SHB2000

Archives can be found here. Leaving me a message on meta will get you a quicker response.

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Semi-retirement

Hi SHB2000, linking onto what Haoreima said above, it's sad to see you semi-retire. Could you show some things that the community could work on to help make simplewiki more of a friendlier place to edit? You are welcome to email me about it, or if I am part of the problem, you could show me what I could be doing better. --Ferien (talk) 23:11, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Ferien, thanks for asking. To make it clear upfront, you're definitely not a part of the problem in any way – in fact, you're one of the few users who have been helping to tackle this issue.

The main reason I semi-retired here was because a fair number of users think it's okay to copy content word-for-word from the English Wikipedia, then change a word here and there, and done, it's simple. What most editors don't realise is that this penalises simplewiki's search engine optimisation on Google, which is essentially why simplewiki barely makes it onto Google search results. My rationale is that if simplewiki isn't going to be read by many, then why write content at all (and if I interpret Special:Diff/8371220 correctly, that's also why Elytrian left)?

A few steps that I may suggest:

1. Try and discourage copying content from the English Wikipedia (the English Wikivoyage's proposed policy on banning content from its predecessor site Wikitravel may not necessarily work here)
2. Instead of simply attributing an article when it's been mostly copied from the English Wikipedia, consider taking it to RfD – duplicate content doesn't really help
3. Maybe try and address Special:Diff/8375611 (not exactly related, but that's also another reason I sorta left (a la Norsk IP))

That should sum it all. On a lighter note, have a great Christmas and New Year and stay warm :-).

--SHB2000 (talk) 23:37, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks and Merry Christmas to you as well :) --Ferien (talk) 12:26, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, my reply is a bit late, but I share your concerns about the state of this wiki. As you pointed out, users copy content verbatim from the English Wikipedia, make minimal changes, and consider it finished. I believe most articles on Simple Wikipedia are like this; in my opinion, they should have been deleted. I also don’t agree with keeping 1-2 line stubs on this wiki (which are abundant); I see no use for them. Most editors shorten (extremely shorten) the article and consider it simple. Another thing is that simple doesn’t mean the article cannot be encyclopedic. Articles simplified here turn out to be uncomprehensive (this is even done by some experienced editors). And no wonder most articles on Simplewiki do not show up in Google searches. I didn’t realize that direct copy-pasting penalizes Simplewiki's search engine optimization on Google. From my observation, many editors only find this wiki because they have been blocked on Enwiki and are sent here to make up for their mistakes; this included me. Your concerns resonate with me and have somewhat discouraged me from editing here, but I hope this wiki can become a friendlier place so that we don’t lose valuable editors like you and PotsdamLamb. – Cyber.Eyes.2005^Talk 12:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)