User talk:Privatemusings/A walk on a path in a garden/A threefold path to enlightenment

Reply from Durova
Sounds very workable. A bit different from my approach, but synergistic. Privatemusings, tell me if the following is on target: You and I have been talking off and on about potential collaborations. NTWW has become quite a productive little corner, and whatever direction your interests take you'll have friends to help things succeed. Doesn't have to be a featured content drive (although I think you could be successful with images or sounds); maybe taking a biography of a cricket player from start-class to GA would be the thing. You already know people who'd be glad to help find sources, deal with images, format citations, and copyedit. The reasoning there is that you've got a lot of ideas about wiki dynamics, but mainspace experience is on the light side. In general, editors who really do well overall put a certain threshold of work into article building before they branch out. So really building an article, and tending it when it gets spammed or vandalized, and interacting with people who come along and might not be easy to work with--well, you're an intelligent and well-meaning fellow--it should yield good insights that will serve you well in a lot of ways. Thoughts? Best, Durova

Response from me
Describing my mainspace experience as being 'on the light side' is actually a very kind way of putting it :-) - I share the view held by some that the content writers / contributors should really be the kings of the wiki, and am very much aware of my own serfdom in that regard....

I'd love to take any article anywhere (a longstanding desire to get dear old Socrates to FA stalled on the grid with the sheer scale of the task, combined with my own rather severe limitations!) - and will continue to try and figure out what a good fit would be. Unfortunately I don't really know enough about Cricket to make that a focus (the standard also seems wonderfully high in that area). I did get rather excited at the discovery of the goldmine on my talk page the other day, so maybe that's a good area to work in in the short term.....

I'm glad to see John seems to be heading for receiving his official badge from arbcom in this procedure (and I'm sure you're all partly wondering what you've done to deserve this!) - I agree with him that the on-wiki corner which is my path page is probably a good spot for co-ordination of efforts - and thanks one and all for signing up for this :-) (as a wag put it to me recently, you could cure 5 addictions in 90 days, so this wiki-rehab will no doubt yield wonderful results!)

cheers all,

Privatemusings (talk)

sum up of the thread following
at this point, the motion to appoint 'mentors' was still being voted upon by the arbs, there was a bit more friendly chat, and the concept that if the motion passed, we should write something up 'on wiki' was introduced - and returned to a few times in further correspondance. It's a little bit regrettable that we didn't sort that out a bit sooner, because I think the BLP vs. broader issues matter could have been ironed out / clarified. No biggie really though, and we can all move on ok from here, I trust :-) Privatemusings (talk) 01:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)