[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[Jim Redmond]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 15:28, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> A newbie who
> manages to find [[WP:INCITE]] and follows its instructions is still just as
> likely to be trouted because they didn't use the "right" style of references
> for the article ("Sorry, Wikiproject:XXX requires that only Harvard style
> references be used in articles under our aegis. Please resubmit your edit,
> properly formatted.")

Uh, wow.  Not to mince words, but any Wikiproject that gets that
snippy about citation formats is a shameful, ridiculous joke, and
anyone who posts anything like that on any user talk page should be
immediately blocked for newbie-biting.  (As you can probably tell, I
have strong opinions on this topic.)

The *entire point* of any wiki is that it should be easy to fix most
problems quickly.  If a newbie makes mistakes - and they always will,
no matter how awesome our policies and tools are - then experienced
editors should just fix the mistakes and gently (!) inform the newbie
why they did what they did.  Not only is that approach faster and
easier and less bite-y, but it also makes our content better *now*,
and it gives the newbie a chance to learn how we work.

-- 
Jim Redmond
[[User:Jredmond]]