Hello!
Some of the things I'm interested in:
Biography, and CSB...
I created an account in 2004. I fancied working on a couple of high-profile articles, but soon found the talkpages awash with epic debates over a single word in the lede,
bickering over rules, and so on. That scared me off; I remained an IP address, making a few trivial typo-fixes &c, before taking the plunge and becoming a more active editor in the latter part of 2009. Brasher people would have edited anyway, but I think that there are more cautious folk out there (especially non-geeks, and those less fluent in English) who are deterred from editing wikipedia. I'd love to find ways to make it just a little easier for these people to join the editing community; this would also help
counter systemic bias.
New editors: Assuming that wikipedia is going to be around for several more years, a large proportion of future content (and improvements to existing content) will be written by people who haven't even edited as of today; and who can guess how many of today's active editors will have got bored (or burnt out) by 2020 or 2030? So, if we want better quality in the long term, it's vitally important for the community to welcome good new editors (not just get rid of the bad ones), even though they might be disheartened when their first few edits are rejected.
Hello!
Some of the things I'm interested in:
Biography, and CSB...
I created an account in 2004. I fancied working on a couple of high-profile articles, but soon found the talkpages awash with epic debates over a single word in the lede,
bickering over rules, and so on. That scared me off; I remained an IP address, making a few trivial typo-fixes &c, before taking the plunge and becoming a more active editor in the latter part of 2009. Brasher people would have edited anyway, but I think that there are more cautious folk out there (especially non-geeks, and those less fluent in English) who are deterred from editing wikipedia. I'd love to find ways to make it just a little easier for these people to join the editing community; this would also help
counter systemic bias.
New editors: Assuming that wikipedia is going to be around for several more years, a large proportion of future content (and improvements to existing content) will be written by people who haven't even edited as of today; and who can guess how many of today's active editors will have got bored (or burnt out) by 2020 or 2030? So, if we want better quality in the long term, it's vitally important for the community to welcome good new editors (not just get rid of the bad ones), even though they might be disheartened when their first few edits are rejected.