Grants talk:IdeaLab/train reviewers to become ambassadors

What about those who don't want to be trained to do anything? I for one singed up to volunteer, not be put through boot camp so I can handle the stress of dealing with everyone else's issues. In the event there is an absence of volunteers to be trained, could the idea still move forward? TomStar81 (talk) 05:23, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

i work with the willing, but it's more like a graduate seminar, not boot camp. it is imperative that standards are increased; and more professional conduct is vital to the survival of wikipedia. i think you underestimate the desire to change among editors, unless you want to preside over wikinews, so get ready. Slowking4 (talk) 15:45, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Excellent idea

I don't know if this is the best spot to respond, but I want to share my view for anyone that will expand on this idea.

This is a truly problematic area. I write as a relatively new contributor that luckily survived a bulk of harassment. Merely by tending to become more aggressive in defending my contribution.

They were mean, so I became mean, but I admit this must not be the best way.

Well, I understand the admins point of view though — they have to climb a high ladder of acceptance to get there, gain trust of the inner cycle, and in the process they are conditioned to be harsh, to be able to fight vandalism. In fact, how in the world can you be nice when you attach a horrible deletion notice on someone's all-day work? This or that doesn't comply to Wikipedia standards, but still he or she did their best, though... And all of a sudden they get this deletion threat. Wow! I remember, not being to sleep well those first days :( I had nightmares of my work being deleted everywhere, and I had no control of it, it could happen anytime, to any portion of my work...

The problem is, that since I joined I never experienced other "vandalism" than theirs :) Because vandalism, such as deletion of written passages can automatically be tracked and returned by user. You don't need much help to fight that. But admins have powers, how do you "fight" them? :/

Well, that's typical of any defending system: to suppose the enemy should always come from outside. While in reality, the inner enemy is the worse, the subtle. I am the worse enemy of myself. Rome collapsed from inside, bad morals, lose of discipline and motivation destroyed it, not the upcoming Barbarians (Vandals :).

Now, I see their position more and more as peoples who should know how to socialize, work with different specific, sometimes crazy people (us - the contributors) and to be able to recognize potential, and able to expand on it by encouraging. Well that's the magic word that I feel many forgot, maybe even deleted from their vocabulary. I know world is a harsh place, but let's make Wikipedia a better one, at least for people that want to contribute. I don's say one should be a psychologist, but a good admin or reviewer should instantly recognize positive attitude even in a poor contributor. I think it is better to have poor writing ability than to be a puffed up professional. One will be open to learn, the other already thinks he knows best...

Many admins, all they do is delete which is soo easy. And if you try to appeal and object to, they are mean as machines, there is rarely valid argumentation, communication. I don't know why is this. I get messages, such as "You better learn how to upload those images, if you don't want to receive such warnings" I even had to ask for help from one admin against the other. The answer was "Do not take it too much personally, he's a big problem, thankfully he is scarcely online..."

Also, something I noticed during my visits to other Wikipedias, those that seemed working well:

They probably had so many vandalism, especially on certain on-edge articles (such as nationality conflicts, whatever) that they stopped direct access to articles whatsoever. When I contribute, even if I add an important update or a useful picture my changes need to be revisited by admin. The problem is, there seems to be not enough trusted reviewers, so this process takes a long time. Instead of seconds, as in English Wikipedia, on these Wikis, article changes are approved only in matter of days, weeks, sometimes even longer. This is kind of disappointing. I have not all the time in the world, especially when a concept or idea is fresh, I tend to lose inspiration, and forget so I change focus. — Jozefsu (talk) 06:15, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Sad, but true. The simple fact is that when Wikipedia made the decision to prioritize article edits over the community our priorities shifted from doing right by the editors to defense of the material added or subtracted on the English Wikipedia. For my part, I try very hard to remember that the history list is not a list of random names, there are people behind those names and they are trying their best, and even then I sometime forget that manners maketh man. For my part, I am sorry for your admin related interaction; if I had any part to play in it please accept my apologies. TomStar81 (talk) 06:27, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

"I know world is a harsh place, but let's make Wikipedia a better one, at least for people that want to contribute. I don's say one should be a psychologist, but a good admin or reviewer should instantly recognize positive attitude even in a poor contributor. I think it is better to have poor writing ability than to be a puffed up professional. One will be open to learn, the other already thinks he knows best...", well phrased Jozef, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

(comments redacted per behavioral expectations and Meta:Urbanity I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 14 June 2016 (UTC)) Tisquesusa (talk) 08:41, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

yes, the system rewards bitey behavior from those in authority, so it's not surprising that the behavior is commonplace. rather than negative feedback, we need positive feedback for civil behavior. we need to shift the system to reward good behavior, and build circles of civility, where wikipedia is more fun. if we can train a critical mass, we can shift the culture over time. Slowking4 (talk) 15:45, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Tisquesusa, why are you squandering your time arguing on Meta when you could be welcoming new users individually? DS (talk) 23:10, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

thanks for carrying the bitey atmosphere to meta talk pages. venting on meta is good therapy, just look at all the essays. individuals can greet newbies one on one, but it is going to take a critical mass to change the culture. Slowking4 (talk) 23:25, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Participation

This is sort of a spinoff of my post on the main page, so there can be discussion on this point. Here's the basic summary of my post:

There are areas on Wikipedia that are frequently referred to as "broken" or problematic and to be frank, they are problematic. However the main issue seems to be that the same small group of people are the main people reviewing these areas. This leads to high burnout rates where the editor(s) might decline an AfC draft that have only minor, easily fixable problems (but otherwise pass NPOV and GNG) or they might prematurely tag a new article while someone is still actively editing. The mindset for this is likely that they're afraid that if they don't do it then no one else will - especially with AfC, where there seems to only be the same 7-8 people actively reviewing drafts.

The problem with all of this is that we have plenty of people talking about how many problems these areas have, but few to none of these editors try to take an active role in helping out in these areas. To be blunt, it just comes across like people complain about these issues but don't actually want to help. This results in more and more people having an unfavorable opinion of these areas, which results in fewer people taking part. This leads to more of a backlog and higher burnout rates.

Basically while I think that a training program is a good idea, we first need to look at how we can get more editors participating in these areas. A training program only works if we have active participants, otherwise all you're really doing is throwing a new curveball at an already overtaxed, small group. I'm not saying that these editors are perfect and have no problems, just that we'd probably see a change in the way the existing editors review if more people come in and lighten their load, since that'd give them more time to work one on one with the AfC and new article editors. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 03:56, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

a little incident to frame my attitude [1] when you have a world class librarian toiling away at AfC, and getting taken to ANI, then no i have no interest in working that backlog. Slowking4 (talk) 04:06, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Mentioned on Wikimedia Blog

Hi Slowking4, I wanted to let you know that your idea was mentioned on the Wikimedia Blog! :) As you discuss, this change in the protection level of User pages seems like it could help prevent many problematic behaviors related to user pages. Have you considered how to go about creating this approach to reviewing? Did you have a new space in mind, or maybe a new design to how the AfC and NPP spaces work to encourage more collaborative behavior? Thanks for your submission. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

oh, that's too bad, maybe after some talk at a workshop saturday, i will have some plans / rework the proposal more specifically. but initially no, not interested in fixing broken processes, rather organize the humans to route around the broken processes. Slowking4 (talk) 04:04, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

@Slowking4: No problem-- I was just throwing those out there as examples; I think there are a number of approaches that could work here. Let us know what you come up with on Saturday. But no rush with getting it all figured out or anything. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:08, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

sorry to be brusk. DGG had a nice talk at wikiconUSA last year. my assessment is that all the processes are broken, because the culture is broken. so that suggests cultural solutions to use existing tools in new ways, rather than fixing, and creating new tools. Slowking4 (talk) 20:52, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Project Grant Application Deadline is Aug. 2nd

@Slowking4, Vwanweb, Omni Flames, and Devopam: thanks for your work and outreach on this Project Grant proposal during the Inspire Campaign. I wanted to let you know that August 2nd is the deadline for applying for a Project Grant proposal for this round (the next open call for Project Grants will begin September 12th this year). Having read over the proposal, I wanted to offer my support in helping you develop your proposal. Having read it over, a few things you could do to get started include:

• Consider developing a rough schedule of how long it will take to develop these training materials. What parts of the training are already fleshed out in the drain the swamp presentation, and what still needs to be fleshed out? This schedule doesn't need to be too specific, but it's good to give reviewers a general sense of how long certain tasks will take.
• Provide a some more detail on measures of success. It's true that use of hashtags will help track contributions, but what kinds of changes will indicate that the training was successful? Global metrics might contain some ways to think about this, but there are probably other kinds of outcomes this training could have -- both on ambassadors and the contributors they train -- that are not captured by global metrics as well.
• Including some of the conferences you would consider attending to provide this training.

As you work on your proposal, we also have sessions on Google Hangouts on July 29th, and Aug. 2nd. If you'd like to chat about your proposal at a different time, let me know and we can arrange something individually. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Reminder: Project Grant Application Deadline is Aug. 2nd

@Slowking4, Vwanweb, Omni Flames, and Devopam: please note that the deadline for the first round of Project Grants is August 2nd. If you'd like to be considered in this round, please update the status on your grant from "draft" to "proposed". Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Adopt-a-user

Are you familiar with en:Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user at the English Wikipedia? It targets this problem. Finnusertop (talk) 23:46, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

yes, it is dormant, yet another initiative without the trained people to execute it. Slowking4 (talk) 02:56, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

October 11 Proposal Deadline: Reminder to change status to 'proposed'

The deadline for Project Grant submissions this round is October 11th, 2016. To submit your proposal, you must (1) complete the proposal entirely, filling in all empty fields, and (2) change the status from "draft" to "proposed." As soon as you’re ready, you should begin to invite any communities affected by your project to provide feedback on your proposal talkpage. If you have any questions about finishing up or would like to brainstorm with us about your proposal, there are still two proposal help sessions before the deadlne in Google Hangouts:

• October 11th, 0200 - 0300 UTC
• October 11th 1600 -1700 UTC

Warm regards,
Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:16, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Project Grant proposal submissions due today!

Thanks for drafting your proposal for a Project Grant. Proposals are due today! In order for this submission to be reviewed, it must be formally proposed. When you have completed filling out the infobox and have fully responded to the questions on your draft, please change status=DRAFT to status=PROPOSED to formally submit your grant proposal. This can be found in the Probox template found on your grant proposal page. If you have already done this, thanks for your submission, and you should be receiving feedback from the Project Grants committee in the coming weeks. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

September 26 Proposal Deadline: Reminder to change status to 'proposed'

As posted on the Project Grants startpage, the deadline for submissions this round is September 26, 2017. To submit your proposal, you must (1) complete the proposal entirely, filling in all empty fields, and (2) change the status from "draft" to "proposed." As soon as you’re ready, you should begin to invite any communities affected by your project to provide feedback on your proposal talkpage.

Warm regards,
--Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)