User:Thorncrag/Subpage

On article inclusion

I am not a deletionist, but believe in very high standards of content on Wikipedia and this is because I believe Wikipedia faces a major public image challenge. Wikipedia should be written for a general audience and when that general audience comes across pages that might be interpreted as nonsensical or lacking sufficient context, then that article should not exist on Wikipedia. Each time this happens it gives the opportunity for Wikipedia's credibility to be further impugned.

Inclusion criteria

In furtherance of this, an article simply must assert the topic's notability, be referenced, and make sense to a general audience at the moment of its publishing into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a very popular, highly visible publishing platform: it is likewise imperative that articles meet high standards. Every time a poor article exists, Wikipedia risks losing credibility with skeptics who claim that Wikipedia is unreliable. In the very least, an article of such diminished value must at least be made into a stub, so that it is abundantly clear to readers that the article is not yet considered reliable and complete.

Google New Article Test (GNAT)

Regarding notability of a topic, I have developed an almost fool-proof method for helping to ascertain this. For newly created articles search for the topic using Google. If the newly created (this only foresee-ably works with new articles) Wikipedia article appears anywhere on the first page of Google's search results, than the topic is not yet notable enough to be included in Wikipedia, as a general rule.

This method works because of the way Google works: search ranking in Google is determined in part based upon the number of internet pages that link to them. Therefore, for a newly created Wikipedia article to appear with such a highly rank after only existing for a short time, means that there are very few if any links on the internet for this topic and therefore its third-party coverage and thus notability is dubious.

General Statement on Wikipedia

I believe in building a free encyclopedia. I believe that Wikipedia is one of the wonders of the modern world. Nowhere in history has such a compilation of human knowledge come together for the benefit of all and at no cost for its use.

Wikipedia Faces Many Challenges

I believe that Wikipedia faces many challenges. One primary challenge is public image.

Abuse is a Primary Concern

Abuse of Wikipedia is one of my primary concerns, as it should be for everyone. Not only because it sets us back in our goal to build an encyclopedia, but because Wikipedia's credibility is damaged every time an abuse takes place and our content is defaced.

Collegiate Atmosphere

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and to that end, it is not optional that we adhere to and expect at least a minimal standard of a collegiate atmosphere. There are several things that are inextricable to an encyclopedia, and thus a collegiate atmosphere:

An encyclopedia means learning and thus readers (and contributors) are here to learn.
An encyclopedia serves to empower people with knowledge to better themselves.
An encyclopedia means sharing.

To these ends it is indivisible to expect that contributors should conform to at least a modicum of decorum, collegiality, and willingness to comply with the norms of—generically—writing an encyclopedia, and—specifically—to those norms established in the Wikipedia community.

Any user behavior which does not conform to that of a collegiate atmosphere should thus be checked. If a user is unwilling, or incapable (See competence) to maintain a collegiate behavior may need to be shown the proverbial door.

Wikipedia can be a Club

In many places Wikipedia has become at best club-like and at worst cult-like, and similarly it lacks accountability. This is demonstrated in processes such as requests for adminship and bureacratship. In these examples, too often if you do not fit the rigid, overly simplistic and fallacious definition of a quality editor (to many seen merely by raw quantity of content contributions rather than quality of overall contributions) you are invisible or even ignored.

Administrator flag has become a reward

You frequently see users opposing candidates on the basis that the they have little or no "content-building" experience. This is a completely flawed premise: whether someone has worked on content has almost nothing to do with with the technical wherewithal which is what is actually required for serving as an administrator. What this creates is what becomes a "reward" or promotion for users who have built content, rather than truly recognizing those whom have contributed in a variety of other ways to the encyclopedia. This is completely antithetical to the stated vision of administrators: as being essentially equals with only a few more tools.

This is also a completely fallacious standard in that if a contributor has spent all or most of their time contributing excellent content, then why would we as a community want them to depart from this work that they excel at only then to spend their effort working on technical aspects of the encyclopedia? Particularly, when we have users who excel more at technical aspects but not with content? Granted, it is important that administrators understand why we are here—to build an encyclopedia not a bureaucracy of sysops—but this can be reasonably assessed in ways other than just content edits.

More Hats

Perhaps more poignantly, too many seeking additional tools are merely seeking "more hats" and a snazzy title. Further, administrators as noted above are in fact elevated above other editors despite the stated intent to the contrary. As an example, we still use the word "promote" when referring to changing roles of users to administrators. Ultimately, most of us are here to contribute constructively. Not all of us excel at building content, and Wikipedia certainly needs contributors who contribute in others ways such as combating abuse. Not all of us have 23 hours-a-day to spend prowling the encyclopedia, no matter how much we might support the cause.

Wikipedia is a Bureaucracy

Wikipedia has become too large and is growing too fast and its current governance structure is NOT adequate to the task. This is a major concern.

Often Wikipedia project-related activities lack an overall strategy, leading too often to the right hand not knowing what left is doing.
The Arbitration Committee is inundated with requests, many of which are undeservedly turned down due to overload.
The increasingly massive body of opinions and precedents constructed by the Committee's decisions is growing fast, and those precedents have not been codified, and are too complex for every-day contributors to decipher.
Too many willing and constructive contributors are stuck in the morass of complex Wikipedia machinations, forgotten and lost their contributions go unidentified and unattributed.
The voices of well-reasoned, fair and balanced contributors are frequently drowned out by the masses of screaming unreasonable self-serving users only here to fluff their ego, or agenda-driven users only here propagate their propaganda, neither to build an encyclopedia.
- Exemplified by the bureaucratic tendency is the no vote guideline which has become a dream of the past. No longer can reasoned opinions be truly distinguished from unreasonable ones, nor good-intentioned from agenda-driven ones. There are too many opinions for this idealistic vision to efficiently function. How can one determine consensus fairly? As Wikipedia grows, so too will the diversity of opinions, and eventually consensus-driven progress will become virtually impossible to construct.

Wikipedia has Become too Much of a Soapbox

All-too-often, so-called "contributors" aren't really here to build an encyclopedia but instead to push an agenda. This is no less destructive than pure vandalism, in the long run. It damages Wikipedia's credibility, perhaps even more so than pure vandalism.

Wikipedia can be too Confusing to New Contributors

New contributors may find Wikipedia to be too confusing. While the stated goal is to avoid instruction creep, the sheer amount of guidelines and policies, principles, pillars, unwritten or unspoken rules, terms, plus all of the subtle nuances and so forth, new contributors may in many cases become daunted and overwhelmed:

The new good-intentioned contributor is abundantly cautious, and gives-up for fear of breaking the rules.
The new good-intentioned contributor (almost always understandably) makes a mistake, receives a warning, and stops contributing.
The new good-intentioned contributor sees articles which they perceive to be contradicting established guidelines, but their article gets deleted, they give up.
The new, once good-intentioned contributor like above, gives up and turns to abusing Wikipedia due to any of the aforementioned. This maybe intentional or unintentional, although clearly becomes intentional after they are informed that their behavior has become abusive.

Taken together, these are just more attestations of textbook bureaucracy.

Ignore all rules thoroughly fails at dealing with this reality: new contributors are likely unaware, and moreover, it actually likely fosters increased abuse by contributors who make destructive contributions under the banner of this ill-conceived clause, intentionally or otherwise. Furthermore, determining what constitutes constructive is far too subjective, whereas this precept by its own self-declaration lacks any hard-fast criterion. In addition, this paradigm is often ripe for additional abuses such as by administrators using tools that either is, or seen to be pushing their own opinion or viewpoint, only further worsening the matter.

Wikipedia Fails at Dealing with Complex Abuse

While Wikipedia excels at dealing with ad hoc abuse, such as dealing with school-house vandalism, it utterly and miserably fails when dealing with long-term, complex abuse. While counter-abuse strategies such as Abuse Response, having recently been revamped and reformulated, strive to counter the abuse in a prescriptive manner, Wikipedia lacks an overall counter-abuse strategy and not to mention coordination, and lacks virtually any support from the Foundation or the community in general. It is possible that this may be due to lack of community awareness of these activities; but nevertheless, the lack of awareness inhibits their success rates, particularly when it comes to deterrence. Other forms of complex abuse, such as point-of-view pushing—a very real problem—also lacks any tangible strategy for treatment and prevention.

More about my history with Wikipedia

I first became an avid reader and fan of Wikipedia back in 2004. At the time, and for a period of several years, my interest was only in reading Wikipedia articles, enjoying, and utilizing its content. I began contributing somewhat shortly thereafter, but it wasn't until July of 2008 that I started to take a real interest in what's behind articles—the procedures and machinations of how articles are produced, as well as the other day-to-day activities on Wikipedia—of which the average reader and even some editors are completely unaware. Some time ago, I was given an opportunity to utilize my knowledge of MediaWiki software, and to propose using MediaWiki as a major system to be used by my employer's department, which was later adopted. This played a significant role in my renewed and increased interest of the workings of Wikipedia.

I should disclose my initial impression of Wikipedia. As I've stated on my user page, I truly believe that Wikipedia is an amazing invention. The mere concept of compiling the collective knowledge of potentially every human being is really an amazing concept. It faces challenges, but those challenges can be overcome, and it is well-worth the effort. Nevertheless, I've come to the realization that struggling against the status quo to make some real improvements will be difficult.

After delving in, there were a few immediate observations which led me to very quick conclusions:

Wikipedia has become so big that it is difficult for any one person to understand.
Due to that complexity, high-quality contributors (both content and non-content) are difficult to not only recruit but to retain.
There is no rule of law, in the truest meaning.
By all these, Wikipedia is by definition a bureaucracy.