On 1/4/13 9:57 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
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.
Yes, this is the main problem I've run into trying to recruit new
Wikipedia editors: less low-hanging fruit, at least on en.wiki (things
are different on smaller wikis). Fewer topics of widespread general
interest are completely article-less compared to a few years ago, so
there's less scope to e.g. write a 1-paragraph stub about [[Mahmoud
Abbas]] and feel you've contributed significantly. *And* you can no
longer do so just by jotting down a few things you remember off the top
of your head, since the standards for verifiability have gone up
considerably.
So the first problem I run into is that many people feel Wikipedia is
"done", or at least done enough that the remaining work is too advanced
for a casual layperson to do. And the second problem is that not many
people want to go to a library, look up books, and do proper research
with cited sources, if it isn't a school assignment or part of their
job. I suspect that part hasn't even really changed—we have fewer
editors now than in 2005, but I would guess if you look at the number of
*souce-citing* editors in 2005 versus today, there hasn't been much of a
decline (I could be wrong on that!).
The most successful approach I've found to getting new people interested
and non-frustrated is to suggest they follow an approach roughly like this:
---
1. Start with a source, not a topic. Pick a high-quality book that
covers subjects that could have Wikipedia articles. For example, I
recently picked up a book on archaeology of northern Greece. Browse in a
library for inspiration!
1a. Do *not* pick a source that you have a particularly close personal
or emotional connection to: it is not good to start with your own
research, your supervisor's or colleague's research, a project of yours
or that you're involved with, a nationalist/political/religious subject
you feel strongly about, the history of your own family, etc.
2. Scan through the book for topics that could be discrete Wikipedia
articles. For example, the book may describe specific historical
figures, or archaeological sites. Identify some that have enough
material on them in the book to put together at least a short article.
See if a Wikipedia article already exists (try several name variations,
and search for mentions in other articles).
3. Add information from the book to an existing article, or start a new
one. After each paragraph (or occasionally after specific important
sentences) add a citation to where you got the information, by adding a
citation tag: <ref>A. Author (1999). Book, pp. 22-23</ref> . You can
format the citation with whatever style you want, as long as it's
sufficient to identify the source. (Wikipedia does have official
citation templates, but there's need to trouble yourself with them when
starting out... a bot or person will re-format your citations later if
necessary).
4. If it's a new article, add at the end of the article a reference section:
==References==
{{reflist}}
This will automatically generate a bibliography of everything you put in
<ref></ref> tags.
5. Optionally, add categories to the article, by adding something like
this at the end of the article text, after the references:
[[Category:Castles in Greece]]
[[Category:13th-century architecture]]
---
I haven't had much success convincing people to do that, though. Not
lack of success as in people try and then fail: run into deletionism or
incivility, or just aren't able to figure it out. But lack of success in
convincing people to go to the library, find a book, and write a cited
article based on it. Most people, ime so far at least, just aren't
interested in doing that. Not sure how to change that, short of paying
editors.
-Mark
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