User talk:Wllm

Welcome to Meta!

Hello, Wllm. Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 21:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

G'day

Hi Wil, if you need any help finding content here on meta, I will do my best to help, or point you towards someone else on meta who can help. John Vandenberg (talk) 01:44, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind offer! Actually, you can help. I'd like to build up the sound sample library on commons. Stuff like rhythm loops, effects, and buildups. People use them a lot in both music and video production. I've created a category, but it's a bit awkward the way stuff is organized here for this use case. Do you know of anyone who might also be interested in such content who also might have more experience to tell me what can and can't be done to make it easier to find/access? Wllm (talk) 03:18, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Sidenote: I keep accidentally making changes without being logged in. I wonder if that will ever end and when. :) Wllm (talk) 03:18, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Look at the top right hand corner for your username. It will show your IP if you are not logged in yet. And use the preview button; your signature will include your IP if you are not logged in. This is of course a personal safety issue, so not something to take lightly. John Vandenberg (talk) 03:45, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Answered the Commons related question over there: User talk:Wllm#Re categories. There is at least one other person that comes to mind, but I think it is best that you upload and play around a bit more before they get involved. I'll try to think of a few more people. Buzz me again after you have done a bit more. --John Vandenberg (talk) 04:02, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Relevant pages to recent discussions on wikimedia-l

Some of the 'meta' issues that you've expressed interest in are:

• Child protection
• Controversial content
• Gendergap

The first hasnt had a lot of traction, and the meta content here isnt very good. We should have links to the child protection (CP) measures on each wikis, where they exist, and an overview of the WMF activity in this area. special:search/COPPA brings up a few more pages to read (including some of my thoughts on the matter). While CP isnt something that is regularly on everyones mind, there are people on English Wikipedia who literally fall asleep at the keyboard night after night trying to help protect children who end up on English Wikipedia and do what children do. We need a better strategy than relying on these volunteers to limit the size of the problem. This is an area where you can be effective very quickly.

Controversial content is a very bloody hard problem. Dragons be there, it has been discussed to death, the board of trustees has struggled with it, even flip-flopping on it, and you'll need to work your way into this problem area more slowly if you wish to have any effective. There are some low hanging fruit that havent been done because the overall problem is so large and ... (IMHO alert) ... these days WMF tends to want to deliver magnificent solutions rather than incremental improvements, so the litte wins are not considered worth attempting.

Gendergap was a strategic item in the 5-year plan released .. 2010 iirc. I dont think it is controversial that the gendergap should be reduced. But how to do it isnt simple, and often requires funds allocated. There has been a lot of talk, and small initiatives, but sfa has been done. But the problem is now well socialised - everyone knows about it. Most people agree that the Wikipedia model of encyclopedia writing should have equal participation. However there is a decent cohort of community concerned with how much resources are being put to bear on 'fixing' it, without much success, as female participation in writing an encyclopedia isnt a top ten issue to many people - things like accuracy, quality, comprehensiveness, readability, style, and illustrations are all much more important and are not yet acceptable in many areas. Unfortunately we've (nearly) put out of business all the people who did what we do (publish encyclopedias), and we've done it by publishing lower quality work. Anyone who believes that overall English Wikipedia is 'better' than Encyclopedia Britannica is drunk on cool-aid. In some aspects we're better, especially in harnessing the network effect of knowledge creation and dissemination, but we have a long way to go. IMO it is because we have a long way to go that we need to fix the gender gap sooner rather than latter - the community needs be a friendly place for all, as it is going to long time before we've come close to publishing version 1 of something that could be called an encyclopedia.

You've also stumbled into, and stirred up, the BADSITES issue. That page isnt very good as a launching point, so here are a few local pages, check out w:Wikipedia:Attack sites (and its talk pages), but you'll learn a lot more on this topic by heading out of the wikiverse and surfing Google with a pretty thick insanity filter firmly in place. If you can make it to Wikimania in London, that would be a good opportunity to learn more about this issue by randomly asking people: "what do you think about Wikipedia Review/Wikipediocracy?".

Issues relating to how we communicate, notably wikimedia-l, need periodic review, but I've run out of time to provide some pointers on that. I looked briefly and found Research:Defining Civil Discourse on Wikipedia, which appears to have been WMF funded but the page doesnt give any results, so that is .. well .. odd.

No doubt you have other 'meta' areas of interest...? John Vandenberg (talk) 11:55, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

A set of people who have volunteered to be subjected to difficult questions are the Affiliate-selected Board seats/2014. See Affiliate-selected Board seats/2014/Questions and on the talk page of each candidacy. e.g. Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2014/Nominations/Frieda Brioschi, Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2014/Nominations/Patricio Lorente and Talk:Affiliate-selected Board seats/2014/Nominations/Anders Wennersten. John Vandenberg (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Off-wiki

You have mail. —Neotarf (talk) 19:37, 23 May 2015 (UTC)