It’s amazing how fast wikiHow’s readership has been expanding. It’s inspiring and heart warming that we are successfully helping so many people around the world. One of the great side effects of our growth is that we are attracting more first time editors. In fact we are attracting so many that it is getting very hard to keep up with our normal wiki backlogs like recent changes, NAB, etc. To keep up with our massive growth, we need to be actively *recruiting* promising new editors to become core members of our community by taking on jobs like recent changes patrol. While recruiting isn’t a task we list on the community dashboard, it’s one of our most important “hidden” jobs on the wiki. It’s something we can all do, whether we are regular patrollers or not. How do we recruit more patrollers? Here are some steps I think would help: 1. Thank existing patrollers! Let them know that you appreciate their dedication and diligence. You know how awful a wikiHow without @BR
, @Isorythmic
or any of our other power patrollers would be. Make sure the patrollers know you appreciate their efforts
2. If you see a promising wiki editor (new or old) encourage them to give patrolling a try. 3. If you see someone patrolling even small amounts. Thank them! 4. If you see a new patroller making a good faith effort but not quite getting things right, shower them with appreciation for their efforts while offering *gentle, caring* coaching to improve. Keep in mind that most people will quit if all they hear is “you did this wrong / read this policy”. Patrolling is hard and takes a long, long time to learn fully. Continue giving new patrollers the support and appreciation they need to keep going when they are still in the frequent mistake phase. 5. Lead by example. If you think patrolling is an important activity for the health of our wiki, demonstrate your belief by finding some time to patrol yourself. You don’t need to patrol enough to ever get on the leaderboard. Every little bit helps! 6. Congratulate patrollers publicly on the forums when the collective team is rocking it. (They almost always are!) The above steps would apply equally well to NAB, NFD guardian, Tips Patrol, or any of our other important wiki backlogs too. RC patrolling is simply the first line of defense, so that’s why I’m highlighting it here!
I totally agree with you and of course, this is a good strategy(i guess) and helpful points. It’s what we all have to adhere to. I would personally thank you for listing them out as this will help me as well as others now and even in future. I will now on try my best to help wikiHow mainly through patrolling (i already do). Thank you again,Jack!
I agree with almost everything in the post, except thanking me, since I am not sure the statement applies as succinctly to me as it does Jeffrey (I often imagine how much LESS AWFUL wikiHow would be without my bumbling and fumbling around trying to figure out what I ought to be doing), but I would tip my hat to Jeffrey, Lutherus, Frostmaker 84, along with the usual awesome people who do an incredible job of both keeping the quality as high as possible, and preventing me from doing more damage than I manage to do in my spare time around the site~
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Sorry, I will be busy about something here at wikiHow but don’t worry, I will try to patrol even just a small amount.
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_“Patrolling is hard and takes a long, long time to learn fully.”_Just this afternoon, I only gave a newcomer the wikiHow Tour link, as well as the {{welcomelinks}} and they replied it was a lot to consume, so yes, I fully agree with the patrolling statement.
I am one of the patrollers as well. For right now, at least.
@BR
I end up patrolling your patrols in Bunch Patrol a lot… And I’ve gotta say… I’m not seeing the mayhem you seem to believe erupts whenever you patrol. I’m seeing some very good patrolling! Just sayin’!
BR’s way too humble (so is Jack) - He does an awesome job, and I think I’ve only seen him make 3 mistakes. (; June Days
