Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Adds "WikiLove" For Newbie Editors
mikejuk writes "Wikipedia has a cunning plan to make wikipedians nicer to each other — its all about WikiLove. They can click on the Love button to make each other feel good about contributing anything from an article to an edit. The idea is that this will encourage newbie editors to stay and contribute rather than slink away into the rest of the web because their contributions get deleted and derided. Perhaps all we need for world peace is a big enough love button."
You know, everyone on slashdot keeps saying stuff like this, but in my corner of the Wikipedia (palaeontology), most pages are under-edited. If anyone comes along and adds relevant, cited information, the edits are most certainly kept. If you cite a real paper that you've read and understood, we'll be pressing that love button!
There is a lot of reverting, but most of it is reverting popular misconceptions that have no citation, or ideologically driven edits (usually creationists, again with no citations).
Is this because people are going and trying to edit the Mohammed or Jesus pages or something? Because I really don't get what you're all on about. Maybe my interests are esoteric, but I've never had a real problem getting edits to stick on any subject, even on controversial fringe topics like cryptozoology.