Ecto5
1
So i was recently looking at the community dashboard and noticed that a lot of the areas were “stormy weather”, some with a backlog of over a thousand (especially the spelling and requests board). So I want to suggest we start backlog elimination drives which focus on other areas of the site like Fix Spelling, Video adding (it’s backlog is 79k) one at a time. I suggest that we set apart a certain week to try and eliminate the backlogs. This won’t mean that you should just ignore other aspects (like RC Patrol) but that more effort should be concentrated on a particular aspect of site improvement each month. Users can be encouraged to participate by giving awards to the largest number of (good quality) edits made. When a new user visits the site, he is given a myriad of options to choose from the dashboard, It confuses him and is unable to decide what to do, if we can give him a single specific goal to work on, I bet most new users will make greater contributions then they do now (I noticed a lot of new users just abandoning the site after a few edits) . Also each user can be presented a short tutorial when he tries to do anything for the first time(instead of giving links to other wikhow articles about that topic, which most users overlook). This forces him to read and get an idea of what is needed to be done before he proceeds. I think that’s why most tips coming from the tips patrol are utterly worthless, as the new user does not know what type of tip is good enough to appreciate. If we can give a small tutorial, with clear examples of “bad” and “good” tips along with how to improve a “workable” tip, the overall quality will certainly improve. I liked the Patrol Coach, but instead of a Coach most users will require a Tutor to teach them first, before trying. This is of course a small suggestion by me and I know that most of the things I may not work in the form I have suggested, but it would (I hope) certainly be implemented in some form or the other.
According to me, driving all attention to a particular aspect is not the solution. Instead, we can suggest them to do so but no force them. You can’t force an editor to add videos just because we have tons of them to do. everyone have their own choice. But I agree with you on the other things. Users must be appreciated for good edits they make. We do suggest new users to try out the tips patrol, we just don’t leave them in the blue.But, I’d agree with you that some tutorials will be a lot beneficial. We have some good volunteers who coach new editors very well too.No doubt on that. I agree with you on the second part, not the first one.
Ecto5
3
I never suggested that we “force” the users to do what we tell them to do(My words: This won’t mean that you should just ignore other aspects (like RC Patrol) but that more effort should be concentrated on a particular aspect of site improvement each month.) Wikipedia (at least The Leage Of Copyeditors) have monthly backlog clearance drives and members are “encouraged” (not forced) to copyedit articles. I have been observing this for quite some time and I have to say that it usually works very well. There is a leader, to whom users may ask questions to get quick answers and the highest contributors are usually rewarded by getting a mention in the GOCE drive newsletter and barnstars.
I have a few thoughts on this. I’ve edited on Wikipedia before, and their community is…Not like ours. wikiHow is not like any other wiki on the Internet (not Wikia, or WikiAnswers, etc.) - I don’t think we should be comparing to what another website does. It could work well for them (considering, the only award they give is a _ barnstar_) because they’re a larger community with a lot more editors than us. While we get tons of new people every day, as said before with new users, they “edit and run”; probably won’t know what the heck we’re doing/talking about. Even though people would edit other areas of the site, they may get tired of doing one thing; and if it doesn’t really work out the way it’s planned, they could get tired and leave. Annnnnd, if you guys focused on one tool at a time, when you get to the last tool, there’s going to be a backlog all over again. I’ve also realized that there are a few members, that even though they know the policies/guidelines of certain tools, they still make “eh” edits. I do like the tutoring idea for the Tips Patrol tool though. But this is just my 2 cents. (; June Days
Ecto5
6
@JuneDays
I agree that wikiHow is unique and a smaller community, I am not trying to compare but rather ‘‘extract’’ useful and effective ideas from Wikipedia. Yes, doing one thing for the whole week can get boring and may deter new people (that’s why I said that my ideas are sure not to work in the form they are presented in), I agree but the elimination drives are supposed to focus the community’s attention on a particular backlog that really needs work on. These “drives” are usually sporadic or happen once a month to clear huge backlogs (There will always be backlogs, this is just to prevent them going over a thousand). As for the “edit and run” thing, If we present each new user who participates is these drives a clear concise “mission statement” detailing what needs to be done and how the new user can go about clearing the backlog, we can effectively keep them engaged. We can also regularly congratulate on their recent efforts by thanking them or pointing out the good edits they made, This gives the user a sense of accomplishment and recognition (if he realizes that his edits are actually seen and appreciated by other people it is more likely for him to continue and contribute. ) The tips tutor could also be expanded to a RC Patrol tutor, a user can get a small demonstration of how to patrol. It can give examples of vandalism, bad tips (which need to be rolled back outright), workable tips(which need to be corrected) and also some examples of intro image not matching the article title and an advertising article (how to place nfd tags) This small “tutorial” will prepare users to RC patrol, who currently just dive right in and make mistakes (resulting in double work for other contributors), Then a friendly admin comes along and tells them to read a wall of text detailing the policies. What I think is that a new user should have atleast a workable knowledge about the different types of edits he may encounter and what to do with them , And then there is the Patrol Coach who will further improve the new Patroller’s skills (This turned out longer than i had planned)
I actually like the idea of video “how tos” on our tools; sounds pretty cool.
Yes, but also, a lot of users don’t even want to edit. And, we wouldn’t really want to bombard them with information; the second they join - It could be a lot for a new user (I did absolutely nothing when I first joined). If you tried to explain what we were doing to a new user, they would lose interest, and not even edit. June Days
Ecto5
8
@JuneDays
hmm. yes that is true, but what if we start tutoring him when he actually attempts to edit? like when he first uses the tips patrol tool or the RC patrol tool, instead of just getting access to the tool he gets an option allowing him to either take the tutorial or just continue to the app(This is only the first time he attempts to edit using a new tool) the option exists so that it doesn’t look like we want to force them to go through a tutorial before doing anything worthwhile. And the how to’s may not necessarily be videos, they can be interactive, asking the user what he would do to this edit before giving the correct answer. (like a educaitonal mini quiz)
That’s what we do. I’d support a tutorial idea. It would be on a tool (like the RC one) and would say something like “New to ____ tool? Watch out tutorial!” (: June Days
Marina
10
I’m just coming in on this…When I’m on other sites I’ve noticed that people I know tend to skip videos. I don’t think a simple video would get across the point as well as an interactive. No matter how good a video is, people will tend to skip it. Interactives that become sort of ‘games’ almost would appeal to younger users (which we’re getting a lot of these days). As long as the have a sense of maturity they’d be fit for older users, too.
Please understand some of those numbers represent “(x #) until GOAL” and theres a lit more than whats shown there, in the app on the Dashboard itself. For instance, the Dashboard says 29,000+, but if you look closely the page it links to, it actually says the totals number is 400,000+ article requests. Same with video adder and SpellChecker.
system
12
