[WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?

[Todd Allen]

I think that should be the general idea of all of our welcoming. "To
succeed here, write [[WP:NPOV|neutral]], [[WP:V|verifiable]],
[[WP:RS|well-referenced]] material on [[WP:N|appropriate subjects]].
Remember to take special care with a [[WP:BLP|biography of a living
person]]. Remember that [[WP:OWN|others can and will edit your
writing]]. Don't worry so much about stylistic consideratons, someone
can always clean up your syntax, style, or formatting later, and don't
worry-if need be, someone will! However, for help with such issues,
visit our [[WP:MOS|manual of style]]." I honestly don't see why the
welcome template can't say something like that, perhaps with a -link-
to a full policy set rather than the whole intimidating lot right
there. I don't honestly care if someone never learns the manual of
style so long as they don't write crap that's not worth fixing anyway,
it's easy to clean up for MOS issues and the like.

On 11/6/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
> > The primary role of the welcome is, I think, informing the newcomers of
> > the community expectations.
> >
> > When I look at the current template, I think it is rather good, but I
> > find interesting that the most important expectations we are mentionning
> > on the talk page of the newcomers are about "naming conventions" or
> > "manual of style".
> >
> > Other expectations, such as code of conduct or consensus building, are
> > only mentionned on a second page, where the newcomer will have to go.
> > Note that I like the five pillars page very much. It is bright, concise,
> > to the point.
> >
>
> Hmm, that's a good point. IMO we should emphasize to newcomers that the
> things they really need to know up front in order to contribute are: 1)
> write neutral content; and 2) cite reliable sources so that what you
> write can be verified by someone else. It's useful to link to some pages
> explaining what those things mean (WP:NPOV, WP:RS, and WP:V). It's
> probably also useful to give a few general background links, like the
> five-principles ones. Most of the rest can be safely be left for later
> IMO---if a newcomer is writing neutral, well referenced articles, it's
> not a big problem if they name their article [[Prince Foo of Bar]]
> instead of [[Foo, Prince of Bar]]---that's easy to fix.
>
> One thing that *is* something of a bottleneck IMO is the technical
> business of citing sources. A newbie looking for guidance on how to do
> that goes to WP:CITE, which quickly degenerates into a morass of
> multiple systems, template help pages, and who knows what else. Maybe we
> should have something prominently posted along the lines of: "If you
> find this confusing, feel free to cite your sources however you want!
> Someone will fix up the formatting later as long as you provide a
> complete citation to the sources you used."
>
> -Mark
>
>
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Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.