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"Everyone reverts my changes"

Around the net and in real life, I hear the following complaint (or something similar) very often : "I found an error on Wikipedia, and corrected it. It was immediately changed back again. I hate Wikipedia." I suspect a lot of the time this is because an article is changed by an IP address with no edit summary that is unsourced, or invalidates a previous source. A regular spots the change on the watchlist, and promptly reverts it with a summary akin to "rv unsourced".

The casual visitor has no idea what our policies on verifiability are, or how to view an article's history, and probably doesn't care. All they know is they changed something, and it was undone "for no reason". They then leave Wikipedia, never to return.

What on earth can we do about this? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:53, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

One obvious change would be to technically prod IP editors to not leave edits without edit summaries. The editor interface could do this very easily. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:58, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

This thread also assumes that they were right (good chance they weren't) and it sounds like they didn't try communication. Specific cases should be evaluated rather than trying to guess at the speculation of a generalized situation. Can you qualify your hypothesis with some form of evidence? If not, speculating could be a waste of your time.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm speaking from personal experience chatting to friends of mine. Bear in mind because they've been discouraged from editing Wikipedia, that they're not going to remember exactly what they did in intricate detail, but just frame it terms of experiences from the outside world. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:17, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Discuss, discuss, discuss! Edits don't tend to stick in one go. For better or worse, we have gotten into a culture where a lot of edits are reverted. Long term editors will recognize a revert as a first disagreement from where consensus should be found. A revert generally means "not like this" rather than "no". A newcomer doesn't work in this mode. They change something, and if it gets reverted, they shrug and walk away, with a potentially good edit wasted. What I would love to see is less revert more compromise. Each time you think of reverting, think about how can I make the article better using this edit. That might be a bit utopian. But what I think we should at the very least be able to do, is on a revert of an edit, if the editor is new, explain to them on their talkpage 0: thank you for taking the effort to improve wikipedia, 1: what was wrong about the edit so that it got reverted, 2: what the user can do to find a compromise, 3: an invitation to discuss if they disagree and ask if they don't understand, and 4: thank you again for your effort. It is unrealistic that a new user will be able to understand our modes of communication on first guess. If we need better tooling for casual reverts - which do not include canned replies, which are the kind of stuff that make humans fail turing tests - then we should work on that. Other than that, we need a shared conciousness that a revert of anything but vandalism is generally not a good, and a revert of anything but vandalism from a new user doubly so: if you have to resort to them, you should explain your actions. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:28, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

@ Ritchie333, I found something I agreed with on your User Page: "A good newbie can teach themselves to become more competent. A bad newbie never will." You added a link in the second sentence to Wikipedia:Competence is required, in which this passage can be found, "This is where we sometimes see a harmful side effect of our (generally quite useful) notion of assuming good faith. Many editors have focused so much on this that they have come to believe that good faith is all that is required to be a useful contributor. Sadly, this is not the case at all. Competence is required as well." As a user of STiki I see a lot of first attempts at editing. I disagree with Martijn Hoekstra that "a revert of anything but vandalism is generally not a good". For every vandalistic edit there is an edit with one or more spelling errors and often poor grammar and punctuation as well. These don't edits belong on WP and I am not going to spend any time encouraging such editors, following the philosophy "A bad newbie never will" [be able to write competently in an acceptably short time-frame]. We are not here to be tutors of the illiterate. --Greenmaven (talk) 05:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

There are many people with bad spelling who are otherwise competent. I would rather fix up the spelling of an editor who finds good information and sources and adds them appropriately than deal with beautifully written spam or unsourced material. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:42, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

My first edits to Wikipedia nearly 10 years ago were on-the-fly corrections to grammar and typos while simply looking stu:ff up. I knew absolutely nothing about rules, regulations, policies, and guidelines. I just saw the 'edit' button and pressed it, and I got it right. Nothing of mine has ever been reverted by an intelligent editor. By the time I had realised there were some articles that I could expand or even write, when I registered an account I still dd not know much about the rules, but most of it was intuitive - it seemed pretty obvious to me what is wanted in an encyclopedia and what would be copyvio, PoV, and what needed sourcing. But that's just me, we can't expect everyone to have been a professional writer and linguist for 30 years. More needs to be done to explain things to IPs and new users as soon as they touch the 'edit' and 'save' buttons. Less credence needs to be lent to the mantra that all drive-by editors will be come dedicated, prolific editors, although with a bit of luck, some might. I did, but I and others like me are probably a rarity out of the 13 million registered accounts. I saw somewhere that there are around 50,000 regular editors, but I doubt even that; it depends on the criteria used for extrapolating the stats. There is a table somewhere of the highest performing editors (by edit count) - I was rather high on it myself once, but IMO, minor edits don't count for much. We should focus here on retaining editors who have made significant contributions to content, and who suddenly stop editing, or who were driven away by the drivel and lack of good faith by others. The focus of WER as I understand its founding principles, is on retaining good editors rather than encouraging 1-edit newbies - for that we have the TeaHouse. Things would buck up if the Foundation would pull its fingers out and create a proper landing page after all these years. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I would like to point out that having an academic background doesn't always lead to an intuitive understanding of Wikipedia's policies. I've had several long discussions with professors and authors who undoubtably wouldn't think of submitting an article to a journal without a bibliography, but couldn't undertand why an encyclopedia article about themselves should have independent sources. —Anne Delong (talk) 07:09, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

If you allow me, I have the opposite experience. I gave up and unwatched the article on heat after on its talk page there was a consensus of editors stating the reference I brought in is incorrect (in fact, mistaken). The reference is an undergraduate text which I use for teaching the course in physics (which includes thermodynamics), and I am a full professor of physics in one of the leading universities of the world. The subsequent discussion showed me that the most active editor on the talk page in not familiar with the basic notions of the subject. This is not my first experience when a bunch of schoolchildren or undergrads gets together to reject academic sources in favor of their favorite book or smth. This is why I almost never edit articles which have any relation to my professional activity, and many of them are in a pitiful state.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

And btw articles about academics do not always have to have independent sources. If the subject passes WP:ACADEMIC, in many cases the university webpage (obviously a dependent source) would suffice.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:10, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

While I agree that the university profile is enough to show notability of a professor (I'm presuming that this is because universities value their reputations and wouldn't allow someone to misstate their academic credentials on an official web site - although I'm sure that it's happened), I believe that references are still needed for the inevitable "is well known for", "has made significant contributions to", "discovered the fundamental principals of", or "lectures world-wide on the topic of", etc —Anne Delong (talk) 13:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is correct.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Anne, 'Not everyone has an academic background' - I think I made that clear in my post - I was referring only to myself. In fact some stats once raised by the WMF demonstrated that the fewest editors have an academic background. Also, having lived in academia for nearly 40 years, I can confirm that even academics are not always the most intuitive of people. It depends what their area of research is. Scientific researchers tend to be more pragmatic, while those studying humanities tend to be less objective (again, only in my experience). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I would also "fix up the spelling of an editor who finds good information and sources and adds them appropriately" (Anne). But I am talking about people who add a sentence or two of drivel, stating the obvious, repeating the already said, in a poor paraphrase. These sort of editors are not capable of finding "good information and sources" because they don't live in the literate community. User:Kudpung has made a key observation: "Less credence needs to be lent to the mantra that all drive-by editors will be come dedicated, prolific editors". --Greenmaven (talk) 08:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Hey folks! Just reverted this, <"ulaalaa,, membahana badai cinn..." "Nyata terpangpang....." "Bulu matakuuu..">. It may be intended to represent part of a song. --Greenmaven (talk) 08:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

So, your point is some edits are plain old vandalism? If I didn't make that clear on the first go; yes, that exists, and the ROI on taking time with those editors is probably a lot less than with good faith edits. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:13, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Martijn is pretty well on the nail with the ROI. I think it's fair to assume that most vandalism is done by children who are best waiting for a few more years before they edit the encyclopedia again. Any vandalism done by adults is probably done by individuals who should never be considering editing Wikipedia again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I try to tell myself, when its a borderline case, to let it go. Its hard because most of the pages on my watchlist are articles I care about. Let's say an editor comes along and changes "most" to "the majority of", stuff like that. It's not an error, but its not an improvement either. Its roiling the text to no benefit and actually introducing needless words, and on the purely technical merits I'd be inclined to revert it on that basis. But: it's not an actual error. The person thought it was an edit worth making. It's the encyclopedia anyone can edit.

If its the introduction of (what I consider to be) unnecessary material, same deal. If it's not sourced but there's no reason to believe it's not true, consider letting it go. Tag it you like. Most of the statements in the Wikipedia are not sourced but are true. Of course if its an actual error, or there's reasonable cause to believe its not true, or if its egregiously illiterate or trivial, that's different. But it's the encyclopedia anyone can edit, not the encyclopedia anyone can edit who writes like I do or has the same idea about what an encyclopedia article should or should not include that I do.

It's hard, though. There's a certain amount of eye-rolling and even teeth-gritting involved. And there's a valid counterargument that technical quality even at the margins is more important than social inclusiveness. You have to strike a balance I guess. Herostratus (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

It's hard, particularly when you've got an article up to a certain standard, and the edit in question would be picked up and criticised at a formal review. For example, List of Hammond organ players is on my watchlist after I cleaned it up substantially, and it's spelled out in a comment in the article's text and in an edit notice that unreferenced and / or non-notable entries will be removed. So when I saw this edit, it would have been quick and easy to undo it with a summary of "unreferenced, non-notable" but I spent a good hour creating a Peter Weltner article even though quite frankly his notability is tenuous. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:07, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

That's pretty great. Now the questions is, how do we get more people acting that way? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Ironically enough, one good way of handling it is to spend less time on Wikipedia and do other things. You'll get a better perspective of what really matters and what doesn't. It sounds counterintuitive, but I think it basically comes back to the fundamentals of WP:OWN that you'll fall into traps less often if you don't have as big a stake or interest in an article. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Possibly though, but can we distill a concrete proposal out of that. We can discuss this untill the cows come home, but unless we change actual behaviour, nothing will change. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The word 'altruism' is occurring to me. Taking time to create a new article rather than throw out someone's contribution is commendable. Probably there was some curiosity as well... who is this Peter Weltner? Behind that there is a desire to keep the article List of Hammond organ players in good shape. Now, how can we formulate a proposal to encourage 'altruism'? Most of the efforts of editors are altruistic, as far as I can see, especially to begin with. We reward them with tokens of our esteem. That's what our first welcome page is. Our community will prosper if we acknowledge good work. In the end, people want to be well thought of, and that begins to supersede 'altruism'. --Greenmaven (talk) 19:12, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps implement forced viewing of Wikipedia:Tutorial for new IP's and accounts. Meaning they will be directed to the tutorial and hopefully read over a few basic principles before they can edit. -- Moxy (talk) 18:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree. They have to be given some kind of Rules of the Road or else they head right for the "fast lanes" and cause all kinds of un-necessary traffic. ```Buster Seven Talk 19:45, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

As an aside, your edit summary is awkward for one large area where new editors head straight for the overtaking lanes. In India, if slower traffic were to keep to the right then one would have colossal problems, for they drive on the left, as do far more people than you might be aware of Fiddle Faddle 19:51, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I meet quite a few "burned" editors in real life. My first response now is to tell them to cite their sources, I'm not sure I like the situation where newbies have to be told to cite any factoid that they add to the pedia, but I find that deals with most cases. OK in several cases I've then had to explain that they first need to create an online source by getting something published in a reliable source. In a couple of cases I've further steered them to wards writing a book, and I'm not sure the sort of book that we would accept as a source. In only one rare occasion have I found that someone had had a cited edit reverted, and I can see there that it was a logical editorial decision, the info belonged in the sub article not in the main article perhaps we could get some sort of edit notice or transclusion system to prevent people from ignoring the {{main}} template and just expanding the main article to duplicate the section that was spun out. ϢereSpielChequers 08:53, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

If a good faith new editor inserts material that's not sourced but is reasonably appropriate and probably true, tag it rather than deleting it. And if someone else deletes it, restore it and tag it. Do this on the grounds that the greater good -- being a more welcoming community -- supersedes the technical requirement to ref all statements (honored more in the breach anyway).

I don't know what the rule is -- so many rules! -- but I'm generally against deleting material that's appropriate, not derogatory to anyone, for which no claim of untruthfulness is made, and which common sense tells me is very likely to be true, unless it's been tagged for a reasonable time, like a year.

You know, if someone inserts let's say a discography, and someone reverts that on the basis of not being sourced, come on -- it's the second editor who's being disruptive (as well as unwelcoming). It's not common for people to just make stuff like that up, it'd be easy enough for the second editor to look it up, or he doesn't want to take the time to do that then tag it, if he doesn't want to take the time to tag it he should let it go, and if he's not willing to do that then screw him -- why should his lazy one-click editing get to dictate the narrative?

If and when an article goes to peer review unsourced material can be removed then I guess. I don't know much about the GA and FA process but what I do know doesn't incline me to treat them as a shibboleth. I want lots of reasonably "good articles" not a few "Good Articles"^TM and to make lots of good articles we need lots of writers.

New topic, but one place where people can practice "letting it go" is re WP:ENGVAR. I see a fair amount of that, anon IPs changing "kilometer" to "kilometre" and so forth (when it's not a UK-specific article). There's a very good reason for WP:ENGVAR, which is to avoid pointless sterile warring over that. But that doesn't mean you're required to bounce the guy's edits. They guy thinks he's "fixing the spelling", and probably some small but non-zero number of editors who start that way go on to become useful editors.

I think it would be basically impossible to write that into WP:ENGVAR. For one thing, if you did it would presently be gamed. It's just an attitude. Lead by example, pass it on, write an essay (there probably already is one) and point people to it, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 16:19, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

What an excellent and forward-moving strategy!

I can think of at least one admin who threatens blocks for doing this. 8-( Andy Dingley (talk) 16:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't fully agree with this, but there is a balance. Leaving it there is probably better than outright reverting, and possibly leaving a boilerplate warning. Then again, a handwritten note, which genuinely thanks the editor for trying to do their part, and genuinely welcomes the editor to wikipedia, along with explaining that the article is written in American English, and that we prefer to keep it in one style, but that they are welcome to keep contributing, and to keep making mistakes every now and then is probably still better. If you don't genuinely feel that they did a good thing trying to improve the encyclopedia because you strongly feel about Engvar/Are in a bad mood today/Are dulled by a rote anti-vandalism run, it's probably better to opt for the first option of leaving it there. Someone in a better state of mind might still do it, and wikipedia isn't going to burn down for leaving that there for a few hours/days/weeks/months. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

  Herostratus is fundamentally correct. The only way that we are going to overcome the delete-if-not-perfection wikiCulture, is by directly counteracting it, in the field. Of course, snark-tagging everything is not much better than deleting it. *Especially* if somebody added some info, then that info was deleted, the beginner was officiously template-spammed... and then *later* it got undeleted, but marked as "we think you are full of it" to add insult to injury, and a condescending patronizing holier-than-thou personal note left beneath the template-spam. (Fully support Martijn's plea for authenticity and genuineness! That is the real intent of pillar four!) Methinks there is only one way forward, we have to bite the bullet and Actually Fix The Problems, not just complain-n-delete; whether done very rudely or very politely, complain-n-delete sends one message only, clear as a bell: Go Away. This goal of fixing-the-problems dovetails with other WP:RETENTION goals: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention#Adding_references_to_articles_as_a_method_of_retaining_editors. I suggest we have to *implement* these cite-squads, not just talk about them. When some beginner adds poorly-written unsourced material, the cite-squad needs to swoop in ... FASTER than the deletionists ... and improve the stuff that was added. Then, thank the beginner, and invite them to join the squad.

  This is true for new articles, and new image-uploads, as much as for new text-insertions. What is the primary reason people want to edit wikipedia? To spam the world, about their awesome band/company/self/boss/friend/whatnot. They create a ten-paragraph article about their band. The upload ten photos of their band. What happens next? In mainspace, all the images are deleted, and all the paragraphs. But it's a slow and torturous procedure: they get template-spammed for every image. Their article is tagged, then templated, then marked for death, then !voted to death, then actually killed. Meanwhile, fighting to save their work, they get even more template-spams, more insults. Don't remove tags! don't re-add unsourced material! don't copy images off the web! don't run with scissors! don't forget to sinebot your posts hahahahahaaaa! Even in the AfC submission queue, things are not much better. They work in quieter conditions, but when somebody finally comes to review their work, weeks later, it is often a quick "sorry WP:NOTNOW WP:COI WP:V WP:RS WP:N WP:NOTEWORTHY WP:UNDUE WP:SELFPUB WP:OMG you're on your own now I'll be back in six weeks with any luck".

  We need to have cite-squads. They need to be helpful to the beginners. They need to be good at improving articles. Most crucially, they need to be friendly, so that the beginners stick around, and get taught all that stuff, by watching the cite-squad at work. But... but... but none of that matters, if the cite-squad is too slow getting there. An article is put into mainspace. WP:NINJA delete! An image is uploaded. WP:NINJA copyvio! An edit is made, inserting some not-quite-perfect grammar, or some not-quite-formatted ref. WP:NINJA snark-tag and/or WP:NINJA revert. How do they do it? Well, simple, the wiki-tools are optimized for deletionists. There are no wiki-tools optimized for cite-squads, for being friendly by helping beginners insta-improve their flawed contributions. VizEd is horrid. Thanks-button does not even *work* for sending to anons. We need to build wiki-tools that make the lives of anons easier, and make the cite-squads able to take control of flawed contributions, before the deletionists arrive, and fill the beginner's talkpage with the templates of war. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

There is one problem with the "let it go" philosophy -- although it is the one I've been practicing for a number of years. That problem is that eventually the time comes when one can't just let it go. I've seen this happen many times with many different editors, & when that moment comes it often isn't pretty. Sometimes it's because the other party is pushing outright bullshit & it seems no one else understands. (This is the problem with esoteric topics that require a fair bit of education, such as advanced mathematics.) Sometimes it's over something very trivial -- if not amazingly stupid -- but it's become the line in the sand a veteran editor has decided to draw. (I suspect a lot of the entries at WP:LAME which end with one or more editors leaving are caused by this.) And sometimes it's because the inevitable personality conflicts between one editor & everyone else have built up until that editor goes into mad suicide bomber mode. (Does anyone like everyone she/he works with? Are you being honest? Would you really invite all of them to a party at your house?)

In short, the average human being can only let so much go & when that point is reached it's not a pretty picture. And I don't have the answer for that. -- llywrch (talk) 22:58, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Nobody is perfect, and nobody said it was easy. For stuff that might end up in LAME it's an excellent idea to point at WP:FUCK a little more often, try to live by it, and remind other editors when they are seemingly too deep in. That whole thing at Yoghurt should never have happened, and we should have asked our editors there how important the spelling of yoghurt is to Wikipedia, and if it's worth the hassle. But I agree there are other issues where letting go would be detriment to Wikipedia. A recentish example of that, which I was tangentially engaged in is the mess at Ezhava, which was the target of persistent POV pushing, and having one central editor trying to maintain sanity there, with some help of others (check the last talk archive for more background). If that editor wouldn't guard the line, or be pestered away (and we've been close to that a couple of times) Wikipedia would be worse of for it. I can't blame him for not always being welcoming to newcomers, since the fast majority of newcomers there have the intention of making Wikipedia worse in their own self interest, and it is virtually impossible to reliably distinguish between a good newcomer and a bad one. If someone has suggestions for these kinds of situations, I'd be very happy to hear them and apply them myself. and remind me to invite you all next time I'm hosting a partyMartijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

  Heartily agree with Llywrch. The idea that, when a beginner shows up, and makes a significantly flawed edit, it should be left to stand, to avoid hurting their feelings by deleting their stuff, is wrongheaded. Yes, deleting their stuff is a slap in the face. But there is a third option, besides leaving shoddy work in mainspace, or deleting everything and driving away the beginner. The third option is to help. Beginners *like* it when they contribute, and somebody notices, and appreciates their intent, and helps them achieve it. Think of the person that changed "most" into the more verbose "the majority of" phrasing. What was their intent? To make the statement less vague. WP:WEASEL applies. How can we help? By getting precision from a sourced quotation. WP:GOOG and WP:CALC and a bit of hunting for relevant sources, and maybe we can improve that sentence to say something like this: "According to the meta-review of surveys[6] of professionals in the field by Faim O'Spundit in 1987, at least 83% of respondents agreed..." Then leave a note on the beginner's talkpage, asking them in they like the new wording you came up with, and thanking them for improving wikipedia when they made the original statement less vague. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Please come and join this discussion on Draft:

Please have a look at the emerging discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Deletion_and_Draft:. I feel that WER could be the key formative group to show us what Draft: can and should do. Fiddle Faddle 08:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Something to commend

This reply from Anna is truly one of a kind. Few, not even me, would have this amount of patience with an editor who may not even even be helping the encyclopedia. I think this is one good example of exactly how we should be treating our good-faith and helpful newcomers. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 01:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

What? A reply that enforces a made-up policy that each list entry must separately meet WP:NOTABLE? Not a good move at all, IMHO. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:15, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

No. The reply said that each list entry must be notable, and additionally, those of the entries that meet WP:NOTABLE could have standalong articles.

In particular, I was pointing to the way the reply was, with respect to making sure we treat our newcomers well and help them understand our policies. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think Andy's point is that entries in lists of brands or companies don't actually have to be notable, although a citation for verification of their membership in the list is required. Whilst I'd personally prefer it if Anna's claim that all list entries must meet WP:GNG was correct, it actually isn't. Yunshui 雲‍水 13:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Anna's response was truly commendable. It would be nice if we all had such patience - and time - (including me) to provide answers like that. BTW: I think you'll all find that the cheese entry is covered by WP:LISTCOMPANY, and noting there the use of the modal, I therefore concur with Yunshui. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:43, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Frederick s. Fuller

Hi, OK here we go again....

I am having an extremely hard time trying to do..what I am told to do...and actually get a proper response that concerns the questions I am asking...

Extended content

#1. and the most important thing....I am NOT trying to change "ANY" of the information that is currently on your site..!! WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO....is figure out how to link the EXACT INFORMATION already on your site to all of my given names.........Now I have tried to explain this already many many people...many many times and they just don't get it.... Most people have ONE NAME Tina, Carl or Sandy and that is it....if you are looking for an article on Tina you just type in her name and you find her... WELL I have been blessed/or cursed...with a name that people can type in as..FRED, FREDDY, FREDDIE, FREDERIC or FREDERICK and depending on what name you type in on Wikipedia determines whether you find me or not "on Wikipedia"...""UNFORTUNTATELY"" I cannot tell people how to search or type in how to find me...they just do it the way they want to. SO if you type in my exact full name Frederick S Fuller...you will find me....BUT if you type in any of the other names..you won't.. AGAIN....I am not trying to """"CHANGE"""" the information that is on your site and has been on Wikipedia for ages....I am just trying to get someone to finally help me by linking the ""EXACT data"" that is and has been there for ages to all my given names....so no matter what anyone types in they can find me... PLEASE PLEASE see if anyone there can help me with this.....every person to date...just sends me more and more information which is totally confusing to me on how to do this...yet no help I need help..!! not instructions......because every time I get time and try to fix this problem I get major flack but no help from anyone there.... Thanks God Bless Freddy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.69.172.100 (talk) 20:14, 20 December 2013 (UTC) 20, 2013 1:15 PM Subject: Help... I cannot understand why your people have such a big problem understanding and allowing me to do this... but maybe using an example using your Founder of the company who does it with his two names...will suffice. AND this is ALL I WANT FOR MYSELF no more... If you go onto Wikipedia, and type in Jimmy Wales...or James Wales the content itself is "identical"...BUT he is using two names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Wales Fortunately for Mr. Wales....he only has two ways for people to confuse his name and you can find him quit easily by using of the spelling of his name.. UNFORTUNATELY.....I cannot seem to be able to get this point through to any of your volunteers..... I have been written about by the sports industry for over 50 years and all articles I have absolutely no control over...and they have posted them using my name. UNFORTUNATELY "I CANNOT" seem to be able to get anyone on your staff to understand that just like their boss....I have more than one way of spelling my name... My name said by other people is either Fred, Freddy, Freddie, Frederick or Frederic... "I DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE ANY OF THE EXISTING CONTENT in any way" that has already been on your site for years... I just want it linked to each of my given names as ..Jimmy or James has done above.... The content is exactly the same but under two different first names. WHAT PART OF THIS DO I NEED TO EXPLAIN AGAIN..... Thanks God Bless Freddy

Additional information

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Frederick_S_Fuller#December_2013 User talk:Frederick S Fuller From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Welcome! Hello and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. The following links will help you begin editing on Wikipedia: The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Editing tutorial Picture tutorial How to write a great article Naming conventions Manual of Style Please bear these points in mind while editing Wikipedia Respect copyrights – do not copy and paste text or images directly from other websites. Maintain a neutral point of view – this is one of Wikipedia's core policies. Take particular care while adding biographical material about a living person to any Wikipedia page and follow Wikipedia's Biography of Living Persons policy. Particularly, controversial and negative statements should be referenced with multiple reliable sources. No edit warring or sock puppetry. If you are testing, please use the Sandbox to do so. Do not add troublesome content to any article, such as: copyrighted text, libel, advertising or promotional messages, and text that is not related to an article's subject. Deliberately adding such content or otherwise editing articles maliciously is considered vandalism; doing so will result in your account or IP being blocked from editing. Do not use talk pages as discussion or forum pages as Wikipedia is not a forum. The Wikipedia tutorial is a good place to start learning about Wikipedia. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and discussion pages using four tildes, like this: Frederick S Fuller (talk) 21:47, 20 December 2013 (UTC) (the software will replace them with your signature and the date). Again, welcome! Contents [hide] 1 Frederick (Fuller) 2 Freddie Fuller 3 Your contributed article, Freddie Fuller 4 September 2013 5 December 2013 Frederick (Fuller)[edit] This is an automated message from MadmanBot. I have performed a search with the contents of Frederick (Fuller), and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: Freddy Stephen Fuller. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history. It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. MadmanBot (talk) 00:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC) Freddie Fuller[edit] Hello, Frederick S Fuller, and thank you for your contributions! I wanted to let you know it seems an article you worked on, Freddie Fuller, is copied from another Wikipedia page, Freddy Stephen Fuller. It's fine to do this as long as you provide the following information in the edit summary: a link to the article you copied from the date you copied it You can do this now by editing the page, making any minor edit to the article, and adding the above information into the edit summary. If you're still not sure how to fix the problem, please leave a message at the help desk. It's possible that I made a mistake, so feel free to remove the tag I placed on the article. Thanks again for helping build the free encyclopedia! MadmanBot (talk) 00:10, 9 September 2013 (UTC) Your contributed article, Freddie Fuller[edit] If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article. You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles. Hello, I noticed that you recently created a new page, Freddie Fuller. First, thank you for your contribution; Wikipedia relies solely on the efforts of volunteers such as you. Unfortunately, the page you created covers a topic on which we already have a page – Freddy Stephen Fuller. Because of the duplication, your article has been tagged for speedy deletion. Please note that this is not a comment on you personally and we hope you will continue helping to improve Wikipedia. If the topic of the article you created is one that interests you, then perhaps you would like to help out at Freddy Stephen Fuller – you might like to discuss new information at the article's talk page. If you think the article you created should remain separate, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. Additionally if you would like to have someone review articles you create before they go live so they are not nominated for deletion shortly after you post them, allow me to suggest the article creation process and using our search feature to find related information we already have in the encyclopedia. Try not to be discouraged. Wikipedia looks forward to your future contributions. - →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 00:13, 9 September 2013 (UTC) September 2013[edit] Hello, Frederick S Fuller. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject. All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible. If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems: Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with. Be cautious about deletion discussions. Everyone is welcome to provide information about independent sources in deletion discussions, but avoid advocating for deletion of articles about your competitors. Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam). Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies. Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. - →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 00:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC) December 2013[edit] Hello, I'm Writ Keeper. I wanted to let you know that I deleted your article AdsMadeEZ because it appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:33, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Freddy. When a subject is known under varying or different names, we don't create duplicate pages for them. We create what is called a 'Redirect page' - that's a simple page that automatically redirects the search entry to the one existing page. That's what happens on Jimmy Wales' page - there aren't several duplicate pages about him. I'll create appropriate redirects now to the article about you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks kudpung, looks good. I left a note on Freddy's two talkpages. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:29, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

People's views of our community

I'm curious if anybody here knows how the rest of the world views the community of Wikipedians here at EN:WP. Has anybody read this recent thread at Slashdot and also this recent thread at Reddit? To those that have read these threads, what did you think of them? Did they give you any ideas on what problems our project has with editor retention. Thanks. 64.40.54.99 (talk) 06:52, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

It's a bit of a paradox. Anyone who has ever contributed to the Wikipedia is part of the community, so all those individuals who attack the encyclopedia and its editors are ironically attacking themselves as a collective. I've worked on a couple of very large collaborative open source software projects in the past, one which I believe powers the vast majority of web forums, and one which is the largest free online store solution. We never had those problems there. When I first started editing Wikipedia nearly 10 years ago (for the first couple of years as an IP) I never really thought about it. First off, I didn't do anything to get told off about, secondly I suppose I imagined that there were a couple of dozen volunteers who all sat together in cubicles in a large open plan office and were the 'insiders'; silly really, because I knew that's not how we worked on other collaborative projects. Some people are just born whingers and whiners and go through life moaning about anything and everything whenever they get an opportunity. Then they wonder why they are always drinking their beer alone in a quite corner of the pub or sat alone at the workplace canteen table at lunchtime. I think they are the majority of the kind of people who populate the anti-Wiki websites. Unfortunately, a few of them hang around on Wikipedia too and all they do is bring the place down and scare even more people off. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:10, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Later note... Kudpung speaks truth, because the reddit username 'SomewhatScience' is absolutely positively a former wikipedian who now spends all their time complaining about how bad wikipedia is... I personally stumbled across them marking an FA as copyvio, flatly insulting four other wikipedians along the way, because it cited the full names of the scientific papers ... then doing a rewrite of the page which merely rearranged words. Sheeeeeesh. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:26, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Kudpung and I disagree, shockingly.  :-)   First of all, I really doubt wikipediocracy has any significant impact on anybody who is not already a wikipedian, and I know from empirical testing that just our everyday revert-first-ask-questions-via-template-spam-later approach is a thousand-fold more damaging than Larry Sanger et al. But first things first: the metaphor Kudpung used was incorrect, and prolly why he though of Larry, perhaps, since back-in-the-day™ the line between mediawiki-PHP/SQL-devs and wikipedian-editors was fuzzier. MediaWiki is the open-source software project here, nowadays. Truth be told, mediaWiki is *not* even a 'major' open source project: it powers wikipedia, and hardly anything else. It is more of a mid-tier single-purpose project, like Chromium (which powers a couple important browsers). Drupal and other CMS stuff surpassed mediawiki long ago.

  Wikipedia, and in particular enWiki, are now the main thing which people complain about. All the people who Richie333 knows, that complained about everybody-reverts-my-changes, were *not* talking about uploading PHP code to gerrit for tweaking the mediaWiki core. They were talking about creating an article, adding a sentence, changing something in mainspace, and being a wikipedian. Being an editor on wikipedia is categorically different from being a contributor to a major open source software project. The barrier to entry is almost non-existent; you don't have to register an account, or learn wiki-markup. All you have to do is click the edit button at the top, type some stuff, and click save. Then you are an editor. Officially a wikipedian, ready to whine about how it sucks? No. Not yet. Just wait, though.

  Four milliseconds later (actual measured median time-to-live of first edits during 2013), you become a frustrated bitter *former* wikipedian, complaining quite authentically on slashdot/reddit/etc, because somebody with flashing colors in their five-year-old-pseudonym just reverted you, with a helpful message like rvv/A7/WP:OMG in their edit-summary, plus some template-spam on your talkpage. Look at the guy above, the canadian welterweight boxing champ of 1977, trying to get a redirect made. He got template-spammed a dozen times! He only finally came here (the wrong place) and got Kudpung to actually help him, because wikiCulture sucks. Here, look, I pasted the main "front-page" headlines, if you do not believe me and Fred/Freddy/Freddie/Frederic/Frederick.[1][2]

the top-rated quotes people visiting those links see first... which *are* mostly correct methinks... WikiCulture is the key

REDDIT.[3] ((aaronSherman sayeth)) I used to contribute liberally to Wikipedia. One day, pages I had worked on started to be merged together into footnotes because they were interesting only to a small fraction (but still sizable in absolute terms) audience. Then my photographs, posted with fair use rationales for their subject matter (such as the "Are you prepared for the Rapture" signs of the early 1990s in New England) began to be attacked for their lack of adherence to new policies. Then my edits began to be reverted for lack of adherence to modern template usage guidelines. As Wikipedia became more insular, I became more alienated until I just stopped. How is Wikipedia going to address this isolationism? ((slide_potentiometer sayeth)) Answer: they won't. The editing has been taken over by people with the most time and persistence. Like many groups the classic hostility to newcomers has taken hold (see: any time something is called "eternal september"). SLASHDOT.[4] ((AnonymousCoward sayeth)) Unfriendly elitists. In my direct experience the majority of hardcore contributors and long-time editors are complete ideologues and giant assholes who are extraordinarily hostile to any outsiders or differing thought. ((rudy_wayne sayeth)) That is the same experience I have had and I'll bet it's the same experience that many people have had. The battles on Wikipedia are well documented. Articles deleted, added back, deleted again. Back and forth in a never ending battle of arrogant assholes with giant egos. But the biggest problem is that the few people who have any power to actually do anything about it are completely clueless, as demonstrated out in TFA: "the Wikimedia Foundation, the 187-person nonprofit that pays for the legal and technical infrastructure supporting Wikipedia, is staging a kind of rescue mission. The foundation can’t order the volunteer community to change the way it operates. But by tweaking Wikipedia’s website and software, it hopes to steer the encyclopedia onto a more sustainable path." Because re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic will make a big difference. TECHREVIEW.[5] ((Tom_Simonite sayeth)) When Wikipedians achieved their most impressive feat of leaderless collective organization, they unwittingly set in motion the decline in participation that troubles their project today.

  Wikipedia *editors* are more like slashdot commenters, and especially reddit contributors, than they are like Linux kernel hackers. (LKML does *not* call it "the kernel anyone can hack" for a very good reason. :-)   Anyways, I think the fine folks at MIT have a clear picture of what's wrong with wikipedia as an environment conducive to building up wikipedians,[6] and although I haven't finished reading through the slashdot and reddit links, there is not much difference in their crowd-sourced conclusions from the MIT author's conclusions, that I can tell. The question is not what the problem is. The question is not even how to fix those problems. The question is, whether we *active* and high-caste wikipedians have the gumption to overcome bureaucratic inertia, and the will to do what it takes to triple the number of active editors, starting now, and finished within the next couple years. We have 1000 first-time editors per month, and we lose 1050 editors per month. We need to stop losing, so we can start winning again. The WMF cannot help us; they have tried since 2010, as WereSpielChequers will tell you... and VizEd was their answer, and as WSC can *also* tell you, it was not designed to be the answer wikipedia herself needs. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Retirement

Yworo (talk · contribs), a user who has been active for over 6-7 years, has already announced his retirement a couple of days ago, as well as Khazar2 (talk · contribs).

Also, I know this might be irrelevant, but back in August, I semi-retired from Wikipedia in frustration over being subjected to personal abuse by some disruptive users (such as Fladrif (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), Bambifan101 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Fragments of Jade (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)), Wikipedia's inability to deal with some of these editors, as well as real life issues like getting ready for college. That lasted for two months (it ended in October), but now I'm back and decided not to let past issues get to me anymore. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

You shouldn't really cast such aspersions against other editors without at least wikilinking them to let them know. I've done so for you. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Some of these issues have been actually easing up for me, because they are things that I don't think about every day. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:46, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Bambifan has been blocked since at least 2012 (and I believe most of the time before that), so you could hardly interfere in 2013.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:22, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

And Fragments of Jade were blocked in 2008.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:24, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Back in early April, an IP belonging to FOJ (76.120.178.220 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) continued her disruptive editing on video game articles as her previous socks, and I had one of the admins block her for it by filing an SPI. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 22:59, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for clarification.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:53, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

This is a volunteer project, people are free to come and go and a proportion will go each year, losing some individuals is normal. Are we losing more volunteers than other voluntary organisations? Are we losing more (or indeed less) than we used to? I will be updating my stats of admin retention in the next fortnight, it would be really useful if someone could do some stats for the broader editing community. It would also be useful to do some research on those who leave to ask why they've gone. But we need to be careful not to do so until people have actually gone months without editing. ϢereSpielChequers 13:45, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Actives, 5+edits/mo.[7] Readers, 1+views/mo.[8] Click 'secondary' to see veryActives, 99+edits/mo. Nutshell follows.

during	99+/mo	5+/mo	readers/active
2011	3382	35099	11725
2012	3313	33057	14333
2013	3176	31648	15824
decline	-4%/yr	-4%/yr	+10%/yr

The loss of 4% of our editors per year, both actives *and* very-actives, is incredibly disconcerting. Coupled with the ever-growing number of readers per editor (nothing attracts visigoths like a large audience with few guardians), wikipedia's lack of retention is an existential crisis.  :-)   "May you live in interesting times." HTH. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Is thisa new trend? Just from my watchlist, we have lost AutomaticStrikeout, user:Kafziel. Just from my watchlist, we could potentially lose Fluffernutter, and Stormmeteo. Generally it's for the same reason: WP:BATTLE. What should we do? -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 15:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

We should change the wikiCulture, from one that drives people away ("everyone just reverts me") into one that welcomes beginners, especially famous celebrity beginners who by their mere presence here will draw in others. This means accepting that COI edits on talkpages are perfectly fine. More crucially though, it means accepting — and then fixing — the problem of slap-in-the-face reverts. Also, some less-clunky wiki-tools, and some less-officious template-spam-messages, can probably help... quite a bit, even, methinks. But the wikiCulture is the key here. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

@IP I was interested in retention of our existing editors, and if that was just 4% we'd not have a problem. Retention is about how many of our existing editors are staying with us. The superficial community decline is about total community size, and the raw edit count has indeed been falling. The more efficient the edit filters have got at preventing vandalism the more editors we appear to have lost, but as it takes most vandals 5 or more edits to get a block we shouldn't worry too much about the loss of 4% of editors who do 5 edits per month. As far as I'm aware nobody who has looked at the effects of the edit filters has been able to work out a formula to calculate whether the community is contracting, stable or growing; But I'm not aware of anyone who thinks that but for the edit filters our community would be growing as fast as our readership.

Community size is about how many editors we have left after we look at how many stayed with us how many joined and how many left. Retention ignores the recruitment side of things and just looks at the proportion of the existing community who have stayed and the proportion who have left. We have lost some people recently, and I'm interested in finding out whether we have a retention problem. ϢereSpielChequers 23:27, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Hello, you can call me 74, if you like. "Retention is about how many of our existing editors are staying with us." Disagree 100% — this project ought to be about growing the number of Good Eggs in absolute terms as well as relative-to-readership terms — but you are in good company with your stance, many others here see this wikiProject the same way you do. If you ask me, retention is about retaining a community-size sufficient for wikipedia to thrive, and that means having enough active editors *per* reader. Readership growing. Editor-count shrinking. Fatal, if not corrected.

  So yes, we have a retention problem, by my definition. I'm curious about your definition, and why it is not the same as mine. When the absolute editor-count is falling, even by your terminology ("our existing editors") there is a decline. Whether that decline is inherently a problem, some would argue no. We have "enough" articles, right? But to me, that *is* one major problem: not enough people believe we have enough articles! We get a new article every 127 seconds, based on my spot-measurements. There are not enough Good Eggs to revert the spam, cruft, et cetera contained in that massive influx. Look at the AfC backlog, which just forced Kazfiel into retirement. So let me put it like this. How many "real" editors do you think we have, in those years, if not 35k/33k/31k? How many do we need? You don't think the loss of 4% of active editors is a problem... do you also not see the loss of 4% of very-active-editors, each responsible for 100+edits/mo, as a problem? That trend *is* new, just this year.

  p.s. Your point about the edit-filters is a telling one... as you know, they only apply to anons and other low-caste folk, so I've been incorrectly blocked by at least eight different edit-filters, just in the last two months. But I'll bet a million wiki-bucks that if the edit-filters were shut off for a randomly-selected million IPs, and left on for the rest of the internet (randomly choosing a million of them to act as a control-group), we'd see a distinct differential in retention profiles, *any* way it was measured. I'm trying to research how many false-poz events there are for filter#225 enWiki, at present. The ones on metaWiki are even more bitey. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi 74, the way I see it we have a problem the recruitment of new members of the community and possibly with the retention of existing ones. But recruitment of new editors and retention of existing ones are very different issues. I suspect we are losing far more than 4% of our existing community every year, but we are recruiting enough new ones that the net loss is 4%. Our retention rate is the percentage of our existing volunteers who we retain, though perversely we usually talk of it in terms of the percentage of them who we lose. As for whether falls of 4% in the number of active and very active editors is a problem, one of those is just a function of the edit filters, if the edit filters had been coded as anti vandal bots we would not have lost most perhaps all of that 4%. The active editors dropping is as you say a new phenomena and I agree it is troubling, but we don't currently know whether it is a retention problem, a recruitment problem or a combination of the two. We know that the community has been getting more and more closed to newcomers, so it is entirely possible that we are still losing say 10% of the very active editors every year, but this year the number of new very active editors has fallen sharply. Of the various theories for loss of experienced editors the hardest ones I find to rebut is that the site has become a much more hostile place for gay editors, and we've seen a lot of them disengage. Whilst the use of EN wiki as a guinea pig for software testing, and a succession of initiatives such as AFT and implementing a version of VE that had failed user testing has taken its toll of people's motivation. Remember we recruited this community by empowering people and involving them in the running of the community. The transition to a more managed community should in theory lose some of those people. The problem with just looking at the growth or decline of the very active editors is that we don't know whether we have a recruitment problem or a retention one or both. As I said I'm not bothered that the edit filters have lost us a bunch of vandals, and no I don't have an accurate figure of the number of goodfaith editors we have left. My guestimate is that somewhere between 2% and 6 % of the annual decline is down to the edit filters stopping vandals. Since the raw decline is running at 4% that could mean anything from 2% annual decline to 2% annual growth in the number of editors doing 5 edits each month.

As for false positives, I thought our main problem with IPs is that we have blocked millions too many and we need to implement some sort of smart blocking, and unblock many IP ranges; But if there is an edit filter that is getting excessive false positives then yes it needs dealing with - and your 8 blocks is a troubling stat. ϢereSpielChequers 02:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Your suggestion seems misguided, WereSpielChequers, that we must *first* figure out the metrics, and which factor is the most crucial, *before* we act to solve the declining-editor-count-relative-to-readership-count problem. We could be working on improving retention-of-experienced-folks, right? And we could be working on improving improving recruitment-and-then-short-term-retention-of-beginners. Which I also see as a "retention" phenomenon... because the vast majority of beginners need no 'recruiting' in terms of active effort, we get literally 1000 of them every month for free... but the problem is, they make ten edits, and get ninja-reverted nine times, and then leave forever.

  WP:NICE will improve retention of beginners, as well as the experienced, some people say. So why not work on both, starting now? The more people we save/retain/recruit, the more people we will have *available* to help us save others; it's not like sending wikiLove or having a nice chat-slash-pep-talk requires Vast Wiki-Skillz. Figuring out which factor is the bigger demographic-group quantitative problem, before we start attacking the low-hanging fruit of *both* groups, is putting the quant before the fruit-picker, or the cart before the horse, or somesuch old-school metaphor, methinks. Agree that we need to have better stats/metrics/whatnot, see sections above on that question; I just disagree that we should do that first. We've known since 2010 that something was amiss. Best to just confidently wade into the floodwaters, and start rescuing the drowning folks, immediately. That way, some of the rescued folks can help us lighten the workload, and give us more hands & brains to figure out the question of measuring our progress, quantitatively. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi 74, I'm not objecting to people starting on the problem before measuring it. I've personally been working on editor recruitment/retention issues for several years. But metrics are worth getting especially if we don't know if a problem is stable or getting worse. We know that our editor recruitment is poor and has been for years - for the 25% of editors who start by creating a new article we demonstrated some of the problems years ago with wp:NEWT. Retention of our existing core editors is a very different matter, we don't know whether it is particularly bad or indeed getting worse, or how we compare with other organisations. So metrics are really useful there, and metrics are useful for the people who don't accept there is a problem. I have been producing metrics at RFA for several years and we no longer get people disputing that there is a drought in the number of new admins, we've also got past the stage of having the problem dismissed as a seasonal or cyclical blip. Now we just have to deal with the arguments of those who don't see the decline as a problem. I believe that if we can prove that something is getting worse reasonable people will be more willing to try and fix things. We have proof that the core community is no longer growing, and that we are treating newbies badly. We don't know whether the existing core editors are leaving in an greater numbers than the past. ϢereSpielChequers 20:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

p.s. I lied, only *seven* bohts have blockerized me... so far... though several of them prevented me from working on more than one occasion, for different false-poz bugs in the regex.[9][10] The warning is always the same: your edit is potentially unconstructive. No details whatsoever; no way to figure out *what* was unconstructive, even if your post is 17 kilobytes. Which, uh, sad to say, I've actually posted that much once... was blocked by the WP:WALLOFTEXT abuse-filter, if memory serves.  ;-)

1. block == Long-term pattern abuse,
2. block == Spam article trap (autopromote),
3. block == Comment bot edits from IPs,
4. block == Antivandalism,
5. block == Personal attacks,
6. block == Common vandal phrases,
7. block == Vandalism in all caps ((this one was rich... I was quoting a policy-shortcut in allcaps)),
8. warn_ == Possible spambot,
9. tag__ == BLP vandalism or libel,
10. tag__ == antivandalism,
11. tag__ == New users adding external links on their user talk page,
12. tag__ == Moniter[sic] addition of archive.org,
13. tag__ == Promotional text added by user to own user(-talk) page ((buggy... tags me on *any* talkpage whatsoever))

Multiple my experience by many-fold, for editors less experienced than myself... nobody is keeping track of false-poz counts, that I can tell, and anecdotally, the edit-filters are *constantly* being tweaked, without then testing whether they hurt or harm retention, that being too hard to measure... all that is tested is whether they knock down the actual visigoths one more tenth of a percentage-point per hour. Talk about the crying need for a metric! Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• A word about the Afc backlog - For a number of years, the declined articles that were not being improved by their original submitters (or in some cases were not improvable) were left in storage, until there were tens of thousands of them sitting there. At the time they were doing no harm, since search engines were ignoring them (NOINDEX), but then some other Wikis sprang up which suck in Wikipedia pages indiscriminately and allow them to be indexed. It became necessary to get rid of the old submissions. All of the editors whose "Articles for creation" hadn't been worked on for six months were notified of impending deletion. Among them, though, were plenty of submissions that were close to being accepted, but whose editors had either forgotten about them or were inactive. Some of us have been going through these and "rescuing" them from the path of deletion. This has been having a bad effect on the Afc backlog for three reasons: (1) setting up the deletion process and checking over the 50,000 or so old submissions is taking up the time of editors who normally would be working on the backlog, and (2) some of the editors who were reminded of their old submissions have started working on them again and resubmitting them, and (3) editors who are checking the old abandoned ones are finding some good material, fixing it up and resubmitting it. This is all temporary. We are about half way through the process, and while it will never be done, the numbers of stale submissions should drop drastically once the giant stack of old submissions is gone. The result should be several thousand new articles, and a cleaner Afc in the long run. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  There is some crap there which should go, and which even an arch inclusionist such as myself would have deleted if it was in mainspace where articles erm belong. There is other stuff which would have been categorised and improved if it had been put in mainspace where collaborative editing takes place. The solution to the AFC problem is to make unpatrolled articles no index and exempt all new articles from most of the goodfaith "A" deletions for their first 24 hours. Shoving them elsewhere just deprives them of the collaborative editing that newbies need. ϢereSpielChequers 18:07, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  I fully support this opinion.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  I think many AFC articles would benefit from the fresh air in mainspace. Let the collaborative editing process take hold of them. --Greenmaven (talk) 20:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

  So move them into mainspace - simples! Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

  I have not moved any because I am not very familiar with the protcol around WP:AFC --Greenmaven (talk) 02:07, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I know i'm late to this, but didn't User:AutomaticStrikeout leave because of the campaign against LGBT editors, which intensified on Jimbo's user page about 1-2 months back? An issue which has once again been swept under the rug after the Chelsea Manning incident was already largely ignored. RFC and ANI are cumbersome and useless. I've seen as much the last time when an editor was painted as the victim for harassing Talk:Homophobia for over a year and trying to redefine the term, without producing a single reliable source. AFC not only allowed this editor to paint the other side, mostly LGBT editors as attackers, but saw fit to call the entire LGBT Wikiproject a group of activists, again, without anyone batting an eye. The result was no consensus. No admin present saw an issue with such an editor who also thought being personally involved with the creation of an article on Straight Pride (a fringe extremist movement) and attempting to merge Gay pride into it, when there wasn't even a reliable source in it at the time was an issue. A racist editor would have been topic banned quickly for just an ounce of this behaviour, no problem, but there is a clear double standard, which is as yet unresolved. I was disgusted by the comparison of bestiality and gay editors (discussed on Jimbo's page) and made clear i would be leaving too the next time i see anything like this again, which is ignored. I'll stick to that oath, as Wikipedia doesn't deserve to retain LGBT editors, when it chooses to attack them at every opportunity. I have less than a year at this rate, as these situations are cropping up more often, since by not stamping them out, they're being encouraged. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken. I'm not pro-gay, so while I left for a variety of reasons, the one you suggested is not among them. At any rate, I will be scrambling my password and removing my email from my preferences, since I seem to keep coming back for one reason or another. Adios, AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 21:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I got the wrong impression from that thread the way it escalated. In any case good luck in future Automatic Strikeout. My opinions on the matter of it being swept under the rug and ignored are unchanged. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 09:19, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Jenova, you are welcome to pay myself and Timtrent a visit, we're working on this on our user-talkpages. I know sometimes it feels like things are ignored, but these are not easy problems. As you can see from the subthread above, where Richie333 sarcastically suggests that we just dump the 80k G13 backlog into mainspace, and Jack replies (in all seriousness) that AfC wiki-tool is too complex to attract more help... while meanwhile up above WSC and I are plotting to Solve The Recruiting... which of course would mean vastly more submissions-per-day to the AfC queue. We can always perma-ban the members of the anti-admin-brigade, perma-ban the editors who are suspected of being in the anti-gay-brigade, and perma-ban anybody who disagrees with such drastic perma-banning. But whence retention, if we do?

  Methinks perhaps the singlemost difficult thing is overcoming institutional slash communal inertia, and shaking up the wikiCulture, so that people are not afraid to just jump right in and try hard to fix the problems without first asking permission, checking the WP:PG thoroughly, creating a wikiProject to manage the new problem-solving effort, writing up some helpdocs to explain the mission ... $insert_agonized_yawp_of_frustration_here. A Little Less Conversation, a little more action. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't accept that at all. If we already ban racist editors and refuse to ban homophobic or transphobic editors when accusing others of bestiality and such, then there's a clear double standard, which should be addressed. Otherwise you will have no LGBT editor retention and should just recruit directly from Conservapedia, since the policy is the same. AGF doesn't make an exception for LGBT editors from what i've seen, but the admin enforcing it do. That's reinterpreting policy and it wouldn't be tolerated for race. Why is it tolerated when LGBT editors are in the firing line? I'm not bothered about permabanning "the editors who are suspected of being in the anti-gay-brigade", i'm bothered about trying to edit and being accused of raping animals. Banning suspected anti-gay editors and banning the ones who come here just to make the lives of others miserable and slur them is a completely different thing. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 11:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Productivity, the Holy Grail

"For years now we have been hearing about the imminent demise of Wikipedia and/or the "damage" it is doing. Yet it continues to grow and prosper. Talk of it's decline/demise is not premature, it's ridiculous. The author openly states that "Even though Wikipedia has far fewer active editors than it did in its heyday, the number and length of its articles continue to grow." With a traditional company with employees and a hierarchy that would be called *greater efficiency* - and lauded. Doing more with fewer people is of course a gold standard of progress and the fact that this is presented as a "problem" for Wikipedia just shows how far afield it's critics will go to find supposed 'problems'."
MaxGain Decline of WP, comment by MaxGain

--Greenmaven (talk) 01:15, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Kudos

The Signpost's newest report includes the WER logo among the best WikiProject logos. A special thanks goes to our first Eddy winner User:Kelvinsong for creating our logo. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:31, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

And in the aftermath

- yet another admin resigns. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:48, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Note that they explicitly said that their resignation was for personal reasons. Ross HillTalk to me! 04:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

And did I say anything different...? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Your heading is In the aftermath. The aftermath of what? Eric Corbett 03:19, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

This section was following the discussion of the User:28bytes leaving Arbcom. A lot of other talk intervened and separated the two sections. —Anne Delong (talk) 06:41, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

So who is the admin Kudpung was referring to? 28bytes? Eric Corbett 07:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I think Admin. Secret. It's what that Admin does from time to time. Leaky Caldron 11:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)