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

[William Pietri]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> "If it isn't clearly vandalism, don't treat it as vandalism" might be
> an interesting approach.
>   

And even when it is clearly vandalism, I think it's often worth not it 
treating as vandalism.

A while back somebody brought up the example of somebody replacing the 
Earth article with "mostly harmless". I think most would call that clear 
vandalism, but that doesn't stop it from being a well-meant joke. The 
person posting that clearly didn't think things through, but it's not 
clear to me that a virtual yelling-at would improve their thinking 
skills any.

Most of the obviously worthless contributions I see are people just 
playing around. The problem isn't that they are playing. It's that 
they're playing at too low a level, like some enthusiastic 
kindergarteners running onto the field of a major-league game. We don't 
want them to stop playing, just to play better, and to avoid ruining 
things for the audience in the meantime.

William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri