On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 05:25:21PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
An argument seems to be being made (by the side which, clearly, I am not on) that there is a group of contributors out there who
Let's call them "random people" rather than "group of contributors".
a) have something useful to contribute to WPYep, whether it be fixing typos, pointing out errors, or even adding a sentence or two.
b) have "precisely zero" interest in expending any effort to learn how to do so -- when that wall is *stunningly* low. (This isn't Framemaker, folks.)Yep. They're browsing the web. They're not doing homework.
If they can't be bothered to learn wikitext, can they be bothered to read [[Assume Good Faith]]? Or [[NPOV]]? Or follow the [[Village Pump]], etc, etc, ad nauseum?
Nope. But that's ok, you need very little of that to make such small contributions. WP:V is probably the only one worth knowing about, and that can be summarised in the sentence "Tell us where you heard this, so we can check it."
My perception of Jimbo's comment on this is that that is not, no, what he's talking about. He means subject matter people. I think.
Are we equipped, as a community, to deal with (let us say) tripling the number of active editors we have now, where most of the new ones can't be bothered to learn... well, anything?
I wouldn't call them "active editors". Is a one-time buyer of a train ticket an "active public transport user?" Someone who dropped some rubbish an "active litterer?" Etc.
But, to answer your question, yes. Haven't seen a lot of problems with newbies, most of the problems seem to come from oldbies.
Really? I'll be darned. Ok.
Some would say we're in critical trouble on that front *now*; it doesn't make much sense to me to enable new people who "are willing to expend precisely zero energy" on working with our community, such as it is.
Who would say that?
It has been the perception I've integrated from half a dozen or more sources; perhaps I'm wrong. I stay out of the fray, myself.
Cheers, -- jra