If you are feeling suicidal right now, press 1. If you are contemplating suicide but aren't actually standing on the bridge ready to jump off, press 2. If you are a closeted gay teenager who is about to storm off and leave home because your parents are bigots, press 3." No. Just no.
For a long time, in the web design world, there's been a "three click rule". You should be able to do everything on a website in three clicks or fewer. Wikipedia:Contact us fails the three click test.
Also, press-ganging more Wikipedians for OTRS work may also be a good idea. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:29, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think one obvious problem is that people tend to expect important things such as FAQs or Help pages to be highlighted plainly at the bottom, per standard practice on most major websites. What we have is dinky little text that includes a hefty About us page, a disclaimer, privacy policy, and the contact page. Adding the Help page link at the bottom would be one thing to ease the process. Most sites also have "terms of services" i.e. policies linked at the bottom, but to get to those on Wikipedia requires you to go to the about page and read through a block of text. Not to mention that, when editors are creating an account, no notice is given to them about Wikipedia's policies. It would make things more accessible if people didn't have to go through a whole lot of navigation and pour over text just to find out what edits are good and what edits are bad. The main reason we have so many vandal-fighting editors is because it takes minimal effort to identify and fix vandalism so there is little risk of running afoul of some complex and obscure policy. Of course, vandal-fighting isn't conducive to actually building an encyclopedia.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 01:06, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

2. Establish an elected BLP committee

Another, complementary option would be an elected BLP committee, similar in size to the arbitration committee, with the authority to hear and adjudicate complaints so as to bring articles on living people and corporations in line with BLP policy. Thoughts? JN466 13:05, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IANAL, but I would think that hiring or appointing staff to control BLPs starts to look a lot like publishing, and would expose Wikipedia and/or these overlords to direct claims of liability. This would be everything wrong with Pending Changes, intensified. If such an election did occur, of course, there is no way that Democrats could conceivably permit Republicans to have authority over the presidential candidate articles, or vice versa, so we should expect a partisan campaign with one single faction in absolute control of Wikipedia's political bias. Wnt (talk) 14:27, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
They would be no more hired and appointed than arbcom. JN466 14:38, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom certainly is appointed, indeed by Jimbo as he affirmed just recently; but it wisely avoids taking a position in content disputes. Wnt (talk) 14:45, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is one of those things that people keep repeating, but that does not make it true. :) While it is true that Arbcom does not write content, it routinely rules on edits' compliance with policy. A BLP committee could operate in a similar manner. At the end of the day, members of such a committee remain community-appointed volunteers. They are not paid, contractually bound employees. JN466 15:39, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Numerous people are semi-idle many months: I think there are many people who could help if contacted. In analyzing active-editor patterns, I am not seeing "everyone quitting", no instead, I am seeing many long-term editors who drift into "dabble mode" ("nibbling and grazing") during several months, where in other months, they have been far more active. I am wondering if we should have "1-week update drives" where perhaps the semi-idle editors would join for a week, if the need was not expected to last an entire month, then people could rotate out more often. Plus, I am seeing more strong evidence of the numerous, questionable AWB-2-word-edits, when people need to really fix 75-changes-per-page, or join a group who are answering help-requests. In many articles which get AWB-2-word-edits, the remaining punctuation errors have lasted for many months or years. AWB is being used like "washing windows by 2 strokes of a toothbrush" so the windows stay dirty a long time (compare to 75 strokes). Even the Top 1000 most-viewed articles often have "40" punctuation errors, typically with non-italicized book/film titles or missing hyphens. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:23, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Doesn't fix the problem. It seems to me that BLP issues aren't all alike. (Duh.) The big major BLP issues which end up on WP:BLPN or which get dragged through RfCs or other dispute resolution processes: that's the sort of thing a BLP committee would handle, presumably. There are other issues too which this doesn't solve: a minor entertainer contacts us telling us her birthdate is wrong. We're talking by a few months, not like some grand attempt to cover up the truth. It turns out that there are a lot of sources with the wrong birthdate because lazy journalists copied IMDB, which is wrong. She mentions in her email that the IMDB page is incorrect and she's been contacting them for months to get it corrected. Eventually, I find a few sources that have a different birthdate, change the article, contact her to tell her it's been fixed. Awesome: OTRS worked as it intended. But the problem is when we can't find those sources, there's not much we can do other than tell them.
    The BLP committee also risks becoming a big public thing. We'll get more "Supreme Court of Wikipedia" type stories about how Wikipedia is secretly in the pocket of some BLP subject. This is really a giant distraction from the problem.
    What would be nice is if we could be slightly less barmy about WP:V for uncontentious BLP facts. Someone emails us in with a minor correction like, say, a middle name or a birthday, and we could have a way for OTRS agents to use the email they've sent us as verification for changing the article. On wiki, we would simply add a note to the talk page saying "The subject of this article has contacted Wikipedia's OTRS address requesting corrections. Two Wikipedians have verified this and corrected this issue." Obviously, we'd have to get the consent of the person and verify that they are who they say they are, and only apply it in really uncontentious cases like birthdates and the like.
    We need a way for OTRSers to actually take action on uncontentious BLP issues when there's a lack of sources. That'd solve a lot of the problems. Not all of them: won't guarantee that there won't be another Siegenthaler or Roth incident, but it'll cut down on a lot of the more minor problems.
    Better OTRS training would be useful. It's something the OTRS community have talked about for a while, but currently, there's little more than "oh, read the wiki". When I started OTRS work, if it wasn't for the fact that I knew an OTRSer who guided me through the process of answering my first two or three tickets, it's rather a daunting process. —Tom Morris (talk) 11:58, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good comment! I agree we should have some system for doing what I've called "Verified Interviews with Biographic Subjects", and this is rather similar to OTRS in that some amount of moderately confidential data will need to be handled in order to verify the interview actually is with the subject. But it also should resemble Wikinews in the sense that the output of the process should be publicly archived somewhere, independently of specific facts for an article that may be deleted or munged over time. Wnt (talk) 16:53, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • BLPs (articles on persons) should have their own mediawiki wiki. This would help disentangle policy between BLPs and the rest of the encyclopedia. - jc37 22:27, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

3. Providing a paid consultancy service that helps members of the public navigate Wikipedia (with profits benefiting Wikimedia)

Tango has produced a more complete write-up of his analysis of the problem, why he thinks a paid consultancy service might be the way forward, and how Wikipedia's interests could be protected. While the service would be for profit, any profits made would be donated to the Wikimedia movement. The complete write-up is at https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tango/Consultancy JN466 00:49, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone with comments please go to the talk page there? I'd like to keep the discussion in one place and there have already been some very useful comments made over there. Thanks! --Tango (talk) 11:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

exemplar of "silly season"

[1] a short BLP of a not-especially-important person on 5 May 2012.

[2] the same BLP today.

Almost all added by one editor. The article is now 15 times its former size.

I suggest that such pages are great exemplars of "silly season" editing" indeed. Collect (talk) 11:54, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A guy has to support fourteen children somehow, I guess. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:05, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Silly season" properly refers to a slow news season, not news you don't want people to know. When Wikipedia covers minor figures in an important political campaign, it is working properly. It is also interesting indeed to see how in reality the rich get rich. Wnt (talk) 13:05, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yeppers -- we must be sure to show how bad the rich are, fer shure. With thousands of words listing every detail of a Boy Scout pedophile scandal which is already fully covered on Wikipedia in the first place. Every candidate he has ever supported with details of the campaigns. With all the dollar amounts. Sure. Thousands of words tell us how evil Stowell was -- who is not even particularly relevant to VanderSloot unless you think VanderSloot favours pedophilia? Sure -- we haveta make sure those "rich" people get this sort of BLP. I think I have seen that sort of argument from you before on this very talk page very recently. My concept of WP:BLP is a lot different from yours. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:45, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
and even richer. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:37, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
a) To me it looks like the section describes conflict between VanderSloot and Peter Zuckerman; Stowell is not the focus.
b) When I said "how the rich get rich", I did not launch off on a tirade (though I could). That someone actually became a notable wealthy person via the Melaleuca marketing model is interesting. It makes me wonder if it would be possible to have an open source equivalent, or open source business in general. I should note that Wikipedia and Wikiversity have generally all but ignored any positive social role they could exercise by making business more accessible to the public understanding the way they have with science. For a truly sad experience, visit v:School:Business. Wikipedia should have abundant resources letting people see how the rich got rich, case by case, and Wikiversity should have a huge range of resources that would explain, step by step for the novice, how people can set up businesses within many specific jurisdictions, come up with a business plan, raise capital, get them licensed, get them profitable. I understand that there is a strong caste barrier in many places and that those on the wrong side don't know this stuff or even feel like it's their place to know this stuff, but WMF could recruit people in to break it if they tried. Wnt (talk) 14:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil." - Ghandi. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:25, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Compare 1 Timothy: 6:10.—Wavelength (talk) 14:22, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The love of money may be the root of all evil, but nothing is said there about the knowledge of money. I'm thinking that if every housewife in New Jersey could easily find out exactly how to start her own business to package deer jerky or barbecue roo meat, we'd have a more varied diet - and better prices, and a more even distribution of wealth. Wnt (talk) 15:17, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Surely, the roo of all evil? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:38, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations!

I'll second that. --Jonty Monty (talk) 19:18, 6 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw on the front page of the Sunday Times. Congratulations! --Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 10:47, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats! ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 10:55, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Cullen, Drew (7 October 2012). "Wikipedia boss Jimmy Wales marries Kate Garvey". theregister.co.uk.

This item from the SignPost caught my attention:

Here's a standing offer: any PR professional who feels their concerns have not been addressed in the English Wikipedia should come and post to my user talk page. I will personally see to it. This idea that PR people have to edit Wikipedia article directly because they can't get a response any other way is sheer and total nonsense.

My experience has been that companies often want to directly edit because they want control of the article (WP:OWN) or want a borderline ADVERT, excessive external links, etc.. Many companies I work with will at some point nod to a competitor's article that is spammy and promotional and say "why can't we do that?" But the one valid reason for direct editing that is not at odds with Wikipedia's principles is that it can take weeks/months/years to get anything done following the WP:BRIGHTLINE.

I appreciate the standing offer, but any risk-adverse organization probably wouldn't feel comfortable having their Wikipedia woes on public display on Jimbo's Talk page. I would go so far as to say that WP:NORUSH and the time/difficulty in getting things done following the WP:BRIGHTLINE are the single most compelling arguments not to follow it.

I've tried a few projects to make the BrightLine more obvious and easier, faster and more consistent, but not with any great success.

What do you think can be done to make the Bright Line a more compelling option for companies pursuing their own self-interest? I do my best to convince companies there is value in doing Wikipedia ethically, but for all intensive purposes, I am not sure the ROI calculation swings that way. Corporate 18:30, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you trust Wikipedia, Jimbo?

I am asking because of this "The couple, who have one child, met at the World Economic Forum at Davos, where Mr Wales reportedly asked an aide to track down Miss Garvey, but not to get her details from Wikipedia, in case they were wrong." By the by why did you ask to track down Miss Garvey in the first place? Regards.31.193.133.160 (talk) 19:14, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a little personal, don't be surprised if you do not get a reply. Wiki's (including Wikipedia) are not considered a WP:RS, as any one can add anything at any time. --Hu12 (talk) 19:26, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See also Wikipedia:General disclaimer. Albacore (talk) 19:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, she's a Brit. I wondered why he's in the UK so much and knew more about the country than-is-normally-feasible-for-an-American.DeCausa (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@31.193.133.160, I believe the newspaper was making a lame joke. -- Avanu (talk) 19:43, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure it was necessarily a joke, but note the Telegraph's careful use of the word 'reportedly' - usually best translated as "someone we don't trust told us this..." AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:46, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can "complete non-believers" get married in Methodist churches? DuncanHill (talk) 20:15, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
lot's of people do, in all types of churches. It's generally to make their spouses happy. --Jonty Monty (talk) 20:20, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh well, perhaps you're right. Call me old-fashioned, I just thought marriage was one of those times that honesty was important. DuncanHill (talk) 20:25, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not saying it's right or wrong. Just saying it's a regular occurance. --Jonty Monty (talk) 20:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

proper question for anyone to ask?

Why are you so keen to bury information regarding the activities of a pedophile?

Was asked of me at [3]

I happened to consider it an millimetre beyond the pale - was it? Collect (talk) 20:01, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it a proper question to ask? No, I very much doubt it. Is this a proper place for you to raise this? I don't think so. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I asked the person to redact - and have received absolutely no response. And this is rather a good place to ask just about anything at all, if you wish to read the many varied discussions held here in the past. Thus it is "proper" to ask and I do not understand why anyone would think otherwise. BTW, I think you should recall my defending you for some rather "grumpy" language in the past. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:29, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah - but is this a good place to raise the issue? Do you want something specific done about it? If so, it won't happen here. If it had say been raised at WP:ANI (which I'd have thought not entirely over-the-top given the refusal to redact), there would be at least possibility of a resolution. Here, likely as not if there is going to be a response at all it will end up running through the whole 'civility' debate once again, with the same inconclusive outcome as everyone goes over the same old ground once more. Meanwhile, more people will have seen what was said, and any redaction becomes less meaningful. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:53, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Check the archives - civility is a major topic on this page. And where an editor does not redact a ridiculous aspersion, the iteration here harms no one but the person who made the absurd comment. And I would daresay Wikipedia's record on actually "enforcing" civility is everso slightly less stellar than a "100 magnitude" star. Collect (talk) 21:08, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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