Changes to #wikipedia

Well, today has been pretty harrowing. I've been addressed as "Premier Whitton" and asked to step down in various Wikipedia positions, but thus far I'm still alive. For it was today I initiated decisive action to solve a problem I have been aiming to solve for literally months (since I took on the role of IRC Group Contact for Wikimedia). Today, #wikipedia's access list was cleared of all operators, and a new system has been put in place to try and improve things. Today, the blasted wasteland that was #wikipedia has started the road to recovery. Or so I hope.

A month or so ago I started talking to people about making changes to #wikipedia to make it better. It was prompted by a fellow freenode staffer telling me "you really really need to sort out #wikipedia" and this encouraged me to take some more proactive steps to improve things. Before, it was known as a burnt out wasteland by a lot of Wikimedia's community, and was avoided. Since the channel is suppose to be helpful to the community, it really wasn't desirable that there was such a rift between IRC users and those who stuck to other forms of communication. There wasn't (and isn't yet, but it's coming) a sense of continuity between what happened on IRC and what happened on the projects etc.

So, myself and the other group contact, James Forrester, chatted about it. I was pretty out of idea as I recall as I didn't want to do anything drastic. However, James suggested that we simply clear out the ops list and start again with a new channel leader figure and a deputy. The raional for this was that a previous attempt to establish new guidelines essentially failed because there was no coherent agreement among operators that they were something to be enforced. By removing them and then readding the vast majority (hopefully, if they ask to come back, as we want their skill at the job), we can reaffirm commitment to the same goals (I'd argue it's more important they are the same than anything else). I had also at this point opened discussion on an internal Wikimedia mailing list that was somewhat calmer than the public ones. Some good feedback was gained. So we formulated a plan, wrote some new guidelines and published them, and as soon as everything was in place I made the changes.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is happy. However, after fielding things for a bit, I employed a few other ops to keep an eye on things and dissapeared for tea followed by a cracking episode of Dr Who (I'm so proud - I guessed it was The Master five minutes before he said it :D). Coming back, I found the above calls and accusations in my away log. I opted to only look briefly and not read every word, thinking that it'd be pretty repetative. I hope I didn't ignore too much because, don't get me wrong here, I want as much input as possible into this process. It is a wiki-based organisation, after all, and therefore we can change things very easily. This brings me on to a criticism I have received, about not allowing much community input. The fact is that Mark, someone involved, posted a link to the draft guidelines a number of days before today (which have since changed very little) and no real comments were made. We therefore went ahead with no communtiy saying it was a bad idea. I'm not sure I could have done much better than this. Of course, the reason I particularly have been targetted for blame is because I was the one with his name on everything. We were aiming to act as a group, honest!

To conclude, I am happy with what is happening now. The channel is looking a lot better. freenode's staff have been encouraging me on the situation and have said that it's good to experience the position of being disliked because one can learn from it; I certainly have. But as they point out, as long as I am doing the right thing and am succeeding at it then there is nothing to fear. And, as I say above, all discussion is very much welcome. I may well write to this blog later with the status quo then.

This entry was posted by Sean Whitton, on Saturday, June 16, 2007. You can leave your response.