On 11/6/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Nov 6, 2007 2:59 PM, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote:
Earlier: there is a big difference between "a necessarily imperfect
work in progress" and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_S._Patton&curid=42090&a... iff=169628093&oldid=169618698 (first diff on English WP RC when I loaded it) ... At least this instance of vandalism is probably not going to [do?] material harm to anyone..."
So, we agree about dispensing with spam and vandalism and off topic contributions. Now that we have that out of the way, perhaps we can agree to leave such irrelevant straw-men out of conversations about ... biting newbies.
That would be much easier if people would stop armwaving and SHOW SOME EXAMPLES.
Come on. If this newbie biting is so rampant, just provide some examples... and then we can talk about those.
From the 50 most recent edits to the User talk namespace, and not
counting {{test}}-style warnings for newbie tests:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Kyle_m4&curid=141103... - A user indef-blocked after his sixth edit, for test-style vandalism to George W Bush.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Hoggboss&curid=14004... - A new user given a spam4 warning for what looks like a good-faith but misguided attempt to insert a YouTube video into [[Chuck Norris]].
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Stevelihn&curid=1313... - A user given a spam1 template for inserting reasonably relevant external links into three articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:82.13.64.246&oldid=1... - A user given a templated warning for a series of what look like good-faith edits to [[List of channels on Virgin Television]].
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:70.144.180.227&oldid... - A ClueBot vandalism warning for a newbie test.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:216.171.252.29&diff=... -A ClueBot vandalism warning for a newbie test.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:72.213.63.137&oldid=... - A ClueBot vandalism warning for a newbie test.
And this does not include the formatting of the templates that ClueBot hands out. The mix of bold, non-bold, blue, and bold blue text on those templates makes them unreadable, and I consider that newbie-biting all by itself.