User:Antandrus/thoughts

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. Some of these are duplicated on Observations on Wikipedia behavior in other forms; some are half-baked and not quite ready to go there yet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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've done 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 be "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.

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.

Praise
You cannot labor on Wikipedia for praise. You will burn out. Do good work for the benefit of our anonymous readers, who visit more often than you might think.

Truth
"Truth" is a big word. Some of the most sophisticated minds in the history of the human race have attempted to clarify its meaning, but rather than succeeding, they have but discovered more questions. Editors who make abrupt claims about either having, knowing, or insisting on "truth" are probably doing something that does not belong in an encyclopedia, and the more stridently they argue, the more suspicious you are right to be.

On "NOR" Fundamentalism
"No Original Research" was never meant to prohibit simple observation. If you determine that Baltimore is north of Washington, or that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is in C minor, or that David Copperfield is a novel and is written in English, these things do not need cites. A surprising number of Wikipedians think otherwise.

On Blind Spots
Some people are extremely competent editors, but have a blind spot so large as to be inconsistent with being a Wikipedian. For example one could be an expert on music theory, and capable of writing NPOV material in that area, but a member of an extremist political group, and as drawn to articles in that area as a Dire Wolf to a dying mammoth in a tar pit. Tar pits make poor restaurants. Of course if you have self-knowledge sufficient to recognize oversized blind spots, you'd never be a member of a fringe political group or religious cult anyway. Self-knowledge isn't just a good thing in a Wikipedian: it's necessary for a balanced life anywhere.

On Retaliation
People who need to retaliate are only showing their own weakness and insecurity. Jesus had it right in the Sermon on the Mount, and it's worth reading, even if you are not a Christian.

On Patience
The importance of patience and self-control cannot be overstated. Sometimes an editor who knows the "truth" may goad you with fallacious, personal, and ad hominem attacks, again and again; but if you lose your temper and snap at the person, your incivility will be extracted as "diffs" and used against you, with no regard for context: so do your best to ignore such things. The community's overtolerance to new and bad editors, and expectation of near-perfection from long-term contributors, is one of the things that burns good people out. See Don't take the bait, an excellent essay penned by Raymond Arritt.

On Dramas
Dramas are to Wikipedia what junk food is to cuisine. It's easy and satisfying and when done you are no longer hungry, only tired. "People too much involved in petty matters soon become incapable of taking on big ones." (La Rochefoucauld, no. 41.) Beware of getting involved in the repetitive drama festival:  not only may you lose your taste for writing an encyclopedia, you risk losing the ability.

On Tagging
I suggest the creation of a new WikiProject: DeTaggify. Find obnoxious and disruptive tags that interfere with the reading of articles or clutter the first screen, and destroy them. Tags are almost always placed by a single editor without consensus, and reflect the opinion of that one person. While not vandalism by the usual definition, they 1) are as disruptive to an article-reader as a casual insertion by a vandal; 2) actual vandals can tag articles with impunity, it being particularly difficult to remove tags. They are an officially-sanctioned way to insert an opinion into an article.

Useful tags include requests for citation for extremely controversial statements, or cleanup for poorly written material; however many tags are large, intrusive, niggle over minor details of wording, or demand citation for the obvious. Such commentary should be on the talk page, not in the article, where it is in the face of the anonymous readers that outnumber editors by thousands to one.

Since it is easier to place than remove tags, they accrete, like dust under the furniture. If an editor has not explained the reason for a tag on the article talk page, you are free to remove it, without further explanation. Find and kill a useless tag today.

On Sancho Panzas
People on noisy crusades, especially when motivated by High Moral Principle, often attract followers who are so foolish and incompetent that they ruin the cause of the crusaders they wish to support. The consequent spew of noticeboard or talk page verbiage just leads to even more wasted time, futile drama, and bad feeling. If you are Saladin in such a case, stay in your tent and enjoy the peaceful night; your enemies will destroy themselves without your help. And if you truly wish to discredit their cause, speak kindly to them, and in few words.

Good-faith misinformation
I spend a lot of time correcting misinformation inserted by brand-new editors who feel they are doing the right thing. Often they have found something on the internet that contradicts a Wikipedia article, and "fix" it, not knowing that updated, peer-reviewed, scholarly information is available, rendering the spread far-and-wide internet information incorrect and actively harmful. For example, it was thought until about the early 1960s that Vivaldi was born in or around 1675; and as this date still appears in old reference works, it has proliferated on the internet: however the discovery of his baptismal record, more than forty years ago now, conclusively establishes his birth date as March 4, 1678. People change it back all the time. Rather than yelling at these people, the best way to proceed is to thank them for their good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, and gently correct them, with a link to a good source. More aggressive approaches usually lead to wastage of time, and bad feeling; the gentle approach requires patience, that all-too-rare virtue in the modern age. I'm no saint in this regard, and have snapped at them too from time to time, but every time I do I vow to do better next time.

On being called "pretentious"
No one has ever written anything of significance, which cannot be considered, from a hostile point of view, as pretentious; and no one has ever written anything of value, which cannot be considered, by the ignorant, as useless. And if you dare to write general observations about the way people behave, you will be called arrogant, prententious [sic], condescending, and worse: get used to it. This happens not because you actually are being those things: it's because you pricked someone's vanity. And that's worth the trouble.

On unwanted attention
Wikipedia has many brilliant and eloquent writers. They have created much of the core of our finest content, that which has already given us enduring fame. For those with the gift: beware of politics. Beware of Wikipolitics, for once involved, persuasive as you are, reasonable as you are, the envious and resentful can destroy you by sheer persistence; for they have the time, and the motivation; and that vindictive, vengeful energy is always most present in those drawn to politics, for reasons apparent to all moral philosophers for the last three thousand years. If you wish to avoid the unwanted attention, avoid the noticeboards, and avoid public votes for positions that give politicians extra powers: for once you are on the payback list for one of the envious, your Wikicareer can become a daily torture of stings of these enraged gnats.

The Wikipedian's Prayer
"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the boldness to edit the things I can; and the wisdom to accept that some editors are just complete assholes."

No, you can't actually write anything
To one of good faith and good will, the gap between plagiarism and novel synthesis is a wide one, making it possible to do a great deal of interesting writing; to one of persistence and malice, anything we write on Wikipedia is either too-close-paraphrase or "original research". Beware Wikilawyers, the Uriah Heeps of our dysfunctional universe. As our project ages, their numbers and their noise increase; driven by resentment and envy, they cause the most damage of any non-obvious type of troublemaker because of the numbers of good editors they drive away.

Unsolved
Our biggest unsolved community problem is that we lack an effective way to deal with people who do a lot of good work, but who are completely and unrepentantly abusive. I don't mean those subject to an occasional temper flare: I expect that from any long-term contributor, vulnerable to the frustrations this project engenders:  I mean those who again and again behave abusively, and neither indicate that they see anything wrong with doing so, or even recognize that they are doing anything wrong. For these people typically have a charismatic side that attracts enough enablers to keep them from being shown the door – at least without a great deal of sound and fury. And this disorder is not unique to Wikipedia, as you can find it in any human institution, or indeed in any gathering of primates. It may be a survival trait, programmed by millions of years of evolution. It may not be solveable.

Bureaucracies
Bureaucracies attract bureaucrats. The more bureaucratic our processes become, the more likely that people attracted to such environments will find and inhabit them, and the more likely that people repelled by them will pack up their things and go. You can find this most obviously in places like our "good stuff" and "featured stuff" zones, in which the majority of frequent inhabitants may as well be behind windows with rubber stamps and forms to sign. Don't do it wrong, wait your turn, and woe to you if you question them. Hell hath no fury as a scorned FA reviewer, and no systems of rules are as byzantine as those which have evolved to prop up individual egos.

In our early years we were wide open, welcoming, and anarchic. We attracted free spirits. Now we repel them.

You will be attacked and libeled
If you are around Wikipedia long enough, and do good work, people will attack you viciously, and seemingly without reason, somewhere; it may occur onsite, but here you may have allies and friends to assist you: or it may occur at "Wikipedia Review", the bucket for ticks shaken off of the dog, the place where they proclaim the dog deserves to die, and its blood wasn't any good anyway. Look closely at the rhetoric of your abusers, and you will see what drives it: deeply wounded vanity lashing out with hate at the perceived wounder. No human is as hateful and vicious as a wounded narcissist, and be prepared for this, for Wikipedia has a lot of these people and they hate with a murderous fury those who took part in their banning.

Please think of the kittens
Every time someone starts an argument about someone's nationality on a Wikipedia page, God kills a kitten, and He'll be proceeding to puppies next.

On libertarians and their limitations
Think about it for a minute -- it's an open content project; anyone can contribute anything. And they do! Ostensibly everyone is free and equal (reality is more complicated, but knowledge of that comes later for editors). We attract more than our share of libertarians, because of the very nature of the project. Also because of its very nature, that makes it difficult to get rid of the most strident and time-wasting whack-jobs, and honestly, is there any single group that has blown more hot air on the internet since its inception? These people often bring a POV which is superficially benign, but which is only a nudge and a whisper away from the lunatic fringe.

On fanatics
Fanatics sometimes change -- by switching to the opposite side. (From Timon of Athens: "The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends.")  Reason is a futile endeavor with one who Knows the Truth. On Wikipedia, after the obligatory polite pointer towards our policies, point them towards the door, with some additional propulsion if necessary.

On single-purpose accounts
They've come here for one reason, and one reason only. Unlike fanatics, they may cultivate a manner of apparent reasonableness. You may try once to get through to them, but no more. This is a hard lesson for a reasonable person of good faith, but an important one: don't let them waste your time. As with fanatics, point them towards the door, and hurl them through it, without unnecessary finesse.