I beg to differ Anirudh, the issue is that the newbies don't know of WP:HD or any other place was the reason I suggested the page. By the same logic, If the newbies could ask their question on Help desk, they could also look up the same guidelines and the Noticeboards to see what they did wrong and complain appropriately, which would make the entire process redundant. What I suggested was a centralized page where all the links that might be helpful to newbies would be collected together, where they can ask senior editors questions directly or look into issues for them.
I suggested Meta for two reason- one to keep it off the English wiki since there is no shortage of similar places, and second most of the users there are very well-versed in policies and guidelines more than local wikis especially Indian Language Wikis, something of an "outside context" might be useful to newcomers.
I agree with Srikanth, there is a cultural difference, besides a different language there is rather large repository of policies of guidelines that might seem daunting to newcomers, we want to provide access as easily as possible. We have met many wikimedians who want to get involved in the movement on meetups, mailing lists - this page would act as a first step page for all of them, we can refer them to it to read up and ask questions if they have issues. What I would like to see is, something similar to adopt a user program so that experienced editors could adopt and guide new comers.
Regards
Salmaan
On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 1:34 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 11:48 PM, theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting point Srikanth, we can address part of the issue. I propose something like "Don't bite the newcomers" page, pref. located
on
Meta where new Wikimedians especially the ones from India can ask
question
to more experienced editors. It would be along the lines of Admin noticeboard, RfC page in terms of structure but any experienced editor
would
be able to answer a newcomers question. They can watch their edit history and even promote our "adopt a user" feature by experienced editors. We can announce this page on the India Mailing list, newcomers at wiki-meetups, regularly for any new comers. For a centralized location I would suggest locating it on Meta considering the experienced user base
and
the multilingual community there. Any thoughts?
I wouldn't attribute this to cultural differences. Let's be clear on something, it's not only users from India who complain about rogue admins and editors.
[[w:en:WP:HD]] is still the best resource for new users to seek advice.
Creating a redundant page on meta serves no purpose. The India noticeboard is a responsive place to seek advice if the user finds himself/herself embroiled in a dispute over India-related subjects.
I do understand that a significant number of new pages patrollers, recent changes patrollers and some administrators are impatient with new users and that leads to unnecessary escalation of conflict. However, the underlying issue is much deeper and not exclusive for editors from India.
anirudh
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