2009/12/5 Carl (CBM) cbm.wikipedia@gmail.com:
The difficulty I see for newcomers improving existing articles is that, as newcomers, they don't know which things they can change and which things they should leave alone.
[snip examples of highly-discussed wordings]
Any article relating to religion can be like this. As late as 2004 there was room for me to improve the articles on the Gospels with no specialist knowledge ... no chance now.
And real-world controversial topics ... w00t!
One rewarding task for new users is expanding stubs. With that sort of editing, they have much more discretion in how to organize and phrase the content, and they are more likely to feel empowered to edit.
Yep! That's in there with the missing article lists.
It's really good that stubs are already sorted by topic to quite fine detail.
So: point newbies at the stubs in their specialist area. "Look, you can edit these right now. That book on your shelf? It's a good reference. Go for it."
These ideas are marvellously useful :-) Someone want to put them on the strategy wiki too? I assume there's a section on n00b recruitment.
- d.