User:Teratornis/Outplacement

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1 Proposal: start a Wikipedia outplacement service for deleted articles
- 1.1 The deletion problem
- 1.2 Article outplacement: a possible solution
2 Another take on the problem
3 To-do
4 See also

[edit] Proposal: start a Wikipedia outplacement service for deleted articles

[edit] The deletion problem

Lolcatspeak may not convey the serious nature of Wikipedia editing, but it's pretty darned funny.

Wikipedia deletes up to several pages per minute. Some fraction of these pages were created by new users who were probably unaware of Wikipedia's complex policies, as well as unaware of how many pages Wikipedia deletes.

From my experience advising disgruntled editors on the Help desk, I'm becoming more convinced that Wikipedia isn't doing enough to account for its honey trap nature:

Wikipedia attracts millions of visitors, many who have never heard of wikis before.
Many people actually seem to think "wiki" is a synonym for "Wikipedia."
Wikipedia makes it so easy for anyone to edit that for many people, this is the first wiki they try editing on.
Many users who are new to Wikipedia have previous experience with other kinds of user-editable Web sites that work very differently than Wikipedia. On sites such as MySpace, Google Groups, blogs, and Internet forum sites, a user's postings are more or less permanent. That is, there is a concept of ownership of the material we contribute to such sites, and other people generally cannot mess with our stuff. People who have been conditioned for years by using such sites may initially assume Wikipedia works similarly.
However, what isn't initially apparent is just how demanding Wikipedia's editorial standards are. The result is that Wikipedia lures a steady stream of new editors, some fraction of whom may have very little chance of ever agreeing with Wikipedia's goal to build an encyclopedia. Even those who do contribute some encyclopedic content may still want other outlets for their non-encyclopedic expressive urges.

[edit] Article outplacement: a possible solution

Now, Wikipedia is not a Web directory nor a mere promoter of other people's sites. This principle is valid in general, but if applied in such a way as to make it harder for new editors to become aware of alternative outlets for their non-encyclopedic edits, may work against Wikipedia's primary goal of building an encyclopedia. Specifically, I'm thinking edit wars and deletion debates may become unnecessarily heated when authors see someone threaten to delete their work altogether. I think it is often much less threatening merely to see one's work moved to another wiki.

By systematically identifying and cataloguing enough of these alternative outlets, such that we build up a comprehensive outplacement directory (that is, a directory of alternative outlets that collectively would accept most of the material Wikipedia currently deletes), I believe we can minimize the waste of editor time that currently goes into unnecessarily heated deletion debates. By freeing up everyone's energy to focus on the primary goal (which is to build an encyclopedia, rather than have fights about it), such a directory would more than justify its seeming violation of the "mere" Web directory principle.

Most people are not naturally NPOV in their thinking. They may find it easier to restrict themselves to NPOV on Wikipedia if they concurrently indulge their POV urges on other wikis that share their biases.

In any case, such an outplacement directory would not need to be an exhaustive list of wikis such as the one in WikiIndex. Instead, we would only need to list the wikis which had actually been found useful as outlets for Wikipedia's article rejects, arranged by topic.

In a few cases, groups of Wikipedia editors who shared a topical interest set up their own wikis to publish the non-encyclopedic content they had a tendency to write on Wikipedia, alongside the encyclopedic content. Wookiepedia is an example; many of its editors contribute to Wikipedia, and their edits on Wikipedia are better because they have an outlet for their non-encyclopedic work. That's an excellent model for calming nerves and making Wikipedia more productive.

I would go so far as to suggest that many if not most WikiProjects should identify, and promote, alternative outlets for non-encyclopedic content in their topical areas, as a way to help their members have a more productive and enjoyable Wikipedia editing experience. For example, in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cycling, I suggested using Bicycling Wiki as such an outlet, because most of the people who edit cycling-related articles on Wikipedia also want to share lots of information about cycling which is unlikely to be encyclopedic (such as information about the local cycling they actually do, most of which is non-notable, but ironically is far more relevant than reading about the elite Lance Armstrongs of the world). That soon led to a productive resolution of one article deletion debate. It was easy to build consensus when we had a way to divide the encyclopedic from non-encyclopedic content, and send each to its appropriate place.

Simply deleting people's hard work seems to contradict Wikipedia's long-standing policy of allowing anyone to edit. If we invite everyone to edit, then I think we owe it to them to make a good-faith effort to find welcoming homes for the articles we encouraged them to start, if we decide their articles aren't encyclopedic enough. With so many newbies having little or no idea that other wikis exist, we should at least make them aware of that fact, so they choose to edit on Wikipedia because they share Wikipedia's goal, not merely because it's the only wiki they know about.

[edit] Another take on the problem

This is another take on the problem, which I will integrate with the above presentation:

Wikipedia's deletion procedures may seem to the bewildered novice like an expression of bureaucratic indifference, because we cite all the rules and regulations only after a new user wasted hours editing an article we don't want. Wikipedia by design makes it very easy to create new articles, without first requiring the novice to know anything about all the rules and regulations we will hit him over the head with after the fact. If Wikipedia were some sort of an exclusive private club, or perhaps an elite unit of the armed forces, this sort of quasi-hazing ritual we put many novices through might be desirable. But Wikipedia is not like a private club; Wikipedia is a tax-exempt charity, and I'd like to think charities should operate differently than, say, fraternities or the Navy SEALs. (If an organization gets a tax break, I think it should try to serve the public rather than punking people.) We inadvertently mislead large numbers of new users, wasting their time, and subjecting them to unnecessary stress, because thousands of novices look at Wikipedia and get the wrong idea. Why not try to present ourselves to novices in a way that increases the percentage who get the right idea? After all, we are trying to build an encyclopedia, and if the encyclopedia is being systematically misunderstood, that would seem logically inconsistent with the purpose of an encyclopedia, which is to explain things. If we can't explain Wikipedia to new users before they create new articles, then what can we explain? Wikipedia doesn't need to list thousands of public wikis, because WikiIndex already does. I think we would fulfill our charitable obligations (justifying our tax break) merely by insuring that before a new user creates a new article here, he or she has a reasonable opportunity to become aware of the following facts:

Many new users form incorrect impressions about the kinds of articles suitable for Wikipedia, with the result that Wikipedia deletes up to several articles per minute.
Wikipedia is not the only wiki - there are thousands, covering a wide range of interests, accepting many articles that Wikipedia would reject.
Before creating a new article on Wikipedia, an editor should first determine whether the article is suitable for Wikipedia, or whether another wiki would be more suitable for it.

The above three sentences are simple, but many new users might take months to learn this information the hard way. It's evidently far easier for novices to learn how to create a new article - because we purposely made it easier.