Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia Foundation/2016/Recommendations

Advanced tutorials brainstorming

Here are some tutorial topics I wish Wikipedia had when I started editing:

• NPOV in practice: attributing conflicting mainstreams without Wikipedia's voice, and discerning duly noteworthy from undue fringes
• A compariative approach to source reliability
• Constructive criticism HOWTO
• The dispute resolution smorgasbord: which choices improve the encyclopedia?
• What to do when you suspect organized advocacy editing
• How to ask the Foundation to fix bugs and add features — EllenCT , — (continues after insertion below.)

  Note, many of these are addressed by volunteers via Phabricator. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:00, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

What are some other good ones? EllenCT (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

• Wikipedia's internal politics
• Finding the rule you need (When I was a new Wikieditor, I didn't like that I had to click through six and seven and ten different pages of rules, still not finding the info I wanted. Some kind of master list would help.)
• Acceptable vs unacceptable ways to attempt to change consensus
• Beyond Google: Methods of finding reliable sources (A lot of newbs haven't yet learned the "It's verifiability, not truth" and end up POV-pushing; this would channel that energy within Wikipedia's existing rules.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:00, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I love those last two, especially. I think there is already a list of the policies and guidelines, somewhere. EllenCT (talk) 14:47, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF) and PEarley (WMF): re [1] how do those look? EllenCT (talk) 15:57, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

More importantly, what's the next step? I've never worked on a Wiki tutorial before. Is there some existing tutorial that's generally considered good that I could take a gander at?

Per content, acceptable vs. unacceptable ways of changing consensus could do with a weigh-in from the Wikipedias' respective ArbComs, but I'm confident I could develop blueprint that Wiki-newbs could use to build their own BS detectors. I've produced some similar material IRL. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:54, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24: the foremost example is en:Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure. @Samtar, Ocaasi, Jtmorgan, and Superm401: are there any others yet? Do any of you use Twine or Twee? EllenCT (talk) 14:06, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@EllenCT: Any other examples of a good tutorial? Not sure, but I'll say that any tutorial which is primarily reading-based won't hold the attention of someone who wants to get "stuck in to editing". I think that's why TWA is so captive and helpful -- samtar ^{talk or stalk} 14:43, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Samtar: which are your favorite in-game editing exercises? EllenCT (talk) 16:04, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

EllenCT, Darkfrog24, and samtar, thanks for these ideas and comments. Our focus is limited for this fiscal year to areas around harassment and in-person events, but we hope that the format and content of what we produce can be adapted to other topics. There is much to cover in terms of helping editors through training. Another important thing is to not recreate what has been created already by both the foundation and contributors, and to make what exists easily findable. I often use the Outreach wiki bookshelf when looking for tutorials, but we should think about how to better collate and present these resources to new editors. We are indeed looking closely at TWA for elements we can borrow :) Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Finding the rules was a big problem when I was a new editor. I would click through six and seven and ten pages and still not find anything relevant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:23, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@PEarley (WMF): I participated in the June Harassment Idea Lab, and I have to ask: Which kind of harassment do you mean? General toxic environment? I'm loosely familiar with the Lightbreather case, but can you point me toward any other specific events that I could review? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:25, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@PEarley (WMF): how about asking the community's help to provide the missing content? It's good to take things one step at a time and not duplicate effort, but there is a lot of missing content remaining to be done. For example, the Bookshelf has nothing on NPOV. It used to have a deleted video which was good almost all the way through, but ended poorly, because someone had designed it to try to get an advantage in a content dispute. EllenCT (talk) 18:41, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF): why not ask the community to help create the tutorial content you can identify as most needed that you don't have time to create in the near term? EllenCT (talk) 19:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

"Incentives, feedback loops, ongoing recognition"

@Katherine (WMF): how do you feel about telling endowment donors that for every million dollars you raise, you'd give en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Hall of Fame a hundred dollars each? Do other languages' Wikipedias have such lists? EllenCT (talk) 14:13, 6 September 2016 (UTC)