Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/WikiProject report

Project Report section of Signpost

I'm sorry to complain, and I think this week's interview is a good one, but I don't think these interviews are generally helpful. They accept whatever the interviewee says uncritically and are very promotional and puffy in nature. One recent wikiproject report focused on an editor who, over the last three years, I have felt, is counterproductive to the entire project, a bully in discussions and whose work on content is almost exclusively on stub and start articles, relying basically on one reference source. Instead of interviewing editors, I suggest having these editors write an essay on specific lessons that they have learned in working on their projects that may be helpful generally, or on how editors can assist with a particular project's needs, or something else very practically oriented. Just my 2 cents. I think the Signpost is a wonderful and useful publication, and I am grateful to its editor. All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:08, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I must say that during this interview I felt a bit like a politician being thrown easy pitches! I think it's good every once in a while to get an uncensored perspective from inside a project, though. And I appreciate being able to shamelessly promote something I care about. Maybe these would be better if they interviewed more than one person within a project at a time? Projects are, after all, made up of several editors. Wrad (talk) 18:18, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I think for this project in particular, there wasn't a whole lot I could do to make the questions more in-depth or challenging. The project has done almost nothing to improve its articles, some of which have thousands of pages linking to them. If anything needs shameless promoting, it's starved projects like this one.

For more active projects, I always try to incorporate questions which would provide practical advice for the readers. Example: "As for outreach efforts, how can editors who are interested in pharmacology articles, but have little experience with medical journals, help out?" I think the various questions/answers regarding how to deal with content disputes are also helpful. Do you disagree? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:26, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I think I agree with what you're saying here. I thought you asked good questions of a struggling project. Wrad (talk) 18:32, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. Could I make a small suggestion, then, for the future, that you skip the stuff about who the interviewee is and how he/she got interested in the project? Your brief introduction can tell us all we need to know about the interviewee is, and then you could devote all the space to the project itself. Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:13, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I'd be willing to try that. For the next interview, I'll just introduce the person myself and skip the usual first question. Let me know what you think. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:45, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Will do. Happy editing! -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:20, 13 April 2009 (UTC)