Marc Riddell wrote:
on 4/1/07 5:24 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Nice idea, doesn't work in practice. Way back when, I tried to help problematic editors a number of times, and there were exactly two outcomes; the person understood what they were doing wrong after getting the one hint, or never understood, no matter how many times it was explained. We get a *lot* of borderlines, and one always hopes that just one more rephrasing will cause the light bulb to come on - but these folks have more serious problems than can be solved with talk page notes.
You should try your hand at it, will be valuable for insight - pick a problem editor, such as one who's come up in an RfC, Arbcom case, etc, and assign yourself to help them.
We each bring our own individual professional backgrounds and skills to the building of the WP Project. In this bringing, the focus is still, nevertheless, applied to the substance of the encyclopedia. I believe what you are suggesting goes beyond this and into the WP Community itself.
My particular involvement would be much trickier than, say, someone with math skills offering to tutor someone in the Community who is struggling with understanding the basics of arithmetic. But, in both cases, before such a relationship could have any hope of succeeding, the person in need of this help would need to ask for that help.
And before people can ask for help they have to realize that they need it. I think a lot of these people start from the belief that they have the only right understanding of the topic.
Ec