To improve wikipedia, i suggest a school, schooling, a special process, including psychological approach when it comes to resolving problems. Just like in law enforcement.
Proper training will eliminate at least some problems.

I could design the football helmets!

Be my guest pal!

How about a course in basic statistics, so they don't make absurd claims about sockpuppetry based on so-called statistical analysis?

Oooh -- ooooooh! I have just the location for this school, and it's conveniently located near the new WMF headquarters in San Francisco!

A serious response - who'd teach it? Other admins? That wouldn't work.

There's guides and stuff, but, really, a new admin is somewhat thrown into the deep end and expected to swim.

I would like to see for the first three months or so, a new admin be guided by a more experienced one (yes, if they got certain admins it could be of no benefit or an active detriment...) but that way they get more familiar with HOW to use the tools, and almost as important WHEN to use (or NOT use) the tools.

Actually, if they wanted a course, it might be very constructive as they would really have to think about what admins should do. After all, the best way to learn something is to teach it, and I think in teaching it, and documenting that, they might write down the right things, and in doing that they might recognise that some people do wrong things.

I'd offer to teach them the art of crafting encyclopedia articles in a responsible, scholarly, and ethical manner. After all, I've written peer-reviewed articles for traditional encyclopedias and many essays on academic subjects.

However, I'm not eligible to play that role, as KillerChihuahua has already determined that I have no interest in writing an encyclopedia, and thus she has summarily banned me forever from participation in Wikipedia.

Oh well. Perhaps they can find someone more qualified.

This seems a good idea, an extension of the coaching concept (in use before adminship in a few cases, and effective in some of those) to after.



Yes. I've learned a lot trying to teach things to others.



That seems more of something that all editors could benefit from, not just admins

One of the unsolved problems in education is how to improve the education of those who prefer not to be on the receiving end of an education. I think the solution might lie in the innovative use of drama and storycraft as a substitute for conventional teaching and mentoring.

WP seems to have plenty of drama already, are you suggesting that it should be bent to that purpose?

I often find myself in the (apparently large, at least according to some) group that is not quite sure what you're driving at with your comments, and I am sure that I am not the only person who would prefer it if you were to try to say exactly what you meant instead of making it a divination or logic puzzle.

I half expect that will result in some sort of obscure allusion to my general cluelessness, but that's OK. I'm not here for validation, merely to learn.

That's the whole point of drama, ain't it? To educate.

It occurs to me that much of the WikiDrama is simply failing at that goal.


I had been driving at a diagnosis and remedy of the systemic dysfunctionality of Wikipedia, but that direct approach didn't work.


Would you be interested in learning why WP is so dysfunctional, and what it would take to salvage and repair it?

I'm sure Lar knows, and I expect he realises he can't do it because nobody can.

Football Team. Student council elections. Cheerleaders. The honor-roll. Homecoming floats. Marching Band.


If you want me I'll be smoking in boys room.

thanks. now I have that song stuck in my head

There's WP:NAS for learning how to do the basic functions of history mergers, deleting, blocking, and protecting

They should start with potty training.

It isn't that hard. You should already have a good grasp on this stuff by the time you become an admin, or else you shouldn't become one. If you're unclear about anything, just behave cautiously (like you should be doing regardless of experience) and you're fine.

Introductory course for Admins.

Adminship 101: choosing a sexual orientation and sticking to it.

I think I'm not as convinced of systemic disfunctionality as some of the rest of you. That's not to say there aren't things that need fixing.

I further think I'm pretty convinced I don't know exactly what all of them are, and very much less how to fix them, that's part of why I'm here, to see what I can learn.

So yes, Moulton, if you can explain it all in a way I can comprehend (remember I'm a Bear of Very Small Brain), please do.

Ooh! I never knew an acre was one furlong by one cable. That's what a pesky metric education does for you.

Is this a systemic problem or just an isolated incident?

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=15240&hl=



It's a furlong by a chain. A cable is 200 yards; a chain is 22 yards.

There are two very good summaries of the basic systemic problems. One of them is this article on Wikipedia itself:

Another one is this editorial, here on Wikipedia Review:


Above and beyond those comprehensive summaries, I would add that Wikipedia suffers from an ill-conceived and chronically unjust social regulatory structure that operates capriciously and erratically at the lower rungs of the Kohlberg-Gilligan Ladder of Moral and Ethical Reasoning.

To solve these problems, I believe the Wikipedia community needs to ascend to at least the fifth rung of that ladder, to the operate within the scope of a conscientiously crafted social contract.


Other open source projects have successfully adopted the Social Contract Community Model with great success. Wikipedia, by operating at the lower rungs of the Kohlberg-Gilligan Ladder of Moral and Ethical Reasoning, inevitably reprises the undesirable characteristics of an MMPORG.

Stage 7 in that list, which was tacked on by Gilligan (not the one with an island) to an earlier list, doesn't really seem to fit well in my opinion; it follows up on a progression toward universal principles by retreating to favoritism towards those individuals with which you have special relationships, which seems more like a retreat to the earlier stages (where you're likely to treat people differently depending on what sort of social relationship you have with them, or what you expect to gain or lose from them, rather than based on general principles) than an advance.

Carol Gilligan's Ethics of Care recognizes that individual differences cannot be entirely ignored when reckoning the most ethical way to treat others. In particular, people with disabilities require special care, relative to those who are more self-sufficient. Practioners in the education, health, and caregiving professions realized this need for ethical principles that extended to their disciplines.

My brain didn't manage to retain the information from video to keyboard. I quite like metric, though an inch is too useful a unit to lose.

I have one of those "it begins with the same letter" confusion memories, like "It begins with L, libr..., no, lint... no, ah! that's it: Wikipedia."

Veering a little off-topic, Carol Gilligan was interviewed this morning on NPR. They were discussing her first novel.

Her novel incorporates ideas from her academic research. Like Daniel Quinn and Umberto Eco, she realizes that academic theories can be mapped into stories, to reach a wider audience.

My amazing, reply, I love, they would fail that too!

Some children occasionally mistake another child's head for a toilet. It's a regrettable mistake.

The problem with suck poppetry is too big on wiki, should not be allowed and separate school where you meet in person should be a must.

The inner policy of wikia will destroy it, not completely, it's too huge, but with its image as it deserves! FOREVER!




Social contract as in social ladder? Nothing social there...

It's not a totally unacceptable tack on, though.

I seem to see some similarity to Maslow's needs hierarchy as well.

Among the highest needs are fairness and feelings of belonging. In the absence of those needs, one is likely to experience feelings of alienation and anomie. The Ethics of Care are especially important when dealing with feelings of alienation and anomie.

Yes. Philosophically I agree with you that an ideal project would be structured in a way that took all this into account.

The question is, can this project produce enough useful things to make up for it not actually being structured this way? It's after all a project to produce something, rather than a social experiment. I think I've made my view clear that enough good stuff has come out that I think the answer is yes (even though I would still want to fix what can be fixed) YMMV of course.

And we have a prime example of why there should be at least a probationary/training period for new administrators, user:Archtransit.. just.. ugh.

A project that eschews the Ethics of Care can produce many useful things other than a high quality encyclopedia. Mainly it can produce copious evidence of what such an imperfect design leads to, either as a direct product or as an unintentional byproduct.

My observation, supported by a surfeit of empirical evidence, is that such a project (operating at the lower rungs of the Kohlberg-Gilligan Ladder) supports an MMPORG which mixes gaming, drama, oddball characters, and occasional heartwarming episodes of Bildungsroman.

That's as may be. And I don't like all the side products of it, or what it does to some people. But WP nevertheless seems to be producing good content. (not uniformly perfect, mind you, but I don't buy the "WP articles are nothing but crap from start to finish" meme. I think some of mine (no false modesty here :grin: ) aren't bad at all, and I never would have been able to create them without WP existing already). WP is good enough for me to want to contribute.

And, remember good enough is the enemy of better.

I have finite free hobby time and I choose to invest it in something that's good enough (warts and all)... spend some of it trying to make it better, some of it writing content, some of it trying to help people, etc.... I can see the incremental good I do (or so I would like to think), and it appears a good use of my time. So I do that... rather than invest ALL of it in trying to create a completely new, better system where my entire work output by itself would be wildly insufficient to get the project even a little bit off the ground, with no hope of it catching on. WP has first mover. I'm not a big fan of heroic gestures.

An analogy to US politics... US politics suck. But I guess I'm less of an idealist than I was 30 years ago when I would have been saying things like "the US is hopelessly corrupt, we must work to bring the system down by throwing sand in the gears"... now I just see the Mainstream Media focusing on style over substance, ignoring my candidate even when he pulls a second place, etc, and gnash my teeth and roll my eyes and say, well that's politics... and tell my kids not to believe everything they read (about the best I can do) and go back to enjoying what the fruits of my labor give me.... even though they are from a flawed, imperfect system like the US... it's net positive for me and for most people even though I hate the war, hate the government subsidies of welfare queens like ADM, etc etc etc... (it's a long list of things I think are bad, believe me)

Now, if you are convinced that WP is net negative, then yes, putting input (content/fixing/helping people) into WP is the wrong thing to do. I'm not. I recognise that others don't agree but I think it's achieved a lot of good content and had an impact for good on society, and I'm glad it's being loaded on the OLPC XO .... and a bunch of other stuff too long and boring to rattle off.

Good enough is the enemy of better. WP, warts and all, is good enough, and surely better than anything I could build by myself. Doesn't mean I don't want to make it better. Doesn't mean you won't condemn me for believing that to be true or think I'm a big sucker/fool/tool for that.

That's OK. I'm glad we're having this discussion regardless of what anyone ends up thinking of how wisely I spend my free time.



His nom on Commons did not get wide support either. It's too bad really, he's done a lot of work at DYK. He doesn't seem to take advice very well, it seems.

WP is unparalleled as a compendium of popular culture.

I suppose if I were a niche expert on some aspect of popular culture, I'd be in there contributing to the collection.

But my expertise happens to be in science and science education, which makes me unsuitable to contribute to articles which depart from popular culture to present a scholarly treatment of an academic subject.

But I'm also interested in scholarly studies of social networking sites to discover their inherent dynamics. A technical analysis of a site like Wikipedia would probably be viewed as in intrusive criticism rather than as a useful contribution to reflective introspection.

Scientific study of a cultural phenomenon need not be viewed as a political act of support or demolition, although insights emerging from such a study could be used either way. I'd prefer that scientific knowledge be employed therapeutically rather than militarily, but that's just a personal preference, and probably not the most popular one in this day and age.

I am not competent to judge how good WP is at most of what it covers. But I do think it possibly is good at more than just popular culture. Again, I admit bias, but my contributions tend not to be in the popular culture area. The three articles I've managed to get GA for (flawed as that process may or may not be) are:

• Teresa_Bagioli_Sickles
• Croton_Dam_(Michigan)
• SS_Christopher_Columbus

None of those are popular culture (well, unless you consider 1859 scandals or 1893 fairs as such) but none are science related either. I admit bias but I think they are good work. (they certainly could be better, I admit) I wish I was able to balance my time to do more writing and less whatever else it is I do.

Ironically, the only published article I wrote expressly for an encyclopedia was on a topic that treats sites like WP as an instance of popular culture.

I co-authored (with a university professor specializing in media studies) a vetted and peer-reviewed article entitled "Electronic (Virtual) Communities" in the four-volume Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications, published in 2004 by Elsevier Science & Technology.

Based on that credential, KillerChihuahua summarily concluded that I had no interest in writing an encyclopedia of the caliber of WP, and she summarily banned me as not suitable to the project as she envisioned it.

Question Number One

While driving along a country road you encounter a dog being harassed by some wolves.
Do you
A) Flash your lights and honk your horn to try to drive away the wolves;
Drive on, and pretend you saw nothing; or
C) Pull out your rifle shoot the dog, then tie it to the back of your car and drag it for a mile or so more.



Ack ! my B isn't a B I've been rendered B-less by the horrible B-swipers!

Testing 1 2 3...
A )
B )
C )

If you want your B's to be B's, edit your post using full edit and disable emoticons.

Are you administrator on wiki? KillerChihuana has been problem, but then again, all administrators are, I am glad my vote here is really good 10:5, on my proposal, school for administrators.

No. I was never more than a pedestrian editor who went there to improve a handful of articles on which I had firsthand knowledge.