Blog till you drop?

I've got to get me some of these pencils!
Image by kaurjmeb via FlickrI know that people make money from blogging. (not me, unless you count the 34 cents in AdSense revenue (or whatever it is, I try not to look) I've gotten so far) But I had no idea that there were "blogger sweatshops"...

The New York Times reports that people are burning out, and other outlets are also talking about how some blogges have actually died.

That seems messed up to me. While I've gotten some comments about my update frequency and about the quality of my posts... I'm doing this blogging thing for me, not for pay. As soon as it's not fun any more, I will stop. That's as it should be I would think.

Does this frenzy to work, to make money at blogging have anything to do with WMF projects or with free content in general? Well, I'm not sure. Money? not so much... people shouldn't be creating content for the money... but obsession? I've talked about obsession before and how it ties into doing what we like to do. I am sure I'm not the only Wikipedia editor who has looked at the time in shock, wondering how it got so late! It is easy to lose track during a good work session on an article, a policy page, or what have you, but it's important to keep a sense of perspective. As with anything else, some rotation is good as well... don't JUST hang out at Requests for Adminship, or the Articles for Deletion pages or Featured Article Candidates or whatever... take some breaks.

That's one of the reasons I'm glad I have multiple hats to wear within Wikimedia Foundation projects... when I tired of the hurly burly of the English Wikipedia, there are always pictures to categorise or upload (after all, I've got plenty of old pictures!) over at Commons, or things to do at Meta, or the like. But I also have my other obsessions too. Oh, and a real life and a job and a family and bills to pay. That sharpens the perspective I think.

How about you? How do you keep a sense of perspective?

Happy April Fool's day

Ima Hogg ca. 1910
Image from Wikimedia CommonsIt's becoming a yearly tradition at Wikipedia to have an, ahem, special main page on the first... and this year is no different. (some of the content is dynamic, here are start of day and end of day versions) This page, more or less, is the page from 2007, and this page, more or less, is the page from 2006.

The joke within a joke is... everything on the main page is true. It just doesn't SEEM that way. when you read it A dedicated cadre of volunteers (with too much time on their hands) works at this for quite some time in advance... bringing an article to Featured Article status through the normal process, identifying appropriate "on this day" entries, selecting a special Featured Picture, and so forth. The rules for DYK are bent a bit so that articles older than 5 days are eligible but otherwise, they have to comply with the expansion, referencing, and other requirements.

This years' Featured Article, Ima Hogg ( with the lead of the summary reading "Ima Hogg was an enterprising circus emcee who brought culture and class to Houston, Texas. A storied ostrich jockey, she once rode to Hawaii to visit the Queen." and yes, that really was her name) was brought from nothing to FA status in extremely short order, and yet, it meets all the normal standards.

You can read more about the process at some of the discussion archives: 2006, 2007, and this years. It wasn't always this way. In early years the main page would be subject to what can only be called vandalism (adding complete nonsense, like, oh, that Wikipedia might carry ads, or was bought by Google, or that Google was launching a competitor to Wikipedia, among other things mooted) by established editors, followed by bouts of edit warring as various factions tried to restore normalcy, or restore Foolishness.

With the advent of the enforcement of policy that even on 1 April, everything has to be true, and everything has to work as a normal page (no messing with the links to helps or the page layout or the sidebar) relative peace has come... although some editors still don't even like the use of silly articles, it's hard to argue against a process that remains true to the spirit of truth (although perhaps NPOV is bent a little in writing the gag tag lines).

Do you know of other organizations that do only the truth in their prankery? Google, for example, does not. It has shared such novel new innovations as pigeon ranking, moon bases and this years gem, Virgle Pioneers, with us. (the sad thing is that except for pigeon ranking, these are all things I wish were true.)

What do you think?

(edits: fixed links to 2008 pages. Also note that this tradition is now a big enough deal that it gets media attention, such as this article. )

Enough about the darn boat, already...

By now all (3 of) my readers must be thoroughly sick of hearing about SS Christopher Columbus and her adventures as a Featured Article Candidate. After all, I wrote about this topic not once before, but twice...

Never fear, this is the last post on that article for a while, I would think, because the article has made it to Featured Article status... Yaay!

I had thought that every comment had to be resolved, but as it turns out, she was promoted with some remaining unresolved minor comments. Still, the article never actually got an oppose, and in a great display of collaborativeness, many of the commenters pitched in and fixed their own or other people's comments.

In fact the article even made the Wikirage top 100 list by edits over a 3 day period.. check out the graph of activity.

So I guess I don't know what all the whining is about? Or did I get lucky? The Featured Article process was exacting and demanding, yes, but ultimately the article's a lot tighter now than it was when we started. (and it was a lot smoother than getting the article to Good Article status, that took two tries!) And now I am trying to decide what other articles I should think about nominating! But why aren't I on this list yet? I demand answers. (obviously an evil bot!) Oh well, a topic for another blog post. What, you thought I was done with this topic???

well well...

Hmph... maybe this FA thing isn't so bad after all. Hopefully I won't jinx things by saying that I think maybe the old girl is going to make it!

I can't really take all the credit, or even much of it, frankly. The collaborative editing on this article is nothing short of remarkable. Compare the difference (121 edits so far, and counting) before and after and see the edits by everyone using this nifty tool. (1)

So, no question for you today. Just happiness. The old girl deserves a great article. She got a raw deal, scrapped after 44 years of faithful service and nothing much saved from her.

-------------------------
1 - Another great tool is the external link checker, which is a very sophisticated tool, good for spotting and fixing all sorts of problems!

Throwing myself to the wolves?

Some time ago Giano opined that any Wikipedia administrator worth listening to should have at least one Featured Article (FA ... "Wikipedia's Best Work" ) under his or her belt, if not actually produce one per year. That suggestion was not met with universal acclaim. :) But there's some merit to it, nonetheless... or at least to the notion that everyone seeking any extra permissions, should have at least some experience with actually writing the encyclopedia.

While I have written some 25+ DYKs 3 of which are Good Articles, I don't yet have a Featured Article to my credit, and I've been maneuvering to get one to the state where it might be a candidate for some time.

So, armed with a lot of help, including the sage advice given here, I've launched a Featured Article Candidacy for SS Christopher Columbus, which is of all the articles I've written, perhaps my all time favorite. There are those that deride the FA process as overly "fussy" or bureaucratic, but I am not sure that's so... so far the suggestions I've gotten have almost all been actionable and were, for the most part, things I'd missed that really did need sorting. Extra eyes do wonders at spotting things needing fixing.

We shall see how it goes. I'm hoping for smooth sailing. Wish me luck!