User:Antandrus/thoughts
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This is a page of various thoughts, drafts of thoughts, and drafts of things which may become pages but not in the main namespace. Some of this may end up on Meta: some may end up in the Wikipedia space: and most will just remain here, since I want a place to write without cluttering up my userpage.
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[edit] Redlinks
Redlinks are good. They are how our project grows. I often add redlinks to articles: they are a tempting carrot for newcomers to try out their own hand at editing.
Removing redlinks from articles is bad. Have you ever done any gardening? Removing all redlinks from an article is the equivalent of snipping off the branch of a plant below the lowest viable bud. An article with only bluelinks is a Wikipedia cul-de-sac.
Some judgment is required, of course, in inserting redlinks: consider whether the item is notable enough to merit its own article. If you think there is a decent chance that the redlink could point to an interesting article, go for it, and link it: at worst, it will end up being a redirect to something that already exists.
Complaints have been made that some articles are so full of redlinks that the condition is "distracting." I take this as a sign that the article is in one of the areas of Wikipedia that is seriously underdeveloped, i.e. not a core interest of our median demographic (offhand I'd guess M/23). There really is a lot still to be written here: a lot. We're not there yet. Have a look around art history, ballet, sculpture, architecture; look at the articles on the Shakespeare plays and compare them in depth and detail to articles on Pokémon or video games. This situation is neither terrifying nor disappointing to me, it is exciting; creating new content, for me at least, is the most fun thing about the project.
[edit] Lists and redlinks
Lists are good, since they are the single most useful way to compile redlinks for unwritten articles on a related topic. In this way, and especially in this way, lists are distinguished from categories, which have a fundamentally different purpose: to aid navigation.
[edit] Lists and categories
Categories have not made lists obsolete. Not only can lists include redlinks to articles which need to be written, but they can be annotated. List of Renaissance composers is one obvious example: while every bluelinked name is included in the Category:Renaissance composers category, the redlinked names are not, and some of those unwritten articles involve important people indeed.
The most useful lists are those which are annotated, i.e. each entry consists of more than just a bullet followed by a linked item. In the case of the Renaissance composers list, each name includes dates, a bit of information impossible to store in a category (and someday will include a nationality too, when I get around to it). Consider also something such as List of works by Beethoven, which includes opus numbers, dates of composition, groupings, keys and other information not maintainable in a category.
[edit] Dealing with jerks
There are editors here who are just jerks. Don't worry, it's not a personal attack, I'm not naming anyone, and I will not. This is written as a generality, and as an approach to a philosophical issue. Not everyone learned in Kindergarten to share their toys, and not everyone learns as an adult to get along with other people.
How do you deal with these people on Wikipedia?
The worst are not trolls and vandals--for they do no good editing, and can be quickly booted out, or eventually booted out, usually with the door hitting them on the backside on the way out, with a satisfying *thwack*, and the project is the better for it. I don't mean them. I mean the people who are good editors, who know their topic, who are even experts in their fields, and who can write prose at an encyclopedic level--but who refuse to collaborate, or accept either criticism or correction (for even experts make errors--I certainly do, in the areas of my expertise--no one can keep up with everything in their field). It is collisions with exactly these people that stress out good editors, occasionally causing them to leave in frustration.
Keeping in mind that our goal is to build an encyclopedia which is reliable, well-sourced, and thorough, we should strive to retain people who can do the heavy work of writing expert-level information, and I think sometimes we have to compromise and allow some of these arrogant assholes to edit anyway. Sorry to be blunt, but having a thin skin is a liability here. (I'm not hard-shelled, and I've fought with this issue.) It is worth the trouble to try to persuade the difficult editors to change, but don't hold your breath: the young have an easier time changing (usually it's called growing up), but they are rarely experts: by the time someone reaches middle age, if they are unable to work with others, they probably won't change their style of interaction with other users if approached with the usual pleas to abide by WP:Civility and WP:NPA.
A little "decoction of Seneca and the stoics" here is helpful. Other people's badness is not your badness; and I quote from the noble Antoninus: "What? art offended by other men's badness? teach them then, or bear with them." If they will not be taught, bear with them. It doesn't matter what they think of you; leave them alone; let them edit, as long as they do it well; and remember that retaliation lowers you, and hate corrodes you from the inside.
There's plenty of places on Wikipedia you can still make a difference. Sometimes you have to let go of control of an article you have nourished for a long time, and take a hard look at just how much ego you have invested in your work on that article. It is easy enough to state that we who write the encyclopedia do not own articles, but can you really admit that you don't feel it sometimes?
Letting go can be the greatest of pleasures.
[edit] Experts
Wikipedia's article quality has been much maligned, somewhat unfairly, as it is generally pretty good. However it is levelling off, and I see a roughly parabolic curve, with article quality versus time, leveling off somewhat short of "sum total of human knowledge." Like it or not, and most will not, the only way to increase the slope of the curve again, and cross the level of Britannica and other encyclopedias, and even come within shouting distance of specialist encyclopedias like the New Grove, is to make use of experts.
Yes, that's right. Experts. The people we are supposed to hold in disregard. The people that egalitarian Wikipedia is said to despise.
They're already here. Some post their credentials on their user pages. Many do not. Many leave in frustration after collisions with amateurs, cranks, and even other experts; after all, they're only human, like the rest of us, and humans reaching their frustration limit will often give up and go do something else less frustrating. However many have stayed on, and continue to edit. It would be interesting to know the reasons not why the departed have gone, but why the persistent have stayed.
We need more of them, and we need to attract them. How?
[edit] It's harder work than it used to be
Writing articles is much more difficult than it was when I joined the project in early 2004. In case anyone does not remember those faraway times, you could still find redlinks on fairly important topics (I started the articles, for example, on things like serenade, ars nova, Jacob Obrecht -- huge topics in musicology). Prohibitions on original research had already been written into policy, but were rarely enforced: people wrote about what they knew, and if they cited references, that was nice, but no one really complained if they didn't. Or most people didn't complain. I could bang out a stub or a few paragraphs without opening a book except to check spellings and dates: writing was easy. That has all changed.
Now, if you are fortunate enough to be working in an area that still has useable redlinks (such as Renaissance musicology--and I'm fine with that) you have to be extremely careful not to over-interpret your source, and you have to cite what you write, sometimes by the sentence. (Personally I don't mind citing by the paragraph, or by individual facts that seem either anti-intuitive or exceedingly specific). But everything I write now I pull from a source, usually secondary (occasionally primary, such as a good translation of Tinctoris or Zarlino, but I don't do this all that often).
Most newcomers are put off by actual article-writing. I've said this elsewhere. It's far, far easier to join the vandal-hunting vigilantes, where you can enjoy the thrill of the kill, rack up points and barnstars and get promoted to über-hunter. Hey, I do it myself: it's fun. Or if you are as altruistic as you are tolerant of tedious repetition, can join in the groups of gnomes who make the encyclopedia better in numerous small ways. Or you can do things like article tagging for quality and importance--but beware: do you really know the subject well enough to assess whether an article is "start" class or "A" class? Please don't just look at the word count or the number of subsections. With out-of-the-way topics there may not be much material available in secondary sources, and a short, well-written, accurate article may indeed by "A" class, but unrecognizable as such by a non-expert.
One of Wikipedia's biggest problems is harnessing all this extra energy, since we have a huge influx of newcomers, but an ever-shrinking amount of encyclopedic material that can be added by non-experts. It's no surprise that this extra energy often gets channeled into that greatest time-suck of all, and the most addictive: conflict.
To manage this conflict we need leaders. Dictators are not needed, only calm, sane, rational, persuasive people who can begin projects, attract followers, and get good work done. Go forth and multiply: there is a lot yet to be done, and someday we will be a great encyclopedia. We already have built the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia in the history of the world: that alone should make all you wikiworkers feel some pride and happiness: go forth and make it yet better.
[edit] On "Rouge" admins
We recently had a category for "rouge admins" which was deleted after a discussion; there is a "humor" page in the Wikipedia space for the topic as well. I seem to be the only one taking this concept at all seriously. To me it means: this admin trusts his own common sense, judgement, and intelligence to be superior to the shelves and books of case law, precedents, chapter, and verse of Wikipedia policy, as interpreted by legions of bureaucrats over many years; for now our project has entered, in internet terms, middle age. While the "rouge admin" will conform to those policies as often as possible, he will ignore them, when necessary, for the good of the project, and for the protection of people working on it. Rouge admins to me almost means: this Wikipedian believes that "ignore all rules" is the most important policy of the project: but with this additional element: he recognizes that such a view is – paradoxically – heretical. Most Wikipedians view "Ignore all rules" as a kind of "Sunday Truth", i.e. the sort of thing you believe while you are standing in church, like "love thy neighbor as thyself", but which may safely be violated any of the 167 other hours in the week.
If you've been here for a while and done some good work for the project, you start to trust yourself to do the right thing. This is good. Redden yourself with a little "rouge", and you call attention to yourself as knowing it.
Personally I've never blocked, to my knowledge, an editor of long duration and significant contribution, for any reason, unless it was a compromised account. I probably won't, either. However I'm pretty good at identifying trolls and malefactors, pointing them towards the door, and propelling them through it with a size-12 bootprint on the buttocks, often without bothering to go through a series of template warnings. Doing so saves someone else the trouble, and just maybe they can use the time saved to help make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia.
Rouge is good. Trust thyself.
