Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Skepticism and coordinated editing/Proposed decision: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:39, 28 February 2022

Revision as of 03:01, 1 March 2022

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Per '''[[User:L235|KevinL]]''' on GSoW training: Background (8) I think you hit the nail on the head in your first two comments about our retention and community. While every volunteer group has issues with staying power - we have had pretty good success. On (9) we aren't novices anymore. Some of the team are tens of thousands of edits in, good articles, DYK and hundreds of pages written. Our work speaks for itself, KevinL you saw some of the work from a few of the team in the Evidence stage. We understand that "consensus can be established only on-wiki." We make the article live, and the page stands on its own merit or it does not, we can't force a page to exist when it is not notable. Skill comes from doing, and GSoW is doing a lot of doing.[[User:Sgerbic|Sgerbic]] ([[User talk:Sgerbic|talk]]) 02:40, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

:[[User:L235|KevinL]], [[User:Wugapodes|Wug·]][[User talk:Wugapodes|a·po·des]]​ and [[User:Barkeep49|Barkeep49]] I understand that you are discussing GSoW training methods and are concerned/worried about the materials you didn't see, assuming they do not exist or if they do they are inadequate. When I sent you some of the training materials, I had to do so in a rush and I really only sent you beginning training materials. What you have viewed on YouTube is very old and I don't think I even assign that video anymore. All of the YouTube videos you find on that channel are old and mostly obsolete from what I remember of my last viewing of them. I don't remember who, but it was not someone from GSoW that brought them to your attention. Some were from 2012.

:As Wugapodes explained, no one in the beginning of training should be learning advanced skills like AfD, Notability and so on. These are people who are just learning to make their first citations and adding photos. I don't want to scare they off. Notability is very confusing, and it is different depending on the topic. An American baseball player can go to bat during one professional game for the major league and end up with a Wikipedia page, whereas a scientist that is instrumental in helping to create a life-saving vaccine is going to be held on a different notability standard. I'm over simplifying this of course, but that is the issue. Notability is a case-by-case discussion and in the GSoW community it can be a longish discussion between the team members. Very often someone suggests a page that we would consider would be on the fence for notability, we look for the citations and discuss, and sometimes the editor moves forward, sometimes they don't.

:To finish GSoW training as I explained in the private evidence and was mentioned here, the editor must rewrite a stub, using all the methods they learned in the smaller steps of training. As you know, a stub exists because it passed notability (usually) and lacks the rest of the content. Therefore I don't feel that we should be spending a lot of time teaching notability, AfD and more advanced lessons until they are done with the rewrite. There are lessons after the rewrite, just not a lot more.

:I'm training these people, mostly one-on-one with backup by the main group. I can't throw every piece of information at them at once, it has to be parceled out in chunks. AND of course they are welcome and encouraged to research answers on their own on Wikipedia. The silly article I sent you in private about explaining notability using an earthquake, was sent to you because it had a date on it, so you could see that we have been having this conversation for years within the team. It was just something I put together to help explain to non-Wikipedia editors why their band or book or themselves can't have a Wikipedia page. It's just a simplified example.

:As the trainer, I do not advise beginners, or even people who have passed training to touch anything that would be contentious, rarely anything that is paranormal related. I don't want anyone confronted or attacked by another editor who is having a bad day. When they are ready to move on to those pages, then sure, fine. No one is encouraged to use AfD on pages, they are taught to write pages, not add flags to the top telling others that the page needs rewriting, or the lead is too long, or that it has problems. They are taught how to fix the problems with the page and then we discuss if it is okay to remove the flag at the top. I'm not training people to be administrators, but Wikipedia page content creators who are here for the long haul. To be honest with you, I don't think I knew what PROD was before ACS used it on all those pages I mentioned in evidence. I would be furious if one of our people did that.

:Oh yeah, wanted to mention that this is not our first rodeo, I just looked at our stats and we have published 1,146 new pages to Wikipedia (not rewrites, but brand new) and 630 are brand new English pages. At the very beginning of my career here on Wikipedia, I myself stumbled to train myself, and made a lot of mistakes. Some of my work did not survive because I didn't have a clue and didn't know how to ask for help. Once the page is live, then it stays or is revised or deleted or whatever. So with over 600 English Wikipedia pages under our belt, 59 of them DYK (we stopped putting them up for DYK because it is so complicated and time consuming) I think we understand the concept of notability.

:And lastly as this looks like it will close soon and I won't be able to have this conversation with you all again (at least I think we are about done). I want to thank all the ArbCom for your professionalism and for spending so much time on this matter. I've learned a lot, GSoW and myself are already making a lot of changes. We take all the comments (even from the detractors) to heart and I don't think you will see reason to have myself or any of our people back in ArbCom again. This was a once in a lifetime learning experience and don't think I want the stress again. [[User:Sgerbic|Sgerbic]] ([[User talk:Sgerbic|talk]]) 03:01, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

== Comments by Guy Macon ==