On Apr 10, 2007, at 8:37 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 4/10/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
Because we shouldn't treat newbies like they're idiots who can't understand how we do things. How about "Sourcing articles is important. It's not always the first priority, but it's an issue."
Most of them *are* idiots. See [[WP:AFC]].
Then we're screwed. Period.
Or, better yet, how about we don't treat "newbies" as a homogenous class. I read some policy pages and found myself on RFA discussing someone's nomination within a day or two of getting to Wikipedia.
You're unusual. :)
True. But most people are unusual for some definition of unusual.
There's just no telling at all whether a newbie will stick around at all, will read the policy documents etc. And since we do actually want sources, where is the harm in telling newbies that they have to source any article they create? Hell, I add at least *one* source for every article I make. Where's the harm?
I figure we can tell a newbie maybe (maybe) three things. Because, well, we don't want to overwhelm them or try to Taylorize them.
#1 has to be NPOV. Period. End of discussion. #2 should be to use talk pages, as they remain somewhat non-obvious. #3 could then be "cite sources," but I think verifiability is vastly more important for this.
-Phil