Well, it's simple. Be polite and non-confrontational and don't make the new contributor feel they have no business trying. Wikipedians are only about 20% female and the world is about 50%...so there must be some noise on this channel. Perhaps males have a higher tolerance for confrontation. Seems like that is the case in life in general. Wikipedia is a choice for use of personal time and if it is a place that can be (in editors' responses to contributors) unnecessarily harsh. Fo people invested in a topic the way Mr. Roth was treated is very telling. I have taught male and female graduate students for many years. Both make mistakes. It takes a lot of deliberation to be positively critical. I generally re-write negative evaluations multiple times before I render them to a student.Words can cause much pain. Telling Mr. Roth he wasn't a credible source is the kind of heedless action I mean. He had access to make his case in the *New Yorker *. Most of the world does not. On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 5:29 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: