On 10 March 2008, Sidin Vadukut <sidin.vadukut at gmail.com> wrote:


> However one of them mentioned that it is slowly becoming more and

> more difficult for new writers to join in as contributions have

> become extremely complicated. Some of the simplest things lead to

> disputes and trivialities cause locks on certain articles.

>

> I was wondering if you guys had an opinion on this? Is Wikipedia

> increasingly becoming more and more difficult for first-timers? I am

> talking about those who intend to specialize in certain topics and

> be active and regular.


I am not sure what exactly do you mean by "contributions have become

extremely complicated". Are you referring to Wikipedia's now-somewhat

stringent standards for accepting articles? Or do you mean that the

wiki-syntax is too difficult? Or are you concerned that the cabals,

vandals and trolls are scaring away the new contributors?


As a society, Wikipedia is bound to grow more complex as it grows.


If the new contributors face a problem that they do not know how to

deal with (vandalism, another abusive user etc.), they can head over

to the new contributors' help page (the link to this page appears on

the help page):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_contributors'_help_page>.


Wikipedia's standards for accepting articles have evolved over the

years. Most Wikipedians will accept that the standards have become

more stringent, but these standards are necessary because in addition

to a lot of positive contributors, Wikipedia also attracts a number of

vandals, trolls and spammers. Very short articles created without

references, inappropriate pages, images uploaded without a license or

text copied from another website are bound to get deleted. Most

newly-created articles or newly-uploaded images are deleted because

they're either copyright violation (e.g. image of the user's favorite

actress copied from a film website) or because they're outside

Wikipedia's project scope (e.g. an article on an little-known school

band). New users can avoid such experiences by learning a few basics

of contributing to Wikipedia. On the article creation page, the users

are presented with a few instructions and a link to

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article>. Creating

an article that'll not get deleted is as simple as following these

instructions.


The disputes (trivial or non-trivial) are a part of any large

collaborative project. This is not something specific to the new

users; controversial topics (e.g. Israel-Palestine) will always

attract disputes. The new users generally find themselves embroiled in

disputes, when they make controversial edits an article without going

through the talk page archives (where the issues might have been

discussed more than once in the past). An example is the article on

Muhammad -- many new users try to remove the images from the article,

without bothering to read the talk page, where the rationale for

including the image is explained in detail.


The vandals and trolls are a serious problem. Citizendium

<http://en.citizendium.org> is trying to deal with them (and other

issues like reliability) by disallowing anonymous editing. At

Wikipedia, we have an article validation proposal

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation> in the works. It

can be tested at <http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox>


As for understanding the wiki syntax, and the Wikipedia policies and

guidelines, these are the minimum basics. The users who joined

Wikipedia three years ago also learned them.


Wikipedia is just like any other project open to public

participation. Before people start contributing, they need to learn a

few basics. The set of "basics" grow larger as the project grows larger.


Regards,

Utkarshraj

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch