On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:41:06 +0100, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
I guess I could write much more. But at the end, I have no solution.
I could imagine some partial solutions for some of the problems, but
nothing that could really bring Wikipedia to days of old.
Certainly, it will not. For the very same reason you mention: less not
covered topics, more complexity, higher editing standards.
We just have to live with that. I personally found a niche (or rather
several niches) which I am covering. If nobody else gets interested
(which seems to be the case), I have enough to do for the next ten years
or so.
This is not bad and not good. This is a fact.
The question of editor retention I believe is not to return to
Wikipedia as of ten or five years ago (this is largely impossible -
remember the first day on Wikidata! This is why everybody went there for
just a day). The problem is how to create an atmosphere in which those
who are interested in writing encyclopedic articles could write them and
not be afraid that tomorrow one idiot would take and article for speedy
deletion when you are still sleeping, and another idiot with
administrator tools would delete it because they do not understand the
language of the references. And those who came here not primarily to
write articles or at least to maintain the place clean, but to solve
their personal problems, should be shown the door. And this is a real
problem, because those who came to solve their personal problems for
obvious reasons are more persistent and more aggressive.
As I said in one of the previous posts, I do not know how this could be
solved. But before solving the problem one needs to formulate it. Just
saying "edirot retention" or "creative atmosphere" is just pronouncing
buzzwords. Retention of which editors? Of all editors? On what
conditions? Are we ready to sacrifice the civility a bit? And there are
many questions like this which were not even been put on the agenda.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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