On 4/10/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@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