On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Chad <innocentkil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> All, > > I had this idea cross my mind earlier today, but I got so tied up > in meetings that I couldn't sit down and write out a proper e-mail > until this evening. I was curious as to whether we think FlaggedRevs > might be of use to Mediawiki.org, and if so, how exactly would > we use it? > > The idea crossed my mind after the past several days noticing > quite a bit of information on Mediawiki.org is either poorly worded, > outdated or just plain wrong. Now, MW.org doesn't suffer from most > of the issues that are seen on other projects: we're small, we don't > really have anything to edit war over, and we don't seem to get (as > much :) spam and vandalism. I was curious as to whether we could > use FlaggedRevs as a quality control over our documentation. > > A lot of the docs have been written by people other than developers, > and a lot of the docs have never been read by a developer. That being > said, using FlaggedRevs we might be able to deliver more solid docs > on MW.org by flagging docs at like two levels. One could be like a basic > "has been looked over for glaring errors and basic readability" and > a second could be "has been thoroughly reviewed and is considered > the doc on the given subject." > > Hopefully we can improve the overall quality of the docs on MW.org. > I'm certainly open to other ideas too. > > When I saw the topic title, I thought of FlaggedRevs at the more basic level of reviewing edits. I try to go through the recent changes and review every edit that looks remotely suspicious or interesting, but I'm sure I miss plenty. When I finally catch up on my backlog I often see destructive edits from several days previous that have not been reverted. This means that other people aren't catching everything, and since I know I won't catch everything, this means that there's stuff going uncaught—and when that stuff includes changing a "true" to a "false," I get worried. The AbuseFilter could probably help in preventing such things, but I'd still like to have every edit reviewed. Given our high eyes–edits ratio, I think this is possible. With that aside, I like what you're proposing. On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:03 AM, Steve Bennett <stevag...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Chad<innocentkil...@gmail.com> wrote: > > A lot of the docs have been written by people other than developers, > > Ever met a developer who likes writing doc? :) > > > and a lot of the docs have never been read by a developer. That being > > said, using FlaggedRevs we might be able to deliver more solid docs > > on MW.org by flagging docs at like two levels. One could be like a basic > > "has been looked over for glaring errors and basic readability" and > > a second could be "has been thoroughly reviewed and is considered > > the doc on the given subject." > > Perhaps we could start by getting developers to thoroughly review > documentation? > > You're proposing a technical solution to a people problem. The problem > is not that the site can't display the fact that a developer vouches > for the quality of documentation. The problem is that there are no > processes for getting developers to review documentation and vouch for > it. > > Steve There's a class of people in between the people who write the code and the people who use it. We like documenting things and helping people with their problems, and even though we don't always know how something works, we (hopefully) have the savvy to either check the source or ask somebody who does know. (We have lots of wonderful and helpful devs, of course; I'm just saying that non-developers can still help, especially since we often have more spare focus and time.) Having developers review everything would be great, but if they don't have the time for all of it, we can leverage our base of knowledgeable MediaWiki hangers-on for a systematic review of the site docs. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
