Ttrimm
1
I would like to know what particular things burn people out when they are boosting. Maybe we can come up with ways to counter the issues.
system
2
I will admit that I don’t boost as much, however
when I do, it’s more of a grammar/formatting issue that could easily be performed in RC. I’m seeing a lotof people patrol articles “as is”, even if it’s total crap, should have been NFD’ed for an obvious reason, or even tagged as speedied. How to counter it? Disable the “Marked as Patrolled” on new articles to encourage people to double check on the content and making the correct changes before patrolling it. I see this stuff being done even when I’m re-categorizing articles and it just wastes the booster’s time at the end when the article finally
gets thoroughly reviewed.
system
3
I agree with the Recent Changes problem of marking almost any new article patrolled without doing the most basic maintenance, and see problem articles lingering far longer than they should, even though I am not a booster, and have no business posting here…Maybe I just posted to tease TTrimm…
system
4
Boosting… <sighs> There’s only so much I can stand in a given period of time. I got tired of multiple articles on the same topic… all written poorly by folks whose writing ambitions outstripped their writing abilities by a very wide margin. I still pop in from time to time, but it’s not my main focus anymore. I can manage perhaps 10 articles before I start to mutter insulting things about the authors. LOL! Not my best formula for assuming good faith! LOL!
I still cleanup articles which catch my attention in RC Patrol… if I know the topic, or if the changes needed don’t require extensive re-writing.</sighs>
Maniac
5
I really don’t boost much, but I wish I did. Not only to help get rid of the backlog, but also to help the wikiHow community. The biggest problem I have with boosting more than a few articles at a time is the quality of the articles when they are created. There’s not much we can do about this as a community, but it seems that so many of our articles come out of the press with so many spelling and grammar errors, incomplete sentences (or totally incomplete articles!), nonsense that one can’t even try to comprehend, etc. While there are some articles that only take a few minutes to boost, others seem to take more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time just because they’re very poorly written and you end up entirely rewriting the article for the author. Furthermore, it seems like so many of the articles are duplicates that I’d love for us to be able to get rid of, but we can’t because the articles’ method is similar, but not exact, to an article we already have.
Lojjik
6
Similar to what Maniac said, if there are so many grammar and spelling and formatting mistakes, it’s basically like me writing the article. I have no problem with expanding stubs when they call for it but there are many articles that are beyond our basic stubs – it seems to be more like a private journal than something meant to be published on the web.
Is there any way to make the tool that searches for potential duplicates any more accurate? It doesn’t seem to work well (or at least not for me) - so I’m always nervous that I’ll accidentally boost a duplicate article, which makes me do long searches on wikiHow and Google looking for duplicates… making me less likely to boost. I also agree that I end up spending a lot of time correcting grammar/spelling errors, format issues, etc., which is the biggest problem I have with boosting.
Ttrimm
8
One thing that I do to combat what is mentioned above, is correct one thing at a time. I hit the articles multiple times. That way I don’t spend long enough on any particular article to get totallydisgusted with it.
system
9
That’s a great strategy! and… LOL… yeah… I’ve stayed with them until I get disgusted in the past… I’ll try your strategy and see how it works for me.
system
10
I do think being a booster requires a very resilient spirit
It can really wear you down to see the same mistakes over and over again. But one of the benefits of having such a big backlog is that you can keep pressing “skip” till you find something you feel energized to improve. Also for me, it helps a lot to connect with the author. Sometimes they’re so appreciative that someone actually read and improved their article that it replenishes my NAB energy a bit
The most annoying thing for me which makes me want to stop boosting is the abundance of articles which are all variations of “Be popular” or “Be and feel pretty”!!! Ugh…I wince in horror It drives me crazy I must admit… I wonder how Teresa deals with it.
Sorry to bring up an old thread but I’m back and have some comments. Although boosting totally burns me out, that’s not why I was gone for a bit. Advanced Composition in school + wikiHow editing = triple burnout.
Too. Many. Words. ^ I completely agree with Clarinetdude. The number of useless new articles from children (sorry, any children reading) about topics like those is staggering. I haven’t brought it up because I can’t think of a suggestion to stop it. Combine that with the low overall quality of most new submissions and it’s basically a hobby of reading crap all day. That’s not my preferred hobby. Then combine that with the knowledge that slapping an NFD tag on total crap just moves it into a huge queue that never seems to go down and it becomes depressing. Since the articles don’t get deleted in a timely manner, the authors take pride and go on to write even more garbage. I honestly don’t mind spending time, even a lot of time, tidying a good new article, but those are rare. I also wonder how Teresa deals with it. She should be a paid staffer. The only solution I can see to Booster Burnout is an option to delete total crap, but I understand that’s not how wH works. (I actually did bring it up as a joke: How to get your mom to let your dad let you throw a spa slumber party at your friend’s house with a horse and Justin Beiber cause you broke up with your boyfriend but only if you are hot and popular and shy and emo and wear makeup (but not lipstick) (but just a little) (but all over your face) and short skirts and look like Selena Gomez of Twilight and know how to hack Club Penguin with surveillance equipment that you can use to make sardine and popcorn barbecue with just ONE lemon FASTER.)
Don’t apologize - they’re breaching policy. While NFD may not go down as swiftly as we’d like, putting an NFD tag on crap is necessary, and a speedy tag goes on any patent nonsense past that. We don’t know what to delete without these.
Ttrimm
14
This thread, I hope, will never go away and I hope no one every comments on bringing up an old thread. I honestly don’t know how I do it. I think the very biggest thing is the fact that I do it in small increments. Fix the formatting this time and spelling…the very basic. Save and skip it. Hit it again later. I only do those with articles that I either feel just need some attention or I just don’t know what to do with.
I agree with almost everything posted here. I’ve tried to kindly hint that I am more likely to boost an article if some effort is made to capitalize a sentence. Just that simple effort makes the task so much easier. I’m also wondering how the patrollers are doing as it seems the brunt of editing has fallen onto the NAB contributors. Back when I was taught to patrol, and I still do some patrolling, I was taught to edit an article while on patrol. Major editing wasn’t required but a few minor edits helped. If each patroller could just make two minor edits per article then each article would be vastly improved with little effort. When the edited article ends up in NAB this means there will be a bit less work for what few NABers who are trying to improve articles. I guess what I am trying to state is that this is a team effort. If we all combined our efforts we’d get so much more done with less stress on everyone. Hope this makes sense.
That makes total sense Mash, and is also something I do, but there are a lot of brand new people patrolling (partly because of the big banner asking them to). Also, because of the actual name—patrolling—people think of it more as policing vandalism, which it also is. If there is a consensus that patrolling should not be just policing vandalism, maybe we could start a new thread to brainstorm ways to make that understood.
Kermit you bring up some very valid points. Perhaps we could have an experienced patroller volunteer to mentor new patrollers. While the number priority of patrolling is reverting vandalism, it is also about performing minor page edits and adding appropriate page tags, if needed.
