"Alphax wrote:
Cobb wrote: Some of the pontificators here should throw themselves back into editing from a newbie's point of view. Pick some craphole area of Wikipedia and try editing, and imagine that you don't know anyone else... don't have tame admin buddies to call on. Imagine facing up to a group of editors who know the ins and outs of the process and how to game it. It might wake some people up.
I wonder how the people with "tame admin buddies" got that way? Not possibly from being Good Editors perhaps?
I was talking about new editors, and how we drive them away... but then, knowing that would require you to have actually read the post that you just replied to. I know it's a burden, but it does make things go more smoothly.
The Wikipedia AFD process is complicated and crufty. Putting an article up for AFD should be easy as adding {{afd|reason}} (don't make technical arguments in response to this. I'm just telling you how it should work). Putting something up for deletion should be almost as easy as creating a new page.
It is. Stick {{prod|reason}} on it.
The point was about AFD, not about prod. Prod tags can simply be removed.
Currently the AFD process is obscure and technical. It doesn't help that there are inclusionist editors who seem to want to make it as unintuitive as possible and keep it that way, and frustrate any attempts to change it.
Calling someone an "inclusionist" or "deletionist" doesn't help.
Neither does avoiding the issue, which is eactly what you have just done.
JesseW wrote: Also, as I mentioned above, we have a number of areas that are well-patrolled by non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines, and editors who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave the work of defending the articles against crazies to others.
And this is an argument against what? Some bits of Wikipedia aren't too bad, so that's ok.
Could you rephrase that so it's coherent?
See above about reading the post properly before replying. What was his point in relation to my post? That parts of wikipedia don't have nutball editors? So what? My point was that we have policies that allow groups to drive off any editor that tries to clean up the bad areas unless they happen to be experienced and hardened. The current system burns up and throws away good new editors with its extreme tolerance of idiots and vandals under some misguided notion of openness. We don't need idiots... we need lots and lots of editors who want to help Wikipedia be an encyclopedia. Policies/admins that defend idiots and frustrate and drive off decent and sensible editors are wrong.