[WikiEN-l] On never visiting a website twice, was Re: The story of an article

[Carcharoth]

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 4:46 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> I do know with absolute certainty that if some admin had blocked me in
>> error early in my editing my response would have been to forget about
>> the site and not attempt to edit it again for many years, if ever.
>>
> This seems to be a big Web issue (no, I don't mean that some fool of an
> admin omitted to block Gregory Maxwell, and now we have to live with the
> consequences). I wondered what Google said on such phrases, i.e. what
> conventional wisdom was on people generally giving websites one chance
> only to impress them. "How to ensure I never visit your site twice" is here
>
> http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2006/11/a-guide-for-losing-visitors
>
> which is a web developer's view. In a sense, by now, Wikipedia should
> have put together a view on this issue. One excuse would be that it is
> only in  the last couple of years that we have had the "steady state"
> position (millions of generic readers, of whom a small proportion are
> potential editors).

It is like WP:BITE, but explaining why new editors are the lifeblood
of Wikipedia, and how losing potential new editors is a drain on
resources. Someone (Charles?) *should* write an essay on this, and
publicise it widely.

The other thing that can happen is when some controversy about
Wikipedia is reported in the news media, and lots of new accounts
arrive at an article, the response is sometimes less than ideal.
Blocking such accounts for any disruptive behaviour they engage in,
and pejoratively labelling them as so-called "single-purpose
accounts", may be technically correct, but in my view the correct
response is to topic ban them until they have "learnt the ropes" (i.e.
have built up a track record of editing elsewhere in Wikipedia).

In other words, there is a tension between WP:BITE and the combination
of WP:SPA and WP:DISRUPT.

Controversial articles are the worst place for new editors to start.

Carcharoth