On 5/31/05, advert <advert(a)ziplip.com> wrote:
Kat,
Thank you for unblocking me. It's good to know that at least one admin has a sense of
fairness here. It is very frustrating as a newbie to be told to jump right in and to
"be bold!" with editing, but then to be blocked for not having known the rules.
I wasn't even aware beforehand that there was a "neutral point of view"
rule.
When I get a chance I'll try to read through the rules in order to understand how I
can be allowed to make changes to the parts which I don't think are at all
"neutral" in the entry as it was (even before I tried editing it).
Hi Advert,
Actually I suspect that there are very many people who would have
unblocked you, were they aware of what happened. ... We can't be
perfect, but we do try! Thanks for your patience.
As far as being bold goes, the *vast* majority of new users don't edit
a potentially controversial subject, and if they do and their changes
are reverted, then they usually don't notice or don't care.... So they
never get into a revert war, and thus they don't get blocked. Because
of this our 'be bold' advice is good in almost all cases.
For the most part on wikipedia you can be a perfectly happy editor
even if you ignore all rules. There is only one rule beyond really
basic common sense which is enforced in any material way, and that is
the Three Revert Rule (3RR). Actually, a great many wikipedians would
rather the 3RR not exist, but without it there are endless revert wars
with no mechanism in place to get the disagreeing parties to calm down
and talk out their changes. I hope you can understand why such a rule
is needed.
If you avoid editing controversial subjects, it is very likely that
you will not need to know much of our rules and policy. I would
*highly* suggest that you avoid those articles until you are well
familiarized with Wikipedia... sometimes it is very challenging to
edit those articles, and it really can make editing unfun. There is an
enormous number of articles in wikipedia which really could use your
love and attention, so why not start there? Best of luck!