Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-08-16/In the news

Wikipedia's communication norms analyzed
"[C]onflict at Wikipedia is said to be “as addictive as cocaine”." Like cocaine it is only addictive to those who are addicted to it. Disputes occur, they are resolved or not, sure there's always scope to "chime in" on ANI, Arbcom cases, RFCs, heated deletion debates - but most stuff just happens, or happens and gets reverted when it shouldn't have. Rich Farmbrough, 18:28, 17 August 2010 (UTC).
 * "Reagle classified the text of 104 pages from Wikipedia ... The majority was found to be in the "supportive" realm."
 * I found that conclusion hard to believe, until I looked at his paper. As it turns out, all of the 104 articles come from the WP: space, none from the Talk: space.
 * That's like assessing a corporation's workplace culture by reading its policies and procedures manual. Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 04:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't quite see why it was necessary to look at his paper to avoid that misunderstanding; IMHO the Signpost article did state that the paper was about norms. Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right, I misunderstood what he was referring to.  Andrew Gradman talk/WP:Hornbook 08:19, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia"—let us hope the first two words will be hyphenated, at least. Faith collaboration sounds like Sunday morning at the pulpit. Tony   (talk)  07:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Newsweek: Wikipedia contributors need materialistic incentives
At the Campus Ambassador Training, the Foundation people said they had also tried to diffuse the Newsweek reporter, but she would not falter in her insistence on the statement that the Foundation must be giving some type of additional incentives to the Ambassadors to get them to participate, such as beer or pizza or money (none of which we are receiving from the Foundation). The whole room was laughing at such a bizarre statement, everyone who was in the room had applied for the position because either: a) they were active wikipedians, b) they were active participants in previous experiences that used Wikipedia in the classroom or c) they were part of programs at their respective University that wanted to make it easier to work with Wikipedia in the classroom. Silly reporters with Objectives! Whatever happened to an objective press!Sadads (talk) 11:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

When was editing Wikipedia cool? Why didn't I get the memo? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:39, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Haha, Sadads (talk) 18:42, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess the institutional memory doesn't go back far enough to know the answer to Cryptic's question. Back around January 2006, there was a significant share of new users who were attracted to Wikipedia because it was "cool". They were identifiable by their inordinate attention to their users pages (which led to the Userbox Wars), lots of edits to Talk pages, & few edits to articles -- all of which were so poor that they were immediately reverted. I'm sure a larger than usual share of newbies were bitten & driven away from Wikipedia at the time, although some of these wannabes wised up & became productive members. It's the same dynamic which encourages people to be "artists": they indulge in the wild, unconventional Bohemian lifestyle to the fullest, while failing to produce a single painting, sculpture, novel or even a single line of poetry. (Real artists spend most of their free time alone, working on their art. And since art doesn't pay very well -- if at all -- most of their time is consumed with the job that pays their bills. So, in the end, they don't get to enjoy that Bohemian lifestyle much; many don't even have much of a life.) -- llywrch (talk) 16:33, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

If Wiki started giving out incentives to contributors it would create one hell of a mess. First of all previous contributors would start applying for their incentive in lieu and given the number of active contributors, even incentives of a penny per 1000 words would get very expensive, very quickly. It would also bring about a situation where people are editing just to get the incentive, irregardless of expertise or knowledge which would lead to huge amounts of irrelevant info being added to pages. Lastly, it would be the death of Wiki as we know it. The only way (that I can see) to combat these problems would be to charge a subscription fee to either editors (which could be offset against good contributions) or users. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kendroche (talk • contribs) 14:53, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the Swahili-language experiment, if it was that, proved to be pretty ineffective. New contributors claimed their prizes and left the project as fast as they came in, as I recall. The volunteer model seems to work, fortunately. Carrite (talk) 16:28, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit wars visualization
Regardless of the point of that edit war visualization, not recognizing that Cute was actually a piped link to Knut (polar bear) is pretty sloppy. Seriously, 21 total edits? That should have been a hint to double-check that you're using the correct data. Reach Out to the Truth 15:42, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

16 Strange Things

 * At the Huffington Post the editorial content of the "15 Surprising Facts ..." post has been "removed due to editorial consideration". But the post-page and the readers' comments on it remain. D-uh! VivekM (talk) 14:58, 20 September 2011 (UTC)