User:Cullen328/Teahouse host remarks

Comments by active Teahouse hosts welcomed

Please write a paragraph or two below with your thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of the Teahouse, and any suggestions for improvement. In particular, please indicate whether you believe that the Teahouse can handle an increase of approximately 50% in traffic. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:05, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments from White Arabian Filly

One thing I think we can improve on is in telling new content creators where to go for help. In some cases, what they are writing about is notable, but so techie or specific to a certain area that most AfC reviewers won't be willing to help with improvement, because the article is out of their range of knowledge. This is where a WikiProject can really help mentor a newbie. They are experienced editors, but even better, they know what the article is about and in many cases, have in-depth knowledge of special-interest sources. (What's reliable and what's not, which isn't always obvious.) I have done that a few times in the horse projects. On the strengths of the Teahouse, I think the best part is the willingness to help IPs as well as registered editors. Not all of them are vandals; a lot want to make good contributions, just without an account. As for weaknesses, I think we could sometimes answer questions from editors who have been around a while, not just newbies. Sometimes you just don't know how to do something, or where to find something, and you need a place to ask. As for the increase in traffic, I think we can probably handle it. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 21:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@White Arabian Filly: Thank you. I am mentioning Wikiprojects briefly in my prepared remarks. I will expand a bit on that. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:33, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@White Arabian Filly: To your observation

I think we could sometimes answer questions from editors who have been around a while, not just newbies.

-- I've been Wikipediating for ~~ten years or so~~ 11 years and 25 days (says my User Wikipedian For userbox), and I generally get helpful answers there. Though, come to think of it, Cullen328 is usually the first to respond, or so it seems to me, so maybe he is more responsive to non-newbies than most other hosts. --Thnidu (talk) 01:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Comment from John from Idegon

I cannot figure out why I keep getting removed from the host list, so you didn't invite me, but I hope you'll accept my input. I don't think you can discuss Teahouse without at least mentioning the impact PAID editors have had. That is one of three reasons I'm not as active at Teahouse as I once was. (The other two don't directly concern Teahouse). Every time I drop by it seems the percentage of questions about obvious promotion has increased. It sucks the resources away from legitimate newbies that honestly want to build an encyclopedia. John from Idegon (talk) 21:34, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@John from Idegon: Thank you. Of course, your comments are welcomed. I pinged the most active Teahouse editors in recent months rather than working from the host list. I will be mentioning the COI/paid editing issue in my prepared remarks. I encourage you to pass by the questions from what you perceive to be promotional editors and answer the sort of questions that will give you satisfaction rather than frustration. I hope that you will consider participating at the Teahouse a little bit more. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Gestrid

I feel like the creation of the Teahouse was a great idea, and, had it been available when I first joined Wikipedia and I had been invited, I may have contributed quite a bit more in the early years than I did. (You can see from my contributions that I didn't really become very active until recently.) The Teahouse is a great place for new editors to go especially because it's one of the less policy-based pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Our goal as hosts is to help them understand what Wikipedia is about and, if need be, to point them to the policy that tells them what they did wrong. (This usually includes some mention of WP:COI, WP:PAID, or an explanation of our copyright policy.)

I definitely believe the Teahouse could handle an increase in traffic, and I believe we should advertise it a bit more to new users, perhaps, fr example, by putting it into our welcome templates. While I don't think we could handle WP:ANI-level traffic, we don't get very many questions at all on a normal given day. (This, of course, doesn't include abnormal days, such as recently when outdated versions of pages were being shown to users after they'd just edited them. I ended up putting up a banner at the top of the page to deter questions related to that.) Better advertising of the Teahouse's existence would, I believe, stop some editors from being turned off by all of our policies about why they can't do such-and-such. It's been pointed out that new users who come with good intentions sometimes turn into vandals and sockpuppets if their contributions are immediately shot down. The Teahouse, I believe, might stop new editors from doing that.

-- Gestrid (talk) 03:42, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Gestrid: Thank you very much for your comments. I am preparing to travel to San Diego so cannot respond in detail at this time. All I will say right now is that I am grateful for your thoughtful response. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:12, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments from jmcgnh

Some of the strengths and weaknesses of The Teahouse relate precisely to strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia as a whole.

Anyone can participate
To participate, you must be able to surpass certain technical barriers: it's not foolproof
It's somewhat variable in quality; generally quite good, but not completely consistent

More specific problems with the Teahouse are

"New additions at the top" convention, contrary to common practice nearly everywhere else in WP
"Write before reading" behavior is pretty common, so there's a lot of repetition in response to questions that are nearly identical to ones already (and frequently) answered
While generally friendly, participants are often somewhat harsh in delivering bad news or critiques regarding content new users are wanting to add

Overall, I view the Teahouse as a valuable resource for answering typical new user questions (I'm presuming that there is some extra credit deserved for users who "read before writing" and end up finding that their question is already answered). There are many days when it looks like it could handle a 1.5 or 2.0 increase in question flow, a few when that might be a bit questionable.

Areas for improvment

I jumped in without signing up as a host. This should be allowed, but there might be some "supervisor" host who a) welcomed people like me and b) laid out some expectations. (I know, more work for the overworked....)

Since many of the questions asked fall into a a small number of buckets, it seems like there could be a "Teahouse FAQ" developed, not to discourage question asking, but to provide more immediate answers to those questions most frequently asked. (Or did I miss this?)

Responders may need to exert an effort to become even more friendly and encouraging. If the most common response newcomers to WP see is an almost-immediate, under-explained reversion or deletion of their edits, it's understandable that they feel discouraged, turned away or angry. The Teahouse may be able to help turn that around into a more positive experience, but its intervention is only going to become available to new editors who persist long enough to come here. (I guess I'm saying that new editor retention has to get higher on the priority list both for Teahouse responders, but also NPPers and RCPers.)

—jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 06:10, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I did an experiment with the "Ask a question" button that appears in the page notice on Teahouse/Questions. It calls for a normal "new section" action, inserting the new question at the bottom. So the advice to insert new questions at the top is at odds with what the button does. —jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 06:39, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments from David Biddulph

One of the main weaknesses is the ~~idiotic~~ strange decision to put new messages at the top, causing great confusion to new users when the convention elsewhere in Wikipedia is to put new messages at the bottom. I am concerned that quite a large proportion of the questions on the Teahouse are from an AFC reviewer wanting a second opinion on his review of drafts; I see the purpose of the Teahouse as being to advise new contributors, not to advise reviewers; help for reviewers ought to be available in the AFC project. A 50% increase in Teahouse traffic from new users could be handled if help for AFC reviewers were moved elsewhere. - David Biddulph (talk) 07:27, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments from Maproom

I've said this before, and I'll probably be saying it again. It's about a weakness in the way many requests are handled.

The most frequent question that comes up on the Teahouse is "My draft/article has been rejected/deleted. What must I do to get it accepted?". Hosts then give advice about promotional tone, conflict of interest, and above all, referencing. The OP then spends time addressing some of these issues, and re-submitting. In a large majority of cases, they are wasting their time and ours. It would be more honest and helpful to reply, "Please consider why you want to create this article. If your purpose is to improve Wikipedia, you could achieve far more with less work by finding and correcting errors and omissions in existing articles. On the other hand, if your purpose is to promote a subject, you should choose some other way, such as Facebook: Wikipedia's purpose is not to promote anything."

Apart from that – I could easily take on answering an extra 50% or more questions at the Teahouse, particularly if they are not of the kind described above. And the policy of having new threads at the top is crazy. Maproom (talk) 14:44, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Comment from Dodger67

The Teahouse can certainly handle much more traffic.
Tighter integration/cooperation with AFC and NPP would be really good. I usually get to the Teahouse through following up on AFC reviews that I have done. Teahouse hosts should be aware of the AFC workflow and know the decline criteria, similarly they should be familiar with NPP's processes too. Referral to WikiProjects for topic-specific help should happen far more often than it currently does.
Top posting sucks! I can't think of a single plausible reason why the Teahouse should be the sole exception to the normal discussion pages convention on en.WP. It confuses newbies and irritates regulars, thus it should be eliminated.

Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:21, 6 October 2016 (UTC)