Grants:IdeaLab/Small Wikis need more help in this matter

Inspire campaign

Small Wikis need more help in this matter

Administrator's behaviour is an importent thing for the growth of small Wikis.

idea creator• Randeerjayasekara

this project needs...

volunteer

created on04:55, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

There are two problems I'm trying to solve. First one is "User Blocking by Administrators" without giving proper reasons to do that. This is a big problem in small Wikis because there isn't enough contributors. Number of Users who have given valuable contributions have been blocked for no reason. Also Administrators don't let them come back ever again. When such things happened, Users come to "Meta" asking for help. But it seems Meta doesn't have proper ways to solve these problems. "Requests for comment" is not a good way to solve these problems nowadays because it seems a lack of comments in that project. These problems led small Wikis to become even smaller. The second problem is Biting the newcomers.

What is your solution?

For the first problem Meta should have a special committee which consists Stewards, to override these problems. For the second problem We should discourage the growth of biting community. In this case administrators and other users should help Newcomers.

Get Involved

About the idea creator

I'm editing Sinhala Wikipedia and many other Wikimedia projects since 2014.

Endorsements

• endorse Balajijagadesh (talk) 05:06, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
• Yes, this is a very important issue that needs to be addressed immediately. As the creator said, it makes the smaller Wikipedias more smaller and this ultimately induces loss to Wiki. Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk) 05:49, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
• The idea is good, but we should think of ways to help Stewards who speak not local language to find a fair way of addressing those issues. Unfortunately this is also true in various Wikipedias in the languages of Russia. In ttwiki I stopped trying to prevent admin/bureaucrat abuse when discovered that not only admins, but even majority of our community historically doesn't believe in applicability of Founding principles, Terms of Use, wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy, Fair use etc. to us. I'd draw your attention to Grants:IdeaLab/Propose Wikimedia Code of Conduct (adapted from open source Contributor Covenant) & Grants talk:IdeaLab/Inspire#Wiki space is so impersonal as possible ways to deal with abusive behavior of admins. Frhdkazan (talk) 07:17, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
• In general I agree with the idea. I think I have also faced it myself. But unfortunately I do not have a solution to propose. I also have experience of being a wiki's sole admin and I know how much hard it is (normal way like being able to leave difficult decision to other admins, or consulting with them do not work as there is no one else — you have to make all the decisions on your own, and surely enough you will be accused of becoming a usurper sooner or later). Looking forward seeing what people might propose, but I am afraid I am likely to be sceptical about most of the proposals. --Base (talk) 16:07, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Expand your idea

Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.

Expand into a Rapid Grant

Expand into a Project Grant
(launching July 1st)