Proposal to add "Wiki Changes" as a Community sub-forum

[Karrows]

Great idea, but there's problems.

Few will go to the wiki page to start a discussion of a problem. People start problems in other forums, and then it may evolve into "fix the wiki." In order for it to work I think there'd have to be active forum moderators that moved threads to the wiki forum when the wiki needed resolving.

Secondly I think a forum about the wiki discourages edits. As I noted in the lets vote on changes thread, requiring to have votes in a forum and deal with critics and troll's is enough to prevent 90% of the people from even trying. In my experience forums get a lot of people who like to complain but not take action. Wiki editors need to be positive action takers. So the forum is not necessarily conductive to what the Wiki actually needs.

In my opinion, go for it. Be bold! If someone doesn't like your wiki edits, there's an undo button they can press. Every wiki page has a discussion tab already for this purpose, so no forum is needed.

[kentsmith9]

I have been looking at the many great pages in the Wiki and as a relatively new addition to the team, I have a lot of fresh thoughts on what I found difficult to understand or locate as I was coming up to speed. I have been making a number of small adjustments to the wording, grammar, style, etc. to make it flow a bit more consistently and help answer questions I am seeing in the forums.

As I search through the forums, I am finding it difficult to isolate discussions focused on Wiki updates vs. discussions just referencing the Wiki. I think we could benefit from adding a sub-forum under Community focused on the Wiki itself. In that forum we could post:

• Feedback from users on things that are hard to understand, but the user is afraid to "be bold" in the Wiki
• Running threads listing sections that need updates where various editors can take a shot at them
• Ideas for proposed larger section changes or additions
• Recommended style guidelines when making changes/additions to the Wiki
• Links to new pages in alternate languages that would benefit from translation to other languages
• Discussions and subsequent links to polls where we are voting on changes around more subjective things like map editing recommendations, e.g. Ramp naming

In RL I do a lot of documentation and technical writing, I am a very experienced Wikipedia editor, and I believe I can add value to the Waze Wiki. I just want to be sure I am in sync with the general community and I think this proposed sub-forum would help us all. If there is an alternate method to achieve this I am happy to listen as well.

[kentsmith9]

Great idea, but there's problems.

Few will go to the wiki page to start a discussion of a problem...

Secondly I think a forum about the wiki discourages edits. As I noted in the lets vote on changes thread, requiring to have votes in a forum...

I think you may have missed my point. The forum is to allow:

1) people to comment on the Wiki who are afraid to make edits directly.
2) we do have forum moderators and they do move posts between forums when they are in the wrong place.
3) the only votes are for things outside of style, grammar, corrections, etc.

In my opinion, go for it. Be bold! If someone doesn't like your wiki edits, there's an undo button they can press. Every wiki page has a discussion tab already for this purpose, so no forum is needed.

We have that now. Anyone is welcome to make edits. I already have. I also believe there are things that would also benefit from discussion. Having edited thousands of Wikipedia articles, I found that controversial changes do better with discussion and prevents edit wars. If you don't like the forum idea, you don't have to read it.

[kentsmith9]

I think Kent and imper1um should get together and hammer out some cool stuff.

Sweet! Thanks for noting that. I just sent my PM to see what we can coordinate on this.

Assuming we have no resistance to adding my proposed sub-forum here, is that accomplished through a request to support? I presume we do not manage the forums directly.

[kentsmith9]

Excellent.

Thanks

[kentsmith9]

Whatever you guys think is more appropriate. Should we consider moving some of the recent thread about the Wiki into that sub forum? Like this one:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20761

And the one we are on now as well:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=20654

[kentsmith9]

I assume you are talking about http://world.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=13601

It appears that much of this is pretty universal and can apply in all countries.

It contains all instructions an editor needs to follow in order to edit in a proper way and in accordance with the "consistency" concept of a map as highlighted by Waze people.

I read through the English portion and I believe there are many more instructions that editors should also follow, so to say this contains "all instructions an editor needs" is an overstatement. I think we can ensure this gets included into the current instructions as appropriate. Many of the instructions on road naming is very country specific, so it is not universal. At some point we need to determine how we have people navigate between instructions in the Wiki based on country of origin. Maybe we have pages that are pretty universal be just that and then for country specific pages or sections we include a note at the top of the page making that statement with a link to a disambiguation page of sorts where you can choose from other pages that are more specific to certain countries. Hopefully those sections already exist in those languages.

If there is already a system being used and I did not notice, I am happy to hear what it is.

[mapcat]

Excellent plan. I found your thread after seeing this one, so it looks like you'll want to touch base with imper1um and perhaps coordinate efforts.

Many thanks for working on this!

[mapcat]

Assuming we have no resistance to adding my proposed sub-forum here, is that accomplished through a request to support? I presume we do not manage the forums directly.

I sent a request to the person who seems to have taken over for the person who used to add new sub-forums. If I hear anything I'll update you.

[mapcat]

Done. She put it under General; hope that's ok.