The next major thing to accomplish would be to come up
with a definite
"recommended reading order" of policies (as hinted at on WP:POL) and
shove step #1 down newbie's throats. This should probably be a
condensed version of [[Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes]]. Then we
can start to educate them on the very very basic policies of V, OR,
NPOV, copyvio etc.
I think the first policy new editors need to be educated in is "allow
your contributions to be edited mercilessly". I've always seen that
as the flip side of IAR: if you're a new user or otherwise not
inclined to pay much attention to learning the rules, *ignore them*,
but let the rest of us massage your edits into a usable form. This is
how my interpretation of IAR differs from most: I actually think that
we're *supposed* to ignore NPOV much, if not most of the time.
Contributing information and making sure that information is written
from a NPOV are two separate tasks. Give us information in whatever
form you're best able to and let other editors make sure it conforms
to NPOV. (Writing polemics doesn't help us much, and neither does
writing polemics but prefacing each point with "some say". On the
other hand, if you write "the Spanish-American war was primarily
caused by U.S. expansionism" and are able to give a source, we don't
need to beat you over the head with a stick because we can rephrase
it ourselves.)
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch