Are you aware of the huge difference in bureaucracy on the different
language versions?
Of course a more elaborate set of written rules is needed where there
are many users, then what is needed where the number of contributors are
fewer.
But even on an smaller language version like "mine" svwp, it is tough to
be a newbee. There is a lot or best practice being accumulated, and you
must follow these even if i is more by being told of these then need for
you to "know" or look into policiy documents etc. And there is a need to
know more of techniques, like templates and Wikidata use.
So I agree the general complexity is increasing, but I disagree that
there is in general increasing bureaucracy.
Anders
Den 2018-03-06 kl. 11:16, skrev WereSpielChequers:
Hi Zubin and welcome.
The discussions about declining editor levels started to go quiet in mid
2015 after we noticed that numbers had started to rally at the end of 2014.
Here is the signpost article that covered part of this in 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus
That focussed on the very active, but the raw edit count shows the same
pattern on English wikipedia, a decline from 2007 to 2014, then a rally and
the last couple of years being broadly stable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Time_Between_Edits
"Wikipedia in terminal decline" was an interesting story for journalists
and others, "maturing organisation is broadly stable on several measures"
sounds just a tad boring.
As for your concern about bureaucracy and philosophical rants. Many of the
policies are complex, and there are even examples of things that contradict
each other. But it is a very very complex system, and some of the
complexity comes from hard won compromises between people with very
different views. A commercial organisation could have done some things more
simply, but a volunteer organisation can't simply tell people to do what
they are paid to do. I suspect that many reforms are possible and may even
be necessary, but it really helps when you are changing something to
understand the different perspectives that lead to that compromise.
WereSpielChequers
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 21:42:32 +0800
From: Zubin JAIN <jain16...@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg>
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Time to simplify the Bureaucracy ?
Message-ID:
<CABRVQKPs3YDucchXt7VHshrdrvrz=PMVD5u3pNeVFM+fjC2=sQ@mail.
gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hello,
As a rare newcomer to the Wikimedia project, I've been thinking of some of
the factors that seem to discourage me from contributing and one of the
primary ones seem to be the fact that the way the administration is
organized and rules enforced is often vague and unclear. The definition and
the method of collection of the vague idea of "Consensus" aren't easily
found and take a lot of digging to get out.
A lot of the guideline is often mixed with philosophical rants that often
seem to contradict each other and has grown in size to the point that it's
unreasonable for any newcomer to have read through it all. The project
designed to work on consensus and community often seems unresponsive and
automated as anarchic communication structure impedes effective
communication by forcing users to learn an obscure markup language just to
communicate.
I'm wondering if there have been any whitepapers on addressing these
problems especialy the ones about bureaucracy, reading through the news I
remember a lot of hay being made about a decline in Wikipedia editor from a
few years back but that seems ot have faded. Is there any hard data on the
future trajectory of the project?
--
Sincerely,
Zubin Jain
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