On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Maury Markowitz maury_markowitz@hotmail.com wrote: [snip]
Thomas, I looked over your Contribs and found that you have made only 21 mainspace edits since the start of the year, and 10 of those were marked "minor". In that same time you made 46 edits to user talk pages, 121 edits on the Wikipedia namespace, and 45 to Wikipedia talk pages. That's a ratio of 10 to 1.
To me this suggests your primary interest in the Wikipedia is to use it as a social networking tool. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think you'll agree that that's not the primary purpose of the system.
[snip]
"primary interest in Wikipedia is to use it as a social networking tool" is a pretty enormous leap from some namespace ratios, and I'm going to guess that it most likely isn't the case.
I think most of us start off with BIG IDEAS on how to improve things. With time we realize that most were misguided, some outright foolish, and this increases over time. After a few years of involvement we reach the point where it seems obvious that almost nothing can work. :) We shouldn't mistake the misguided ideas and exuberance of the inexperienced for attempted social networking any more than we should mistake it for brilliant leadership, or any more than we should mistake the frequent cynicism of the old-timers for the fundamental truth.
On another point: If, on the real merits of a users contributions, it's clear that they really are using Wikipedia primarily for social networking then thats not okay and there is something wrong with that. Wikipedia has a mission, we've got a job to do. We should be expansive in what we consider contribution, but so much as to include pure social networking. Comradeship between contributors is essential but dead weight is not beneficial.