On 4/10/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Because we shouldn't treat newbies like
they're idiots who can't
understand how we do things. How about "Sourcing articles is
important. It's not always the first priority, but it's an issue."
Most of them *are* idiots. See [[WP:AFC]].
Or, better yet, how about we don't treat
"newbies" as a homogenous
class. I read some policy pages and found myself on RFA discussing
someone's nomination within a day or two of getting to Wikipedia.
You're unusual. :)
This was, admittedly, before the Great Process
Explosion, and it may
well be that it's impossible for a newbie to get up to speed on the
basics now because we've eliminated basics. But that's neither here
nor there - newbie is not a homogenous class any more than "article"
is. How we deal with a given one and what we tell a given one should
not be determined before we've looked at the specific situation.
There's just no telling at all whether a newbie will stick around at
all, will read the policy documents etc. And since we do actually want
sources, where is the harm in telling newbies that they have to source
any article they create? Hell, I add at least *one* source for every
article I make. Where's the harm?
Steve