Zeal
1
I just find it very irritating that almost all the edits I patrol are from “how to get x to like you if you are x”. There’s like one for each grade, gender, and all the possible mixes of those. Then there are “how to flirt with x” “how to subtly flirt without being noticed with x” and “how to tell if x is flirting with you”. Is there a way these can be cleaned up? It’s pretty irritating to have so many repeats. Just saying.
We’ve all seem them, yes. It’s not as annoying when you realize that this infatuation-based area of the site is unprofessional in just about every respect. It’s sort of like the youth or video game sections.
As I see it, we’ve got a problem in the fact that we’re a community… and we are all volunteers. When our mission is to create a How To manual, It is hard to say “no” to any edit, so long as it is remotely helpful. Often we’ll get a bunch of helpful edits in other areas from the same individuals who create multiple articles about young relationships. If we squash their hormone laced submissions, we run the risk of losing their other, more helpful, edits along with their enthusiasm and energy. It’s a two edged sword… and there’s no easy way to discourage one type of submission without also discouraging the other.
Zeal
4
I see. I find it funny how I have close to no wiki spirit
system
5
-wry smile- “wiki spirit” is not something that comes naturally to most people. In many cases, our first inclination is to make rules and Lord it over the next guy. The idea of sharing or collaborating for any reason at all… is foreign to most of us. It takes all of us choosing to set aside our desire to be in total control for long enough to do something of benefit to someone other than ourselves. When we do this though? Great things happen. The mediawiki software makes it possible for us all to make contributions which in “real time, real life” we would NEVER come together to do. The fun in collaborating … the glow of group accomplishment… the unlikely friendships… the ability to improve my world one edit at a time… are all reasons I continue to edit here… and continue to give grace to the newbies who rush in where seasoned editors fear to tread.
When the community allows 18 various articles on “How to Pee/Urinate/Pee as a girl/Pee while Standing as a girl”, ad nauseum <barf> the list of “How to Flirt with X” <hurl> can hardly be cleaned up.
The fact that we are a volunteer community is no excuse to allow the violation of our mission, which is, in truth, “wikiHow is a collaborative effort to build and share the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual” by accepting dozens, even hundreds, of hormone laced submissions. Many of those submissions come from adolescents who display their inability to write in any other way better than they talk. In today’s language, that amounts to nearly illegible groupings of symbols, letters, and run on paragraphs that appear to be a single word.
I understand the admins are tired of hearing this, but accepting these articles while stating our mission makes wikiHow a laughing stock and a joke, not a high quality How-to.</hurl></barf>
All I have to say, is we can only do so much.
Well said Ttrimm but perhaps it’s time to take a look at cleaning house to remove some of the duplicate articles. Sigh…
I would agree… but would caution everyone… Whatever solution we choose, we need to keep in mind the impact it is likely to have on our community in the future. We’ve had similar discussions before… about our stance toward vandals. We used to have very harsh warnings, strict penalties for offenders and the like… and it effectively set up an “us vs them” mentality in which vandals would openly mock the site, laughing about how they’d managed to outwit the admins and wreak havoc. We changed to a low key approach which involved us sending gently worded messages which assumed any bad edits were only accidental and offered help. It served us much better because it kept the door open to bring at least some of the vandals around to our POV to become productive editors and took the implied challenge out of the equation. I understand the urge to “bring the hammer down” on some of these articles. The quality and duplication issues bug me too. BUT! I am NOT in favor of any fix for the situation that will have (perhaps) unintended side effects of closing our community to outsiders. We are in business and we grow the site because we welcome outsiders into our community quickly. Let’s not throw our (editing) babies out with the (sub-par article) bathwater.
Linus
10
I, too, find these articles lacking in originality and personally find them annoying. However, like freedom, I may not like what they say but will fight to the death for their right to say it. What I mean by this is that while we have quality guidelines, I would rather have these annoying articles than to discourage the writers. Many of these users may be young, but will likely contribute to other areas (I have no data on this but seems like a logical jump to make). I don’t get anything out of these articles, but don’t have a problem of them sharing the same namespace as some of our featured articles.
Very Voltaire-ish. Indeed, perhaps the answer is right in front of us - why not take the low key approach by gently explaining that articles of these varieties just aren’t up to our standards, and softly suggest people try something else? We might see fewer of these articles and more productive edits in the future by doing so, but I can’t really say for certain.
I agree with what you’re saying. We defend Freedom of Speech to a fault. I am fully in favor of freedoms, but I also understand that freedoms come with responsibilities. You are free to yell FIRE!, but you are not free to do so in a crowded theater. You are free to yell MAN OVERBOARD!, but you are not free to do so on a cruise liner. Point being, you are free to do many things, but for many there is a time and a place for everything. Freedom of speech, in its original and current terms, means you are free to write an article entitled “how to get x to like you if you are x”. Heck, you can write 2 dozen articles of slightly varying titles. But it does not say you are free to do it here. Personally, I would rather have wikiHow be “a collaborative effort to build and share the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual” with 8,000 editors and 50,000 decent articles than 90,000 editors and a million articles, just to accept articles of questionable quality just so we can be inclusive and remotely helpful.
