From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of John Lee
Peter Mackay wrote:
<snip>
If people are using Wikipedia to play rather than build an encyclopaedia, then they should be encouraged in this primary objective, not castigated for extraneous activies, because for every frivolous userbox, I dare say if I went looking, I could find some other piece of useless guff on the user pages of experienced
editors.
Let people play, if it does no harm and they are participating in community activities, but also encourage them to be more productive.
The difference is experienced users tend to contribute to article space as well.
So do inexperienced users.
Many userbox fanatics make minimal or no edits to articles. (Of course, most people with userboxes aren't fanatics; I have quite a few userboxes myself. But there are a few rogue bunch out there who seem more intent on userboxes than building an encyclopedia.) I agree that this is probably a symptom of a larger problem, though - people forgetting we're here to build an encyclopedia, not play.
I think it goes deeper than that. I think that some new editors are being made to feel that they are not part of the established WP community and consequently they are "acting up". This is the same "old hands" vs "young Turks" divide I see on other sites and indeed in real life. This is not to say that all old hands are pitted against all new arrivals, but it's a noisy minority at both ends of the spectrum who are stirring things up.
Peter (Skyring)