[WikiEN-l] Newbies who don't act like newbies

[Todd Allen]

Ron Ritzman wrote:
> On 12/1/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> The problem is not the diagnosis that this was an experienced
>> Wikipedia user; by his own admission, he was.  The problem is
>> assumption of bad faith.  A  lot of assumption of bad faith,
>> liberally distributed.
>>     
>
> And I've been guilty of that myself when I've seen AFD nominations on
> the first edit.
>
> Ever since Usenet was started in the late 70s, old timers lamented
> that newbies didn't [[RTFM]], didn't read FAQs, and made the same old
> mistakes over and over again and that experienced users were answering
> the same questions over and over again. Oh how nice it would be if
> newbies would step back and learn how things worked before diving in.
> (or as we like to call it "being bold")
>
> So when did this trend of suspecting editors who don't have a history
> of "newbie mistakes" of being potential troublemakers start? I can
> think of several good faith explanations for this...
>
> The "newbie" might be a long time anon editor who finally took common
> advice and registered an account.
>
> The "newbie" might have experience on other wikis.
>
> The "newbie" might have started out using his real meatspace name,
> which is common on some classic wikis such as Meatball but thought
> twice about it due to net.kooks who like to make trouble for people in
> real life.
>
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>   
Or the "newbie" may be a sock. But all the others are real possibilities
too. The important part is to look for -actual- disruption. If someone's
editing non-disruptively, and doing good work right when new, well,
there's a very good chance that they're simply a conscientious person
who bothered to RTFM, and in the absence of evidence otherwise, we
should assume that is the case.

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