Talk:Assignment Zero/Wikipedia desk

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Contents 1 Balance 2 Random ramblings about edit wars 3 Ward Cunningham 4 Citizendium

[edit] Balance

How can Assignment Zero improve balance in its Wikipedia coverage? So far, we have assignments for three pieces, each focused on an insider.

Some ideas:

1. Broader perspective -- such as sociological (What does the WP movement say about society?), economic ("tragedy of the commons")
2. Criticisms and WP responses
3. Lessons learned -- for itself or others
4. People who have left WP and why
5. Profile of Larry Sanger (had early involvement)
6. Random articles -- examine, review, critique some
7. Side-by-side comparison of WP and other references work(s), etc.
   1. Possible metrics for a quantitative comparison - % of main pts in one work vs other; total % facts in 1 vs other; ?? Anna 20:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
   2. More potential metrics: accuracy, currency, depth, balance and comprehensiveness, links, organization, readability, writing quality (I know the last one is hard to measure). Maurreen 07:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
8. Statistics, including demographics
9. Various stuff about other wikis, in particular or in general
10. WP arbitration
11. WP culture, good and bad
12. WP edit wars
    1. Edit wars epitomize the "dark side" of crowdsourcing - that it enables interested parties to sway public opinion, and so provides a motivation for them to game the system. What does wikipedia's immune system look like, and how well is it working? (and given that the 'pathogens' are sentient and literate, how much info about said immune system can safely be publicized?) Anna 20:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
    2. How do "edit warriors" differ from core contributors? (is there a pattern to the kind of pages they "war" on? what info of interest can be gleaned, by looking at their editing patterns?) Anna 20:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Maurreen 17:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Random ramblings about edit wars

Anna, you suggest some good questions and angles.

There is probably a spectrum of edit-warriors or not. Sometimes people will just walk away, even if there should be no factual question. Some people go on campaigns for their pet issues. And in the middle somewhere are people who want to be reasonable but see no other avenue.

Political topics are more likely to be controversial, but disputes can arise and grow on surprising topics. I think WP has a page about "Lamest edit war ever."

I like your analogy about the immune system. My opinion is that the immune system is too weak.

More questions:

1. How many, or what portion, of WP editors have left because of edit wars or the like?
2. What are typical lengths of time for edit wars?
3. What are the different methods of resolving such wars, and how often is each type used and successful? Maurreen 07:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ward Cunningham

Anna, I really like this suggestion. It seems like a lot of people think wikis begin and end with Wikipedia.

Also, just so you know, sorry, but after I mentioned signatures to you, then I took yours off. Sigs are usually just used on the talk pages, although there are exceptions. A difference behind related to this is that usually material on talk pages is not changed (except for archiving), or only by the original writer. Material on "article" pages is usually expected to be changed. Attribution info for specific edits is available by looking at the history pages.

Another good thing about your help here is that you are inspiring me to finally do something with the Journawiki help page. The few people that had done anything here before already had wiki experience. Thanks! Maurreen 13:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

So Maurreen sheepishly takes her signature off an article page. :) Maurreen 13:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citizendium

That was a good article by Shirky; thanks. Maurreen 05:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)