I think most of us on this list treat newbies fairly well. Now what about
the people that showed up a few months ago, never contributed much, and
spend their time biting newbies?
Let's say I register a new account right now. I go to new page patrol and
start indiscriminately deletion-tagging any article by an inexperienced
user. If they ask me about it, I reply with an impersonal but perfectly
polite note referring them to WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:OR and WP:CIV while ignoring
anything they say. For how long could I do this before I get blocked? How
many could I scare away?
A question for the admins here: When you come across an article wrongly
tagged for speedy deletinon or prod, do you check up on the user who tagged
it? What do you do if their deletion tagging is no more accurate than
picking new articles at random?
This discussion is about biting newbies in general, but I focused on
deletion for personal reasons. I know the rules well, but I have had to
fight deletions too. Asahi Kasei, one of largest chemical companies in Japan
was tagged for deletion at least twice. When I am working on an article I
often discover related subject lacking articles, so I create quick stubs for
reference and later expansion. Very often they get tagged for deletion. They
are on perfectly notable subject, so I can save the articles, but I would
rather spend my time working on the main article.
The issues we discuss in this thread go deep, but here is one change that
would help a lot:
* Articles should not be tagged for deletion two minutes after creation for
not asserting notability. Yes there is {{Hangon}} but how would a newcomer
know about that, and why should they? Of course an article created a minute
ago is being actively worked on. If it's not time critical (attack pages,
copyvios) no tagging should happen the first hour. If this is technically
difficult then NPP should be modified.
/Apoc2400