Wikipedia talk:Article Improvement Drive/archive5

Vote#8: Should people not be allowed to advertise for an AID nominee
In respect to the recent uproar from people regarding the jump in votes of the AID nominee BELGRADE, I have decided to have this issue settled once and for all.

To disallow individuals from soliciting votes from other users interested in a page.
 * Proposal:


 * Support:


 * 1) AID is not about how many people you can notify who like an article, it's about how much help the article needs. I've also reworded the proposal slightly. — Cuivi é  nen  , Sunday, 30 April 2006 @ 00:22 UTC 
 * 2) Sicilianmandolin 10:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Mkaycomputer 16:10, 30 April 2006 (UTC) This isn't about jealousy, this isn't about a personal vendetta, this is about the sanctity of AID.  AID is supposed to support articles that are in need.  They can be put up by users that have personal biases towards that article, but afterwards, the beauty of it, is that the Wikipedia community votes to see solely on if the article is important enough and needs to be fixed.  If this continues, it will turn into a culture war.  One that will be won by the side that did not start this, native English speaking Americans and Brits, the overwhelming majority of the user population.  Wikipedia was built on the honor system, and therefore, it stays in a beautiful but fragile equilibrium.  Lets not disturb it.
 * 4)  S iva1979 Talk to me  16:28, 30 April 2006 (UTC)  Agree with Sicilianmandolin.
 * 5) Daniel 16:39, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 6) Litefantastic 16:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC) - I got into something of a fight with the people at the SCOTW over this sort of thing. Although it worked out well, the truth is that this is an agrivating practice and should probably be stopped; I compared it to "spamming." That being said, I was once solicited politely (for emergency department) and voted for it. The difference is people, really.
 * 7) Josen 19:56, 12 June 2006 (UTC) As with Litefantastic.


 * Opposed:


 * 1) Steven 22:13, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) Lakinekaki The Article Improvement Drive is a weekly collaboration to improve non-stub articles to featured article status. (from the top of AID page). You guys may notice that many Belgrade voters also voted for other articles (and did not vote for others related to Serbia). I think that AID is biased itself, because only so many people know about it (I didn't know about it before I saw message on my talk page), and they put articles they care about, and therefore create bias by having the tag on the articles page that attracts more people to vote for it to get to featured status (which they may be interested in since they looked at it), and that reinforces the bias of featured articles based on the initial nomination of people who cared about it at the first place and who knew for AID. Maybe AID should be eliminated altogether! People who care about articles and think they need attention, will edit them anyhow. I don't understand why Mkaycomputer talks about culture war and equilibrium. I don't see culture war going on here (if he sees it, than he must feel threatened in some way), nor do I think that wikipedia is in equilibrium, but is constantly evolving, like everything else in life. I agree with Stevens comment below, that the purpose of solicitation of votes was to notify people that Belgrade is very close to becoming featured article, but may need a help from the people who are knowlegable about it. You could say now, why don't people who are reading and editing Belgrade fix it and improve it. Well, people from Belgrade probably don't need to read about Belgrade on wikipedia, and therefore don't know if article is in need of attention. By letting those people know that article needs attention, they can jump in, fix it, improve it, and make reading of Belgrade article to non-serbian wikipedians more enjoyable. Now, is this bad? Should it be disallowed? I don't think so.
 * Perhaps this should be continued in the comments section below, but I would like to ask you why believe that notifying users of Belgrade's AID nomination was necessary to encourage them to dit the article. Surely a simple request for assistance on the Belgrade article would have sufficed? (And no one would begrudge you that.) Articles need not pass through AID to become featured; very few featured articles have ever even been on AID. — Cuivi é  nen  , Monday, 1 May 2006 @ 01:47 UTC 
 * At present, there are 961 featured articles, out of a total of 1,110,152 articles on Wikipedia. That means approximately 1 in 1150 articles is listed here. From you can see that 1 in about 7 articles from AID gets a featured status. I think it creates a bias. Don't you? 1150 / 7 ~ 164 times higher chances!!! Lakinekaki
 * 1) --Bora Nesic 20:52, 30 April 2006 (UTC) Wikipedia is about cooperation. Inviting people to colaborate on an interesting article is perfectly in line with everything Wikipedia stands for. In addition, people can always say "no" despite all the advertising, which by the way is a loaded word - an in invitation to cooperation is more like it.
 * I appreciate your efforts on trying to keep the wording fair and neutral. Just to let you know, however, where I live (this might be a regional thing) "advertisement" is the neutral word; "invitation" is loaded heavily pro-advertising and "spam" is loaded heavily anti-advertising. I do PR for one real-life group; we always talk about doing more "advertising" but we would never talk about doing more "spam". This is nothing against you; I just want to point out that people have been using the term "advertising" not because they want to sway others with loaded words but because it is a relatively neutral term. I hope this clears things up. (^'-')^ Covington 19:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) --RockyMM 21:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) --Asterion talk to me 06:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC). "Advertising" is not spam. People do not spam people they do not know.
 * I disagree. I believe people exclusively spam people they do not know. -Litefantastic 18:58, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess we have had different experiences, which basically get us to the point I was trying to make against "one size fits all" solutions. Regards, --Asterion talk to me 19:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough; I've had experiences on this that I would consider 'good', and I've had 'bad' ones as well. I just don't like the idea of condoning this. Can we make some sort of list (as they have on the SCOTW) of people who would like to be solicited for their votes? -Litefantastic 23:09, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) This is not a competition.  The real problem is that most people who vote don't then participate in the improvement drive, but trying to prevent people from soliciting others to participate is not only impossible, but ridiculously restrictive and detrimental to the wikipedia community as a whole. siafu 19:42, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I know this for a fact. I ended up extending Lipovans myself (and I could not do much on my own). I hadn't even voted for it... --Asterion talk to me 23:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Joyous | Talk 00:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC) The end goal is an improved article. Not everyone watches, or even knows about AID. Why not get as many people involved as possible? Joyous | Talk 00:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) juppiter  bon giorno   #c  20:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC) Instruction creep
 * 3) What's wrong in asking for help in improving an article, I imagined Wikipedia was this, where everyone will do their best in helping the others with information. Of course, we should solicite help not just votes... C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-I-O-N is the word. I do not believe the term culture war is appropiate, it is more like an ego war. --Francisco Valverde 13:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Comments:

Taken from the comment section of the voting and comments made under the removed votes section:

Sicilianmandolin 01:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC) by Sicilianmandolin because he refuses to support a nomination that has been advertised in such a manner to gain votes and believes that it should result in a disqualification of the nomination for a defined period of time. Sicilianmandolin believes such a process inevitably encourages bias and diminishes the reputability of AID.
 * Absolutely. This is ridiculous.  This is not what AID is about. Mkaycomputer 20:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

This is in my opinion, a ridiculous comment. This and the one you made above. I'm truly sorry if you find this offensive, but just because someone is proud of their birth place, does not mean you have to say they cause bias in editing. What people have done to gain attention is truly useful. Who better to edit an article then the people that once was born, or had lived there? It causes no "Bias" to edits. In fact, I believe its an extremely good idea of someone would volunteer to alert all related people about certain articles nominated, so that we can actually get experts to help with the editting. If you personally wish to send all Americans a comment when an American-related article becomes nominated, I don't believe anyone would mind. If that is, anyone, or any group of people have the patience required for such a big job. Therefore, I believe your comment is too aggressive. (And no, I'm not from Belgrade) --Steven 23:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Steven, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having pride for your country or many other things for that matter. That is not where my concern lies, nor does my comment address that kind of bias. My concern is letting any bias distort results in favor of something other than what is immediately important to the Wikipedia community, as determined by it's visitors, and more directly, regular contributors to AID, and letting any single group of people become overrepresented in the votes, as I feel articles of which hold the highest relevance that are in the poorest of shape should be our priority. I do not think the Belgrade article, in comparison to many articles of greater or equal importance, is in the kind of condition that warrants that kind of overhaul, so to speak. I also agree that AID needs more participants and that generating interest is called for, but in the case that we begin selectively appealing to people of the same interests as our own, do we become a project for improving those articles accordingly, for the amount of time it takes other people of other interests to do the same. I think the best way to generate interest in AID is by informing everyone, indiscriminate of their interests, so that every group is represented in votes as proportionately as possible. I must admit, however, that I am new to AID and may not be fully aware of how it operates. If there already exist regulations, such as limiting the amount of articles allowed to be nominated of the same subject for a certain amount of time, that discourage such a scenario from happening, then please let me know, and I will certainly reconsider my position. I hope that all makes sense. I'm tired. Sicilianmandolin 07:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree fully. There is a significant danger in allowing the soliciting of votes. The point of AID is not to war over which page is chosen to be improved, and recruiting votes in such a fashion as this nomination did does exactly that. I suppose I could, if I wanted, nominate an American city for AID each week, call out every American on the English Wikipedian to vote for it and come out with an overwhelming number of votes; hundreds, or possibly even one thousand. However, promotion of my nation, or any nation, is not the purpose of AID. The purpose of AID is to fix up ailing articles rather than articles that an individual may hold dear to their hearts. I don't want AID to become a recruiting war. — Cuivi é  nen  , Friday, 28 April 2006 @ 03:35 UTC 
 * I agree totaly with you. The danger is immense! Wikipedia is being overwhelmed by those Serbs. And they dare to do this on English Wikipedia. (American English or British English, I don't know!) Why don't you demonstrate the danger by actually calling thousand Americans to help. Allow them to vote! Call me too, as I live in America (will be citizen soon). What if Chinese or Indian people also start mobilizing. What if Christian Right starts mobilizing. I think we should then all built shelters, turn off computers, disconnect DSL cables. I am soo scared. Those Serbs. Can't live in peace. Must bother us everywhere! BUUAAAAAA. We need help! ... Whatever... Lakinekaki
 * Take it personally if you want. This isn't about Serbs or any other group, ethnic, religious, or otherwise. It's about maintaining the process of AID. Each community on Wikipedia is perfectly welcome to have a Collaboration of the [Insert Length of Time], but we don't need any group hijacking AID to force through related articles. Collaborating on articles in a specific area of interest is the purpose of WikiProjects. — Cuivi é  nen  , Sunday, 30 April 2006 @ 00:28 UTC 
 * From what I know it is perfectly acceptable and, indeed, encouraged, to ask your wikifriends to take a look at some article or vote, as long as you do it with a bot, which would be required in your examples. The purpose of AID is to fix up ailing articles, but individuals may still hold such articles dear to their hearts. If this ever becomes a problem on some vote pages, it may be discouraged, but Serbiana shouldn't be criticised for not following nonexistant policy. Nikola 09:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed; it wasn't policy when he did it. — Cuivi é  nen  , Sunday, 30 April 2006 @ 00:28 UTC 
 * Absolutely. I am not advocating that anyone be punished, I am simply trying to raise an awareness of the potential danger, as I perceive it, in allowing this kind of practice to continue. Sicilianmandolin


 * 1) Chile 23:20, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's calm down. First of all, I want to make it clear that I am not targeting any individual or group of people; I am targeting an action that some believe is detrimental to the AID. No person or people are goinging to get blamed/in trouble/etc, and if we decide against advertising the AID, no one will be punished retroactively. I just want to discuss with you all whether or not the proposed policy is a good idea.

The purpose of the AID is collaborative editing; the people who should be voting are the ones who actively want to work on the article. It's fine to announce that the AID nomination on the talk page; it is not fine to send talk messages to every person with a certain userbox and ask them to vote "support". The difference is that editors who look at the article's talk page are very likely interested in actively improving the article (Why else would they be looking at the article's talk page?); those who have a related userbox might be interested in the article but most likely will not be active in improving it. We have to strike a balance here. We want to get as many potential editors voting, but we don't want "junk messages" to be an everyday thing for Wikipedians.

To all participants: What counts as "soliciting votes"? Technically the AIDnom advertises the AID, but it is posted on an article's talk page and does not ask editors to vote a particular way.

(^'-')^ Covington 06:47, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * That's been one of my qualms with the idea since the beginning. Unfortunately, I have not been so eloquent in expressing it. You'll see I've left comments on the talk page of Rome and Italy in light of that idea. In my opinion, I think the term "soliciting votes" in this case implies messaging other users in sole regard to their interest in the nomination in question for the purpose of gaining votes. Like I said, in selectively messaging these people it seems as though we're defeating the purpose and viability of voting in the first place. Votes should represent as unbiased and proportionate of a general userbase as possible, and I find that difficult an ideal to achieve with a single people now unfairly overrepresented in the quantity of votes, especially when many of whom more likely than otherwise have less an intention to contribute to the article in the first place. I mean, was the Belgrade article in such poor shape to begin with that it should, under normal circumstances, acquire so many votes so quickly? Not that I recall. And I find it very interesting that I see only two, maybe three names out of the 58 that I recognize from the votes that have edited the article since it's nomination nearly a month ago.

Sicilianmandolin 10:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

It's time to select the new weekly article. I'm doing a rollover soon but I'd like to check with you all first. So far, Belgrade has the most votes. Would you rather have Belgrade up this week and implement the results of the vote starting next week, or would you rather postpone Belgrade for a week until we make a decision? (^'-')^ Covington 18:58, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


 * In light of AID's purpose, as illuminated above, I wouldn't mind seeing Belgrade's votes remaining altogether and no postponing taking place. I think our concerns lie with the future of AID, and I think it's reasonable to allow the Belgrade article nomination continue undisturbed since no one evidently foresaw this kind of problem. Sicilianmandolin 20:44, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I would like to comment more on the issue, but don't have the time to do so at the moment. --Steven 00:48, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed also. If this proposal passes, Belgrade was nominated and received all of its votes before this proposal will go into effect. I don't think this proposal should be ex post facto legislation. — Cuivi é  nen  , Monday, 1 May 2006 @ 01:38 UTC 

Weak support (don't count it as a vote). I would fully support this if soliciting votes would happen regularly, and if it becomes a problem (if articles which obviously don't deserve it start winning). But as this is just a hypothetical danger and soliciting votes is otherwise allowed, I don't think it should be implemented. I'd also like to note that the creator of this vote solicited my vote about it ;) Nikola 06:35, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

It is a culture war, because when a certain culture or race (in this case native serbs) come together and lobby for one thing related to their culture, it instigates the same done by others, almost to even out the playing field. Mkaycomputer 02:59, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is equilibrium because it relies heavily on honor and fairplay, rather than bias not just in the general community, but in actual articles. On average, most articles are neutral and are fairly written, even when it is not a popular topic, and few people have knowledge to write an article about it.Mkaycomputer 03:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Lets go back to the beginning. The message said that one may vote for the Belgrade article on AID. Here is my problem. This deprives others that haven't had the honor of being advertised currently nominated on AID the fairness of the voting system. It deprives their chance of being improved, although it was nominated under the same circumstances and theoretically at the same spot on the Wiki-totem pole, if you will. It is quite honorable for one to ask his fellow (can we use the Belgrade example again) Serbs to help in editing the article up to featured status. It is also honorable for one to nominate the Belgrade article and allow the system to work itself out, and if it fails, try again or nominate in a different, more specific collaboration category. But to solicit a vote and in turn deprive the chance and the right of all of the other nominations that were nominated and voted for through the status quo, in my opinion is dishonorable and unwikipedia. In my opinion, it makes a statement saying that in order to win AID for the week, you must advertise it to its most likely voters. It makes it seem like a presidential election, in which a candidate will win usually if he is FUNDED the most by outside sources. The sanctity of AID and Wikipedia in general is in jeopardy, in my opinion.Mkaycomputer 03:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The Article Improvement Drive is a weekly collaboration to improve non-stub articles to featured article status. AID nomination increase chances of it getting to the featured status by ~164 times (see comment above). In your own /modified/ words: This deprives others that haven't had the honor of being advertised /...currently nominated.../ on AID the fairness of /...the voting system.../ getting to featured status. People who know about AID have much higher chances of getting their favorite articles to the featured status. Maybe AID should be eliminated altogether! Lakinekaki


 * Fine, then send messages to someone notifying them about AID's existence. I think everyone recieves something in their introductory tutorial anyway now.Mkaycomputer 22:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if I didn't make this clear. I agree with Litefantastic; the main issue that i am concerned with there is spamming. It's okay to post a message on the article's talk page or an appropriate Wikiproject; it's inappropriate to spam every person on the Wikiproject or to spam every person with a particular userbox.

Where I live (Northeastern US), there is a huge problem with "junk" mail, phone calls, text messages, etc. Most of the time advertizers do not pick who to spam on the blue. For example, if I bought athletic shoes from company A, company A might sell their addresses to companies B, C, D, and E, who each will spam me their catalogues or mail messages. Then cable channels will send me messages because they assume that since I like sports I like watching it on TV. Etc, etc. Spammers might call it an invitation, but to most people, it will be spam, and no one likes spam.

Yes, it's good to tell people about AID. But the thing is, if we let group A send out spam, we must let all groups do the same. And from someone who receives at least 10 spam messages a day in real life, let me tell you, it's very annoying. It's especially annoying if I'd have to check my talk page after I get the "new messages" bar and realized that it's spam.

There are ways to tell people about the AID without spamming their talk pages. They have already done it for the RfA; Dragons flight has created a RfA summary that automatically tells editors what new RfAs are up for vote and how the previous ones are doing. Some editors post this on their talk page, and it gets updated immediately. Maybe AID can get their own AID summary program. If you want to invite someone to the AID, just suggest that they post this program on their talk page. This will solve many things:
 * 1) Advertise which articles are up for vote.
 * For example, I nominated Nikola Tesla last night; if they know that this article is up for vote and they are interested in editing the Tesla article, it is very likely that they will vote for it.
 * Advertising the entire AID would not restrict people from voting for one article. If there's are other articles that they are interested in, they can vote for more than one (instead of focusing the attention on one article; makes it more fair while bringing in more contributors; just because someone is interested in the Nikola Tesla article doesn't mean she isn't interested in the Rome article).
 * 1) There will me no AID related spam messages (except maybe one invitation from you, but that's much better than ten individual ones). And a message saying "Check out the AID and vote for your favorite articles." would be less biased than "Nikola Tesla is up for votes in the AID. You might want to help support."
 * 2) It's voluntary; people do not feel forced to vote. And if they don't want to do AID any more, they can take it off their page.

In summary, the intent is good, but the method is bad. Yes, it's great to have pride in your city/country/religious affiliation/etc. It's great to get the message about AID out there. But it's not fun to receive spam messages every other day. Let's keep the same good intentions but change our methods.

I hope this solution addresses most of your concerns. Let me know what you think. (^'-')^ Covington 19:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think that statistics that I made (only more accurate) should be put at Featured_articles page, since it seems to be significant. Then, there would be many more articles on AID page (because I think that most of the people click at some moment at 'Featured star', and would therefore learn about AID. There would be no need for advertizing AID on individual pages... I may as well add that statistics there now! Lakinekaki


 * That sounds like an excellent idea. I like the solution Covington proposed above as well, but in addition to this, it makes a compromise even more reasonable. Well done. Sicilianmandolin 01:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * If you like it, than you can help me put it on featured article page, since there is an administrator/arbitrator that erased it. He likes short and sweet things . ... Lakinekaki


 * That statistic is not necessary on the FA page; it is misleading, as very few articles have been through AID, and it does tell anything about how many featured articles are former AID articles. (I believe Sicilianmandolin was referring to Covington's comment). — Cuivi é  nen  , Wednesday, 3 May 2006 @ 17:29 UTC