Today marks 8 years that I have been an editor here. Over the last few months, as my activity has increased now that I am out of undergrad, I have stopped several times to think at how long it has been. No matter how many times I have tried to quit, and despite all the hardships I have faced here, I am still as enthusiastic as ever, so it is evident that I will be here for quite a while longer {{smiley}}
Over this next year my goals are to continue work on California road articles while staying involved in admin areas such as SPI. I've gotten 4 of the San Diego County road articles to the desired quality, and am working on finishing the rest of the county's road articles before moving on to Imperial County and then north through the rest of the state. It may take a long time to get this done, but now that I've put 8 years into getting the infrastructure ready for it, I might as well do it.
I will continue my work with U.S. Roads and with the Highways project in general, helping other editors write articles about their local roads. This is something that I hope to continue well after the California road articles are "finished."
At this time, I would like to soapbox a bit and promote two ideas that I think would improve the encyclopedia:
*The role of the WikiProject. Today, people dismiss the role of the WikiProject as antiquated and cliquish, even likening that to some sort of a cabal or walled garden. But as a member of the U.S. Roads WikiProject, I can confidently say that our project together has done much more than the sum of all our possible efforts combined. http://enwp.org/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-02-25/WikiProject_report describes our methodology that has gotten us an average article quality of between Start and C (well above the Wikipedia-wide average), and 48 FAs and over 800 GAs. We have an IRC channel where we can collaborate in real time. It sounds weird, and http://enwp.org/User:Rschen7754/ACE2012 arbitrator candidates regularly pan WikiProjects, but it works. That's the only way that I can explain why we have a high editor retention rate and most of our editors stick around, or come back after a year or two away.
If we really want to work on editor retention, we need to get editors with specific interests plugged into these smaller groups, where they can form a community and collaborate and accomplish much more than they could individually. USRD is why I am still excited about Wikipedia 8 years later, even as the world outside USRD becomes no longer safe for the average editor. We cannot continue to strip WikiProjects of any capabilities that they still have and expect these groups of editors to stay around and generate high-quality content. Today there are only 3-4 A-Class review processes still remaining on this site, including the http://enwp.org/WP:HWY/ACR Highways ACR. We have roughly an 80% pass rate at FAC over the last 3 years because of this ACR. If only we had more ACRs left, I think that FAC wouldn't be the backlog that it is today (no fault of Ian or Graham of course, who are trying to make the best of it).
*The treatment of functionaries. Currently, when functionaries (ArbCom, CU, OS) make mistakes, they are called out on them in the worst way possible. In fact, even when they make unpopular decisions, they have comments made against them that would be block-worthy had they been made against anyone else. I have heard many of them saying that they have considered resigning over the last few weeks as all of those teams have come under fire. Yet they are vital to the day-to-day operations of this encyclopedia.
There will be times when functionaries screw up and need to be called out on their actions. But we must do it with words and logic, not with rhetoric and pitchforks. I have criticized two sitting arbitrators before, and my opinion that they should have resigned was clear, but I have strived to do so in respect, and I encourage you to do the same in similar situations.
A theme through all of these incidents deals with privacy, be it arbcom-l, CU, OS, or outing. Not everything that is private is bad. I think that today editors hear about private discussion going on and go ZOMG SECRET CABAL! MUST KILL!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!! Having seen a touch of what ArbCom deals with through my own OS requests and other issues (and no, they had nothing to do with Malleus or Cla68), and through my role on the SPI clerk team and on OTRS, I can say this for a fact - there are reasons why some information is private, and ''very good'' reasons at that. I can't even begin to imagine all that ArbCom actually deals with that the average editor will never see. A lot of the critics are quite frankly uninformed.
What happens on projects without an ArbCom is that this private information is discussed in public, which is uncomfortable at best and violates the editor's right to privacy at worst. I also hold sysop on Wikidata and the English Wikivoyage and have seen crosswiki situations like this.
We have a fundamental problem with editors going from WMF wiki to WMF wiki asking for user rights like they are toys, and many of them are young. I believe that we have a moral responsibility to protect their privacy as much as possible while still putting the goals of the encyclopedia/database/travel guide/dictionary etc. first. This responsibility does not involve vigilante actions or false or flawed accusations against others, but first communicating with the user, trying to work with them so that they become productive editors, and taking proper action if they do not in order to preserve the integrity of the site.
But anyway, off my soapbox, and back to writing an encyclopedia. It's been a great 8 years so far, and here's to the ones ahead!
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