[WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?

[James Forrester]

On 06/11/2007, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Vandalism can wait a moment.

Good heavens, man, do you /want/ to be taken out and shot? :-)

Seriously, a lot of what some term "newbie-biting" comes from the
concept held dear by many that our old creed of eventualism is dead,
and that expedient removal of vandalism trumps all other concerns,
including having a project worth defending.

But yes, exactly as you said - don't expect users, even if they're
moderately 'old' (a few dozen - two hundred edits or so) to understand
policy. Don't say "You did X, in clear violation of Y. Do it again and
you will get blocked."; say "I saw that you did X, but you may not be
aware that one of our guiding principles is Z which has led to the
concept of Y, which suggests doing things differently. In this case,
what if you did...?". Of course, this isn't easily replicated in a bot
or human-driven script (which amounts to much the same thing), so
sysops' editcountitis habit can't be fed.

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester
jdforrester at wikimedia.org | jdforrester at gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]