On Nov 6, 2007, at 8:56 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It would be really really really helpful to see some links to incidents. Many times these complaints come without citation. I don't disbelieve them, but there are many types and causes of these results and they have vastly different cures.
It's not enough to simply say "be nicer!". Some times we need to say different things like "New users haven't learned our customs, that doesn't mean they are all jerks!"
Another component of this is a failure to remember the difference between a useful contribution and an ideal one. In addition to telling people to bite the newbies less hard (an important lesson), we have to think seriously about what cases it is and is not helpful to wield any of the multitude of sticks we have developed to whack people in the head with.
We should remember that we became a top ten website as a website littered with inaccuracies for which we were frequently criticized, full to the brim of crufty articles on silly topics, and peppered with vandalism. That is not to say that we should not attempt to correct these things, but we should recognize that people seem to be aware and accepting of what we are right now, and, in some cases, even desiring what we are right now.
This is, perhaps, not something that is easily shifted in preparation for an "edit Wikipedia week," but it is something we have to remember - {{fact}} is in many cases preferable to reversion, notes on talk pages are in many cases preferable to speedy deletion tags, vandalism should be dealt with as we see it, and even watched for, but should not be an obsession.
-Phil