Research talk:Main/sub-article relationship

Feedback

1. How will you get "separate IRB approval" if you do not record any identifying info on the participants?
2. It might be worth linking to an edit counter for the first question

czar 23:02, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Feedback 2

I responded to the survey. Here's additional feedback:

How many edits have you done approximately? (give selection range 1-25, 25-50, 50-100, 100+)?

Your scale is badly out of whack.

We have huge numbers of low-edit-count users, but there is very little chance they would create or fundamentally change a main/sub pairing. It's a very rare type of work and it typically involves far more experienced editors. (Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.) I doubt you'll get many responses from people with 100 edits anyway, especially from an advertisement at Village pump. Editors start work out on article pages, and it generally takes very significant involvement before someone discovers that pages like Village Pump exist.

I have 2300 global edits.[1]

Did you have conflicts about sub article creation or deletion with other editors? If yes, please describe how did you resolve the disagreement.

• There have been a handful of times I offered passing opinions, but I don't recall any case where I was significantly involved. And I wouldn't call any "conflicts". I checked "No", so the survey didn't give me the box for conflict resolution. I'll respond here: It seems you are really looking for our generic dispute resolution mechanisms. Here's how we work:

• Editors are encouraged to be en:wp:Bold. If someone thinks something will improve the encyclopedia, the basic model is to go ahead and do it. Although it would be unwise to do something as major as splitting an article without discussion if there are other active editors working on that article.
• Simple discussion on the article page, seeking en:wp:consensus. An experienced editor who cites policies and guidelines can be extremely effective in persuading other editors.
• Optional mechanisms: We have a board where agreeable editors may seek an uninvolved en:wp:Third_opinion. And we have a board where agreeable editors may seek more in depth en:wp:Dispute_resolution managed by an uninvolved editor.
• I don't think something like a main/sub relationship would often be a hotly contested matter. If things are heated it could be because one or more editors involved are unreasonable and disruptive individuals. Editors with a history of rules violations could get blocked from editing. This would implicitly end an unreasonable dispute.
• The main answer to your question is: en:wp:RFC. An RFC is a Request For Comment. Any editor may start an RFC. This brings in a significant number of uninvolved editors to review the dispute. It is an open invitation for people to !vote. (!vote literally means not-a-vote.) Most often a !vote takes the form of Supporting or Opposing the RFC proposal, or otherwise answering the RFC question. A !vote is expected to include a good reason for their position. Usually after a month of !voting and discussion, an uninvolved editor will en:wp:Close the RFC. This is typically done by an experienced editor. Most RFCs are closed in line with majority vote, but !votes that give no reason might be ignored, !votes backed up by policy get more weight, !votes that violate policy may be discarded, and a number of other factors may apply. The person closing the discussion evaluates the en:wp:Consensus outcome. (An unreasonable close may be challenged.) All editors are then expected to reasonably respect the Consensus outcome. Editors who continue to disruptively battle consensus may be blocked from editing.
• We have one final level. en:wp:ARBCOM is the Arbitration Committee. It serves as our "Supreme Court". It would be pretty bizarre for a main/sub dispute to reach Arbcom. The closest I know of was major conflicts relating to Abortion, which in part involved a dispute over what article titles to use for the pro-abortion and anti-abortion sub articles. That part was sent back for a huge RFC to decide the article titles.

Are you satisfied with the current quality of the main/sub-article relationship on Wikipedia?

This didn't allow a text response. It's not something I've paid close attention to, but I have the impression that the situation is up to general expectations. We don't expect everything to be perfect. en:wp:Wikipedia_is_a_work_in_progress. en:wp:There_is_no_deadline. It's all volunteer work, and people work on whatever they want to work on. Stuff is generally handled article-by-article. A motivated individual could try to rally some sort of "cleanup project", if they think there is a wide ranging problem that needs to be addressed.

Probably the biggest issue is that people may edit on an individual page, without trying to synchronize it with an associated main or sub article. That's a tough problem to address. It basically takes another editor watching or reviewing those pages to figure out any appropriate edits for the associated article. Alsee (talk) 20:01, 4 December 2015 (UTC)