Wikipedia talk:Why do you care?

Think tanks and neighborhood watches

Closely aligned with this concept are WP:THINKTANK and WP:NEIGHBORHOODWATCH. Aldrich Hanssen (talk) 04:17, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

We don't pay our editors

In support of the position on Wikipedia:Why do you care?, I would add that Wikipedia does not pay its editors. In a commercial enterprise, what does it cost to hire people who can do the following tasks?

• Write high-quality encyclopedia articles.
• Provide rapid, accurate, and friendly technical support (such as on Wikipedia's Help desk and many other assistance pages).
• Identify and fix bugs in the software.
• Continuously improve Wikipedia's internal documentation.
• Participate in Wikipedia's internal procedures such as WP:RFA, WP:AFD, etc.

The amount of free skilled labor Wikipedia gets from its contributors, particularly its most productive contributors, vastly outweighs the trivial (and steadily declining) cost of providing some Web space for user pages. If we take the point of view that Wikipedia compensates its editors for their work in part by giving them the ability to put up some pages where they can socialize and meet other Wikipedians who share their interests, then we should judge user pages not so much according to what is on them, but to what extent they encourage their "owners" to continue donating free labor to Wikipedia proper. Even users who are new and haven't contributed much to the encyclopedia yet can learn the basics of wikitext editing with much less trauma by practicing on their user pages, where they won't have all their contributions mercilessly edited by others right away. On Wikipedia there is no deadline, so we can afford to tolerate lavish user pages by users who take a while to become productive, as long as they are heading towards eventually becoming productive, or if their user pages are attracting other people to Wikipedia who then become productive. Only user pages with content which directly contradicts Wikipedia's mission should require active intervention (spam, personal attacks, extreme POV-pushing, etc.). --Teratornis (talk) 14:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that we should start paying people to identify and fix bugs in the software – scratch that; I think that the people we are currently paying need to start doing a better job. EVCM (talk) 05:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Respect?

I would be more inclined to consider this page's message if its author treated people who disagree with that author's opinion as though they were reasonable people who happened to disagree, and deserved respect. Calling people "overzealous editors" and "busybodies" is not likely to encourage them to consider your opinions seriously. JamesBWatson (talk) 18:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Good point. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:00, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I care

Because Wikipedia is not a free web host, and has no vested contributors. There are plenty of free webhosts out there and Wikipedia is not one of them, and nor should it be viewed as one. Acather96 (talk) 11:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Wow. You just parroted the line in the essay, with only neglible variation. You don't *care*, you're just self-righteous. There's no other possibility, because, as the essay says, if the people 'hosting' this material in their user space are otherwise quality editors, what business is it of yours what they do with their user page? Pure arrogance. Also, spirit, not letter. 149.135.146.1 (talk) 09:10, 29 January 2013 (UTC)