Wikipedia talk:CSB Collaboration of the Week

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Has anyone been updating this? It doesn't seem like this collaboration of the "week" has changed for a very long time.--Pharos 08:36, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There are a few problems with the CSB project. The main page - WP:Bias - needs reorganising. Until then, updates will be infrequent and certainly not weekly. - XED.talk 11:40, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We really need an update. Collaboration of the Week turns into Collaboration of the Fortnight turns into Collaboration of the Month. Wikiacc 02:27, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)+

I concur. Go ahead, by all means; add your vote and get some others to vote, then you can choose the winner and update the CotW. Or you can just pick one of the articles now; there are too few votes anyway to speak of a real 'winner'. Changing the collaboration might revive the interest a little (it did last time). I'm on a Wikivacation for a few days, so I'm off! — mark ✎ 10:20, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK, right now there are a few issues with that right now:

1. All articles that have survived pruning have exactly 4 votes because of the way the system is set up (except some more recently active ones) and there will be a multi-way tie.
2. Even still, nobody will contribute to the new article--Famine still has a long way to go to featured standard, for example. This may have to do with nobody being on here.
3. What Xed said. (Funny--it rhymes.)

Wikiacc 22:43, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

CSB is virtually dead because of the lack of exposure on the rest of Wikipedia. It should really be on the front page. Otherwise their is no real prospect of reversing the extreme problem of systemic bias on Wikipedia. I think it also failed because some people had a rather strange idea of articles covered by the project - Joan Jett for instance. - XED.talk 19:20, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Completely agree. It looks like people looked at this as a kind of "2nd COTW" and put stubs that are the exact opposite of what this project aims for (namely, topics less well-known by the common Wikipedia demographic). I came across this project on a user page (I think User:Garzo) and so if all of us who haven't already put the boilerplate on our userpages it will get more publicity.

Also, if we can get this back up and running more people will find CSBCOTW articles and follow the link to the main project. Wikiacc 20:35, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you both that CSB needs better marketing. I don't use the current template because I tend to work mainly on articles from my own to-do list (and also because it's rarely updated); but I would be happy to put a CSB banner on my userpage (something like Countering the Systemic Bias of Wikipedia, with a short and sweet marketing text below it). I'm not a native speaker of English so I'm not good at creating this sort of thing; but I would use it for sure, and with me a lot more editors, I think.

A little thing I do when I add a new article or a stub is putting something like dedicated to Countering Systemic Bias in the edit summary. In fact, now I come to think about it, this practice could be easily extended to all CSB-related edits. WP Wikisyntax does something like that, and it works very good in attracting new participants.

By the way, note that there are 52 participants so far (a few less if we don't count the ones that think it's about systematic bias), which is quite a lot if we manage to find a good way to mobilize them all. — mark ✎ 21:55, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I suppose one of the in-built problems with CSB is that it deals with the obscure. There are topics up for the vote that I just do not know anything about. There is no way that we can make our project topics less obscure without giving way to the bias we seek to correct. I find that the country carousel is one thing that does work well: it has a plan behind it. Perhaps choosing collaboration by vote is the wrong way to go about things: I note that a few other collaborations are finding it difficult to muster support. With some of the topics we cover with CSB, it would be surprising to find even three contributors confident enough to collaborate. Perhaps, instead, we could have three or four carousels, based on CSB topic areas. Rather than voting for topics, we could add them to the carousel list, and get the carousel moving around the list every week: it is uninspiring to be confronted by the same unapproachable challenge for a whole fortnight. This approach would focus on awareness more than active collaboration. Like Mark, I imagine that most of us are countering the bias in our own ways: collaboration is great when it happens, but is probably too difficult to organise. Gareth Hughes 22:23, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How about, rather than working on a single obscure and difficult topic, we work on improving something we already have info on to featured-level? For example, we could work on Burkina Faso or Brazil. These would be much easier to find info on than most of what is proposed. Maybe the country carousel could have as its goal the improvement of the main article (i.e. Burkina Faso) to featured and simply the improvement of the subarticles (e.g. History of Burkina Faso, Geography of Burkina Faso). Tuf-Kat 00:01, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. - XED.talk 10:05, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think one way to help attract attention to CSB would be to put a "CSB-related" template at the top of the talk pages of relevant articles. Anyway, I think it couldn't hurt to just pick a new collaboration some time, hopefully on next Sunday? BTW, is there any particular reason the winner has been chosen at 20:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time?--Pharos 02:57, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That is a very good idea. And also Australian Eastern Standard Time is kind of an awkward time for us Americans--maybe a well-known time zone such as GMT should be used. (Most people know what their time zone difference is from GMT but few people know their difference from AEST.) Wikiacc 03:13, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The AEST time is there because originally I adapted the Australian CotW to make the page. No reason for it to stay. - XED.talk 10:05, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I edited the page to set for a new collaboration to be chosen on Sunday, January 30, 18:00 (UTC), same time as the general COTW. I hope this is satisfacry with everyone.--Pharos 05:54, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As there is currently a tie, per policy on the project page, voting will be extended 24 hours to Monday, February 14, 18:00 (UTC). If there is still a tie, Food security will win because it was nominated first.--Pharos 00:11, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pruning?

Does anyone else think that the policy on pruning needs to be revamped? I would propose a slightly stricter policy: changing the and in If a nomination has been has less then 4 votes, and receives no new votes for over two weeks (14 days), to OR. As long as people keep nominating articles, we can handle the increased turnover. I really don't see a fair way to avoid Democracy in the Middle East, given that it is clearly next according to policy, unless Africa gets a bunch more votes in the next couple days. - — BanyanTree 00:50, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed reorganizaiton of CSB

I have made a proposal for a reorganization of CSB that suggests the abandonment of the CotW at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Please weigh in there. - BanyanTree 01:23, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)