Can't do anything but help as possible, from whatever forum.  These are the folks interested enough to click contact us, so there's certainly more. -- Sent from my Palm Pre Emily Monroe wrote: *pixie dust pixie dust* ;-D I agree. Maybe have a Signpost-like note to everyone subscribed to Signpost? Maybe have that actually in the Signpost? Something like "Editors note: There's an influx of newbies, so please be patient". How will that work? Emily On Aug 26, 2009, at 7:53 PM, Carcharoth wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Emily Monroe<bluecaliocean(a)me.com> wrote: Nah. We need permanent solutions. Wikipedia is a terrible place for a newcomer. Fortunately the Usability project amongst others is doing something about this. It would be interesting if someone did a study on initial interactions between newcomers and oldbies to see if anything can be improved. But IMHO the best way to avoid newbies getting "bitten" is to help them avoiding newbie mistakes in the first place - a good interface, the right help and a few safety checks would go a long way. ("Whoa there newbie, you just wiped the whole page. Here's how not to do that...") Steve

Correction, it was a blog. I just don't remember where. If'n anyone else does, please post. It was a good read. On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:56 PM, Keegan Paul <kgnpaul(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan

Could you link to an example? On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Keegan Paul<kgnpaul(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe we need to make it more obvious that there's no "staff" at Wikipedia, at least for the time being. Emily On Aug 28, 2009, at 2:49 AM, Keegan Paul wrote:

Holy cow. Is Jimbo aware of this? Emily On Aug 28, 2009, at 10:04 AM, FT2 wrote:

Yes, that's exactly what I mean! Emily On Aug 28, 2009, at 10:19 AM, Carcharoth wrote: > On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Emily Monroe<bluecaliocean(a)me.com> > wrote: >>> The reason for this is, when Flagged Revisions got into the press >>> last week, a number of sources reported that Wikipedia would be >>> recruiting 20,000 "unpaid expert editors" as staff to check the >>> articles.... >> >> Holy cow. Is Jimbo aware of this? > > > Carcharoth > > PS. I pointed out in an earlier thread that this mis-reporting would > lead to people thinking new editors are being sought especially for > this. It's point 4 in my e-mail of 26 August in the thread titled "A > sudden thought on the media coverage of flagged revisions". Could > someone post to the foundation-l list and get some co-ordination going > if are going to see a large influx of new editors to the WMF's largest > project asking "how can we help?" > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

FT2 wrote: I am actually curious as to where precisely did they pull that particular figure of 20 000 from. It looks awfully specific, like somebody might have actually used that number in some context or another, and the media just completely fumbled at understanding what the number referred to. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 9:12 PM, Emily Monroe<bluecaliocean(a)me.com> wrote: Is there, in fact, an influx of newbies going on? Has anyone compiled the numbers for recent days to find out whether newbies are signing up faster than usual and if so by how much? I think it's a good idea to point to such an influx in the Signpost if it actually happening, and to highlight the various pages and recommendations we have for enculturating newbies, but doing so based purely on anecdote and second-hand information... that seems more like Daily Mail than Signpost. -Sage