William Pietri wrote:
Rob wrote:
The fact that a block gets someone MAD does not justify further abuse, and the talk page should not be used to give a troll a soapbox to attack people.
I'd agree with that. On the other hand, there's this pattern I'm worried about that goes something like this:
- A new user tries to do something that seems reasonable to them, but is annoying to us -- e.g., adding their friend's band to Wikipedia.
- Almost instantly they receive a boilerplate negative reaction from us -- e.g., their article is speedied.
- They struggle to understand what the hell is going on and do something they think is reasonable -- let's say they replace the speedy template with {{hangon}} and go on editing their article.
- They get another instant boilerplate negative reaction and experience more frustration -- perhaps they get the template back, a user page warning for removing speedies, and an edit conflict to boot.
- After repeatedly being frustrated in trying to do something they think is useful, they express their frustration with less than perfect politeness.
- The cycle of negative interactions spirals until they end up blocked.
The disrespect starts at #2. If the person so acting took the trouble to open a dialogue instead of slapping on impersonal boilerplate and initiating hostile action a lot more of these newbies could be mentored into becoming useful contributors.
And then from here, I'm sure a most of those people just go away, nursing their burnt fingers and telling their pals what jerks those Wikipedians are. A few of them take it as a great injustice and turn into long-term enemies.
With full justification for doing so.
I would rather we took more time with these people, as I think we currently create more enemies than we need, and discourage potential contributors.
That's the big problem to overcome.
Ec