User talk:WereSpielChequers/Going off the boil?

Going off the boil works in the upstart colonies; while I wouldn't say it's commonly used, it's clear enough what it means. Especially from those tea drinking Brits.

Yea, I gave up reverting vandalism when I found the majority of times I edit conflicted with a bot or hasty editor who had already addressed the issue.

I hate stupid templates on the top of article pages -- "this article sucks, but I'm too lazy to fix it, so I'm put this up here so I can feel like I did something useful." Other the other hand, the whole's world's smartest woman {Entwife} (smart enough to read WP and smart enough not to waste her time here) finds them useful. So go figure. NE Ent

Thanks NE Ent, I expect there is a middle view that some templates are useful to readers and others are really internal things for editors. Personally I'd be more relaxed about them if the only ones that existed were things like unreferenced and not uncategorised or unlinked. More importantly I'd like to see a culture change such that we use them as an admission of failure when we can't fix the problem ourselves. ϢereSpielChequers 12:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Culture change would be good -- in many, many ways. NE Ent 13:59, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Rough draft: Ched

First, sorry for the "alt" account, but "User:Ched" always seems to be caught up in "one more thing to fix". OK, just a rough draft of bullet points in my own mind. It's been a bit since I read the essay, so these are solely my own thoughts - but many of which stem from what I recall reading as well:

• Age of the project 1. In short, the novelty has worn off for those people who like to get involved with "new" things.
• Age of the project 2. I think that in the beginning there was a desire to establish something of value by a smaller group of people. As the project has aged, and the numbers have grown, many have split off into their own areas of interest. This has also created groups of "cliques", who often are wary of newcomers. I think this has had a tendency to create a less welcoming atmosphere to new editors.
• Age of project 3. Those who have been around for a while establish a familiarity with each other. This increases the "clique" factor for those who often are like-minded, and also leads to "grudges" in respect to editors with alternate views. These grudges can go on for years, festering until they reach a "boiling" point (sorry for the pun :)). Often new editors, or those unaware of the larger picture get pulled in, and when it ends up at Arbcom - there is often collateral damage. (MOS types of battles are well known for these types of things). This is not an atmosphere that encourages editors to return or stay.
• Age diversity 1. There are multiple editors here that are retired, or semi-retired; many of them professionals who choose to share their experience and knowledge. When younger editors come in and try to engage with all the exuberance of youth, many of these older editors tend to have a "don't try to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs" approach and try to chase the youngsters away. <placeholder> (will continue a bit later) — ChedZILLA 09:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
• Rules As the project has grown it seems that we are forever rushing to create new "rules" to document past problems in the hopes that the same problem won't happen again if we can just point someone to a WP:TLA. The sheer volume of rules, regulations, guidelines can be very daunting to a new editor who may quickly decide to simply "give up" rather than attempt the learning curve.
• History and Grudges "Wiki never forgets. And this goes back a bit to the "groups and cliques" as well. What someone says in a moment of emotion is preserved forever in wiki-history. Often when a person is facing some sort of scrutiny (RfA, AN boards, any kind of "election" or disagreement) then someone still smarting over an intemperate will invariably dig out that diff and throw it in someone's face. And every time we read a less than optimal post - it is as if it is being re-said in the present. When someone has that momentary lapse and it gets thrown in their face time and again, the project becomes less enjoyable. Arbcom has actually used "recidivism" as a talking point in findings and determinations. While it is good to know history so it's not repeated - I think the end result of this is a net negative; and a cause for departure in many cases. (break 2) — ChedZILLA 10:39, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Ched, I've tried to incorporate your 4th and 5th points. I disagree with you re Novelty, our problem is not that people don't try editing, it is that they try and very rarely persist. As for history and grudges, I think that Wikipedia is still a remarkably tolerant place. We rarely see effective opposes over matters that date back more than a year or so, and people with quite contentious pasts have made it to adminship. People do distinguish between old and new diffs, and most are quite willing to accept that people may change as they grow up. I've also added points about cliquiness and policy bloat ϢereSpielChequers 15:50, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to it. You've put a lot of time, thought, effort, and quality writing skills into this - and I very much appreciated being asked to have a look. I especially liked the "conclusion" section. Do you work with the WP:WER or Teahouse groups at all? They would likely be very glad to have your insights on this topic. I think the new "wikidata" project and this new visual editor you've mentioned may have an impact on participation here. I'm not sure how much, but I hope it will be a positive impact. — Ched :  ?  09:28, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I've not touched Wikidata and have little involvement in the teahouse. I thought WYSIWYG would transform the wiki and took part in the early testing of it. Unfortunately it went live despite failing the user acceptance testing and consequently has been a bit of a disaster. ϢereSpielChequers 05:41, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Great essay

I only discovered this after a link was posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 62#Speedy deletion of Adam (band). It basically agrees with what I've been thinking for some time now. I had considered writing my own essay, highlighting three reasons that editor activity had peaked and declined:

• the editor total was always going to peak at some point, it could not keep growing forever
• the low-hanging fruit of creating and completing obvious/easy topics has all been picked. Now it's only obscure topics that need creating, and relatively obscure/difficult ones that need fixing.
• there are many alternative wikis, in other languages, with other focusses, as well as blogs, tumblr, comment threads on any and every site.

What's important is these are not signs of Wikipedia growing irrelevant or failing, but of its success. That there's less easy work to do means that the encyclopaedia is mostly done, at least as far as core and popular topics that have many eyes on them. The encyclopaedia may never be finished but it is already treated as a reliable and comprehensive reference by many due to its quality. And that there are many alternatives is also partly down to Wikipedia's success, both in proving the model for wikis and supplying the software for free to most of them. Not least the other language Wikipedias which have been growing much faster, as has Baidu.

This essay offers a lot more reasons for the decline that I didn't even think of, but which make a lot of sense. Mobile browsing is probably the biggest as it accounts for a large portion of web browsing now. A mobile device is an ideal device for browsing Wikipedia – no Flash, WP scales well and mostly loads quickly – but no matter what we do it's never going to be as easy editing a text-heavy encyclopaedia on a phone or tablet. That WP is used more for reading as it matures is again not a problem.

I don't think our dated software is that much of an issue. Blocks of text with markup are used on many sites, many more than have WYSIWYG editors, and a WYSIWYG editor does't relieve you of all that typing on a mobile device. New editors hit 'edit' and see blocks of text and generally know what to do. Basic techniques such as formatting, linking, and more advanced ones such as adding references, using templates can be learned later at their own speed.

Templates were massively improved after Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Level one user warnings. Not only are they better for the editor receiving them they encourage anyone reading them, including the editor posting them, to not bite the newbie. Hopefully they mean far fewer editors are scared away after a single bad edit. With edit filters, tags, EL blacklists, and better tools a lot of vandalism should either not happen or be stopped very quickly.

Demographics of the editor body is a concern, though there's not an obvious solution. WP is already very open to editors of all backgrounds. Anonymous accounts are very welcome, preferred over unregistered accounts. Our strict policy on personal attacks and harassment means women, minorities, children can all feel welcome here. Try too hard to address the demographic imbalances and there's a danger good editors will be discouraged if they feel they or their contributions are less valued.

Overall though I agree wholeheartedly with this. Too much time is spent worrying about the decline in edits or editors, when there are perfectly good reasons for it and no indications it's causing any problems.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)