Wikipedia Task Force: Reader Conversion

[netmouse]

I have been selected to participate in the Wikipedia task force to increase contributions from readers and under-represented groups. In other words, to convert wikipedia readers to editors.

I have posted a few of my pet theories as to why people are discouraged from or disinterested in editing wikipedia on my wikipedia strategic planning user page. I welcome discussion there or here about why you or people you know choose not to edit wikipedia.

Comments

[theferrett.livejournal.com]

Two reasons:

1) The process is fairly opaque to me. I don't really know how to start; people say it's easy, but from what I see on my remote viewpoint is that there's actually a lot of political stuff (Home on the Strange had a web page, then got deleteamated for "not being of interest," despite the fact that it had like 30,000 daily visitors), so why bother?

2) I'm never clear where the lines are drawn, and anything I'm interested in, I'm involved in. I know that making my own Wikipedia entry is wrong (not that I would), but I'd also feel uncomfortable editing, say, the Clarion page because I'm involved with that. Or Kelly Link, because I know her. In short, there's some fuzzy line between "my own self-interest" and "the public good," and I'm not sure where to draw that. But the places I'd be most likely to know enough to edit are the ones where I'm not sure if I'm ego-editing.

[cdave]

It's point 1) for me too. There was a period a few years ago where one or two editors had targeted webcomics as an area that needed tidying up. They were deleting as non-notable webcomics which had higher reader numbers than many US newspapers, and which the creators were making a living from.

No amount of rallying from the readers would persuade these editors not to delete these entries.

I still occasionally tweek errors in articles, but don't normally bother.


For instance in Time of Eve, it states that couple of things happened, when they are only _implied_ to have happened. A big difference in a show where the main premis is about the characters concealing things. But I can't be bothered to edit it, as there's every chance it'll be decided it's non-notable and disappear soon anyway.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Do you remember one or two examples of which webcomics got deleted?

[cdave]

It goes back through 2005, and 2006, but the biggest fuss I recall was in 2007.

The attempt to delete one of the longest standing webcomic hosting projects, Keenspot, was particularly daft.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks for the links.

[eleri.livejournal.com]

that's exactly what happened with PX!, and that was in '08. The PX forums are gone now, so I can't dig up dates.