There is less for people to do, but there is still plenty of "wiki gnoming" to do. This is exactly the kind of thing that could attract some new editors. The minor fixing of small details should be an excellent use of crowdsourcing.
I seem to have lousy experiences at Wikipedia whenever I try to edit anything, even if it's a minor edit.
Last time I tried:
My IP had already been blocked because it had been used by a vandal. I thought that was a bit odd (blocking a dynamic IP range), so I made an unblock request.
The template is confusing, and doesn't tell users to include the reason for being blocked as well as the reason for being unblocked, so I got an error message.
While I was fixing the mistake I made my unblock request was declined. (This happened within a few minutes of me posting it.) Thus, I fixed the mistake I made, saved the page, (working past the edit conflict) and find that my request has been declined.
I read why it's declined.
I make another unblock request.
I get a friendly, polite, sympathetic reply. But it's not actually much use - it doesn't help new users to understand WP. And the block remains.
I try to reply. Because the talk page includes links to templates WP thinks I'm entering external links and asks me to enter capchas.
I enter the capchas and reply. I say that blocking a troll by blocking some dynamic IPs is odd - they just log off the Internet and log back on to get a new IP address, which may be outside the blocked range. Determined trolls (the kind who attract IP range blocks) will find this trivial to do. Newbies, the kind of people who are being targeted for this retention programme, may not find this quite so easy.
What kind of person will willingly jump through these hoops? People who are great at grammar and copy editing? Or cranks who want to put homeopathy in every article, or who want to mention Armenian genocide in many articles?
Putting my admin hat on for a moment... rangeblocks are fairly rare for the reason you cite. But when used they are deployed in situations where a vandal has been noted to be using IP addresses from the same range.
Although you seem skeptical it often works! As these are not the smartest cookies in the crumble.
Unfortunately, the only way to fix your problem is to create an account on another IP address and log in (or alternately ask someone to create it for you, a service Wikipedia can provide).
Because the talk page includes links to templates WP thinks I'm entering external links and asks me to enter capchas.
That's rather odd, I've never come across that before! I thought internal Wikipedia links were excluded from that filter. I will raise that when I find someone who is responsible for such things :)
I seem to have lousy experiences at Wikipedia whenever I try to edit anything, even if it's a minor edit.
Last time I tried:
My IP had already been blocked because it had been used by a vandal. I thought that was a bit odd (blocking a dynamic IP range), so I made an unblock request.
The template is confusing, and doesn't tell users to include the reason for being blocked as well as the reason for being unblocked, so I got an error message.
While I was fixing the mistake I made my unblock request was declined. (This happened within a few minutes of me posting it.) Thus, I fixed the mistake I made, saved the page, (working past the edit conflict) and find that my request has been declined.
I read why it's declined.
I make another unblock request.
I get a friendly, polite, sympathetic reply. But it's not actually much use - it doesn't help new users to understand WP. And the block remains.
I try to reply. Because the talk page includes links to templates WP thinks I'm entering external links and asks me to enter capchas.
I enter the capchas and reply. I say that blocking a troll by blocking some dynamic IPs is odd - they just log off the Internet and log back on to get a new IP address, which may be outside the blocked range. Determined trolls (the kind who attract IP range blocks) will find this trivial to do. Newbies, the kind of people who are being targeted for this retention programme, may not find this quite so easy.
What kind of person will willingly jump through these hoops? People who are great at grammar and copy editing? Or cranks who want to put homeopathy in every article, or who want to mention Armenian genocide in many articles?