I don't get it, Timwi. Correct me if my perception is wrong, but it's like you're against cheers and pats on the back. PLEASE correct me. Yeah, when someone bothers to leave me a note about how they liked my article or photo, I'm happy, but I consider myself fortunate to have huge amounts of experience with both writing and photography; if the plaudits I've earned by exemplary performance (no humility here) are reflective of what the "average" writer/illustrator gets, then there's a pathetically abyssmal level of feedback and encouragement going on. We have lost, or so it would seem, two talented and capable writers in the last month because it's easier to bitch and criticise than to support and praise. Or at least to yell "patent nonsense" when we should have just kept our bleeding gobs shut until we had bothered to determine whether or not we were peeing on our own shoes.
As an easy example, try this: SETI Online offers online certificates for work units completed. I am coming up on certificate four - 1000 work units - and I'm excited. Work for SETI? Zero. Their web page (or a counting applet attached) counts the returned work units and automatically adds access to new certificates as I am eligible for them. We have some crackerjack coders here who could, I'm sure, easily implement a routine to do such a thing. Volunteer work (pick me!!) can design 500 edits/1000 edits/2000 edits etc. certificates, and then it's all up to the editor to download certs as they show up on his /her userpage. (I can print as many 100 workunits as I want - it's my printer, my ink, and my money. I could paper my walls or send one to all my friends. What does it cost Wiki? Does zero sound like a good number to you?)
Timwi, Wiki has to be in part about the fun of doing it, and that =somebody= sees and appreciates the effort you're contributing. That is one area where Wiki could do a vastly better job. E2 has a chatbox, so community links can develop quickly and effectively (they also have a bunch of level 3+ editors who need a good cuff on the side of the head for the way they treat newbies, but that's another topic). Village Pump is not exactly chat, and IRC, as wonderful as I'm sure it is, is prodigiously threatening to the newbie user. The only contact with other Wikipedians is what the newbie initiates herself/himself.
I don't know how best this can be done. Do we create a WikiCommittee whose job it is to track users and drop comments on their user page? Do we ask a codejunkie to write a script to autogenerate certificate messages? Help me out here, allies. Whatever we do, if anything, I offer my assistance, because the more welcome we make good writers feel, the longer they stay, and the more welcome we make weak writers feel, the stronger they get.
Denni
-- "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. " -- Pablo Picasso