User:Bestedpeach

This is the user-page for User:Bested Peach.

Wikipedia user Bestedpeach is a curious world citizen.

WP problems

(Credit to User:Wikid77 for these ideas)

There are many problems, easily hundreds, with priority depending on what each person wants. Some problems are:

Weakipedia: Many articles have limited, hollow content that still lacks simple reference footnotes to support claims. Because many articles were created as quick stubs, with no follow-up plan, they have remained weak and hollow (for years). Also wiki collaboration lacks the power to deter troublemakers, since the system is too weak to "ban" people, while "freedom of editing" allows users to hack articles from hundreds of anonymous IP addresses. Anyone with a mindset or corporate agenda can "hire" people to slant wiki articles, and so information is only revised as neutral due to extensive efforts of many part-time volunteers who guard against troubles. Ask any school teacher what would happen if chemistry labs were left unlocked day-and-night (also see: poisoning wells).
Hunches: Some articles contain several hunches about the information, even though many articles could be sourced with verifiable footnotes, within only 2 hours of editing. There is great potential for management to direct efforts in quick, effective avenues, rather than let trivial minor edits dominate the landscape.
Edit wars: A huge amount of time is wasted in "edit wars" due to a lack of focus in writing. Most conflicts are decided by mob rule, so joining an active group can help resolve some conflicts.
The vision thing: Unlike organizations that teach a short overview of project vision and supportive goals, wiki efforts can seem like mindless chatter. Joining any of the various WikiProjects could help provide some vision to avoid wasting efforts on useless activities.
Unsourced images: Within 6 months, any non-free image is likely to be deleted as a total waste of time. Uploading popular images, CD or book covers requires complex, specific "fair use rationale" that takes time to handle smoothly. Perhaps 3 or 4 solid days of examining other non-free images/sounds should be spent to better understand how fleeting those files can be, and avoid the wasted time of uploading non-free files that will be axed within weeks.
Subheader traditions: A "typical" wiki article has specfic subheader titles and almost never has an "overview" section, for separate editing, so keep the lede section short, and add subheaders such as History, Career, Family, Legacy, etc. The ending bottom sections are typically given exact subheader names (in order): See also, Notes, References, External links, as fully described in the WP guideline "Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout" (or WP:GUIDE).
Wiki life is messy, clean it up: Many mainstream articles will get amended and hacked, within 2 months, so just like rooms open to the public, expect cleanup: check old facts, new word-flow or commas, and use the History-diff options to detect overlooked vandalism. People with great ideas are not always the best writers; when choosing between facts and grammar, the cleanup can wait. If the cleanup would aggravate writers, wait longer. Don't sweat the small stuff: focus on major articles, adding sources. Minor errors are common and OK: many people already fix one word per article (sad but true). Also, articles can be added to your watchlist; however, other people also help repair wording.
Strict consistency: Even though a consistent format can allow repeated edits to a pattern or common displays from a template, some people try to use "consistency" as a means of suppressing changes. Quoting "consistency" is a false justification, because the first improved article is inconsistent with the others. Use the 80-20 rule, and accept that 80% of particular articles being consistent is a plateau goal, but remember that only 20% of particular articles will be read by 80% of all users. That viewpoint avoids the push for strict consistency.
Psycho-pressures: With millions of articles and images to sort/revise or remove, there is a frantic tendency to go, go, go. Few take the time to recruit or mentor others to be productive team players. Rather than teach others to focus on writing/uploading quality files, many people are obsessed with slashing, trashing and deleting the unfocused stuff that gets thrown hourly into the wiki giga-bit-bucket. The lack of visionary teamwork produces a somewhat psychotic, adversarial attitude (of almost everyone), fostered by fringe element types that are slanting articles or scattering corporate "ads" in hopes to mass-market via wiki. Some people seem compelled to struggle faster, harder, as if speed and determination will end the need for garbage trucks in a city. It's another fool's errand. The wiki world seems a chaotic mix of "stamping out fires" while trying to hold sandpiles of accuracy in bare hands. The burnout pressures are very great.
No feedback: Visionary management would use customer feedback and trend analysis to analyze responses from users and track which article groups are read most (at what time of the year), in order to focus efforts in those arenas as trends are spotted (see: wp:Surveys). However, privacy was threatened by snooping, so Wikipedia no longer reports who is reading what, which a search-engine might log for various government snoops. But, other websites are counting Wikipedia page-views.
Bots gone bonkers: Several robotic "bot" processes edit articles for trivial fixes, such as upper/lowercase, or reverting vandalism. By mid-2008, bots were choking Wikipedia, even fixing "spelling errors" in vandalism, with over 1 million new revisions per week, clogging disk storage. Why is Wikipedia so slow? Well, duh, all changes must be re-saved (daily) for disk backup. But of course, "Don't worry about performance" (WP:PERF), even when people have good ideas, some developers do not want to hear about them, or are too distracted with trivial changes to the MediaWiki software.
Wackopedia: Many Wikipedia articles are slanted in a vast array of subjects, by people with severe mindsets. You think you know strong attitudes, but you have no idea. Psychotic people should not be blamed alone, for living in fascist countries, having a father like Chancellor Hitler, coping with Mommie Dearest, or being a product of fetal alcohol syndrome, etc. However, be aware that more than 60,000 articles are slanted, purposely biased by the unbalanced, for whatever agenda. A employee was once paid by Microsoft to slant tech articles. Road maps are removed. Cleopatra was wikified as an alluring beauty, rather than a 27-language polyglot who controlled the vast wheat fields of Egypt. Wikipedia is a psycho magnet with glue, like flies on stink sealed in varnish. Once they conclude they are effectively warping the world, they remain for years before psycho-burnout (or become reporters for the communist party?). What the hey? I only reveal this (bias problem) in hopes that wiki policies could one day change to prevent such slanting of tendentious copy as being article contents. Yes, numerous people have left WP in disgust, some of them even out-psychoed the others into quitting, so the impact is real in articles, as well as people. Always beware that articles might be slanted, and check outside sources when possible.