As we grow larger, we get more and more users who seemingly act against at
least some of our rules or do not understand what our mission is. 172, Frank
Wappler, Stevertigo and others are users I would classify as "problematic".
However, doing so on the wiki will not help us much, it will only alienate them
from Wikipedia. There is, of course, a certain point at which we need to ban
users, but I do not see this line being crossed in these cases yet.
Another idea would be to create a list of "Watched users", with a
"watcher"
assigned to each one of them, keeping an eye on their contributions. However,
this does have negative connotations, which might lead to edit wars on the
respective page.
A more positive, affirmative approach might be to create a mentor policy. It
could work like this:
[[Wikipedia:Available mentors]] -> everyone willing to be a mentor can put
themselves in that list. Only requirement: needs to have been a Wikipedian
for n months. (I suggest n=6).
[[Wikipedia:Votes for mentoring]] -> users who may need a mentor can be
added to this list.
The "Available mentors" link could be put on the main page and linked
prominently elsewhere so that new users who want some hand holding can message one
of them directly. If we "vote for mentoring" of a user, the assigned mentor
could put some text on the user's talk page:
"Hello, .... It has been suggested that one of the Wikipedia oldtimers could
help you better understand our policies and convention. In that spirit, I
will try to work with you on your future edits to make sure they meet our
standards of neutrality and research. If that bothers you, please comment on my
Talk page or on the [[Wikipedia:Votes for mentoring]] page."
What do you think? I do believe that we need to watch the edits of
problematic users in a more coordinated fashion, at least.
Regards,
Erik
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