Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-28/In the news



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  • The only time most people will read a long paragraph of instructions on a form is if the alternative is the likelihood of going to prison, or at least incurring a hefty financial penalty. As we do not offer these negative incentives, the instruction need to be 2 or 3 short sentences at the most (with links to fuller explanations). If we cannot figure out how to describe what to do in 40 or 50 words, the process needs redesigning -- and if it cannot be redesigned to that point, we need to re-think the way we handle the underlying problem. They need not offer all the possible options to do the same thing, and deal with all the potential cases. The clicks should go to the right places, simplify all possible steps. I've been here 5 years , 4 as an admin, and many processes I do not engage in because they're not worth the learning for doing it a few times only. I rarely even nominated Articles for Deletion until twinkle automated it; I almost never closed AfDs till they automated that also. The procedures I use by the hundreds I know, complete with all the details, but no new user will be in that situation. For the ones I know, when people ask me on my user talk to do something they could perfectly well do themselves, I just do it for them; I don't blame them for not knowing how, or refer them to the appropriate link that gives the full explanation. DGG ( talk ) 17:01, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reading the exchange between Danny Sullivan & the Metropolitan90 (the Wikipedian who happened to get involved), I found some interesting dynamics at work. Yes, Metropolitan did rely on Wikipedia jargon too heavily in responding to Sullivan, but in essence gave the right information. ("You're not helping your cause by posting to a closed discussion. Take it to Deletion Review.") About the only other thing Metropolitan could have done differently would have been to offer to help in that process -- but should a Wikipedian be expected to go that far? Do we all need to provide excellent customer service? We're all volunteers -- & by any measure, customers of Wikipedia too -- & for the majority of us our donation of time takes second place to the other obligations in our lives. He could have blown off Sullivan at any time.

    And reading Sullivan's response, he not only showed inexcusable arrogance -- in truth, does he take this attitude when talking to the average random contact at for-profit Internet projects like Yahoo or Amazon? -- I thought he showed a surprising lack of clue at how an online forum works. Specifically, where he accuses Metropolitan of asserting something on his Talk page, when it's clear that someone else had written it.

    A lot of this miscommunication could have been prevented if both parties had tried to treat each other as individuals & not as a subgroup of a type. Here I'm tempted to come down harder on Sullivan since he was the one who wanted something from the exchange: he wanted the article, so at the least he should have remembered the old saying about flies, honey & vinegar when contacting a Wikipedian. (For all anyone knows, Metropolitan is a stereotypical 15-year-old living with his parents. Many of them respond poorly to criticism. Fortunately, Metropolitan did act maturely.) Less obvious would be that almost any Wikipedian, with more than minimal experience, who is confronted by someone claiming to be an expert -- either in general or a specific expert individual -- is to suspect the opposite. Never say you are an expert; just show it. Another important point is that just because a Wikipedian makes an edit, there is no guarantee that she/he will ever make another; there have been countless Wikipedians who, after making hundreds or thousands of productive edits, just stop contributing. And had Metropolitan quit Wikipedia in the middle of this, where lesson would Sullivan had taken away from this?

    I know I'm preaching to the choir in writing the above, but maybe, just maybe, someone will point certain WMF employees to my comment the next time they criticize how Wikipedians treat new people. We didn't become unfriendly, insular members of an important project out of choice or careful reflection, but as a response to chronic frustration from problems in trying to create a reliable encyclopedia. These problems include dealing with people like Sullivan who, although well-intentioned, treat us like front-line employees in a faceless call center. -- llywrch (talk) 18:35, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bingo - "Here I'm tempted to come down harder on Sullivan since he was the one who wanted something from the exchange: he wanted the article, ...". That's the Wikipedia editor view. That's not his view, which is I believe, that he's giving Wikipedia something it should want, an expert contribution. And regarding your point about how you're treated by WMF, well, personally I get a lot of grief from low-level Wikipedians who see slamming a critic as a quick way to get status points. However, if you actually read what I say in my overall criticism, another thread is the exploitation, of the 99% by the 1%, where those at the top will make a power-calculation as to what benefits them. And if you lose in that calculation, you will be the fall-guy for the dysfunctional system. The classic question is how to react to this dysfunction. There's always many points for shooting the messengers. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Having read Finkelstein's response, I've wondered if I should have used different words in making my point above. I doubt it: no matter what one writes, a listener will always chose which message to hear. Thus, Finkelstein will always find evidence of a cult in Wikipedia; he sees us as a faceless crowd which includes "low-level Wikipedians who see slamming a critic as a quick way to get status points". As for deference to expert opinion, their arguing that they are right because of a title or certificate will always be obnoxious or self-defeating, whether they are making their point in a classroom or on Wikipedia. Were they to approach us as individuals motivated to get the facts right -- often adequately educated, but always willing to learn more about the subject -- they would have a better experience here. And it works both ways: not every person who is unhappy with Wikipedia content is a kook, troll, or trying to push some fringe belief no one else cares about, & we Wikipedians us forget that more often than we would like to admit. -- llywrch (talk) 20:13, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
llywrch, you have no idea how disheartening your reply is. In terms of "always chose which message to hear", well, I don't think it would help you hear if I screamed at you, so I won't do that (in particular, the "faceless crowd" bit is a straight line for a riposte of "No, I see you collectively as ...", which I will forgo) . But, for heaven's sake, can I express with strong emotional tone, that it looks like you didn't even read what I wrote? (in terms of thinking about the ideas) Talk about evidence for a cult! (ok, one riposte). A huge amount of my criticism of Wikipedia is about exploitation, manipulation, digital sharecropping, dysfunctional group dynamics, and then that connects to another branch of criticism about anti-expertise and a kind of pseudo-popularism. To gloss this all as you do isn't even wrong. Regarding "a title or certificate", that's more of the same. Danny Sullivan isn't an expert because someone gave him a title of Professor Of Searchitude, or a certificate of SEOishness (shades of "The Wizard of Oz", where the wizard gives the Scarecrow a diploma instead of a brain). He's an expert because he's been studying the field for many years and understands it. Now, this doesn't mean you have to bow down before such people (I certainly don't). However, to deride it as you do is another matter entirely -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 14:46, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You all might be interested to know that Mr. Sullivan has been editing since this story broke; here is his latest:

"I know you're trying to help me; I do. And I do appreciate the effort you're putting in. But I don't need that help. Wikipedia needs the help. That's the core point in all this. It's not that I or Wikipedia outsiders are broken and just need to get up-to-speed on Wikipedia. It's that Wikipedia is this incredibly dysfunctional system. Seriously, just how we're conversing. This messaging system isn't a messaging system; it's archaic.

Help Wikipedia, that's what needs it."

Take care not to shoot the messenger. Food for thought. Skomorokh 22:48, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's absolutely true that WP is a maze of twisty passages all alike. And this would not be such a problem if firstly we were more uniformly friendly to people who get it wrong (which includes me, after all these years) and secondly more supportive of those who try to untwist the passages. Rich Farmbrough, 23:24, 29 November 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • : Having said that, it does slightly stretch credulity that he "did not know the name of the deleted page" viz: "Jessie Stricchiola".... Rich Farmbrough, 02:12, 30 November 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Um, the title of his own page is "Danny Sullivan (technologist)". So how does he know the name of the page is "Jessie Stricchiola" and not "Jessie Stricchiola (technologist)"? That looks like what he was thinking, as he wrote "I suppose you can guess, but given how bureaucratic everything else is on Wikipedia, I have little faith". After all, someone might say "Of course you have to give a disambiguation - there might be several people with the same name". Wikipedians often really do underestimate how the little quirks which are their conventions are very opaque to everyone else. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:43, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A technologist shouldn't find that hard. But then a good yarn for a blog may need a little embellishment. See my later comment below. Rich Farmbrough, 00:47, 1 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]

As much as I understand all the processes we have, I really have to agree with Danny. The METHOD in which we run our processes is so incredibly convoluted, it needs changing, and we really all need to understand HOW broken our system really is. 217.114.102.131 (talk) 10:31, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • There are 4,142 chemists listed on English Wikipedia, compared with 996 pornographic actresses and 450 pornographic film actors.

    Chemists thus make up over 1 per thousand of WP articles, which I think is a good representation. (Whether we have, pari passu, to much coverage of pornographic actors, I am not qualified to guess, let alone judge.) Similarly while Wikipedia has 273 pages related to Pokemon, we have 10,000 on bird species and many more on fish, plants and animals. It is certainly clear that the "Otaku attack" in absolute terms is loosing its power.

    On a similar bent, Wikipedia was attacked for being too liberal recently, I noticed one of the metrics was the low proportion of criticism in the article on Michael Moore. The writer (who I recall was a well known pundit) had not noticed that there are whole articles of criticism that have been spun off.

    I do think WP has some fundamental problems, but they are not really brought to light by writing based on what are virtually made-up figures. Rich Farmbrough, 00:47, 1 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]
  • I think Danny missed a core point here. We don't need or want expert opinions. For a while, we gave experts deference. Then bad things happened and we stopped. Expert opinions are original research and harder to cite, making them unverifiable. Furthermore, an expert is much more likely to stand in a conflict of interest than a typical user. Experts are great for providing pointers to sources, and for less controversial work, but they are not and should not be our principle source of content.
Now, I do agree that our system is far too bureaucratic, making it much harder to contribute than it should be. But that doesn't mean that we should automatically bow our heads in deference when a person who claims to be an expert throws an out-of-process temper tantrum -- even if the claim proves to be correct. Process is and always will be important for a project of our size; experts and supposed experts don't get a free pass around it, and they certainly don't get to bypass it by being rude (nor, for that matter, does anyone else). --NYKevin @182, i.e. 03:22, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
NYKevin: Opinions are research, good. Wikispeak rules. Seriously, being "pointers to sources" and being "the principal (if not the only) source" is often one and the same. Either "the expert" reports the source, with or without opinions, or there's nothing. Step outside the U.S. college curriculum, step outside what's hot in research community and what's visible on googlebooks, - the number of people with physical access to good sources in less-popular areas is quite low. I would be more concerned of a different angle - that wikipedians who have such access become recognized as "experts" simply because they have sources. NVO (talk) 09:08, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fine. They need to cite those sources. If those sources are unpublished, they can't seriously expect us to discuss them at all. They can't just tell us to take their word for it. WP:V is a core policy. Experts don't get to ignore it. It's as simple as that. WP:COI is also fairly important, and often arises when an expert starts writing about fringe science, although in principle it could arise in any field. --NYKevin @836, i.e. 19:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per Sullivan: On occasion I have also been frustrated by the off-limits nature of closed AfD discussions. It might be useful to allow post-discussion comments to be added below the closed text box and have the addition pop up on a dynamic discussion thread somewhere. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:25, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]