To help with overly "shouty" templates, I did create https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fae/talk_page_trimmer https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:F%C3%A6/talk_page_trimmer on Commons which 'shrinks' long notices on the presumption that noting a possible "copyright problem" does not need lots of threats because not everyone is a vandal. The code is open source, it's very stable and anyone on Commons can opt-in.
A system of "friendly notice alternative bots" which newbies could opt-in to if they act in good faith and want to take policies seriously could help to make any project seem less hostile. Anyone that does something like ask for help at a noticeboard, does not need to be shouted at by torch-wielding villagers. I recall several newbies fleeing the project after getting just a couple of very shouty notices and presuming everyone thought they were a crimmo.
Fae
On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 at 01:50, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
It would be nice to have a tool for long standing editors to clean up a newbies talk page for them, leave messages for the overeager templaters, and help them out / welcome them in untemolsted language.
Then a little ML could go a long way in guessing which newbies are in this situation and generating a queue for newbie-care. ~~~
đđđđ
On Wed., Feb. 19, 2020, 4:35 p.m. Andy Mabbett, <andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:
I have just come across a case on en.Wikipedia where the daughter of an article subject added details of his funeral (his death in 1984,w as already recorded) and his view about an indent in his life.
Her six sequential edits - her first and only contribution to Wikipedia - totalled 1254 characters, and were conducted over the space of 30 minutes. They were no the best quality, lacking sources, but were benign, and exactly what one might expect an untutored novice to do as a first change.
As well as being reverted, she now has three templates on her talk page; two warning her of a CoI, and sandwiching one notifying her of a discussion about her on the COI noticeboard. These total 4094 characters or 665 words.
How do other projects deal with such cases?
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk